Åhléns joins Visual Art’s retail media network. The department store chain adds screens in around 50 locations, bringing the network closer to becoming Sweden’s first nationwide offering.
Retail Media: Visual Art Expands National Network with Åhléns
Visual Art is continuing to expand its national retail media network in Sweden, launched earlier this year. As part of this growth, Swedish department store chain Åhléns is joining as a new retail partner.
Åhléns is one of Sweden’s largest department store chains, with more than 50 locations across the country. The retailer offers more than 1,000 private-label, in-house, and external brands, alongside services in beauty, fashion, and home.
Ad Sales through Retail Media Hub
To commercialize its digital in-store infrastructure, Åhléns will use Visual Art’s Retail Media Hub. The platform aggregates and standardizes data on inventory, screen formats, reach, and exposure. This standardization makes it possible to package and sell the in-store environment as a professional media channel, aligned with how traditional media is bought and sold.
The solution is integrated with Visual Art’s In-Store Experience Management (IXM) platform, which serves as the CMS layer for orchestrating content and managing campaigns. Within the broader ecosystem, Bonnier News is responsible for packaging and selling the network’s reach through its media sales organization and commercial tools.
Sensor Tech to Boost Transparency
The platform will also integrate sensor technology from Apsace, enabling real-time analysis of in-store exposure and customer flows. Åhléns uses this technology to increase transparency and provide verifiable reach and shared KPIs for both retailers and advertisers. All data is processed locally, with no personal information stored or shared.
“This collaboration is an important step in our ambition to develop Åhléns’ retail media offering,” says Linnéa Mårtensson, Retail Media & Partner Manager at Åhléns. “By combining our strong in-store environment with data-driven technology, we are creating new opportunities for brands to reach customers in a more effective and measurable way.”
Pontus Meijer, CEO of Visual Art, adds: “As a strong retailer like Åhléns joins, we see the network rapidly growing in both reach and relevance. This is an important milestone in our ambition to establish a national retail media structure that makes the channel more accessible and actionable for the market.”
The initiative is part of Visual Art’s long-term ambition to develop in-store retail media as a strategic component of the digital in-store experience, where the physical store increasingly becomes a data-driven and monetisable media channel.