CVS and Reddit partner up on retail media targeting
CVS and Reddit launch a data partnership that gives marketers new offsite targeting and sales tracking capabilities
Retail media has a new frontier: Reddit. CVS Media Exchange is teaming up with the social platform in a first-of-its-kind clean room partnership that lets brands target CVS shoppers based on both subreddit activity and purchase behavior.
The deal, announced at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, gives advertisers beta access starting in Q4. It links CVS’s 90 million loyalty members with Reddit’s 108 million daily users—offering the ability to track whether ad viewers actually buy products in CVS stores or online.
For marketers, this is more than a flashy integration. It signals a new push to validate retail media’s core promise: measurable, purchase-driven outcomes—even when ads appear offsite.
This article unpacks the CVS–Reddit partnership, the strategic context behind it, and what marketers should know as the lines between media, data, and commerce continue to blur.
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Patrecia Meliana
What's happening between CVS and Reddit?
CVS’s retail media arm, CVS Media Exchange, is launching a clean room collaboration with Reddit.
The idea: brands can use CVS’s first-party data to identify loyalty shoppers who also engage on Reddit, target them based on their subreddit behavior, and then track if they purchase products after seeing the ads.
This targeting data will be privacy-safe, thanks to the clean room architecture, which allows each platform to match and analyze user overlaps without directly sharing identifiable data.
While Reddit and CVS haven’t disclosed how many loyalty users overlap with Reddit’s audience, the play here is about combining context-rich intent data (from subreddit activity) with conversion-linked purchase signals (from CVS transactions).
Atikah Amalia
Why it matters
Retail media is booming—but also facing growing scrutiny. Offsite targeting, in particular, has drawn pushback from brands frustrated with rising CPMs and opaque performance metrics.
This deal is CVS’s answer to that skepticism.
Instead of just offering ad inventory on its own site or app, CVS is now extending its shopper intelligence into Reddit—a platform known for high-intent engagement, especially in wellness, beauty, and lifestyle communities.
“If you think about the health and wellness conversations that are happening within the Reddit platform, it’s primed for insertion of brands—through the data assets that we have—into that conversation,” said Parbinder Dhariwal, Vice President and General Manager at CVS Media Exchange.
Reddit’s Chief Revenue Officer Mike Romoff echoed this, saying the partnership connects Reddit’s “unique intent and authenticity” with CVS’s purchase ecosystem to “create a seamless path-to-purchase experience.”
Patrecia Meliana
What marketers should know
This clean room collaboration is more than just another retail media tool—it’s a potential shift in how brands approach offsite ad strategy and attribution. Here are four takeaways for marketers:
1. Cross-platform shopper insights just got stronger
CVS’s loyalty data offers a goldmine of verified purchase behavior. Combined with Reddit’s topic-driven interest signals, marketers can build nuanced audience segments—think skincare buyers active in r/skincareaddiction or supplement shoppers engaging in r/fitness.
2. Attribution clarity beyond owned platforms
The clean room setup enables closed-loop measurement, even for offsite impressions. This could help justify higher CPMs if brands can prove ads seen on Reddit led to CVS purchases—a long-standing ask in offsite retail media.
3. First-party data is now media-agnostic
Retailers like CVS are beginning to treat their shopper data as a media asset, independent of their owned platforms. That opens up a future where loyalty signals can travel with audiences across the web—so long as privacy and permissions are respected.
4. Expect more of these partnerships
This CVS–Reddit deal is part of a broader wave of cross-platform clean room collaborations. For marketers, this means more opportunities—but also more complexity. You’ll need strong data governance, creative adaptation for niche platforms, and clear measurement frameworks to make these partnerships work.
The CVS–Reddit partnership marks a strategic evolution in retail media—moving from owned-and-operated ecosystems into contextual, community-based environments like Reddit.
For marketers, the opportunity is clear: pair rich shopper data with authentic digital spaces to drive not just impressions, but measurable outcomes.
As Q4 approaches and the beta opens, brands should start evaluating their Reddit presence, mapping high-intent communities, and preparing to plug CVS data into their audience strategy.
