From Pilot to Profit: How Martin & Servera Built Retail Media In-House
The Results
Martin & Servera validated Retail Media as a scalable revenue stream using Algonomy’s Recommend™ and DSW, without investing in a costly point solution.
From September 2025 through April 2026, the program delivered strong outcomes across all key metrics.
Placements closer to the point of purchase, such as the search results page, consistently delivered the highest engagement and conversion rates.
Client Background
Martin & Servera is Sweden’s leading wholesaler for the restaurant and foodservice industry. Formed in 2012 through the merger of Martin Olsson and Servera R&S, the company supplies fresh produce, beverages, equipment, services, and training to restaurants, cafés, bars, and canteens across the country.
For over a decade, Martin & Servera has partnered with Algonomy, using Recommend™ (with Engage) to deliver personalized, data-driven recommendations on their B2B platform. This helps engage customers, improve relevance, and ensure users quickly find what they need.
Personalized Product Recommendations on Home Page, powered by Recommend™.
The Challenge
Having built a personalized procurement experience, Martin & Servera saw Retail Media as the next growth opportunity. They wanted to monetize website space by displaying sponsored product recommendations from supplier brands and private labels.
While they had identified high-impact placements and built a business case, they lacked the infrastructure to execute. The team needed to:
- Automate sponsored placements: Activate sponsored products by keyword, placement, audience, and campaign dates without manual merchandising.
- Manage campaigns efficiently: Onboard, monitor, and optimize supplier campaigns without creating operational burden for the eCommerce team.
- Personalize sponsored ads: Ensure sponsored products remain relevant through segmentation and behavioral context.
- Avoid third-party ad solutions: Validate retail media in-house without revenue share models or vendor lock-in.
Martin & Servera required flexibility, automation, and control without overhead.
1 How it works
Martin & Servera activated sponsored recommendations in four key areas:
search results page, search flyout, mini cart, and checkout.
Sponsored product ads for spirits on Search Results page, powered by Recommend™ and DSW.
Suppliers purchase sponsored placements for specific search terms. Martin & Servera manages these agreements and uploads campaign files to DSW. Each file contains the search term, product SKU, campaign dates, and ranking score.
DSW combines campaign inputs with Martin & Servera’s product catalog and customer behavioral data, including searches, clicks, add-to-carts, and purchases collected through Recommend™. Using queries, the data team generated structured tables that mapped keywords to sponsored SKUs.
These tables power custom strategies that automatically inject sponsored products into the right placements for the right audience segments, and activate and expire campaigns, without manual merchandising.
Sponsored product ads for Heinz in the Search Flyout, powered by Recommend™ and DSW.
Built on Martin & Servera’s existing Algonomy setup, the team built a custom campaign planning tool to complement it. Together with Algonomy, this avoided the cost and complexity of a dedicated third-party retail media platform. After go-live, the only ongoing step was regularly uploading supplier campaign files.
Sponsored product ads for milk in the Checkout pop-up, powered by Recommend™ and DSW.
2 What Sets This Program Apart
- Built on Existing Personalization Infrastructure
Sponsored product ads are launched on the existing Algonomy stack, with no vendor lock-in or revenue share models. Operationally, this means that Martin & Servera have access to the full suite of merchandising controls within Recommend™, which they use to optimize their campaigns.With the Segment Library feature, they can create different customer segments based on shopper business type and location, then target those segments in Merchandising Rules to prevent sponsored products from appearing to audiences where they are unlikely to perform well and vice versa.
- Full Control with Automation
Brand relationships, placements, segmentation, and revenue stayed in-house, while execution was automated. - Flexibility by Design
The solution was built with several business goals in mind from the start, making it flexible and versatile enough to serve both supplier brands and private-label products across multiple placements and customer segments. - Built for Growth, Powered by a Small Team
Managed by a small, cross-functional team with high autonomy, the solution is designed to grow with their needs. This makes decision-making agile, without the cost or complexity of a third-party ad server.
What’s Next for Martin & Servera and Algonomy
Martin & Servera is scaling their Retail Media program, closing deals with new suppliers while ensuring existing partners continue to see the value and reinvest. The team is continuing to fine-tune targeting options, gather deeper insights from campaign performance, and build greater automation into their campaign management process.
