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Kroger Launches AI Shopping Assistant with Ads Built In from Day One

US retail giant Kroger has launched an AI shopping assistant on its website and app, embedding product ads into results from the very first day of operation.

Kroger, one of the largest supermarket chains in the United States, has launched an AI Shopping Assistant on its website and mobile app, designed to help customers build shopping lists and find meal ideas more easily. What stands out, however, is the company's decision to embed advertising into the experience from day one.

The ads take the form of Product Listing Ads (PLA), run through Kroger Precision Marketing (KPM), the company's retail media business. These ads appear while users are building their shopping lists—for example, when asking for meal ideas—displayed alongside regular results but clearly labeled as sponsored content.

Marketing trade outlet MediaPost reports that KPM inserted PLAs into the AI Shopping Assistant's results right at launch, while The Cincinnati CPG Edge, which closely follows Kroger's business, confirmed that the product recommendation space in the AI assistant was opened to brand advertisers the moment the system went live.

This case reflects a growing industry-wide trend: as AI chatbots become places where people search for and decide on purchases, businesses are starting to treat them as a new form of advertising space—without waiting for the service to mature first, as platforms did in the past. For Kroger, it's an extension of its already fast-growing retail media business into AI territory.

The key question, however, is how users will respond to ads within AI conversations, when the recommendations they receive may include brands that paid for placement—even if labeled as sponsored.