BJ's Wholesale Club has been running a retail media network for five years, mostly without telling anyone. BJ's Media Edge built its business on owned-and-operated inventory: sponsored products, display banners, push notifications and brand pages. Now it is getting ready to go offsite, and it is starting to talk about it.

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Mark Sluzinski, Director of Commercial Planning and Delivery at BJ's Media Edge, joins The Middlemen for what he calls the network's first podcast. BJ's has more than 8 million members and over 260 clubs across 22 states, and this year it pushed farther west than ever with five new clubs in Texas. It opened the market with $1.99 gas, a competitor matched it, and the free publicity did the rest.

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The big move is offsite. BJ's is finalizing a partnership with a leading DSP that will let it put its membership data to work beyond its own properties, with managed and self-serve buying in 2027. Suppliers had been asking for it for years. BJ's is also making its audiences available in programmatic data marketplaces, the same playbook large publishers have used for years to get in front of brand and non-endemic buyers.

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Measurement is being built in-house. BJ's developed its own test-and-control incrementality methodology for onsite media, validated it in Q2 by funding campaigns for key suppliers, and is sharing the results with its top suppliers along with a question few retailers ask: what more do you need? That transparency extends to quarterly reviews, where suppliers see the roadmap and help shape it.

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The club model changes the stakes. With a tight assortment, products that do not move units lose their spot, so retail media becomes a way to keep a brand on the shelf, not just an extra line in the budget. Sluzinski wants joint business planning to start earlier so key initiatives are not pushed back a year, and he sees two kinds of buyers: sophisticated brands asking about incrementality, and long-tail brands that need managed service to get started and can still become significant investors.

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The standout is sponsored coupons. Coupons at BJ's belong to the merchants, from a 72-page Smart Savers book to digital offers in the app, and Media Edge amplifies them. Suppliers can pay to boost their coupons to the top of the digital coupon list, ranked for each member, with the same creative and purchases tied back through membership data. Todd called it an idea the rest of the industry will wish it had thought of first.

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Heading into 2027, BJ's Media Edge is adding offsite, in-club and incrementality to a business that has quietly built some of the largest supplier relationships in the space.