Here’s everything retail media network experts are asking for this holiday season

Still, there are a few things that marketers and advertisers would ask for if Santa were accepting RMN-related wishlists. Digiday talked to four retail media experts about what they’d like to see come out of the retail media boom. Here’s what they said: 

Measurement standardization 

In an industry full of constant change, standardization in measurement seems to be the one thing marketers consistently ask for. At this point, there are reportedly more than 200 retail media networks (and counting), each with their own metrics, capabilities and reporting. 

As it currently stands, there’s no standard way to measure across all 200-plus of these networks. Agency execs say measurement reporting is being held together with gum and duct tape. It takes a hodge podge of dashboards and agency-created metric reporting systems to give clients a somewhat clear view of how their media dollars are working.

“With it being so different across the board, it’s really hard for [people], especially marketers who aren’t looking at this stuff day to day like someone at an agency, a media person or analytics person, to keep up with it and make sense of it all,” said Leah Sallen, of media at VML digital agency.

This year, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Media Rating Council (MRC) filled in for Santa by publishing its final iteration of the retail media measurement guidelines in February.

If marketers had it their way, retailers would merge their various templates, whether PDFs or Excel spreadsheets, into one API that can be accessed through a single dashboard. At least that’s what’s on Sallen’s wishlist. 

Incrementality and attribution 

American businessman John Wanamaker is often quoted as saying, “Half my advertising spend is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” Consider it the retail media tagline, at least when it comes to off-platform media buys, whether that be on social media or streaming services. 

Increasingly, retailers have been offering more off-platform ad opportunities, like social and streaming, to make a play for brand marketing budgets. Once media moves off of the retailer’s owned properties, it gets more difficult to connect the dots between dollars spent and sales earned, advertisers say. “We want to know not just that our media investments [are] driving attributed sales, but we want to know that it’s driving sales above and beyond the base,” said Ethan Goodman, evp of digital commerce at Mars United Commerce. 

For the last year or so, retail media networks have been deemed the industry’s latest cure-all, expected to account for almost a quarter of all U.S. media ad spend in 2028, according to eMarketer. With so much money pumping into that space, advertisers are eyeing the channel with more scrutiny, Goodman said. He added clients see return on ad spend increasing with retail media spending, but total sales at the retailer are either flat or down. “That doesn’t make any sense. There clearly isn’t any incrementality there,” he said.

Hence, incrementality and attribution on this year’s retail media network-themed holiday wish list. “My wish list is that the data and pipes get connected so that we can actually do the thing versus talk about the thing,” said Mike Feldman, svp and global head of retail media at Vayner Media.

Transparency 

Calls for transparency and accountability in the booming RMN space have been growing to a feverpitch lately. Seemingly, every retailer has an ad network, and pressure is mounting for advertisers to spend more with them to secure and maintain in-store shelf space. Amid all of that, there are questions around kickbacks or quid pro quo relationships in the negotiation process. 

Agency execs have had to get creative with their reporting for the sake of clients, but “We have to do somersaults to help [clients] pull that data out of [retailers],” said Ross Walker, paid media team lead at Acadia marketing agency.

Digiday has previously reported that the lack of transparency is less about the nefarious nature of retail media networks than it is about RMN being in its early stages. Still, without the curtains pulled back enough to reveal the flow of money through the RMN pipes, clients aren’t getting a very clear picture of their total channel sales online or in-store, and the impact of that spend, Walker added. 

For this holiday wish list, marketers and advertisers aren’t limiting transparency requests to just ad spend. That wish also applies to customer data protection processes, AI tech stacks and of course, negotiations. 

“Retailers need to give serious consideration to bringing the media and the merchant organizations closer together, and creating opportunities to enable brands to leverage our retail media investment for in-store merchandizing and display and that kind of stuff,” said Goodman. Goodman’s holiday wish is for retailers to bridge the gap between their media and merchant teams, making it easier for advertisers to strike deals that’ll give them more bang (i.e. in-store merchandizing and display) for their buck. 

Creativity 

The bulk of marketers and advertisers’ wish list this year revolves around the walled garden nature of the current retail media landscape. The industry is keen on tracking media investments down to the dollar. 

Thus, the last spot on the holiday list is reserved for creativity. While off-platform media offerings have raised questions about measurement and transparency, it has also created opportunities for more creativity and brand awareness, per agency execs. Think social media integration, curation on web pages using shopper insights, personalized web store fronts or searches based on projects rather than keywords or target audiences.

Walmart is a good example of this, according to Feldman. The retailer launched its creator program back in 2022, allowing creators and brands to reach Walmart’s massive physical footprint. The move makes Walmart a more so-called omnichannel retail media ecosystem, expanding its reach beyond traditional paid search or display ads into the creator economy, he said. 

Expanded creative opportunities, whether that be social commerce or search, could be a way to usurp brand dollars, Sallen added. The way people search for things is changing, with less people searching Google for a keyword or brand they want and instead searching TikTok for terms or phrases “that fit within a characteristic of someone they aspire to be,” she said.” Sallen added, “It’s a little bit more of that aspirational search.”

When the dog bites, when the bee stings
When I’m feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite retail media network things
And then I don’t feel so bad