The case for and against retail media networks as brand-building channels

“Retailers own far more than online ad placements. They own aisles, screens, apps, content and cultural moments,” Kim Mayo, executive director of retail media at Trade School told Digiday in an emailed statement.

For example, in Q4 of 2025, 60% of Walmart’s self-serve display spend went to offsite inventory, according to a recent Tinuiti report.

But brands still need convincing. Execs say that comes down to part education from the agency and part budgeting from the brand. Some marketers are hooked on ROAS, putting brand growth in the backseat. And for some brands that are focused on brand growth, the right person might not be in the room to pitch as there’s a tug of war over who controls retail media budgets.

“You can have all the capabilities in the world, if advertisers can’t agree how to fund it, then you’re never in the running,” said one retail media expert who spoke on the condition of anonymity. They added that the majority of dollars are still being spent with RMNs as conversions.

The case for retail media networks as brand-building channels

Retail media is a first-shopper data play, enabling advertisers to target shoppers at the point of purchase, whether in-store or online.

Retailers control physical aisles, digital screens, apps, and cultural moments where shoppers already are. In theory, retailers could offer brands storytelling opportunities in those spaces and serve up what they’re good at: closed loop measurement. 

“They’re not modeled off of a lookalike. They’re modeled off of a receipt,” said Jen Sayroo, senior director of paid search at Mission One Media. That first-party data treasure trove can also be executed off-site across audiences in programmatic, audio, and social, Sayroo added. 

Over the past two years, more retail media networks have started pitching themselves as full-funnel marketing channels, looking to shore up against Amazon’s offering. RMNs have inked partnerships that allow advertisers to leverage first-party data off-site. They’ve expanded ad formats and tried to improve measurement capabilities. 

“Everyone enables you to use the audience data, activate it on a streaming TV inventory source through a DSP,” said Ryan Walker, who leads PMG’s Commerce Center of Excellence. 

As far as media buyers and commerce experts are concerned, the pipes are all there. The reality is most RMNs aren’t thought of or currently functioning in a full-funnel capacity. That’s the opinion of six retail media experts Digiday spoke with for this piece. 

The case against retail media networks as brand building channels

That takes us to the case against RMNs as brand building channels. Aside from Amazon, most RMN ad inventory is “small online units built for conversion, sold in auctions optimized for conversion, and measured by attribution models that will always make brand work look like it’s underperforming,” as Mayo describes it. 

There’s also the costs. Or as the first anonymous media buyer puts it, “Lord knows there’s a lot of leaps of faith in validating the value of brand building investments.”

Media buyers said the price validating upper-funnel metrics can be steep thanks to test-and-learn campaigns with longer lead times. For example, a brand would need to spend more than $500,000 to test whether it’s gaining household penetration nationwide from RMN investments, per the first anonymous exec. In some cases, those data points are locked behind spend thresholds or Joint Business Planning (JBPs), where advertisers have to spend a set amount to access the data. 

“I feel very nickel and dimed as a brand…,” said Elizabeth Marsten, vp of commerce media at performance marketing agency Tinuiti. “When you start locking me into a dollar amount, and I have no recourse if you don’t deliver.” 

That’s just on the retailer side. On the brand side, there’s executive dysfunction muddying who pays for RMN activations. RMNs are by and large paid for by trade or shopper dollars—teams that are hinged on immediate ROI, which, to Mayo’s point, makes brand work hard to prove. 

“Until the ad products and the measurement change, the channel will keep pulling brand budgets toward performance behavior,” Mayo said.