Ada Wachowska is Head of Retail Media at global omnichannel media agency Assembly, part of the Stagwell network. She took up her role in August 2023 after more than four years with Assembly’s Digital Commerce team in retail media-focused roles and more than two years at Saatchi & Saatchi Poland.
In an interview with Retail Media Age, she explains how Assembly adapts its approach to retail media markets that may be at different stages of maturity, how brands are taking a wider view of the customer journey as retail media has become established, and why it’s no longer necessary for advertisers to choose between brand building and commercial delivery.
Can you tell us a bit about Assembly and how you operate in the retail media space? What does your day-to-day look like?
I’m Head of Retail Media at Assembly, where I lead our retail media proposition and a specialist team working across markets, platforms and client categories. Assembly is a global omnichannel media agency, which means retail media doesn’t sit in a silo. We work closely with teams across media, ecommerce, data, technology and research to help clients connect retail media to broader business objectives.
My day-to-day is incredibly varied. One moment I might be working with a client on a multi-market growth strategy, the next I could be discussing measurement frameworks, supporting new business opportunities or helping my team navigate a new retail media capability that’s launched in one of our markets. A big part of my role is helping clients make sense of an increasingly complex landscape and translating that complexity into clear, actionable plans that drive growth.
Working in an agency that operates across so many different regions, how does Assembly adapt its approach to different markets and the distinct challenges presented by each one?
One of the most interesting aspects of retail media is how unevenly it develops across markets. The US, UK, Italy or Australia may all be at very different stages of maturity, with different retailer ecosystems, capabilities and levels of advertiser adoption.
We try to strike a balance between consistency and flexibility. We have shared strategic and measurement frameworks, but we don’t believe in applying exactly the same solution everywhere. Local expertise matters because every market has its own commercial realities and consumer behaviours.
The advantage of operating globally is that we often get visibility of new capabilities very early. Features, formats or measurement solutions are frequently launched in larger markets before rolling out elsewhere. That gives us opportunities to test, learn and understand what works before those capabilities reach additional markets. By the time they arrive, we’re often able to move much faster because we’ve already built that experience and perspective.
How are you seeing client strategies around retail media evolve over time?
Retail media started as an experiment for many brands. Clients were testing budgets, learning how to measure success and trying to understand where retail media fitted within their wider marketing strategy.
That conversation has changed significantly. Retail media has established itself as a core media channel, and as the channel has matured, so have the conversations, budgets and expectations around it.
We’re seeing much greater focus on incrementality, new-to-brand growth and broader business outcomes rather than evaluating success through a single platform metric. Clients are asking more sophisticated questions about how retail media contributes to overall growth and how it connects with the rest of their marketing activity.
We’re also seeing brands take a much wider view of the customer journey. Discovery and consideration increasingly happen across multiple environments, including AI-powered experiences, before a shopper ever reaches a retailer. That’s one of the reasons we built Search+, Stagwell’s agentic AI search offering, which helps brands understand their readiness for AI-mediated discovery and measure visibility, recommendation and outcomes across AI-powered environments.
Ultimately, the biggest shift is that clients are thinking less about individual channels and more about how different touchpoints work together to influence a purchase decision.
What is your approach to dealing with any silos that might be present on the client side?
Retail media naturally sits between several different functions. Ecommerce, media, category, sales, shopper marketing and retailer teams often all have a stake in the same outcome, but not always the same objectives or metrics.
The first step is usually creating alignment around a common business goal. Once everyone agrees what success looks like, it becomes much easier to have productive conversations about investment, measurement and priorities.
As an agency, we’re often in a unique position because we have visibility across multiple stakeholders and disciplines. We can connect information and conversations that might otherwise happen independently.
To be honest, I don’t view this position as purely a challenge. In many ways it’s one of the most exciting aspects of retail media. Because retail media sits so close to media, ecommerce, retailer relationships, product availability and conversion, it gives practitioners the opportunity to influence a wide range of business levers. You’re not simply looking at performance and reporting on it after the fact; you’re often able to identify an issue and work with the relevant teams to solve it.
What’s a common misconception about retail media that you’d love to debunk?
I think the misconception I’d challenge is that brands need to choose between brand building and commercial accountability.
Great creative and meaningful brand experiences still matter, but marketers also want to know who they reached, whether they influenced new customers, and what happened afterwards.
That’s what makes retail media interesting. It combines brand-building opportunities with closed-loop measurement. In recent work for Lenovo, for example, analysis showed that 21% of conversion journeys began with a video exposure. That demonstrates that awareness activity can play a meaningful role in driving eventual business outcomes, while giving marketers much greater visibility into the customer journey.
For me, that’s the more interesting story. Retail media isn’t simply another performance channel. It gives brands better tools to understand how brand investment contributes to commercial results.
What one piece of advice would you give to brands who are considering adding retail media to their channel mix?
Be clear on what success looks like before deciding where to invest.
The brands that get the most value from retail media are usually the ones that know exactly what they’re trying to achieve. That could be driving incremental sales, supporting a product launch, growing household penetration, acquiring new customers, or strengthening retailer relationships.
I’d also encourage brands to focus on fundamentals before scaling investment. Media can bring shoppers to a product, but it can’t compensate indefinitely for poor availability, weak product content, or a poor customer experience.
Read more agency insights into retail media’s challenges and opportunities in RMA’s Agency Views series.
