When advertisers decide where their next pound or dollar goes, friction should never be the deciding factor. Ollie Shayer, Senior Director, Global Strategy & Innovation at SMG, makes the case for retail media being easier to work with, together with points for where to start.
Mrunal Bhagat is Retail Media Lead at Pearson. In this opinion article, she explains the limitations of ROAS as a measurement approach in the “recommendation economy” – and why she has created a model that lets businesses truly understand where to allocate spend.
For years, retailers have poured investment into attracting customers, optimising websites and reducing basket abandonment. Yet one of the most commercially valuable opportunities in ecommerce often arrives after the transaction has already taken place.
As commerce media matures, success will depend less on what individual organizations can build on their own and more on how retailers, brands, agencies, publishers, and technology partners combine their data, expertise, investment, and customer relationships to create value they could not deliver independently.
While a wide range of brands have embraced commerce media, there is a significant difference between participating in commerce media and fully unlocking its value. Helen Johnson, Managing Director at commerce media agency Capture, unpacks the findings from new research to reveal where brands need to focus their efforts in order to unlock its full value.
As retail media matures, the industry is discovering that growth alone does not guarantee efficiency, writes Claire Trbovic, Global Head of Product at SMG. She argues that the next phase of retail media growth will not be defined by the number of networks that launch – but by the infrastructure that connects them.
Retail media doesn’t just perform well. It highlights how loosely defined – and lightly planned – other parts of the mix have become. When one channel can clearly link investment to sales, it becomes much harder to ignore the rest.
As AI becomes embedded in everyday decision-making, it will transform how consumers discover, evaluate, and choose products – disrupting the commerce landscape as we know it, including retail media. Talon.One’s Laurens Van Wiele outlines where loyalty can fit into the picture and promote discoverability, providing the right groundwork is laid early.
Paul Stafford, Head of Very Media Group, lays out why building a successful retail media network demands a coordinated transformation across people, processes, technology, and partnerships – and why its framework needs to incorporate the “5Cs” of curiosity, capabilities, credentials, connectivity, and chaos.
Much of the current influx of spend into retail media is concentrated within point-of-sale and last-click performance. While this can be effective, anchoring retail media in performance marketing risks narrowing the scope of what can truly be achieved within the channel, writes Graham Field, CRO at Outra.
Parweez Mulbocus, Head of Ecommerce at OMD EMEA, writes about why brands need to rethink their approach to commerce in the current era – and why creative commerce is the answer to the conundrum.
While retail media’s growth is impressive, turning that momentum into an effective strategy will take more from retailers, writes Lee Metters, Senior Client Partner, Brand Partnerships & Retail Media at Awin. He outlines the moves retailers will need to make to be on the cutting edge in 2026.