Retail media has moved quickly from emerging opportunity to established line item on marketing budgets, but according to ISBA Head of Media Dan Larden, the most important work is only just beginning. As a member of the Retail Media Age advisory board, Larden brings an advertiser-led perspective to a channel that is increasingly influential, politically complex and organisationally challenging for brands.
How are you feeling about retail media as we look ahead this year?
I’m still feeling really positive. From our perspective as an industry body, we’re not coming at this from a place of talking about how new or innovative retail media is. We’re much more focused on trust, standards and governance. It’s not the sexiest part of the conversation, but retail media is such a collaborative space that those fundamentals really matter.
One of the big takeaways from our work last year was how willing everyone was to lean in and share. Brands, agencies, tech companies, everyone was open and engaged. It genuinely felt like the early days of programmatic, when people were excited and trying to raise the overall level of understanding across the industry.
That energy has carried on, and that’s a big opportunity for us.
What changes as the industry moves beyond its initial focus on standards?
Part one of our work was very qualitative. It was about asking what retail media actually looks like, where the opportunities are and where the risks sit. What came through very clearly was the need to raise the water level, build trust and put governance at the heart of growth.
Now the conversation is shifting. People are largely done debating whether standards are needed. The focus is moving towards education and effectiveness. As an impartial, industry-led body, we have a central role to play there.
The key is making sure this doesn’t become too supply-led or tech-led, and that advertisers remain firmly at the centre of the conversation.
You’ve described retail media as unusually political. Why is that?
There really isn’t a direct comparison in marketing. It’s a bit like out of home, in that the retailer owns the screen and the environment. You’re not just buying a media placement, you’re buying access to property that the retailer controls, whether that’s in store, on site or across digital screens.
On top of that, you have the dynamic of giving money to your biggest customer. That doesn’t really happen anywhere else.
Brands are often quite honest about this. Sometimes retail media spend is defensive, or about managing a trade relationship, rather than purely about marketing effectiveness. That political dimension touches every part of the business.
Is there a risk retail media repeats the trust issues programmatic faced?
I can see why people worry about that, but I think the risk is lower. Programmatic became its own worst enemy because it was open, fragmented and heavily technology-led. Retail media is much more concentrated. In most categories there are only a handful of networks that really matter.
That said, it does resemble walled gardens more than the open web. That’s why it’s so important to involve the right people early and grow this responsibly.
With programmatic, it took nearly 20 years before anyone properly mapped how it worked and where the money went, and that was painful for everyone. We’re trying to avoid that by putting governance and advertiser involvement in place now.
What internal frictions are brands experiencing around retail media?
A lot of it mirrors the long-standing tension between media and creative. Shopper and trade teams think very differently to brand marketers, even though they ultimately want the same thing. Many people responsible for trade have never heard of ISBA or the IAB.
Their focus is on selling more units in a specific promotion, not media standards.
What we are seeing is that agencies are often the ones helping to bring those teams together. They have people who can speak both languages, particularly those coming from search and ecommerce backgrounds where optimisation and ROI are second nature. Agencies deserve credit for playing that bridging role.
How is the measurement conversation evolving?
Measurement isn’t just about standards. It covers briefing, buying, reporting and optimisation. This year, we need less debate about standards and more focus on effectiveness. How does retail media work alongside price, packaging and product? How do you understand total impact across online and in-store?
Very few organisations can answer that internally. They need external support from agencies or consultancies.
We’ve seen some excellent case studies where everything came together perfectly, but the challenge now is making that approach the norm, not the exception. That requires organisational change, not just better metrics.
Is creativity in retail media where it needs to be?
Creativity will largely fix itself.
You can’t solve creativity through excessive standardisation. AI will help with personalisation and scale, and agencies will play a key role in connecting brand and trade activity. The bigger issue is briefing and communication, not formats.
What about the push for non-endemic brands in retail media?
I think that conversation is often overplayed.
Retail data is incredibly powerful, probably the best signal you can buy, but it’s also very expensive to activate. For some non-endemic use cases, the economics simply don’t stack up.
Retail media will continue to grow strongly with endemic brands, and that’s where much of the real value sits. Non-endemic use cases make for good conference talking points, but in practice, many brands will get similar results far more cheaply through more traditional approaches.
