Good morning from Retail Media Age HQ!
As you read this, I’ll be on the floor of RetailX’s Commerce Media Festival, high-tailing it between sessions at Retail MediaX Europe as well as the co-located FMCG Summit and CTV Summit.
I have a packed agenda lined up, with sessions on the future of retail media, driving in-store performance, what brands need to know about commerce media, and more to look forward to – and RMA readers can look forward to reading all the highlights in the days following the event.
The conference will be followed by what promises to be an amazing night at the RMX Awards, taking place at Horizon 22, aka the tallest building in the City of London! I’m excited to celebrate the award winners in what will no doubt be breathtaking surroundings.
The Wall Street Journal recently put out a piece that described retail media networks as being “in their ‘gangly teenager’ phase” as they try to grow and mature, with RMNs facing challenges such as competing against the behemoth that is Amazon for a portion of squeezed budgets, and persuading marketers who want to simplify their spending that their solutions can deliver.
There’s also an increasing focus on how retail media can serve as a brand-building channel and not just a driver of performance – though it’s still charged with meeting performance expectations at the same time.
All of this chimes exactly with the thoughts shared by members of the RMA’s advisory board at our most recent meeting – from which you can now read the key points in my write-up on Retail Media Age. Leaders from the Co-op, Harrods, John Lewis, Screwfix, Nectar360, Criteo, and IAB UK discussed how shrinking budgets are making advertisers keen to stick to what’s proven and less ambitious about taking a chance on retail media, as well as how (at the same time) retail media is losing its ‘experimental’ status and facing more demands to prove itself.
The meeting also featured a fascinating discussion about ease of buying retail media and whether retail media has a buying efficiency problem; the experience of shopping with AI and how we are in the “MySpace era” of agentic commerce; and how brand-building is coming to the fore in the midst of all this.
No doubt the sessions at today’s Commerce Media Festival will build on these themes with some great insights into how retailers, brands, and tech partners alike are adapting.
And speaking of great insights: this week’s My Road to Retail Media, which stars Hélène Trad, Director of Retail Media at Kingfisher, is a must-read; I particularly loved how she outlined the shift taking place in retail media from “buying space” to “activating audiences” – and why she believes in the potential for retail media to be a “genuine brand-building engine”. Hélène has had a long career in customer insight that has led her to retail media and I thoroughly appreciated her take on where the space is going.
