Now a much maturer proposition, Retail Media must still prove itself to leadership. It is struggling to embrace the potential for creative “failure” for a start, leading executives are calling for more boldness on the part of leadership.
In Maison New Digital Age at Cannes Lions, a group of industry leaders gathered to discuss retail media’s next phase: how to move beyond the ‘hype’ of growth and tackle urgent questions of fragmentation, measurement, customer experience, and more.
The discussion was chaired by New Digital Age and Retail Media Age Editor-in-Chief Justin Pearse and was made up of senior leaders representing major retail media networks, platforms, and organisations. Joining the discussion were Ollie Shayer, Senior Director, Global Strategy and Innovation, SMG; Jill Orr, SVP GTM, Criteo; Ellie Prendergast, Founder, Women in Retail Media; Martin Ditlev Nielsen, Global Head of Media Strategy & Planning, Arla Foods; Shane Buckley, UK Country Co-Lead, Uber Advertising; Simon White, Sales Director UK & Nordics – Retail Media, Mirakl; Kavita Cariapa, Head of Commerce Media, EMEA Global, Dentsu; Justin Reid, Senior Director of Media, Tripadvisor; and Suzy Knight, Partnerships Lead, Screwfix.
This article is part two of a two-part write-up – check here to read Part 1, which looked at market fragmentation and the metric move to outcome-based assessment.
The problem with creative standardisation
The roundtable consensus was clear: performance media has drifted into visual anonymity, hiding behind automated templates that sacrifice brand identity for programmatic scale. The next step is injecting real creativity back into retail media formats.
Suzy Knight of Screwfix pointed out that while retail media is an undeniable revenue stream, its long-term viability relies heavily on the maturity of its measurement frameworks.
“Retail is an incredibly tough business with tight margins, so this represents a vital revenue and profit opportunity,” Knight said. However, she pointed out that retail media teams face a persistent hurdle when presenting to senior leadership. Because executives are accustomed to analysing rigid performance spreadsheets, proving the broader, creative value-add of these media assets remains a challenge.
Shayer expanded on the systemic infrastructure needed to bridge this gap, saying that retail media is trying to build measurement standards in an environment that demands absolute accountability.
He said that evaluating retail media solely as a short-term profit line is an incredibly limiting viewpoint. According to Shayer, the true value of modern retail media infrastructure, such as massive in-store digital screen rollouts, extends far beyond ad sales to lift core brand marketing, boost own-brand visibility, and fundamentally improve the physical customer experience.
Cariapa warned that this constant push for immediate, programmatic justification has drained the creativity out of the assets themselves. She said that brands must become much more comfortable with structured testing and accepting creative failure.
“Testing with intention, and also being okay with failure, is one of the best things a brand or retailer can have as an asset,” Cariapa said. She said that the current landscape is oversaturated with safe, bland assets where the only creative innovation is a minor tweak to a font color or size. To overcome this, she said retailers must provide more flexible creative playgrounds that move away from rigid templates.
The internal creative standards must also be fundamentally reassessed if networks want to achieve commercial longevity.
Orr said that standardising formatting rules is a double-edged sword. She said that while establishing cohesive creative frameworks help networks scale operations, over-complicating technical specifications can artificially stifle creative expression.
Orr pointed out that some network structures have become so bloated with internal rules that it hinders their own performance, saying, “We have seen retailers with over 150 creative formats within their retail media network. From an operational point of view, that can make them stand out more for complexity than effectiveness”.
Building infrastructure around the consumer
The structural design of retail businesses often exacerbates these channel silos. When data, retail media operations, and core commercial teams are completely separated, creating a unified customer experience becomes nearly impossible.
Shayer suggested that centralised customer data is the only way to break down these internal walls. He said that when a retailer consolidates its data footprint into a single, holistic view of the consumer, the business naturally stops thinking in isolated channels and starts building unified touchpoints across the entire shopping journey.
“If data is centralised so there is a holistic view of the customer,” Shayer suggested, “it becomes less about channels and more about customer touchpoints across the entire journey”.
Prendergast highlighted how these structural divisions look from an operational standpoint, saying that retail media networks are frequently forced to navigate internal barriers. She said that retail media acts as an agitator within a legacy retail business.
Before a network can scale, Prendergast said that leadership must often rip up and re-engineer old corporate foundations. “Before you can really put the grassroots in your retail media network,” Prendergast said, “you are pulling apart some of those core foundations”.
Orr agreed with this assessment, saying that the foundational starting point of a business’s internal organisation is often what dictates its digital readiness. She noted that the friction Prendergast described is a natural part of a network’s early evolution, stating that it “starts off with what is the starting point of the retailer’s structure, and is that ready to welcome a retail media network”.
Buckley added that these partnerships are maturing beyond reporting into co-marketing opportunities. He said that insights from loyalty and commerce ecosystems can help partners better understand customer behaviour in aggregate and inform collaborative marketing strategies.
The modern retail media talent profile
The roundtable concluded with a focus on the human engine driving the sector. The unique nature of retail media demands a specific, hybrid talent profile, individuals who possess sophisticated media planning skills alongside deep financial and commercial literacy.
Shayer said that organisational design dictates how effectively this talent can operate. Reflecting on his senior roles, he said he frequently spent more time collaborating with corporate finance departments than with traditional marketing teams.
“I spent most time in organisations with the finance department than I did with anybody else,” Shayer said. He says that retail media leadership requires individuals who can educate the wider business on media mechanics while simultaneously analysing the deep, financial waterfall values that these ads bring to a retailer’s broader commercial operation.
Knight observed that the early operational setup within a business dictates how effectively this new breed of talent can perform. She says that because the sector is constantly shifting, successful professionals cannot rely on traditional, static job descriptions.
Instead, Knight said the industry requires talent driven by an innate curiosity: “You want it to be to have that growth and constantly emerging, so you need to have that thirst and that sort of drive”.
The industry’s ultimate maturation requires a workforce that is far less siloed in its foundational thinking. Orr says that cross-pollinating talent between the historical divisions of retail and media is vital for long-term health.
She said that breaking down these traditional walls can expose structural blind spots, saying, “I think you could get a lot more diversity in the industry if people swapped around a little bit, and everybody understood a little bit more of what other people did”.
White observed that the ongoing talent migration from agencies and platforms into retail networks is gradually breaking down long-standing industry silos. He said that the most successful hires are often those who do not possess a legacy, institutional retail media background.
“We are actually not looking for people that have long retail media backgrounds because, more often than not, they are all singing from the same hymn sheet,” White said. According to White, bringing in professionals from adjacent digital or creative fields introduces a vital, fresh perspective that prevents networks from repeating the same rigid industry playbooks.
Ultimately, Buckley summarised the exact qualities that define leadership in the sector today, emphasising that success relies on a unique mindset. He said that when building a team, he prioritises raw grit, hunger, and an entrepreneurial comfort with ambiguity over a perfect corporate pedigree.
“The biggest piece is grit, hunger, wanting to build something from scratch, that I look for when I am hiring candidates,” Buckley said. Because modern retail media requires building complex networks entirely from scratch, Buckley said the industry’s top performers are those who are energised by solving undefined, highly complex problems.
