‘The Missing Piece’ is a series where we ask the retail/commerce media tech platforms how they are addressing the challenges facing the ecosystem.
Next, we speak to James House, Chief Commercial Officer at customer engagement company Reward.
What excites you about the retail media landscape as a whole?
Retail media is sitting at the intersection of data, technology, and consumer behaviour – three forces that are reshaping how brands and retailers connect with people. We’re entering an era where first-party data is the most powerful asset a business can have. Combined with advances in AI, we can now move beyond broad segmentation to hyper-personalisation at scale. That means being able to engage customers at the right time and with relevance.
Commerce media itself is also evolving from a tactical add-on to a core growth strategy. Retailers are no longer just places to shop – they’re becoming media owners with unique audiences and insights. The opportunity to build brand equity, drive measurable sales, and deepen loyalty through these channels is vast, which is especially relevant as we enter the Golden Quarter, when precision targeting and attribution matter most.
What are the biggest challenges facing the ecosystem?
The shift away from cookies is accelerating a rethink in digital advertising. Marketers are grappling with media fragmentation, rising costs, and increasing pressure from consumers who expect both personalisation and privacy – a tough balance to strike.
Today, targeting often lacks precision, in-store sales frequently go unattributed, and budgets leak into platforms where spend isn’t tied back to real sales. One of the biggest blind spots remains the inability to link digital marketing spend to in-store sales. Without clear attribution across channels, brands are left making decisions on incomplete data. For CMOs under pressure to demonstrate ROI, that’s a major challenge.
How does your business aim to solve those challenges?
Reward has built a Finance Media Network rooted in the everyday spending behaviour of millions of consumers through their banking apps. By partnering with major banks, we give brands access to millions of permissioned, marketable customers, and billions of verified transaction-level data points across categories. This is data you can trust – tied to real purchases, not proxies.
Because our data is linked directly to transactions, we can attribute impact across both online and in-store sales. That closed-loop view enables brands to invest with confidence, retailers to prove the value of their media, and banks to deliver stronger customer engagement.
AI powers how we activate this data. For consumers, that means hyper-personalised content and offers with real value. For brands, it means targeted campaigns that drive loyalty and conversion. For retailers, it means a high-performing media channel with accurate attribution. And for banks, it means deeper engagement and stronger customer value.
Our Intelligence Suite takes this even further – providing visibility into customer intent, competitor activity, and the effectiveness of spend across channels. It empowers partners to make confident, data-led decisions while maximising ROI and reducing inefficiencies.
What has been your biggest success so far?
Our biggest success has been our proposition evolution and fast growth. We started as a card-linked offers business, but by leveraging our unique datasets we’ve transformed into a leading intelligence and commerce media partner. Acquisitions such as HDI (Hospitality Data Insights) and investment from Experian, integrating their analytics capabilities, have strengthened our segmentation, SKU data, and sentiment analysis – giving our partners a more accurate, holistic view of the market and their customers than ever before.
At the same time, we’ve never lost sight of our roots in loyalty. Since inception, we’ve powered loyalty programmes for leading banks and returned over £2 billion in rewards to customers on behalf of banks and retailers. Today, we’re recognised by some of the biggest names in retail and banking as a trusted partner in driving incremental sales and ROI – with the ability to attribute across online and offline, against actual purchases.
What do you think the future holds for both the business and the wider world of retail media?
The future of retail media will be defined by the evolving relationship between brands, data, and consumers. We’re moving into a world where agentic AI will give consumers more control over their data, while enabling brands to engage in a privacy-first, hyper-personalised way across the open internet.
We’ll also see a shift from proxy-based measurement to AI-powered causal attribution models that can finally answer the age-old marketing question: “What really works?” At Reward, our card-linked data enables real-time Media Mix Modelling, giving marketers the ability to optimise spend for both short-term sales and long-term brand health.
Ultimately, hyper-personalised attribution – at the individual level – will become the new standard. That will give CMOs the tools to prove marketing’s true long-term value, reduce wasted spend, and build deeper, more meaningful relationships with customers.
For us at Reward, our mission is to keep leading at the intersection of customer engagement, data, and media – helping brands, retailers, and banks unlock sustainable growth in this next chapter of commerce media.
