Retail Media's $100B Question: Who's Really Seeing Those Ads?

Retail media ad spending is projected to reach over $165 billion this year, making up more than a fifth of digital ad spend worldwide. However, this booming industry is built on shaky ground: retail media networks (RMNs) can’t actually prove who is seeing their ads. While retailers promise targeted advertising through first-party data, most can’t deliver basic metrics like real-time impressions and clicks.

To address this challenge, the most forward-thinking marketers are turning to platforms that can offer more granular tracking, measurements and attribution, delivering real-time performance data directly to advertisers' analytics platforms and enabling them to see how their ads perform across networks instantly. This means retailers can monetize their networks with much more compelling (and differentiated) reporting capabilities.

RMN Pain Points

RMNs are now expanding their advertising offerings beyond their own platforms to include search engines and social media sites. This expansion allows them to reach a wider, more diverse audience while creating new revenue streams. It also makes it increasingly difficult for marketers and executives to accurately track and evaluate return on investment across all channels.

According to the Association of National Advertisers, over half of marketing pros pointed to a lack of standardization across platforms as their biggest obstacle when working with RMNs. In fact, according to ISM's inaugural In-Store Readiness Report, all evaluated retail verticals across the industry, including grocery, drug and home improvement, require significant advancement in standardization and measurement capabilities, highlighting a critical gap in the current retail media ecosystem.

Since 56 percent of American marketers are managing at least five different RMNs, this absence of standardization compounds their challenges. The combination of multiple campaigns and limited visibility into the underlying technology has resulted in many marketers questioning if these networks are truly delivering valuable results. Organizations that fail to invest in tech tools that can accurately measure and attribute engagement will risk losing advertiser confidence and their money.

Rethinking RMN Road Maps

When RMNs rose in prominence last year, many marketers promptly put all their eggs into that basket only to be disappointed with underwhelming results. Though their RMN investment may have been premature, it’s not too late for them to leverage sophisticated technology to take their RMN strategy to the next level.

The key to a successful RMN depends on tracking results across disparate platforms. Investing in technology that can consolidate data from multiple RMN sources into a single, real-time dashboard is an opportunity to get ahead of competitors who have hesitated to implement these types of solutions. Comprehensive tracking has the potential to fundamentally transform how RMN performance is measured while also influencing what advertisers expect from campaigns.

As businesses continue to develop RMN strategies aimed at connecting with precisely targeted consumers at the exact time they're ready to make a purchase, these unified measurement platforms will become increasingly impactful, especially as organizations see their effectiveness firsthand. Companies that integrate advanced monitoring technologies into their RMNs now will position themselves for sustained success in the always-evolving digital advertising landscape.

As MetaRouter’s head of product, Greg Brunk leads its team in setting the strategy and building out its customer data infrastructure platform.