If retail media networks want to talk like ITV, they have to act like ITV
Opinion
To achieve the next phase of growth, retail media networks must move beyond being a trading desk and become true media owners. This requires a change in operating model.
Almost every major retailer now has a media network, promising audience scale, premium inventory and measurable performance. But here’s the catch: if you want to talk like ITV, you need to act like ITV.
Too many retail media networks talk about brand value but behave like trading desks — imposing rigid sales-linked models, annual spend commitments and treating media as an extension of retail negotiations.
That’s not how broadcasters or platforms behave. And it’s this inconsistency that risks holding the channel back.
There’s a clear three-step roadmap to becoming a genuine media owner — and it starts with a critical choice.
What kind of business are you?
This is the fork in the road. Are you essentially a trading lever in disguise — retail media — where inventory is tied to in-store sales and commercial agreements?
Or are you committing to behave like a true media business — retail media — where value is built on audiences, data and campaign outcomes?
The difference matters. If you speak like the second one but act like the first, you’ll confuse clients, disappoint them and ultimately push them away.
Brands and agencies expect consistency. If you position yourself as a media channel, you must live up to media standards: transparency, accountability and effectiveness. Not retail mechanics dressed up as advertising.
Align your people, processes and proposition
Once you’ve made the decision, everything else flows from it.
If you choose to be retail media, you can’t keep running on a retail media operating model. The behind-the-scenes has to marry up with the external experience.
That means reshaping your processes (from governance to measurement), your people (bringing in media talent, not just retail buyers), your proposition (audiences, reach, frequency, scale, missions, problems you solve) and your products (data and media innovations, and enabling vendors that deliver value across the funnel).
It’s much easier to be a retail media network; retailers have been doing it in their stores for many years. It leans on existing trading levers and commercial teams.
But if you want to be taken seriously as a media owner, you need a completely different ecosystem and operating model — one that can stand shoulder to shoulder with Bauer, ITV, Sky or Meta.
Being a retail media network is harder. But it’s also where the long-term growth is. Which is why every retail media network is claiming to be there.
Curate your strategic fit
Not all retail media networks look the same. ITV doesn’t try to be Apple TV+. Spotify doesn’t try to be Sky. The most successful retail media networks know their differentiating value proposition — and double down on it.
That means curating your proposition around your unique strengths: whether that’s convenience, ecommerce, data breadth and depth or in-store experience. You don’t need to compete head on with the biggest networks to be credible; you need to be distinctive, complementary and clear about what you are not.
The danger for those stuck in retail media mode is they mimic other media businesses while still running a trading-led model. The result? Confusion, dilution and missed opportunity.
Winners will be those that embrace their unique positioning and prove why their channel adds value to the broader media mix.
Retail media is at a crossroads. Treat it as a have-to-invest “trading tax” and it will remain a minor player. Embrace it as a genuine want-to-invest channel and it could become one of the defining media opportunities of the next decade.
It’s time for retailers to move past the rhetoric and into the reality of media ownership. And it’s time for brands to challenge the networks they work with — not to catch them out, but to pull them forward.
Because there will be a point in the near future when retailers won’t be able to have their cake and eat it.
Dean Harris is head of Co-op Media Network