Don’t forget retail media’s brand-building power
Opinion
Many brands still see retail media primarily as a performance channel focused on driving conversions. But it can help advertisers drive incremental reach and increase brand equity.
Retail media is one of the fastest-growing advertising channels, fuelled by rich first-party data and the ability to reach consumers in a high-intent environment. This makes it an obvious choice for performance marketing, particularly for endemic brands selling directly on retail platforms.
It’s no surprise, then, that a study by the US Association of National Advertisers (ANA) found that 71% of advertisers consider sales the most important objective of retail media investments.
However, this transactional focus is limiting. Increasing conversions at the point of sale is just one piece of the puzzle — retail media also offers brand-building opportunities, even for non-endemic brands that don’t sell directly on retail platforms.
The same ANA study found that 68% of brands already test retail media’s ability to drive upper-funnel brand metrics like awareness and consideration.
Why? Because retail media has several unique advantages that make it an ideal channel for brand marketing.
- High-quality reach: retail media provides direct access to relevant, often affluent consumers who are already in a discovery mindset, making them highly receptive to brand messaging
- Significant incremental reach: retail media can reach audiences that traditional channels like TV, social media, and other digital platforms often miss and drive incremental reach on top of these.
- Brand-safe and trustworthy environment: retail media offers brand-safe and trustworthy environments, making retail media an ideal setting for brand-building
- Superior targeting capabilities: retail media offers high-quality first-party data, allowing brands to precisely target and engage high-intent customers at scale.
Retail media requires brand marketing measurement
Given these advantages, it’s clear that retail media should be a core component of brand marketing strategies. However, to unlock its full potential, brands must rethink how they measure success.
Brand marketing should not be measured using performance marketing KPIs like clicks and conversions — it must be measured in the same way as other brand-building channels such as TV, connected TV and digital video.
- Audience insights: which audience segments were reached and at what frequency?
- Incrementality: how many additional consumers did retail media add to the campaign?
- Brand lift: what impact did retail media have on brand awareness, consideration or purchase intent?
A study by Boston Consulting Group reinforces this shift, highlighting that advertisers increasingly expect insights on brand performance, audiences and incrementality from retail media networks.
This also presents a huge opportunity for retail media networks as proving their incremental reach and brand-building impact can help them attract a larger share of brand marketing budgets and secure long-term investment from brands.
The future of retail media: Beyond performance
As media fragmentation accelerates, brands that fail to integrate retail media into their brand marketing strategy will miss a crucial opportunity to reach consumers in a high-intent environment. Meanwhile, retail media networks that fail to provide reach and brand impact measurement risk being overlooked in favour of more established brand-building channels.
The shift is already happening. Brands and retail media networks that embrace brand marketing measurement, focusing on audience insights, incrementality and brand lift, will secure a sustainable competitive advantage in the evolving media landscape.
It’s time to move beyond performance. Retail media is a brand-building powerhouse — but only if we measure it like one.
Sedat Polat is solution director, DACH, at AudienceProject