Retail Media – Week in Focus recap
Retail Media – Week in Focus
Last week, The Media Leader took a deep dive into retail media, reporting on the latest updates and hearing from key industry leaders on the challenges, trends and the future of this fast-growing media channel.
Here you can find a roundup of the highlights from our coverage.
Measurement
The infrastructure needed to measure retail media properly has struggled to keep pace with the channel’s rapid growth. Marie-Clare Puffett, senior director of industry development and marketing at IAB Europe, argues that inconsistency is the real issue, with metrics being defined differently from one retail media network (RMN) to the next, making comparison impossible. She emphasises the positive impact standardisation and certification can have for measurement.
For Neilson Hall, dentsu UK&I’s MD of commerce, the measurement problem lies in spending millions to capture demand that already exists. For him, platform metrics tell us how media performed, but not whether it drove incremental growth.
A more meaningful measurement? Sales velocity – the rate at which a product sells.
Collaboration
Alongside measurement, a key challenge for retail media is its fragmentation and the need for cross-silo collaboration.
Claire Trbovic, global head of product at SMG, argues that there is clear friction from each RMN operating as its own silo, forcing buyers to prioritise efficiency over reach. Retail media must embrace co-operation, she suggests, to move forward.
Meanwhile, Project5’s executive director, Sam Drake, makes the case for media planners, arguing they can add true value in retail media because it sits across separate silos. He suggests that someone must define retail media’s role and make deliberate trade-offs between capture and creation.
Similarly, media and creative teams can no longer operate in silos, argues Shane Buckley, head of UKI restaurants at Uber Advertising. Now that every brand can access AI-driven targeting, the quality of the creative in retail media is becoming the key differentiator.
AI
The impact AI is having on the changing face of discovery and consideration was another theme picked up this week. With Lee Metters, senior client partner, brand and partnerships and retail media at Awin, writing that OpenAI’s move to introduce ads to ChatGPT means retail media will need to work in tandem with AI discovery moving forward.
AI will cause significant disruption to retail media, according to Paul Evans, founder and chief positioning engineer at V2RSION, particularly as its happening at a time when retail media is still so fragmented.
UK to get ChatGPT ads imminently as OpenAI expands pilot to other territories
What’s next
As technology continues to develop, the speed of change is accelerating, writes Helen Johnson, MD at Capture. She puts forward six major shifts that will reshape marketing over the next few years, placing commerce and retail media at its core, and outlining how to lean into AI.
Sarah Lawson Johnston, MD EMEA at Vudoo, turns her attention to the purchasing power of Gen Z and the impact of their desire for a seamless and more convenient path to purchase. Shoppability is now a shared expectation across multiple platforms, she argues, following users where they are.
News
The latest dunnhumby report finds that shoppers are more than twice as likely to trust personalised advertising, with the study suggesting that shoppers support their data being used, as long as it leads to more valuable communications.
Retail media growth in the UK was quantified in the latest AA/WARC Expenditure Report. The channel grew 17.5% year-on-year in 2025, with forecasts indicating continued growth in 2026 and 2027.
Elsewhere, we put three questions to media leaders to get their take on how retail media has developed, whether small players can compete, and what comes next.
Over on The Media Leader podcast, host Jack Benjamin sat down with Tash Whitmey, MD of the Tesco Media and Insight Platform, to discuss the latest innovations the company is making, the state of the retail media market, and whether shopping habits are changing amid macroeconomic turbulence.
And this week’s Leading Questions was with Experian’s consulting partner, media and agency, Danny Holmes, who spoke about his approach to leadership, building a strong company culture, and how AI is changing his decision-making process.
Further Reading
Can retail media be a brand channel? With Tesco’s Tash Whitmey
Shoppers more than twice as likely to trust advertising that is personalised, finds dunnhumby report