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As Retail Media Evolves, Brands Face Tough Challenges

May 12, 2025 by James Tenser

AMONG THE MANY CHALLENGES facing CPGs in their efforts to make sense of retail media networks has been a pervasive storytelling bias.

On daily basis, we encounter widespread published commentary and reports celebrating retail media’s headlong growth, along with advice on tech, measurement, and monetization for retailers. Much of it comes from solution providers, consultancies and ad agencies vying to cash in on the burgeoning media sales opportunity. Wall Street analysts have been a megaphone for this side of the story too.

This article is part of a series. Republished here by permission from CPGmatters.

The bandwagon effect has been so powerful, the lure of “new” digital revenue so enticing, that critical thinking is too often abandoned by analysts and bloggers. Spending forecasts are frequently represented with “hockey stick” charts. With each new quarterly release, it seems as if proponents keep expanding the definition of “commerce media” to help drive the forecasts to new heights.

Meanwhile, for brand marketers (the lion’s share of all that juicy ad spending) pragmatic guidance about RMN strategy and practices seems relatively hard to come by.

Balancing the retail media story

As we have been documenting here in recent months, retail media is just now emerging from its nascent state. The digital network side has been dominated by early adopters who pioneered search and sponsored product advertising – Amazon Ads, Google Ads, Walmart Connect, Albertsons Media Collective, Kroger Precision Marketing, Instacart Carrot Ads, and a few others.

Retail Media Scale: CPG Brands’ Conundrum

March 14, 2025 by James Tenser

HOW DO BRANDS UNDERSTAND retail media scale as they plan spending?

In previous articles in this series, we addressed the challenges CPG brands face in dealing with retail media networks. It summarized brand marketer spending trends and described why brand teams are challenged when it comes to making decisions about retail media investments across their entire distribution networks.

We discussed the struggle brands face as they endeavor to support their retail distribution networks with proportional retail media investments across all their distribution channels. With hundreds of small retailers seeking a fair share of the pie, CPGs simply don’t have the bandwidth for empirical decision-making.

Regional and independent retailers are not the only ones concerned about the concentration at the top of the Retail Media Network hierarchy.

CPGs are also wrestling with this, and the conversation is beginning to bring trading partners together in search of workable solutions which enable a fair share of retail media spending to find its way to numerous retailers who are not on the top-ten RMN list.

“The network is the piece that’s missing.”

– Adam Zimmerman, Ideal by Design House

At the handful of larger retailers where retail media is a must, joint business planning discussions have become more complicated, as CPGs work to establish new practices that incorporate traditional trade marketing along with the type of targeted messaging that retail media enables. Negotiations must now address how outcomes can be measured and what merchandising support will be required in the stores and fulfillment centers.

Needed: “Connective Tissue”

At February’s 2025 NGA Show in Las Vegas, two panel sessions were devoted to the existential challenge faced by independent grocers as they seek sufficient retail media scale (i.e., audience size) to be relevant to national brands. Wholesalers and retailer networks represented at the conference discussed their efforts to deliver targetable shopper audiences with sufficient scale and measurability to justify CPG investment.

Retail Media and CPGs: How do Brands Optimize Investments?

February 13, 2025December 2, 2024 by James Tenser

AMID THE HYPE AND HYPERBOLE around Retail Media Networks, some fundamental issues about CPG marketing spending have barely been addressed. Brand marketers have an opportunity – perhaps an imperative – to elevate the dialog about how funds should be allocated, to maximize returns and sustain mutually profitable relationships with retail partners.

Ad standards are yet to be established across the RMN universe. The allure of first-party data is compelling, but each network presents its own interfaces and definitions. Established norms around trade marketing spending – the lion’s share of marketing investment by brands – are under pressure. Beneath the surface lurk issues around fairness and proportionality, too.

THIS ARTICLE IS PART ONE of a series, originally published on CPGmatters.com

Experts contacted for this article spoke mostly on background. The consensus is that RMNs are not easy to master and that best practices are yet to emerge. They introduce a heightened degree of intricacy for brand marketers and retailers alike. Some standards may be on the horizon, but trading partner joint planning is not getting any easier.

Concentration at the Top

A relatively small handful of retailers with very broad geographies and high customer counts are sweeping up the lion’s share of retail media spending and decision-making capacity. This presents steep challenges for CPG brands. Their “brand-width” is not unlimited, after all.