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Why collaboration is key to the future of retail media

Retail media has exploded onto the marketing landscape in the last

couple of years. E-marketer declared 2022 as “the year of retail media”,

while in the autumn of that year a GroupM report said that retail media

already represented 10.7% of global ad spend.


The sector continues to grow. By December, GroupM’s Global 2022

End-Of-Year Forecast estimated retail media would account for $110.7

billion, up from its prediction of $101bn in September.


This growth is being driven by a number of factors. Retailers are looking

for new revenue streams. Brands are trying to replace the functionality

of the current third-party cookie-based marketing ecosystem.


Meanwhile both sides are looking for ways to mitigate the tough trading

environment caused by war, pandemic and economic conditions.

Add to this the ubiquity of programmatic advertising infrastructure, the

continuing development of technology around data collaboration, and

the maturing attitude of the industry to data protection and privacy,

and you have the conditions needed for the emergence of this new

marketing channel.


Retail media gives retailers a way of monetising the huge data resources

they’ve been building since the launch of electronic loyalty cards in the

1990s. It gives brands a way of using that opted-in first-party data to

target and measure their advertising more accurately, and to understand

customer behaviour more deeply. And it promises customers a more

personalised shopping experience, better deals and, ultimately, better

products.


Looking to the future

However, the immaturity of the sector means significant questions still

remain to be answered. How do we want the industry to operate in the

future, and what standards need to apply for that to happen? What new

opportunities are starting to emerge for brands and retailers? And what

barriers are there to all participants – and the sector itself – in realising

their full potential, and how can we remove or avoid them?


Our parent agency SMG has partnered with our data partner LiveRamp to produce this insightful industry report.


Click here to download the full report.

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