Retailers have traditionally relied on product sales for most of their profits. Now, the drastic rise in e-commerce and industry profitability challenges has prompted them to turn digital real estate and customer data into ad sales, providing abnormally high returns for the industry.

While traditional retail media has been around since the first brick-and-mortar retail stores, the significance of the term has changed in the last five years to focus on digital retail media networks (RMNs), or retail data monetization.

RMNs have already proliferated across the retail industry, but what will determine their future success, and which networks will come out on top?

In the past, retailers were very hesitant to monetize their transaction and loyalty data, creating a gap in an advertiser’s ability to deterministically measure the efficacy of a campaign.

The market shift away from cookie-based audiences corresponds with retailers’ increasing comfort with using their first-party data for advertising. This creates a unique opportunity for retailers to become publishers, directly capturing more ad dollars through strategic data monetization via retail media networks. The result is a major uptick in the overall number of networks themselves, with several new networks created every year.

Deterministic closed-loop measurement is the biggest perk driving the value of retail media networks compared to other digital advertising. RMNs can connect digital advertising campaigns to actual purchases at an individual level, which Google and Facebook can’t inherently offer without the retailer sending their transaction files to those third parties.

Another retail media network benefit is the retailer’s ability to bridge customer in-store shopping habits with their online purchasing patterns, offering another unique differentiation from other channels.

RMNs will continue to evolve with trends through investing in their digital capabilities, especially as more networks enter a saturated market.

So, what’s the key for retailers to stand out among other networks? Personalization. RMNs that can get the right product in front of the right consumer at the right time will prove much more valuable to brand advertisers.

The future of retail media is no longer about defining the value or creation of retail media networks—it’s about taking them to the next level through digital transformation.

RMNs recoup ROI quickly and represent a huge revenue opportunity, with an estimated additional $100M per year for a retailer with $10B in revenue. Because a successful RMN solution requires removing data siloes, creating a 360° customer view and uncovering actionable insights, it generates positive impact across the enterprise and into the shopping experience. Further, RMNs generate increasingly robust commercial intent data that’s as valuable to your business as it is to your advertisers.

We partner with clients every step of the way, from strategy through design, implementation and support, pairing our strategy, operational models and engineering with the deep media and creative expertise of our Publicis Groupe sister agencies.

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