Closing the confidence gap in Retail Media

A recent eMarketer study found that 72% of marketing leaders believe their media budgets are not allocated effectively – suggesting that while investment continues to increase, many businesses are still grappling with how to fully navigate the retail media landscape and ultimately, drive stronger business growth. 

If you missed our session at MAD//North on connecting shopper insight to performance, we addressed exactly how to close this gap. Here are three principles to drive greater confidence in retail media strategies.

1. Connect teams through a shared category vision

The brands that are winning use retail media as a strategic lever rather than a tactical add-on. They bridge the gap between shopper teams and brand teams by using retail insights to influence consumer decision-making. This enables teams to be more fluid in their strategies and respond more effectively to category targets.

Delivering a connected commerce strategy does not necessarily require corporate restructuring; it often just requires a shift in mindset. The most effective approach starts with one brief and one plan, aligning brand, shopper and media teams around a shared category objective. This clarity reduces blind spots and ensures teams focus on what is actually driving category growth, how audiences engage, and how shopper behaviour is evolving. 

2. Put the customer at the heart

Delivering clear, consistent messaging across every touchpoint plays a critical role in building trust and recognition with shoppers. Research from LucidPress in partnership with Demand Metric shows that maintaining a consistent brand story across platforms can increase revenue by up to 23%.

When combined with intelligent audience targeting and personalisation, this consistency ensures that the right message reaches the right consumer in a way that feels both relevant and recognisable.

The brands that deeply understand the behaviour change they are trying to impact are asking 'which format attracts the right type of customer for our category strategy?' instead of simply 'which format converts best?'.

By making your shopper’s experience as frictionless as possible, consistent creative simplifies the path to purchase and delivers more impact for the broader campaign. 

3. Measure the behaviour change you want to impact

Retail media is most effective when measurement is anchored in category outcomes, rather than channel outputs.

While ROAS and short-term metrics give a strong steer on channel performance, they rarely reveal if the business is fundamentally changing. To understand true effectiveness, the focus should shift to analysing category behaviour.

For example, if your goal is to recruit new customers, success could be measured against the new to brand customer percentages and supported by wider tactical media metrics to ensure this new-to-brand acquisition remains commercially sustainable.

From uncertainty to confident decision-making

By aligning teams around a shared vision and prioritising consistent, customer-centric storytelling, brands can move beyond the uncertainty that often surrounds the retail market. Success in this space comes from understanding category dynamics well enough to identify the behaviour that needs to change, and then effectively measuring those outcomes.

Omnicom Media’s commerce experts, Flywheel, take a category-first approach – diagnosing the opportunity before defining a solution and deploying retail media strategically to drive maximum effectiveness for our clients. Ultimately, the shift in focus needs to move from media efficiency to category effectiveness to unlock value and spending confidence.