Retailers and brands don’t see eye to eye on retail media networks

If the retail industry were a high school yearbook, retail media networks, where retailers sell online and in-store advertising to brands, would be a contender for Most Likely to Succeed.

• Retail media will grow 9.9% YoY in 2023, to $125.7 billion globally, and will overtake TV spending by 2028, according to a forecast by GroupM.

But the takeaway from a new report is that unless retail media networks (RMNs) improve the experience for brands purchasing their ads, the superlative they’re more likely to earn is one more associated with wooing than outcomes: Biggest Flirt.

The report, by Turbyne, a retail media platform that expects to be available in beta form in early 2024, surveyed 225 retail executives and 87 brands.

Grade expectations: The report found that retailers who expect to make the honor roll may need to hire a tutor instead. Nearly two-thirds (65%) predicted that the largest brands—those with more than $500 million in annual revenues—would give their experience with their RMN an “A” grade. But—cue the helicopter parents—only 6% of brands in the survey said they’d give an “A” to their experience with retail media.

“That’s just one of several indicators that RMNs are failing to deliver on their promise,” the report stated.

Retail media notworks? “While speaking to retailers and brands about their respective retail media experiences,” the report continued, “we noticed a high level of frustration coming from both sides.”

One source of friction is that brands find it inconvenient to have to strike deals with individual media networks for their campaigns, rather than being able to purchase from them collectively:

• 40% of retailers said that having to execute individual advertising purchases with each RMN is the primary reason brands don’t spend more on retail media.
• 35% of brands themselves said the reason they don’t spend more on retail media is that the overall buying process is too difficult.

And here again, brands are tough graders. Nearly four out of 10 (38%) said they’d give the retail media buying process a grade of C or—this could get them thrown off the football team—lower.