The disconnect between how brands plan campaigns and how retailers execute them could be preventing retail media networks (RMNs) from winning upper-funnel budgets.

Often, the gap often takes shape well before execution.

Campaign planning begins with an integrated brief that maps out holistic growth strategies across channels and partners. This brief often represents months of work, said Briana Finelli, vice president, commerce media at full-funnel agency Goodway Group.

“That is the result of a lot of drilling down, client feedback, and integrated discussions,” she said.

But when retailers receive these carefully constructed briefs, many can't accept them due to standardized intake processes. While it makes sense that retailers require templated submissions to manage the overwhelming volume of supplier requests, it can strip the nuance away from the brand brief.

“If [brands or agencies] need to fill out the template, you, as the retailer, lose a ton of the work and context,” said Finelli.

This contrasts with how major publishers work with brands on campaigns.

“Publishers deliver comprehensive pitch decks that align properties with target audiences, and it does all of the things that do exactly what you need the brief to do,” said Finelli. Retailers, in contrast, have a “very specific ecommerce DNA” that make them optimized for performance marketing and direct sales rather than the strategic brand-building that commands premium budgets.

When retailers rewrite the brief

Even after a brief is delivered, misalignment between brands and retailers often persists.

For example, many brand briefs explicitly define what incrementality means for each campaign and it's rarely what retailers assume.

"The brand brief literally says what is incremental," said Finelli, noting that for one brand, incrementality might mean getting core buyers to purchase one additional time per year and for another, it could mean capturing 5% of a competitor's sales at specific retailers.

But instead of using brand-defined incrementality, retailers override with their own definition, which shifts the objective. Instead of supporting the brand’s specific growth mandate, they optimize for broader category potential.

A similar tension shows up in audience targeting, where retailers often push for broader segments, pointing to larger category opportunities.

But that approach misses the intent behind the brief and everything that needs to happen to ladder up to the larger campaign objective.

"We're not disagreeing that the opportunity to sell is bigger than what we briefed you on, but this is where we need growth to come from to deliver on this huge pyramid of things in this brief," said Finelli.

Open data, better alignment

One path to closing this gap is greater data democratization.

By making their data accessible through DSPs and self-service platforms, retailers can enable agencies to execute campaigns across multiple partners while staying aligned with the strategic intent of the brand brief.

"If the data is democratized, if I'm able to go into a DSP and target the audiences I want and the channels I need to execute against them, then the retailer benefit becomes closed-loop sales measurement," said Finelli.

This approach would allow agencies to integrate retail data into broader planning processes, optimize across retailers based on performance, and maintain the strategic coherence that brand briefs require, all while reducing the operational burden on retailer teams.

While this may mean retailers need to give up some control, retailers that democratize data access while maintaining measurement capabilities could unlock budgets that currently flow to traditional publishers.

“Networks are going after publisher dollars, not just brand dollars,” said Finelli. “Because publishers can't deliver on the sales data brands need to close the loop.”

This was originally featured in the EMARKETER Daily newsletter. For more marketing insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.