Retail media has rapidly evolved from a nascent idea into a core pillar of digital advertising.

“If retail media was a baby, it would be like crawling or maybe walking… you still need to get the fundamentals right,” said Arthur Sylvestre, vice president, digital commerce at Danone North America at EMARKETER’s Future of Digital Summit event.

The message is clear: Retail media’s long-term success will hinge on mastering the basics before scaling further.

Securing the fundamentals

Scale, transparency, measurement, and performance are the foundation of any successful retail media strategy.

“If you have that, you’re ready to have good conversations with partners or agencies in order to craft and build the plans that are going to have the ability to move the needle on business objectives,” said Sylvestre.

He warned against chasing the “shiny objects” that can distract marketers.

“Sometimes it looks like a team of young kids playing soccer,” he said. “The ball goes to the left, everybody goes to the left… In reality, you need strategy, and you need to understand what’s going to really drive the business.”

Breaking down silos

Consumer health company Kenvue has shifted from treating retail media as an afterthought to making it an integrated, full-funnel strategy, according to Meredith Herman, the company's vice president, head of global marketing acceleration.

“I think now it’s more of the teams coming together… being more integrated and holistic with budget and KPI, especially at the market level,” she said.

But breaking down organizational silos remains a challenge.

“We’re sitting—and those retailers are sitting—on a lot of rich information and consumer understanding,” said Herman. “We don’t want to miss out on that opportunity, both upstream as well as executional.”

On-site vs. off-site: Finding the right balance

As retail media moves up-the-funnel, brands need to figure out the right mix between on-site and off-site retail media.

“Driving that off-site traffic will be incredibly important … you can drive additional traffic that will increase sales in the long term,” said Jeffrey Bustos, senior vice president of retail media analytics at Merkle, citing Albertsons’ pledge to match every dollar advertisers spend off-site with enterprise funds.

“They’re kind of putting a stake in the ground and saying, like, we see the value in off-site,” he said.

But Sylvestre cautioned against moving off-site too fast.

“Until I have maximized and captured those super low-hanging fruits… should I go off-site? Yes, but for other reasons,” he said. “For the majority of companies like us, we haven’t even scratched the surface of what can be done on site.”

Balance is key. “We find we’re in the 65% to 70% on-site and 30% off-site,” said Herman. “But it’s so fluid, it’s just kind of a guardrail to make sure that we’ve really maximized that demand.”

In-store media has big potential

While formats like TV walls, in-store audio, and smart carts offer creative opportunities, investment remains limited until brands prove in-store’s worth.

This presents retailers with a major opportunity for differentiation.

• “As some of the larger retailers invest more in their identity [capabilities] and bring us that consumer insight and that measurement and targeting availability, [it’s] compelling,” said Herman.

Retailers can also use in-store tech to improve other parts of the shopping experience.

“The real value in layer tech in-store is where you can add a second dimension to all of those pieces,” said Sylvestre.

• For example, retailers can use the camera on smart carts to identify out-of-stock items or enrich customer insights.
• This not only provides value to marketers, but also to the rest of the organization.

The bottom line: Retail media is no longer an “add-on”—it’s central to the marketing mix. Long-term success depends on:

• Getting the fundamentals right (scale, transparency, measurement, performance).
• Breaking down silos between brand and retailer organizations.
• Balancing on-site efficiency with off-site reach.
• Testing in-store innovations, but demanding measurement rigor.

This article was prepared with the assistance of generative AI tools to support content organization, summarization, and drafting. All AI-generated contributions have been reviewed, fact-checked, and verified for accuracy and originality by EMARKETER editors. Any recommendations reflect EMARKETER’s research and human judgment.

This was originally featured in the Commerce Media Weekly newsletter. For more marketing insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.