The news: Walmart and Kroger announced new retail media capabilities aimed at satisfying marketers’ desire for better measurement.

• Walmart plans to introduce a unified login experience across Vizio and private-label TVs that allows users to sign in with their Walmart accounts to access Smart TV features—a feature that would help the retailer track whether streaming ads drive purchases.
• Kroger is letting brands use its shopper data to target ads on YouTube and providing SKU-level conversion reporting in Google DV360 to show how campaigns affect sales at the retailer.

Why it matters: Retail media networks face more pressure than ever to deliver greater precision and accuracy in measurement. Those that fall short risk falling even further behind Amazon and Walmart, which will collectively account for nearly 90% of all retail media digital ad spend this year.

Companies are well aware of the threat: 86% of commerce media decision makers in North America and Europe labeled strengthening measurement and attribution to prove ROI as a critical or high priority over the next 12 months, according to a November report from Koddi and Forrester.

But lack of industry standardization could be a sticking point. A recent white paper released by Albertsons Media Collective in partnership with Ovative Group and Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management found that reported iROAS could vary by 6.5 times on average, while 83% of campaigns could switch from being considered positive to negative based solely on measurement methodology.

Implications for retailers: Slowing retail media spending growth is putting pressure on retailers to deliver more granular measurement capabilities to prove their worth to potential advertising partners. Without those enhancements, brands will be hard-pressed to justify increasing their retail media budgets, while retailers risk losing a high-margin revenue source.