Retail media network

A retail media network is the advertising business of a retailer that sells brands access to its shoppers on its own site, app, emails and stores, and increasingly on third-party media, using its first-party shopper data for targeting and its sales data for attribution.

The IAB/MRC Retail Media Measurement Guidelines define retail media as "marketing to consumers near their point of purchase or choice between brands or products," online and in-store (IAB/MRC, January 2024). The "network" is the organization and technology that sells it: a sales team, an ad server for sponsored products and display, a self-serve console for brands, an offsite extension through a DSP, in-store screens, and reporting that ties exposures to transactions.

Retail media networks are a subset of commerce media networks. The formats are standard across the industry: onsite sponsored products (CPC), onsite display (CPM), offsite audiences on the open web, social and CTV, and in-store screens and audio measured under the December 2024 in-store standard (IAB, 3 December 2024). What varies is who runs the stack; the options are compared in Retail media network platforms compared.

Example: a grocer with 2,500 stores and 18 million loyalty members sells a sponsored-product slot on its search results page to a cereal brand, bids are ranked by relevance and CPC, the brand's sales among exposed loyalty members are compared with a holdout, and the grocer reports ROAS and incremental sales at SKU level. The measurement rules for that report are in Retail media measurement standards explained.

Related: commerce media network, closed-loop measurement, incrementality, take rate.

Source: IAB/MRC, "Retail Media Measurement Guidelines" (January 2024); IAB and IAB Europe, "In-Store Retail Media: Definitions and Measurement Standards" (3 December 2024).

1. IAB/MRC, January 2024
2. IAB, 3 December 2024