Retail media’s explosive growth over the past few years is the result of a straightforward pitch to advertisers: the ability to reach consumers close to the point of purchase, connect media exposure to transactions and prove conversion. Retail media is exceptionally effective at capturing existing demand as a lower-funnel performance channel.
Now, the category is maturing and asking marketers to think bigger. That was a big takeaway from SHOWCASE, Ascendant Network’s inaugural Retail + Commerce Media Upfront in September.
But playing a larger role in the media plan comes with a higher bar. If the retail and commerce media categories want advertisers to think beyond the bottom of the funnel, our industry has to make it easier to buy, easier to compare and, most importantly, easier to prove what actually changed because of that investment.
Retail media will create demand, not just capture it
Retail media’s proximity to the transaction has always been one of its greatest strengths. But that proximity doesn’t mean a purchase decision has already been made.
For example, two-thirds of DoorDash users are still undecided about what to buy when they open the app, although 33% knew exactly what they wanted, according to the DoorDash Consumables Study published in June. They have a need tied to a moment – dinner tonight, groceries for tomorrow morning, snacks for a football game – but haven’t determined the specific restaurant, retailer, product or brand that will fulfill it.
This reflects a larger change in how people shop. Commerce increasingly happens through a series of need-driven moments throughout the day, rather than one neatly defined shopping trip. In other words, the same commerce signals that make retail media powerful at the bottom of the funnel can inform what happens further upstream.
Measurement must move from attribution to incrementality
Closed-loop measurement was the original defining advantage of retail media. But conversion following an ad exposure doesn’t necessarily tell us whether the advertising created a new sale, changed a brand decision or reached a customer the brand otherwise would have missed.
Moreover, as marketers report to more media-savvy C-suites and boards, the question they often now get isn’t, “Did someone who saw our ad eventually buy?” It’s, “Did the ad cause something to happen that otherwise would not have happened?”
That incrementality distinction is even more important in commerce environments filled with high-intent consumers. And if retail media wants to compete for broader marketing budgets, it needs to prove that difference.
Proving incrementality was a major theme at SHOWCASE. For example, we highlighted how DoorDash Ads recently worked with Circana to show that advertising for a major beverage company drove incremental in-store sales. More than half (56%) of the buyers reached through DoorDash were net-new customers the brand wasn’t getting in-store, according to Circana.
Standardization is necessary to validate retail media’s impact
The growing diversity in commerce media is a boon to advertisers. Grocery, mass retail, restaurants, home improvement, apparel, payments and other commerce environments each have different relationships with consumers and different signals about how people live and shop.
Advertisers benefit from harnessing the full richness of all this consumer insight.
But that diversity also presents problems with measurement. If networks use the same terms but calculate them differently, apply different methodologies or provide different levels of disclosure, marketers can’t confidently compare performance or determine where their next dollar should go.
That is why, as the industry matures and measurement gets more sophisticated, standardization becomes even more important.
DoorDash, for example, recently earned certification from the Alliance for Audited Media following an independent review of our first-party incrementality measurement and reporting, including our causal testing framework, methodology, data governance and metric calculations.
This kind of independent certification is a valuable means of facilitating standardization, enabling advertisers to more directly compare RMNs. Moreover, greater standardization will ultimately make it easier for agencies and brands to plan retail media alongside the rest of the media ecosystem.
Asking for more opportunity requires delivering more accountability
Hosting an upfront is itself a sign of retail media’s evolution. The inaugural SHOWCASE event positioned commerce media within the familiar rhythm of the annual planning cycle.
Across the presentations at SHOWCASE, commerce media players showed off their increasingly deep insight into consumers within their particular categories, shopping environments and occasions. But an even bigger opportunity lies in connecting those individual views to a broader understanding of how people actually live and shop across categories, needs and moments – and then using that broad context to help brands create demand as well as capture it.
Moreover, the conversations at SHOWCASE demonstrated that the industry clearly recognizes it must push accountability forward to earn those broader opportunities.
But to win a larger share of the media plan, retail media has to meet the same standards as every other mature media channel: a common language, transparent methodologies, independent scrutiny and measurement that proves the incrementality of advertising.
