Retail Media

Retail media and tech platforms now represent a return to agency scale dynamics. The proposed Omnicom and IPG merger is the latest example.

Publishers expect the agencies will eliminate tech redundancies as they consolidate, which could compel pubs to shed redundant tech themselves. The merger could also entrench principal-based buying, which may not be a bad thing.

“It’s going to be harder for [indie agencies] to compete,” said Rob Rivenburgh, the CEO of Mars United, who also now leads the Publicis Commerce global group.

Curation is a reaction to programmatic’s worsening queries-per-second problem, says Permutive’s Joe Root. DSPs are biased toward impressions that have an identifier attached, so SSPs are using curated deal IDs as a stand-in for third-party cookies.

Retailers should always have a shopper-first mentality – and sometimes that may mean having to deprioritize their retail media business.

Personalization and customization are great, but when marketers go overboard with targeting, they don’t cast a wide enough net to attract new customers and foster growth, says JP Jansen, SVP of marketing and CMO for North America at Mars Pet Nutrition.

Here are 12 essential tips to help advertisers optimize their retail media investments and thrive in this fierce new arena, based on insights from the ANA’s Retail Media Networks Fair.

Forrester released its first SSP wave since 2014 last week, and there’s a surprise. The research firm ranked Google – whose sell-side ad tech platform is facing federal antitrust charges – as a mere challenger.

Brands are getting back to basics. They’re rethinking their packaging and trying to figure out how they fit into the new world of retail store shelves. And while they are getting more data-driven, the data is not necessarily for advertising.

Walmart’s latest data play: an app for unlocking barricades on store shelves; training generative AI may rely more on scraping big-name sites than previously thought; and tracking the issues that mattered most to Trump and Harris, based on ad spending.