Retail Media · Strategy · Measurement
Three Teams, Three Stories:
Why Vendors Still Struggle to See the Real Impact of Retail Media.
One of the biggest structural problems in retail media is not a lack of data.
It is a lack of connected storytelling across the business.
In many retail organizations, the media team, merchant team, and finance team are all looking at the same general initiative from different angles, using different measures, and telling different stories about what success actually means.
That creates confusion internally. It creates even more confusion for vendors.
From the media team’s perspective, a campaign may have performed well.
-The placements ran.
-The reporting looks strong.
-Engagement happened.
-Revenue was attributed.
-The story feels positive.
From the merchant team’s perspective, the outcome may be less clear.
-Did the campaign move the right products?
-Did it improve sell-through where the business needed it?
-Did it support category priorities?
-Did it help create stronger vendor partnerships?
From a finance perspective, a different set of questions appears.
1.Was the return truly incremental?
2.Did the margin improve?
3.Was the spending defensible?
4.Is this a scalable commercial model or simply a new revenue line with limited proof underneath it?
All three views matter.
The problem is that they too often sit in different places, under different systems, with different narratives attached.
This internal disconnect matters even more as the market starts to concentrate. eMarketer projected that of the $10.53 billion in incremental US retail media spend between 2025 and 2026, $9.42 billion would go to Amazon Ads and Walmart Connect. That means every other RMN has even less room for organizational confusion. If the story is not connected internally, it becomes very hard to build confidence externally.
So what does the vendor experience? Too often, the vendor gets fragments.
-One team says the campaign was successful.
-Another team is not fully convinced.
-A third team is looking for proof that no one has clearly assembled.
That is not an ideal model for building long-term trust.
Vendors do not experience the retailer in silos.
-They experience the retailer as one commercial partner.
-They want to understand not just what ran, but what changed.
-They want to know whether their spending supported product movement, category growth, customer response, or broader business objectives.
Increasingly, they want to see that in a way that feels connected rather than stitched together after the fact.
This is why I believe retail media and vendor performance cannot stay separate conversations.
A mature RMN should not simply be a media reporting layer added on top of the business. It should be integrated into the broader vendor performance discussion.
That means a vendor should be able to understand, in one connected commercial story:
-What was funded
-What ran
-What customer response occurred
-What sales or category effect followed
-whether the result was worth repeating
That does not mean every answer will be simple. It will not, but it does mean the retailer should be working toward a more unified way of explaining value.
This matters for another reason as well: internal alignment.
When the media, merchant, and finance teams are not operating from a common view of outcome, the organization struggles to scale RMN intelligently. Decisions become slower. Confidence weakens. The quality of vendor conversations declines. Growth may still happen, but it becomes harder to sustain with discipline.
In my view, one of the most important signs of RMN maturity is not the size of the network. It is whether the retailer can bring the media story and the commercial story together. That is when the conversation improves, and that is when vendors start hearing one coherent answer instead of three partial ones.
Source note: eMarketer, Retail Media Ad Spending Forecast and Trends H2 2025 (Nov. 5, 2025).
It is a lack of connected storytelling across the business.
In many retail organizations, the media team, merchant team, and finance team are all looking at the same general initiative from different angles, using different measures, and telling different stories about what success actually means.
That creates confusion internally. It creates even more confusion for vendors.
From the media team’s perspective, a campaign may have performed well.
-The placements ran.
-The reporting looks strong.
-Engagement happened.
-Revenue was attributed.
-The story feels positive.
From the merchant team’s perspective, the outcome may be less clear.
-Did the campaign move the right products?
-Did it improve sell-through where the business needed it?
-Did it support category priorities?
-Did it help create stronger vendor partnerships?
From a finance perspective, a different set of questions appears.
1.Was the return truly incremental?
2.Did the margin improve?
3.Was the spending defensible?
4.Is this a scalable commercial model or simply a new revenue line with limited proof underneath it?
All three views matter.
The problem is that they too often sit in different places, under different systems, with different narratives attached.
This internal disconnect matters even more as the market starts to concentrate. eMarketer projected that of the $10.53 billion in incremental US retail media spend between 2025 and 2026, $9.42 billion would go to Amazon Ads and Walmart Connect. That means every other RMN has even less room for organizational confusion. If the story is not connected internally, it becomes very hard to build confidence externally.
So what does the vendor experience? Too often, the vendor gets fragments.
-One team says the campaign was successful.
-Another team is not fully convinced.
-A third team is looking for proof that no one has clearly assembled.
That is not an ideal model for building long-term trust.
Vendors do not experience the retailer in silos.
-They experience the retailer as one commercial partner.
-They want to understand not just what ran, but what changed.
-They want to know whether their spending supported product movement, category growth, customer response, or broader business objectives.
Increasingly, they want to see that in a way that feels connected rather than stitched together after the fact.
This is why I believe retail media and vendor performance cannot stay separate conversations.
A mature RMN should not simply be a media reporting layer added on top of the business. It should be integrated into the broader vendor performance discussion.
That means a vendor should be able to understand, in one connected commercial story:
-What was funded
-What ran
-What customer response occurred
-What sales or category effect followed
-whether the result was worth repeating
That does not mean every answer will be simple. It will not, but it does mean the retailer should be working toward a more unified way of explaining value.
This matters for another reason as well: internal alignment.
When the media, merchant, and finance teams are not operating from a common view of outcome, the organization struggles to scale RMN intelligently. Decisions become slower. Confidence weakens. The quality of vendor conversations declines. Growth may still happen, but it becomes harder to sustain with discipline.
In my view, one of the most important signs of RMN maturity is not the size of the network. It is whether the retailer can bring the media story and the commercial story together. That is when the conversation improves, and that is when vendors start hearing one coherent answer instead of three partial ones.
Source note: eMarketer, Retail Media Ad Spending Forecast and Trends H2 2025 (Nov. 5, 2025).