Retail media: the new blueprint for growth

Retail media is growing at a remarkable rate globally - projections show that spending is set to overtake traditional TV advertising for the first time this year¹ and that growth is expected to continue at pace - doubling in value across Europe alone over the next 4 years².

This new revenue stream is highly attractive for retailers looking at supplementing their core margins, with Grocery retailers achieving up to 1% monetisation of total retail revenue and non-food retailers reaching up to 5% at full maturity.

Growth is powered by retail media’s uniquely strong ability to engage high-intent shoppers at the point of purchase, provide rich customer insights to inform brand strategy, enable precision audience targeting, and deliver closed-loop measurement. Together, these capabilities position retail media as one of the most compelling opportunities in the modern marketing landscape.

This all sounds positive, however, any business taking on the challenge will know that achieving retail media success is far from easy. It’s not just about selling ad space or implementing new formats - it requires genuine business transformation, one that requires new investments and new thinking. Ultimately, this means evolving from a traditional retail model into a fully fledged media business.

Six steps to scalable success

At dunnhumby, with decades of experience helping retailers across sectors and markets take that leap, we see consistent challenges in scaling retail media. Looking towards the most successful players, we have distilled this into six success factors that define what it takes to win in retail media today.

Looking to scale your own retail media operation? Here’s how…

1. Redefine the value exchange with brands

• • Retail media fundamentally transforms the retailer-brand relationship: brands move from being “suppliers” to “clients”, changing how value is created and delivered. The most advanced retail media networks globally - such as Tesco in the UK and Home Depot or Kroger in the US are already reorganising their operating models around this principle to drive stronger value for advertisers.
  • To succeed, retailers must understand what brands are truly trying to achieve - moving beyond traditional media metrics and focusing on meaningful business outcomes. Think driving category growth, customer penetration, and incremental impact, not just reach or clicks. Insights play a critical role in shaping and validating campaign objectives, as well as measuring performance through robust post-campaign analysis.
  • Co-creation is central to success. Rather than simply selling media space, leading retail media organisations build integrated solutions that span brand, trade, and agency budgets, underpinned by shared KPIs that align data, marketing, and commercial objectives. Retail media becomes a platform for solving real brand challenges and delivering measurable outcomes. 

2. Build the right mindset – and the right skills

• • Effectively planning and selling the array of media formats is complex and requires specific media expertise from those who can interpret insights, navigate multiple platforms and engage trade, brand and agency contacts. Investing in your people is critical. Some retailers bring in external talent here; others invest in dedicated, structured training programmes for existing teams. Either way, success depends on building the right organisational structure and developing the right talent aligned to key capabilities needed to scale the business.

3. Simplify the media buying experience

• • Retailers can only build effective partnerships when the underlying technology and processes work seamlessly. Yet conflicting dashboards, inefficient workflows and disjointed teams often make campaign planning, buying, and measurement far harder than is needs to be for brands and agency partners.
  • Scaling media effectively requires simplicity and frictionless execution. Booking processes and platforms that offer automation and self-serve/managed service capabilities should be intuitive and reliable, enabling brands to easily activate campaigns and clearly demonstrate a return on their investment.

4. Strengthen collaboration across functions

• • Retail media will struggle to achieve its potential if it’s isolated from the rest of the business. The retailers moving fastest treat it as a strategic priority, tightly connected to Customer and Commercial teams, all working to shared, regularly reviewed KPIs.
  • Strong cross-functional collaboration is essential. The retail media team should lead the media strategy, while the Commercial functions manage the overarching supplier relationship - each supporting the other with clear boundaries. The most mature players use collaborative frameworks to guide joint decisions and ensure brand marketing and trade investments work in harmony. With the right structure and shared goals, teams stay aligned and focused on a collective vision for sustainable retail media growth. 

5. Build scalable, automated Operations

• • Scaling media products to market in line with commercial ambitions is often heavily restricted by existing legacy systems and processes. To compete with established media players, AI-driven, automated platforms are needed to reduce manual effort, increase speed and agility, and dynamically optimise campaigns. Unified, API-driven solutions streamline operations and enable rapid innovation, creating a strong foundation for growth.
  • Technology alone is not enough for success. Retailers must invest in scalable infrastructure and experienced teams across proposition, tech, and data, while aligning resources around a shared vision to prevent delays due to possible roadmap conflicts.

6. Secure visible exec sponsorship

None of this can happen without backing from the top. Visible executive sponsorship is foundational to launching and accelerating media businesses. Retail media must be recognised as a core business initiative, with clear transparency on resource needs and investment expectations, to alignment across key cross functional divisions.  Executive sponsorship is therefore crucial. This isn’t just about unlocking the right capabilities or agreeing common KPIs; it’s about ensuring retail media is recognised as a high-margin growth engine for the business, not a side hustle.

That vision should filter down into each function’s respective strategies, too. From data and tech through to customer and commercial. Executive sponsorship drives buy-in, ensures resource allocation, establishes governance, and aligns KPIs, creating a coordinated, impactful retail media operation.

Retail media success requires real transformation. The best retailers put their brand partners and customers first, make buying effortless, and run a data-powered operation built for sustainable growth.

How does yours stack up?

Sources

• ¹Retail media growth momentum continues, set to lead in 2025 - WARC
• ²Retail Media in 2025:  Coming Out of Denial – IAB Europe, 14^th November 2024