In less than a decade, retail media evolved from a monetization tactic piloted by margin-seeking mass retailers into one of advertising’s fastest-growing channels. By nearly every surface-level metric, retail media works. Marketers shifted billions of co-op funds into it, lured by the promise of closed-loop measurement and higher return on relationships with merchants. However, beneath retail media’s exuberant marketing lies a complicated reality.

The outsized influence of Amazon Ads sets expectations for what retail media can deliver. Retail media networks (RMNs) without Amazon’s inherent, peerless advantages struggle to replicate its runaway growth, leaving advertisers dealing with fragmented workflows and questionable incrementality.

Retail Media’s Promise Outpaces Its Execution

Retail media’s problem isn’t demand, it’s design. Brands navigate dozens of disparate platforms, each with unique data, measurement standards, and levels of automation. This lack of cross-channel interoperability and standardized reporting creates operational drag and obscures true performance, challenging marketers to optimize spend and compare outcomes across networks. The very data richness that makes retail media attractive causes persistent friction.

Furthermore, non-Amazon RMNs remain tethered to their roots. Many still operate like retail organizations first and media companies second, with workflows, incentives, and IT investments that don’t align with how full-funnel advertising is bought and measured elsewhere in the media mix. This misalignment limits RMNs’ ability to scale beyond endemic, lower-funnel budgets.

Commerce Media Breaks Through

Commerce media networks (CMNs) extend retail media’s core advantage – tons of deterministic data – without the constraints of retail ownership. CMNs are scaled by a broad set of first-party data-rich enterprises across industries, spanning travel, financial services, delivery apps, and fitness centers.

Commerce media isn’t confined to the digital shelf. It empowers advertisers to generate and harvest high-intent signals wherever they occur. By linking media exposures to transaction outcomes across channels, commerce media augments and delivers on retail media’s closed-loop vision.

CMNs tend to be more digitally savvy and media-centric in how they operate. Without the constraints of retailers’ legacies, they can build more interoperable systems, flexible media buying models, and performance marketer-friendly workflows. The result is a model not only more scalable but better aligned with how brands and agencies actually plan, buy, and measure full-funnel media and creative.

Commerce Media’s Future Won’t Be Decided By Supply Alone

Retail media proved that commerce data transforms advertising. Commerce media’s evolution will determine how far that transformation goes. The question is no longer whether commerce media will grow, but whether advertising will evolve fast enough to realize its potential.

Advertisers hold the keys to what scales and stalls. If they continue treating retail media like a tax on their cost of serving retailers, RMNs will continue underdelivering. If they demand intensive data collaboration as well as robust creative and media automation, they can accelerate the shift towards models that meet their needs.

Our latest report on commerce media – Commerce Media Can Fulfill Retail Media’s Promises – explains retail media’s hurdles, commerce media’s capabilities, and how advertisers can affect the changes they want made.

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