Retail media networks have spent five years growing on trade and shopper-marketing money. The next phase is different: networks want brand budgets, and they are building the ad formats to justify it.
What "full-funnel retail media" means in practice
Off-site display and video bought against a retailer's first-party data; connected-TV inventory sold by the retailer; in-store digital screens measured against sales lift. The pitch is closed-loop measurement on upper-funnel spend.
Where it still falls down
Measurement is inconsistent between networks, incrementality testing is rare, and "sales lift" often is not adjusted for what would have sold anyway.
Every leader we spoke to is spending more on retail media next year. Not one was fully confident in the way it is measured.
The brands getting value are treating retail media as a testable channel with its own hypotheses, not as a tax on doing business with a retailer.