Navigating the future of retail media networks 

Harnessing intelligent orchestration to overcome challenges and drive growth in a competitive landscape. 

Feb 25, 2025

Retail media has fast evolved from a “below the radar” media channel to a strategic priority for many retailers. Once viewed as a side revenue stream, it’s now recognized as a significant driver of profit, with the potential to reshape how brands and retailers engage with consumers.  

 
A Retail Media Network (RMN) allows advertisers to buy advertising space across the retailer’s owned (onsite or instore) properties and paid (offsite) media using first party data to influence the full customer journey through to point of sale.  
 
This is a transformational new advertising channel and its promise is enticing – full-funnel media touchpoints, enhanced audience targeting using retailers’ first party data, and closed loop campaign measurement for incremental sales attribution.  
 
Yet, despite the hype, few retailers have been able to deliver against its potential. The roadblocks are clear: technological fragmentation, data silos, complex operational processes, lack of internal stakeholder buy-in, and an overloaded tech and product roadmap. 

However, as retail media continues to “grow up” it’s increasingly becoming one of the key pillars around how retailers position themselves to the investor community:

“We're gaining share, seeing strong e-commerce growth, and excited about the contributions from higher-margin businesses like advertising.”

 John David Rainey – CFO, Walmart Inc. Earnings call, November 2023

A reminder that retail media is no longer just about ad revenue. It’s become a scalable, integrated part of their business that adds value both operationally and strategically. 
 
But how can retailers unlock the full potential of retail media? To answer this, let’s take a closer look at the challenges in the current landscape, and explore how some of the exciting technological innovations we are witnessing in AI and cloud computing can help retailers deliver on the retail media promises. 

The growing pains of retail media networks

Technological fragmentation and data silos 

As you know, retailers often work with multiple, disconnected platforms to manage campaigns. And each platform may well have its own data set, covering everything from customer interactions to media performance.  

 
But, without a unified view multi-channel campaign planning, execution, optimization and measurement becomes a huge challenge, which only increases as RMNs scale. Creating a single data repository within the retailer’s own cloud environment through a layer of API connectors and data feeds starts to address this issue. And integrates retail media data with other key retailer and customer data points. 

Complex operational processes

Disparate systems also lead to operational complexity, especially when it comes to campaign reporting. Teams often have to piece together data manually, which slows down the process. The ensuing campaign report is often made up of inconsistent and inaccurate results and is delivered too late to enable upselling, campaign optimization and securing repeat business.  

 
Building and automating sophisticated workflows for each user persona and use cases, powered by AI driven business rules and predictive logic, can simplify and reduce operational complexity. Machine learning can refine and train the logic, to optimize and further enhance campaign reports over time. 

Lack of internal stakeholder alignment 

Retail media traditionally operates in isolation from other areas of the business, like merchandising, loyalty, and corporate marketing. As the number of retail media campaigns and customer touchpoints increases, so does the internal focus on retail media.  
 
The broader business is concerned with the fragmented approach to customer touchpoints, which can result in conflicting messaging and missed opportunities to engage shoppers effectively. Campaigns might drive ad revenues, but without aligning all touchpoints with broader goals – like increasing customer lifetime value or boosting in-store traffic – you miss out on key synergies.  
 
Making sure all stakeholders are aligned is crucial. This often calls for some internal shifts in organization and culture, along with the need to centralize all data and customer touchpoints within a single view, governed by a unified set of KPIs. 

Scaling complexity with growth 

As retailers expand their RMNs, managing their growth becomes more challenging. With more new platforms, data sources, and channels to manage, media planning and campaign execution can become quite complex.  
 
Without the right tools to simplify operations, trying to scale retail media can lead to inefficiencies that ultimately hold back growth and performance.  
 
Deploying AI data-driven technologies within the retailer's own cloud environment can enable streamlined orchestration of the end-to-end retail media campaigns. 

Overloaded tech and product roadmap 

With ever-advancing technological demands, it’s easy for the retailer to be overwhelmed when trying to prioritize which to tackle first. And the RMN is often battling for technical resource and prioritization on that roadmap. This can lead to competing projects that distract from the main objective.  Engaging a technology partner to focus on retail media specific projects can often alleviate this specific challenge. 

The path forward

So it’s clear that retailers face a number of challenges as they scale their RMNs. Embracing an intelligent orchestration strategy can be a game changer. This approach pulls together tools and data sources allowing internal alignment across departments and streamlining of RMN operations.   

 
By bringing it all together, RMNs can easily deploy content across multiple channels, while making sure everything aligns with broader business goals. And it provides a holistic view of customer interactions, so retailers can optimize touchpoints, refine messaging, and update campaigns as needed. 
 Its composable and flexible nature not only simplifies the tech environment but makes it easy to integrate new tools and capabilities. So it’s easy to stay on top of evolving customer needs and the latest technologies. 
 
Ultimately, intelligent orchestration empowers retailers to innovate and thrive in an ever-evolving market landscape.