Best Practices For Building A Strong Retail Media Network In 2025

Originally shared on Forbes

Research shows that while some brands allocate nearly half of their budgets to advertising through retail media networks, as many as one-third of marketers find it difficult to demonstrate a strong return on investment (ROI) from their campaigns.

Without a successful strategy, retailers risk overwhelming and desensitizing customers with ads. This could mean missing opportunities to provide personalized recommendations, prioritizing the wrong metrics or making poor use of potential marketing channels, all of which can significantly impact your overall ROI.

So, what are the best practices for creating a retail media strategy that enhances your performance and delivers measurable results? Based on my own experience in the advertising industry, here are four important factors to keep in mind:

1. Don’t overwhelm shoppers.

One of the most prevalent mistakes I see with advertising in general, and particularly with retail media networks, is overwhelming shoppers with ads. When every part of an online screen experience is covered with sponsored content, or when pop-ups interrupt the checkout process, the shopping experience suffers.

In-store retail media networks can have the same problem. If an in-store screen provides no additional value and has no functional role other than showing ads (meaning it is not used to educate, inform or entertain), I’ve observed that customers tend to tune it out, providing less value to the advertising brand. Too many digital signs or intrusive pop-ups at self-checkout kiosks can frustrate customers rather than engage them, decreasing the overall ROI of your retail media strategy.

People are tired of ad overload. Instead of bombarding shoppers, focus on fewer, better-placed ads that are contextually relevant, brand-friendly and able to enhance rather than disrupt the customer experience.

2. Focus on personalization

I’ve found that one of the most important aspects of a strong retail media network is personalizing offers through first-party data. This refers to data that the retail media network provider collects directly from its customers. For example, Amazon collects and uses its first-party data to personalize which ads and products show up as “sponsored” as its customers search the website. The more your retail media network can personalize sponsored products according to customers’ real needs, the higher your ROI should be.

In physical stores, first-party data can be harder to collect, which can make personalization more challenging. Loyalty programs or surveys can be a good source of first-party data that you can use to personalize future offers.

Leveraging AI to analyze transaction log data and recommend ad placement based on time-of-day and day-of-week purchase patterns is a major way you can use first-party data to create more value for both yourself and the advertiser. Take the well-known pattern of people tending to buy more coffee in the morning and more soda in the afternoon, for example. Determining adjacent products like donuts for coffee and chips for sodas is logical. This is one of the reasons data is such an important component of a successful retail media network.

You can also gather demographic information and behavioral data through various in-store technologies, such as smart devices, kiosks, scanners and sensors. Regardless of the method, your goal should always be to maximize the value of first-party data in order to understand customer needs and deliver relevant offers at the right time.

3. Clarify your KPIs early.

Another contributing factor to retail media success is tracking the right performance metrics from the start so you can see where you’re doing well and where you need to improve. Let’s take a look at some of the major key performance indicators (KPIs) used for digital and in-store retail media networks…