Every retailer serious about building a media business faces a foundational technology decision: should they build their own advertising platform, acquire an existing one, or partner with a specialist technology provider? The answer has significant implications for time-to-market, cost structure, capability ceiling, and competitive differentiation.
The Case for Building
Building a proprietary retail media technology stack gives maximum control over the product roadmap, data architecture, and commercial relationships. A custom-built platform can be deeply integrated with the retailer’s e-commerce infrastructure, loyalty systems, and inventory management — creating a seamless data flow that third-party platforms can’t fully replicate. The downside is cost and time. Building a full-stack advertising platform — auction engine, campaign management, creative serving, measurement reporting — requires significant engineering investment and years of development. Amazon spent a decade building its advertising infrastructure. Most retailers don’t have that runway or budget.
The Case for Acquiring
Acquisition compresses the build timeline dramatically. Publicis’s acquisition of CitrusAd gave it an immediately deployable retail media platform. The risk is integration complexity and ensuring acquired technology can scale with ambitions. For retailers, the most notable acquisitions have been of specialist retail media technology companies that bring both the technical stack and the operational expertise to run an advertising business.
The Case for Partnering
Most retailers — particularly those outside the top tier in size — are taking a partnership approach. Companies like Criteo, CitrusAd, and Commerce IQ provide technology infrastructure that retailers can deploy quickly, without the capital cost of building or acquiring. These partnerships involve revenue sharing, which limits margin upside compared to owning the technology outright — but provides a faster path to market with ongoing platform development without internal R&D investment. For retailers: speed to market matters more than perfection. A good-enough platform launched now is worth more than a perfect platform launched in three years.