Retail media has graduated from a media planning specialist’s concern to a board-level conversation. If you’re a CMO and your retail media strategy consists of “let the performance team handle Amazon,” you are behind. Here’s what you need to understand — and what decisions you need to own.
The Scale Demands Senior Attention
Retail media is on course to reach $200 billion globally by 2026. It’s the fastest-growing category in advertising. It’s capturing share from TV, search, and social simultaneously. It touches every major consumer goods category and an increasing number of non-endemic categories. This is not a tactical channel — it’s a structural shift in how advertising works. As CMO, the decisions that matter are not which keywords to bid on. They are: How much of our total marketing budget should flow through retail media channels? How do we build a data strategy that lets us maximise the value of retailer partnerships? How do we organise internally to capture the convergence of brand and trade marketing? These are strategic questions requiring CMO-level ownership.
The Three Decisions That Matter Most
Budget architecture. How you allocate budget across brand advertising, performance marketing, and retail media determines your competitive position over the next three to five years. The brands that underweight retail media now will find themselves at a structural disadvantage as retailer platforms mature and auction competition intensifies. Get the architecture right.
Data strategy. Retail media’s full potential is only accessible to brands with strong first-party data assets of their own — CRM data, loyalty programme data, direct consumer relationships. Without your own data to bring to retailer clean rooms, you’re dependent on the retailer’s data alone, limiting targeting precision and measurement depth.
Organisational design. The traditional separation of brand and trade marketing is a structural impediment to effective retail media strategy. The fastest-moving companies have built unified commerce marketing functions. Consider whether your organisation is structured to make integrated retail media decisions — or whether silos are preventing optimal allocation.
The CEO Conversation
Retail media is increasingly a P&L conversation, not just a marketing conversation. If your company sells consumer products through retail partners, the growth of retail media means your relationship with those retailers is changing. They have a new revenue stream to protect and grow. Understanding their media business — and choosing how to engage with it strategically rather than reactively — is a competitive necessity. Start that conversation now.