Retail Media has spent most of its history as a digital business. Sponsored products, search advertising and display formats turned ecommerce platforms into powerful media environments where retailers could connect advertising exposure with shopping behaviour and transactions. For brands, this created something traditional digital advertising often struggled to deliver: a direct connection between media investment and commerce outcomes.
That model has worked remarkably well. In Europe alone, Retail Media grew by 16.7% in 2025, reaching €13.3 billion and exceeding 10% of total European digital advertising spend for the first time, according to IAB Europe.
The next phase of Retail Media may look very different from the one that created the category. Consumers do not experience retail exclusively through websites and apps. They move between search, ecommerce, physical stores, loyalty programmes, social platforms and different fulfilment options. Increasingly, Retail Media is starting to follow the same path.
The opportunity is therefore no longer simply to create more advertising inventory. It is to connect media, commerce, customer data and physical retail into one measurable ecosystem. This is where omnichannel Retail Media becomes strategically important.
Retail Media Was Built for Digital Commerce
Amazon demonstrated the strength of the digital Retail Media model. A shopper searches for a product, sees a sponsored placement, visits the product detail page and eventually makes a purchase. Each step happens inside a highly measurable digital environment.
This creates a powerful feedback loop: Search → Media Exposure → Product Interaction → Purchase → Measurement. Advertising is positioned close to the transaction, while commerce data provides signals that can improve targeting, optimisation and measurement.
Other retailers have progressively built similar capabilities across their ecommerce properties. As a result, on-site advertising remains at the centre of Retail Media investment. According to IAB Europe’s 2025 Attitudes to Retail Media research, more than 90% of surveyed buyers allocated at least 41% of their Retail Media spend to on-site media.
This model remains powerful. At the same time, it represents only part of how consumers experience retail today.
The Customer Journey Has Already Become Omnichannel
Consider a customer looking for a new laptop. The journey could start with an advertisement on social media. The customer then searches for different models online, visits a retailer’s website, compares specifications and checks product reviews.
The purchase could happen somewhere else entirely. The customer might check availability at a nearby store, visit the location to experience the product, speak with a sales advisor and then order through the retailer’s app. Alternatively, the customer could purchase online and collect the product in-store.
From the customer’s perspective, this is one shopping journey. From an organisational perspective, those interactions may involve ecommerce, marketing, CRM, store operations, merchandising, media and data teams.
Customers experience one retailer. Retail organisations often manage multiple channels.
This creates one of the fundamental challenges for omnichannel Retail Media. Retail Media has an opportunity to bridge that gap by evolving from a digital advertising proposition into an infrastructure connecting customer interactions across the broader commerce journey.
Retail Media Is Starting to Follow the Customer
Advertising investment is already moving in this direction. EMARKETER forecasts that US omnichannel Retail Media advertising spend will increase from $54.85 billion in 2024 to $129.93 billion in 2028.
The US market should not be treated as a proxy for every Retail Media market. Still, the direction matters. Retail Media is expanding beyond sponsored products and traditional on-site formats as advertisers explore additional environments across the customer journey.
Off-site activation is one example. Retailer first-party data can support campaigns across social platforms, connected TV, publishers and the wider digital ecosystem. Physical environments are also becoming part of the equation. In Europe, IAB Europe identifies first-party data, in-store digital touchpoints and connected TV among the opportunities shaping the development of Retail Media.
What is emerging is not simply a larger catalogue of media formats. Retail Media is gradually expanding across the same environments where consumers discover, evaluate and purchase products.
The strategic question is whether retailers can connect those environments.
The Store Is More Than Advertising Inventory
In-store Retail Media is receiving increasing attention. Digital screens, interactive displays and other formats create new opportunities for retailers to monetise physical environments while allowing brands to communicate with consumers close to the point of purchase.
Looking at the store purely as another source of advertising inventory, though, understates its potential role. A physical store can simultaneously act as a transaction environment, fulfilment point, product experience and source of commerce signals. It connects customers with products, brands and retail staff. Increasingly, it can also become a media environment.
The opportunity is therefore broader than replicating online display advertising on a screen inside a store. Connecting in-store interactions with the retailer’s wider data and media ecosystem can make the physical environment part of the same commerce intelligence that powers digital Retail Media.
IAB Europe and IAB have already developed common definitions and measurement standards for in-store Retail Media. Their approach explicitly connects in-store advertising inventory with retail data used for planning, execution and measurement. This connection between media and commerce data is also what differentiates Retail Media from traditional out-of-home advertising.
Seen this way, the store is not simply another screen. It is another source of customer interaction, commerce data and measurable outcomes.
Digital-First vs Omnichannel Retail Media
Digital-first and omnichannel Retail Media models start from very different structural positions.
Digital-first platforms begin with integration. Search behaviour, product interactions, media exposure and transactions can often be connected inside the same digital environment. Customer identity and commerce signals are generated within a relatively controlled ecosystem, which creates strong foundations for targeting, optimisation and closed-loop measurement.
Omnichannel retailers begin with something else: breadth. Their customer relationships may extend across ecommerce platforms, mobile apps, loyalty programmes, physical stores, point-of-sale transactions, click-and-collect services and in-store media. This potentially gives them visibility across a much broader commerce journey.
The trade-off is complexity. Customer identity has to be resolved across environments. Online and offline transactions need to be reconciled. Inventory systems, loyalty data and media platforms need to communicate. Measurement also needs to account for purchases that may happen in a completely different environment from the original media exposure.
Digital-first Retail Media starts with integration and expands its reach. Omnichannel Retail Media starts with reach and needs to build integration.
For omnichannel retailers, physical footprint alone is therefore not a competitive advantage. The strategic value comes from turning that footprint into a connected capability.
The Omnichannel Retail Media Value System
To understand what that capability requires, it is useful to look at omnichannel Retail Media as a system rather than as a collection of advertising formats.
I see four capabilities as essential to building an omnichannel Retail Media operating model: Customer Identity, Commerce Data, Media Activation and Closed-Loop Measurement.
| Capability | Objective | Key Capabilities | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer Identity | Recognise customers across touchpoints | Loyalty, identity resolution, consent management | Connected customer view |
| Commerce Data | Understand shopping behaviour | Search, browsing, transaction and fulfilment data | Commerce intelligence |
| Media Activation | Reach customers across environments | On-site, off-site and in-store activation | Coordinated media experience |
| Closed-Loop Measurement | Connect media to business outcomes | Online and offline attribution, incrementality, reporting | Measurable commercial impact |
1. Customer Identity
The first challenge is understanding the customer across different environments. A customer may interact with a retailer through a website, mobile app, loyalty programme and physical store.
When those interactions remain disconnected, the retailer sees separate touchpoints. When they can be connected responsibly, the retailer starts to understand a customer journey. Identity resolution therefore becomes one of the foundations of omnichannel Retail Media.
2. Commerce Data
Identity alone provides limited value without understanding behaviour. Retailers generate signals across the entire shopping journey, including searches, product views, purchases, store transactions, loyalty interactions and fulfilment behaviour.
Connecting these signals creates a richer understanding not only of who customers are, but also of how they shop across different environments. This commerce intelligence can then inform audience creation, activation and measurement.
3. Media Activation
The third capability turns those signals into action. Retail Media can increasingly operate across three broad environments: on-site, off-site and in-store.
On-site includes retailer websites and apps. Off-site extends retailer audiences and data into environments such as social platforms, connected TV and publishers. In-store introduces media into the physical shopping experience.
An omnichannel Retail Media strategy coordinates these environments around audiences, business objectives and customer journeys rather than managing them purely as independent media products.
4. Closed-Loop Measurement
The final capability connects media investment back to commercial outcomes. Retail Media built much of its value proposition around this ability, and omnichannel Retail Media needs to preserve it across a more complex environment.
The objective is a connected measurement loop: Media Exposure → Customer Behaviour → Transaction → Learning. Crucially, that loop needs to account for both online and offline outcomes.
Consider again the customer looking for a laptop. The retailer recognises the customer through its loyalty ecosystem and uses browsing behaviour to understand purchase intent. The customer is exposed to a relevant campaign online, checks local availability and eventually completes the purchase in a physical store. If that transaction can be connected back to the media interaction, both retailer and advertiser gain a more complete understanding of the commercial outcome.
In this example, customer identity connects the shopper across environments. Commerce data creates the signal. Media activation creates the interaction. Closed-loop measurement connects the transaction back to the investment.
Together, these four capabilities form what I call the Omnichannel Retail Media Value System: Customer Identity → Commerce Data → Media Activation → Closed-Loop Measurement.
The Real Challenge Is Organisational
Building that system is not purely a technology challenge. Many of the capabilities required to deliver omnichannel Retail Media sit across different parts of a retail organisation.
Retail Media teams understand advertisers and media products. Ecommerce teams manage digital shopping experiences. CRM and loyalty teams manage customer relationships. Data teams build identity and measurement infrastructure. Store operations manage the physical environment, while commercial and merchandising teams manage relationships with brands and product categories.
These teams may operate with different systems, priorities and KPIs. A retailer can therefore have sophisticated technology, valuable first-party data and a large physical footprint while still struggling to build a genuinely connected Retail Media proposition.
The leadership challenge becomes one of orchestration: Can the organisation align customer identity, commerce data, media activation and measurement around shared commercial outcomes?
This is where omnichannel Retail Media becomes an operating-model challenge. Technology creates the capability, but organisational alignment determines whether that capability can scale.
For Retail Media leaders, this also changes the scope of the role. Building the next generation of Retail Media Networks increasingly requires collaboration across functions that traditionally operated independently. Media monetisation remains important, but so do data governance, customer experience, technology integration, measurement standards and commercial alignment.
From Retail Media Network to Commerce Ecosystem
This evolution may ultimately change how we think about Retail Media Networks themselves. The first generation of RMNs was largely built around advertising inventory. The next generation may increasingly be built around connected commerce capabilities.
That changes the questions Retail Media leaders need to ask. Instead of focusing only on how many sponsored products, display placements or in-store screens can be sold, retailers need to understand how much of the customer journey they can connect. They need to determine how effectively first-party data can be activated, whether brands can reach relevant audiences across different environments and whether online and offline outcomes can be measured consistently.
Customer experience belongs in that discussion as well. Expanding media across the commerce journey creates value only if advertising remains relevant and does not make the shopping experience more fragmented.
Retail Media therefore starts moving beyond media monetisation. It becomes part of a broader commerce ecosystem where media, customer experience, data and transactions increasingly intersect.
Conclusion: The Next Frontier of Retail Media
Retail Media’s first major chapter was about turning digital commerce environments into media environments. That transformation created one of the fastest-growing areas of advertising.
The next chapter could be more ambitious. Omnichannel Retail Media creates the possibility of connecting ecommerce, stores, customer data and advertising within the same commercial ecosystem. Physical reach alone will not create that advantage, and neither will simply adding more advertising formats.
Sustainable value will depend on the ability to connect customer identity, commerce data, media activation and measurement across the customer journey.
Amazon demonstrated how powerful Retail Media can become when commerce and advertising operate within a deeply integrated digital environment. The challenge for omnichannel retailers is different: bringing that level of integration to a much more complex world where digital and physical commerce increasingly operate as one.
That is why omnichannel is not simply another channel for Retail Media.
It is the next operating model.
Retail Media & Commerce Growth Leader with 8+ years across Amazon and leading marketplaces. I design full-funnel strategy, governance, and measurement—building operating models and developing teams to scale performance across markets. I share practical frameworks and tools for sustainable growth.