Mythbusters: Retail media networks aren’t immune to the pitfalls of programmatic media buying
By Kimeko McCoy • May 27, 2025 •
Ivy Liu
When programmatic media buying first started heating up in the early 2000s, it promised scale, efficiency and more precise ad placements. But some of that promise has worn off. Programmatic marketers are weary, wading through an opaque web of ad tech middlemen, questionable inventory quality and murky measurement. Marketers are now looking at retail media networks with a similar sense of caution and a renewed feeling of déjà vu.
“We’re going to have the same challenges as you’re seeing [with DSPs]. We’re going to have the same desires as the brands and agencies want,” George Musi, chief business officer at Night Market, the retail and commerce agency at Horizon Media Holdings media agency, told Digiday at the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit, which took place in Palm Springs, California earlier this month.
Marketers want solutions to off-site inventory quality, transparency and measurement, Musi said. “Hopefully, this time around, we can shorten the distance between the need and the reality much quicker,” he added.
Retail media had its own promises when it entered the scene three years ago: first-party data and closed-loop attribution. At the time, Google’s third-party cookie deprecation was looming, fueling the RMN value proposition for marketers desperate for precision and performance in a post-cookie world.
The novelty of retail media, however, may soon be wearing thin. Even as programmatic seems to be leveling out.
Demand side platforms (DSP), the backbone of programmatic media buys, have reached a semblance of standardization. Think of it as a universal key in which marketers can unlock media across digital-out-of-home or connected TV through a single platform, whether that be Trade Desk or DV360 or others. “Digital-out-of-home is an expectation that you access in every DSP that is omnichannel that you’re buying in today,” said Mary O’Brien, head of programmatic at independent media agency PMG. She added that retail media is still a relatively new channel within the media landscape with room to grow as it relates to things like tech tools, transparency, ad inventory and more. The hope is RMNs will reach the greater parity, or some semblance of standardization, similar to the current DSP landscape.
Walled gardens
Unlike DSPs, which marketers liken to open tech tools, RMNs operate in walled gardens and operate as gatekeepers of their proprietary data. It’s left marketers in the dark over how the data can be used in RMN campaigns. For some, marketers it’s the cost of doing business. For others, it’s the ghost of programmatic years past.
One hurdle for RMNs to be transparent is bundling, where retail media partners bundle their audience data with off-site ad inventory and charge marketers a flat rate, leaving it unclear exactly what marketers are paying for, O’Brien added.
For the past year or so, marketers have pushed for transparency in this data by encouraging more flexibility in joint business plan negotiations, incrementality. Ideally, marketers say RMNs give them granular level insights and control over how dollars flow.
“That tension is something that’s on the horizon,” said Maddy Duyck, svp, director of digital investment at 22squared. “It could hit us in six days, six months, six years, but it is going to be a space we continue to evolve as they start to fight for dollars and as spaces become increasingly competitive.”
A cash cow with little incentive to change
Marketers remain bullish on retail media despite tricky deal-making negotiations, measurement challenges and economic headwinds. And perhaps, that’s the problem.
Retail media networks remain the industry’s cash cow, expected to rake in $97.91 billion in U.S. ad spend by 2028, according to eMarketer.
“Brands have to chase growth to a certain extent, and a lot of that is going to come through growing on retailers’ [media networks]. It’s the cost of doing business with them, to be spending on these retail media networks,” said Chris Rigas, vp of media at Markacy.
Growing from the one mouth that feeds you. It lays out a power dynamic that exists within retail media networks that doesn’t necessarily exist within DSPs. To Rigas’ point, brands are more or less required, in some cases, to spend with RMNs to maintain premium in-store shelf space and stay in good standing with a retailer.
Incrementality over inventory concerns
Perhaps the one entrapment that RMNs have managed to avoid is the fraud and low-quality ad inventory that has plagued the programmatic media buying market. Recall back in February when Amazon, Google and verification vendors were among the ad tech cohort under fire from U.S. senators regarding child safety shortcomings.
Marketers say they don’t share those concerns with RMNs.
Though there have been “early signs of incentive-based marketing,” said Duyck, but nothing that’s set off alarms across the industry yet. If RMNs can’t keep up with demands for monetization from shareholders, there’s a chance marketers end up playing whack-a-mole to ensure brand safety in ad placements, she added. The bigger question is around incrementality to help marketers determine if retail media campaigns are driving new purchases or targeting shoppers already in the funnel.
Marketers have seen this movie before
Even as retail media continues to be the industry’s latest golden child, marketers have raised flags around its inefficiencies. There’s more scrutiny around deal structures, data sourcing and performance metrics. The expectation (or perhaps the hope) is that retail media will have its day or reckoning, forcing it to evolve in some of the same ways as was seen across the DSP landscape. Ultimately, changes would give buyers more control.
“I anticipate retail media will have its own renaissance of transparency, uniformity and some standard bearers for how we define incrementality in the space…,” Duyck predicted.
But until then, RMNs risk falling into the same entrapments that DSPs made with little incentive to change as long as the money is still rolling in. As O’Brien puts it, “Because we are so early in the retail media evolution, these offerings are still in their infancy when it comes to the timeline of overall ad tech, there will be greater parity as time goes on.”
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