The Home Depot adds another acronym — ‘ROMO’ — in next phase of negotiating retail media network measurement
By Kimeko McCoy • April 3, 2025 •
Ivy Liu
Marketers’ calls for more granular insights from retail media networks have reached a fever pitch as of late. Last January, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Media Rating Council (MRC) finalized retail media measurement standards, to which retailers like Instacart and others have aligned themselves with. Still, marketers question measurement, specifically: Would that sale have happened regardless of the ad?
In response, The Home Depot is pitching a new acronym: ROMO, or return on marketing objectives, in addition to return on ad spend (ROAS) to help marketers paint a more holistic picture of their campaign efficacy.
Zach Darkow, senior director of marketing measurement at The Home Depot, floated the idea of ROMO to a room full of 350 suppliers, marketers and The Home Depot associates in Atlanta at its second annual InFronts presentation. InFronts is the retailer’s annual event to tout its retail media offering, Orange Apron Media, similar to upfront negotiations or digital media affairs the NewFronts that will kick off late this month and in May.
“It helps advertisers measure that impact that goes beyond the immediate sales and aligns marketing efforts to your long-term business objectives,” Darkow told the audience.
Last year, The Home Depot’s InFronts pitch focused on rebranding itself to the Orange Apron Network, touting its specialty retailer status in its pitch for ad dollars. That trend continued this year with emphasis on its future road map, which builds on Orange Access, Orange Apron Media’s self-service ad platform that launched last October. Part of those plans, of course, mean deeper insights to help Orange Apron Media stand out in a growing sea of retail media networks.
As opposed to relying on return on ad spend to determine the success of a campaign, return on marketing objectives includes brand awareness, customer engagement, retention and market share growth, Darkow said.
Marketers have long complained that retail media networks is inconsistently measured across retailers and their walled gardens. It’s yet to be seen if The Home Depot’s ROMO will help streamline measurements.
It’s a pivot that comes as retail media networks are moving further up the marketing funnel with ad placements and audience targeting opportunities across off-site channels, like search and social, and brand marketing channels, like connected television. Orange Apron Media, for example, has off-site partnerships across Meta, Google, Pinterest and Yahoo, all of which had spokespersons at InFronts.
ROMO is not a new metric per se, Darkow told Digiday. It is, however, a more robust framework the retailer is pitching marketers as retail media networks aim to reposition themselves as media networks as opposed to performance marketing channels.
“Marketing can only take you so far,” he told Digiday. “How do we encompass all of our measurement toolbox into a framework that’s really about our suppliers’ objectives and outcomes?”
Notably, measurement has been a point of contention in retail media networks’ growth spurt. Retail media networks have been pushing for increased ad spend commitments year over year. At the same time, RMNs have been lauding off-site ad opportunities across social media, connected television and other channels geared toward brand marketing to better position themselves to take in brand marketing budgets as opposed to shopper marketing and trade budgets RMNs have historically been relegated to. Meanwhile, marketers say return on ad spend isn’t enough to justify the increased spend or brand marketing dollars.
“Incrementality is definitely a huge priority for brands,” Jeffrey Bustos, svp of retail media analytics at Merkle, previously told Digiday, “because you’re within an environment where retailers are grading their own homework and this helps brands prove out their performance.”
In the grand scheme of things, the retail media network ecosystem is in its infancy, still navigating standardization when it comes to how incrementality, measurement and efficacy is determined. Traditionally, ROAS was the gold standard for measurement to help marketers determine which campaigns were effective and which weren’t, thus making the case for where to put their ad dollars.
That’s not to say The Home Depot is abandoning ROAS as a means of measurement. That is to say, the retailer’s pivot signals a shift in the retail media ecosystem.
“In retail media, we’re so focused on ROAS. We started that way. It’s our own fault,” said Melanie Babcock, vp of Orange Apron Media and monetization. She later added, “Those return on marketing objectives isn’t necessarily always ROAS. It’s around changes in customer behavior.”
https://digiday.com/?p=574086
