Retail media
In short
Advertising connected to a retailer’s inventory, shopping environment, or data, across onsite, offsite, and in-store placements.
Retail media connects advertising with a retailer’s shopping environment, inventory, or data. It can reach people while they browse a store’s website, use its app, encounter a supported offsite advertisement, or visit a physical store.
The main environments
Onsite retail media appears within the retailer’s own digital properties, such as search or product pages. Offsite activity extends advertising beyond those properties using retailer-enabled arrangements. In-store media uses placements in the physical retail environment.
These environments create different opportunities and measurement limits. A sponsored product in shopping results and a screen inside a store are both retail media, but their exposure and outcome measurements are not interchangeable.
The retail media network is the organization or infrastructure selling and managing the advertising opportunity. Retail media describes the activity and inventory bought through it.
Illustrative example
A cereal brand promotes a product in a supermarket’s online search results and on a digital store display. It gives each placement a defined objective and checks how the retailer reports exposure and sales.
The example does not assume that every recorded sale was caused by the advertisement. Compare attribution windows, eligible products, and online versus store coverage before combining reports. Use an appropriate incrementality study when the question is how many purchases would not otherwise have happened.