Retail Media Solutions: How Brands Are Scaling Advertising Across Retailers

Introduction

Ten years ago, retail media meant sponsored product listings on Amazon and not much else. Today it spans onsite search, offsite retargeting, in-store digital screens, and connected TV, run across more than a hundred retailers, each with its own ad platform, data rules, and reporting format. The tools built to manage that load are retail media solutions, and picking the right one now shapes how much of that budget actually produces results.

What Are Retail Media Solutions?

Retail media solutions are software platforms that let brands plan, launch, and measure advertising campaigns on retailer-owned media, using the retailer’s first-party shopper and purchase data for targeting. They cover everything from campaign management and bidding to reporting and attribution, and the strongest ones connect to more than one retailer from a single login.

How Retail Media Solutions Work

A brand connects its product catalog and first-party data to the platform, which links to each retailer’s advertising API. From there, the brand builds campaigns, sponsored products, display, video, using retailer audience segments, sets budgets and bids, and the platform’s automation adjusts those bids in response to performance. Results and spend data flow back through the platform’s reporting layer instead of a dozen separate retailer dashboards.

Retail Media Solutions Vs. Traditional Digital Advertising

Traditional digital advertising, like a display campaign bought through the open web, targets based on browsing behavior, demographics, or interest categories. Retail media targets based on what someone has actually bought or searched for on a specific retailer’s site, which produces a level of purchase intent that behavioral targeting alone can’t match. The tradeoff is that a brand needs a different setup, budget, and measurement approach for each retailer, which is the exact problem retail media solutions exist to solve.

The Core Components Of A Retail Media Solution

Audience targeting and segmentation

Retailer first-party data, purchase history, browse behavior, loyalty status, builds audience segments more specific than anything available through third-party targeting.

Campaign management and activation

A single interface for building, launching, and adjusting campaigns across every connected retailer, instead of learning and operating a dozen separate ad consoles.

Retail media analytics and reporting

Dashboards that show performance by retailer, by campaign, and rolled up across the whole program, using consistent metric definitions instead of whatever each retailer calls a click.

Measurement and attribution capabilities

Tools that connect ad spend to actual sales, ideally including incrementality testing that shows what a campaign produced beyond what would have sold anyway.

Inventory and ad placement management

Visibility into which placements are available on each retailer, and control over where a brand’s ads actually show up on the digital shelf.

Types Of Retail Media Channels

Onsite retail media

Ads that show up directly on a retailer’s website or app: sponsored product listings, banner ads, and search results.

Offsite retail media

Ads that use a retailer’s first-party data to target shoppers off the retailer’s own site, on social platforms, connected TV, or the open web.

In-store retail media

Digital screens, audio, and other placements inside physical stores, an area that’s grown as retailers build out retail media beyond their websites.

Omnichannel retail media campaigns

Campaigns coordinated across onsite, offsite, and in-store placements at once, built to reach a shopper at more than one point before they buy.

Benefits Of Using Retail Media Solutions

Reach high-intent shoppers closer to purchase

Retail media puts a brand’s ad in front of someone who has already searched for or bought a related product, closer to the moment of purchase than most other ad formats reach.

Improve advertising performance with first-party data

Retailer data holds up as third-party cookies phase out, giving brands a compliant, durable base for targeting.

Increase retail media revenue opportunities

Brands that show up well in retail media placements often see a lift in organic sales too, since sponsored placements increase overall visibility on a retailer’s site.

Improve campaign measurement and attribution

Retail media’s closed-loop data ties an ad directly to a sale on the same platform, producing cleaner attribution than most channels can offer.

Support omnichannel customer experiences

Coordinating retail media with search and social keeps messaging consistent for a shopper moving between channels before they buy.

Common Retail Media Solution Use Cases

Sponsored product advertising

The core use case: placing a brand’s product in front of shoppers actively searching for it or similar products on a retailer’s site.

Product launch campaigns

Retail media’s targeting and speed to launch make it a common first move for new product introductions, especially on Amazon and Walmart.

Personalized shopper promotions

Using loyalty and purchase data to target specific offers to shoppers likely to respond, rather than running one offer across an entire audience.

Cross-channel brand awareness campaigns

Using a retailer’s offsite inventory, connected TV or social, to build awareness among shoppers who’ve bought in the category before.

Retail media for in-store engagement

Digital signage and audio placements that extend a retail media campaign into the physical store, reaching shoppers at the shelf.

Challenges Brands Face With Retail Media Solutions

Fragmented retail media networks

More than a hundred retailers now run their own ad platforms, each with different inventory, targeting options, and reporting standards.

Limited cross-channel measurement

Comparing performance across retailers, or between retail media and other channels, is hard without a shared measurement standard.

Data privacy and compliance concerns

Each retailer sets its own rules for how brands can access and use first-party data, often through clean rooms that require separate setup and compliance work.

Campaign optimization workload

Managing bids and budgets across dozens of retailers by hand doesn’t leave much time for strategy.

Scaling retail media operations

What works for a five-retailer program breaks down at fifty retailers without automation and a shared reporting layer.

How To Choose The Right Retail Media Solution

Evaluate data and targeting capabilities

Check which first-party data sources the platform can connect to and how deep its audience segmentation actually goes, not just how many retailers it lists as supported.

Look for strong measurement and attribution tools

Incrementality testing shows whether a campaign actually changed the outcome, something basic click and impression counts can’t confirm on their own.

Assess integration and interoperability

Confirm the platform connects to your product catalog, CRM, and any other martech you already run. A retail media solution that sits apart from everything else adds a new silo instead of removing one.

Prioritize scalability and automation

Ask how the platform handles bid and budget management at ten retailers versus a hundred, since manual processes that work at a small scale often collapse at a large one.

Consider omnichannel support

A retail media solution that also connects to search and social removes the need for a separate cross-channel platform later.

Improve Retail Media Performance With Better Measurement And Insights

Retail media has become too large a piece of the media budget to run on instinct or retailer-provided dashboards alone. The brands getting ahead can see performance across every retailer in one place and back budget decisions with real incrementality data instead of platform-reported clicks. Skai’s retail media solution connects campaigns across 100-plus retailers, including Amazon, Walmart, Target, and Instacart, alongside paid search and paid social, so a brand’s retail media program runs through one system instead of a dozen.

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Retail Media Solutions FAQS