ShopAble 2025: Should Retail Media Live with Media or Commerce Teams?

ShopAble 2025 is an annual commerce media event hosted by Skai, gathering marketing leaders, industry innovators, and brand executives to explore emerging trends and practical strategies driving the future of commerce. Held in New York, ShopAble offered candid insights, actionable takeaways, and real-world stories from the forefront of retail media, generative AI, and omnichannel marketing.

The pace of retail media’s growth has created a lot of urgency, but not a lot of consensus on ownership. Is it ecommerce? Is it media? Is it something new entirely? And how does where it lives affect how brands build strategy, allocate budget, and measure success?

At this year’s ShopAble 2025, one panel dug straight into these topics by focusing on one of the biggest questions facing retail media today: where should it live inside an organization — the retail team or the media team? The session, appropriately named, RETAIL media or retail MEDIA?, was a lively discussion with plenty of healthy back-and-forth.

Nich Weinheimer, Chief Strategy Officer at Skai, hosted the session and opened by calling this one of the most common—and most strategic—challenges marketers are grappling with right now. A panel of leaders from both sides of the aisle shared their perspectives on where they see the market today and where it’s likely headed next.

Structured as a debate, the session featured a pair of experts on each side—media vs. retail—making the case for where retail media should live.. Attendees voted at the end on which side made the stronger argument.

Panelists (seated from left to right in the picture above)

• TEAM MEDIA
  • Elizabeth Marsten, VP Commerce Media, Tinuiti
  • Josh Kreitzer, Founder & CEO, Channel Bakers
    
• TEAM RETAIL
  • Mark Stamps, SVP Innovation and Partnerships, Harvest Group
  • Kris McDermott, SVP Commerce, Spark Foundry

Watch the full session recording.

Where should retail media live?

Marsten: “Where retail media lives in an organization today is largely still based on relationships. What retailers do they have relationships with, and who owns those relationships? I think it’s moving toward media, but there’s still a lot of ecommerce ownership there because that’s how a lot of the programs started.”

McDermott: “It’s really about what your business goal is. If your goal is, ‘I want to drive commerce,’ then you’re probably going to lean heavier into ecommerce. If you’re saying, ‘I’m trying to drive upper-funnel impact,’ you’re going to lean towards media.

“In reality, the answer is yes—it’s both. And the companies that are doing it best are the ones where ecommerce and media aren’t fighting over this. They’re building teams that are collaborative.”

Stamps: “The clients that are winning here are the ones that are building cross-functional teams… where they’re trying to force connection between commerce and media and brand. The teams that are not winning are the ones where it’s ecommerce versus media versus brand.”

How are brands organizing retail media today?

Kreitzer: “For a lot of brands, retail media has largely been ecommerce-driven. It started that way because it was connected to conversion: paid search on retailer sites, product detail page optimization, and things that drove a measurable sale.

“Now it’s evolving. We’re seeing brands start to build hybrid teams because retail media can’t just live in ecommerce anymore if it’s going to drive long-term brand growth.”

Stamps: “It depends on the category. In CPG, a lot of it still sits with the shopper team or the ecommerce team, because historically that’s where those budgets lived. In other categories, like consumer electronics, we’re seeing it start to move more toward media.

“But again, the companies that are building cross-functional collaboration are the ones that are really getting the most out of retail media.”

McDermott: “Some clients are starting to say, ‘We need to bring this together under one leader,’ whether that’s a Head of Commerce Media or something else. It’s still evolving, but the direction is moving toward more integrated ownership.”

Where is the retail media budget coming from—and going?

Marsten: “We still see a lot of retail media budget coming from trade. That’s just the reality today. But as the programs mature, and as brands demand better measurement and transparency, I think we’ll see more budget moving from traditional media lines.”

McDermott: “There’s still a ton of budget coming from trade, shopper, shopper marketing teams, and shopper agencies.

“But what we’re seeing is that if brands want to get out of the spiral of promotions and price discounting, they need to start treating retail media as media. And when they do, that budget starts moving toward media teams.”

Kreitzer: “When you look at where brands want this to go, it’s clear they want more consistency and control. That means moving away from short-term trade funding toward more strategic media investment.”

What does the retail media org of the future look like?

McDermott: “The skills that are needed are really media skills—you need media buyers, planners, strategists—people who understand how to plan and activate campaigns, not just ecommerce or shopper marketers.”

Stamps: “The future is an integrated team. You can’t have this be a pure media team or a pure ecommerce team. It’s going to be a hybrid skillset—people who understand retail, who understand media, who understand how to connect those pieces.”

Marsten: “At the end of the day, what matters is the business outcome. You need leaders who can bridge across ecommerce, marketing, and sales, and who understand what drives growth—not just who owns what line on a P&L.”

Key Takeaways for Marketers

The vote? In the end, Team Media edged out Team Retail with a narrow win. But the bigger takeaway was clear: no matter where retail media sits today, the future will demand more integrated, collaborative approaches.

Where retail media lives still varies, but hybrid collaboration is emerging as best practice. Brands seeing the best results are breaking down silos between ecommerce, media, and brand teams, and building more connected approaches to planning and execution.

Budget is still coming from trade, but is slowly shifting toward media. As retail media matures, more brands are looking to move budget away from short-term trade and toward more strategic, measurable media investment.

Ownership is evolving toward integrated leadership. Leading organizations are starting to appoint heads of commerce media or equivalent roles to drive cross-functional alignment and accountability.

The future retail media team will need hybrid skills. Success will depend on teams that understand both retail dynamics and media strategy, not just one or the other.

Business outcomes—not internal ownership—should drive decisions. Ultimately, where retail media lives matters less than whether it is aligned with driving brand and business growth. That’s what should guide organizational decisions.

Retail media continues to evolve—and as this conversation made clear, there is no one-size-fits-all model. But the direction is clear: more integration, more strategic ownership, and a sharper focus on outcomes.

Watch the full session recording here.