ANALYSIS Digital retail media is the fusion of commercial and marketing

One of my theses since day one of working in Retail Media has been how Retail Media fundamentally transforms how consumer brands do business with their retail partners. I’ve long joked that the “Fab Four” of marketing aren’t The Beatles, they’re brand, trade, shopper and digital teams – each drumming to their own beat. 

Who are the ‘fab four’?

• Brand marketing
• Trade marketing
• Shopper marketing
• Digital marketing

Each of these teams operate separately often with different KPIs and goals. These silos create conflicts as all of these teams are working with exactly the same brands. 

Within the retailer, the challenge is not dissimilar. Retailers have trade marketing or “merch” teams and category teams who operate separately from account management and from the Retail Media teams.

Those silos once served us well when retail media was in its infancy (obviously not including Amazon Ads!) but not anymore.

In 2025, UK retail media (excluding Amazon) claims 10%of all media spend, according to IAB UK. That scale forces a reckoning: where does retail media sit among brand, trade, shopper and digital? And how should it link into commercial teams?

ISBA’s recent MediaSense study gives us a blueprint. Twenty‑five brands, retailers, agencies and tech partners mapped the current retail media landscape, with three top takeaways as follows:

1. Digital retail media is the fusion of commercial and marketing (and also directly impacts finance).
2. Breaking down silos is somewhat of a marketing cliché – but with retail media, It is therefore crucial to bring together the right teams and people. The crucial difference is that those are silos within marketing, whereas retail media must break down silos with another function.
3. Bring commercial and marketing teams together to integrate demand generation with sales, and hence maximise the opportunities in digital retail media”.

There’s lots more detail in the report, broken into five sections:

• People: merge commercial and marketing – You can’t bolt retail media onto existing silos and hope for the best. The study warns that governance starts with “People”—aligning commercial, marketing and finance teams to break down those walls. Retailers face the same hurdle: merchandisers, category managers, account executives and retail media specialists all too often operate in parallel. The remedy is simple in theory—unite them around shared objectives. However, this demands a culture shift. The best practice that I have seen is that marketing (including shopper, eCom, brand and retail media) commercial and often finance are in the same room where possible.
• Strategy – Some brands interviewed by ISBA and Mediasense were unsure and simply experimenting because it’s a growing area. Brand who had thought through their strategy gave some variation on these four reasons:
• Sales discount i.e. a way to return money to retailers
• Defensive i.e. to maintain sales at current levels
• Performance i.e. to grow short-term sales
• Brand i.e. to grow long-terms sales through brand equity

Each of these is perfectly valid. Howver, good governance entails truly understanding the varied reasons for investing in digital retail media, and tailoring strategy accordingly.

• Partnerships – The ISBA / MediaSense research stressed that retail media platforms must be negotiated and valued like any premium publisher—you’re buying access to an audience – so partnerships should align with scale, value, services and maturity; and should be contracted in a way that recognises each retailer’s role and obligations as a media owner.
• Standardisation – The study recommends having unified access points to buy inventory and data as well as clear, customisable definitions in areas such as ‘sales’, ‘new to brand’ and ‘attribution windows.’ These are already recommended in various IAB reports, but retail media networks have not adopted them 100% as yet.
• Value – Brands should identify the right KPIs for their business and strategy, moving beyond reliance on ROAS (return on ad spend) and instead building clear, outcome-focused measurement frameworks that focus on long-term business impact to prove the effectiveness of their digital retail media spend.

I would encourage you to…

• Read the report – see the comments for the link.
• Consider whether you are ‘future fit’ in terms of governance with RM
• Consider how you are going to bring sales and marketing to work real and lasting governance and trust within this sector

Download the full ISBA-MediaSense Digital Retail Media Study 2025 report here