Retail Media Guide

Empowering brands, agencies, and retailers to sell products.

Retail Media empowers brands, agencies, and retailers to work better together to sell more products. In this guide, you’ll discover why now is the moment for retail media.

What is retail media?

Retail media refers to the ads placed on a retailer’s ecommerce site or app by a brand in order to influence the customer at the point of purchase. This model enables brands to boost their visibility on the “digital shelf”, similar to an endcap or special in-aisle feature in a physical store.

Discover what retail media is

Why is retail media advertising important?

Known as the third big wave of digital advertising (behind search and social), retail media gained traction due to the rise of ecommerce and the growing need for secure, brand-safe advertising environments. With consumers purchasing online more than ever, brands are turning to retail media on the open web for new ways to reach customers and retailers need ways to offset the cost of operating ecommerce.

2/3 of online product searches start on retailer sites

Retail media a future-proof strategy as it helps brands take advantage of retailers’ valuable first-party data as advertisers move toward a post-cookies world. Retailer first-party data is clean, reliable, and enables the kind of personalized advertising that customers will still want, even after third-party cookies go away.

Retail media is also the basis of its larger cousin, commerce media, which is being touted as the fourth wave of digital advertising. Commerce media takes the retail media model and expands it.

It includes a broad network of publishers across the open internet, in addition to retailers. And it enables non-retail and non-endemic advertisers, in addition to retail advertisers, to use commerce data and AI to more effectively engage audiences on those publishers and retailers. It also includes a wide range of formats and channels to meet full-funnel objectives, from video and CTV to contextual and sponsored product ads.

The what

What are retail media networks?

Retail media networks are advertising platforms provided by retailers that enable advertisers to access and leverage first-party data and inventory for engaging with relevant audiences at the point of purchase.

Among the fastest growing ad-supported digital media channels, retail media networks are intricate to build and require building a proprietary network or working with a technology partner.

Learn more about retail media networks

What is the retail media ecosystem?

Just like in nature, where different entities must work together in order to maintain balance, the success of retail media requires the collaboration of its participants. The retail media ecosystem includes:

Brands: Act as the demand side of the ecosystem. (Examples: P&G, Levis, Honest Company, L ‘Oreal, Estee Lauder)
Retailers: Act as the supply side of the ecosystem. (Examples: Target, Best Buy, Shipt, Costco, Ulta)
Agencies: Part two of the demand-side, as a proxy for their brand clients. (Examples: Wavemaker, Publicis, Group M)
Consumers: Why it all matters. Consumers’ expectations for a personalized experience shape retail media’s technology and offerings. Both retailers and brands work together to make sure ads are relevant and the shopping experience is preserved.

Retail media ad formats

Retail media offers a wide variety of ad formats and sponsored content. Primarily, there are 3 ad types that exist in retail media

Ad units can appear in a variety of different types across retailer sites. Below is an example of what a retailer page using this format might look like.

on site display

Ads can also serve in high visibility placements like a retailer’s homepage, or at the closest point to purchase – usually a product detail page.

On-site display solutions are:

Usually considered to be a mid-funnel tactic
Meant to engage shoppers while the shopper is browsing
Intended to help your products gain shopper consideration along the path to purchase

Similarly to on-site sponsored content (sponsored products and on-site display), there is also a retail media solution that runs not on a retailer’s website, or “off-site”.

Off-site display (also known as off-site audience extension) is powered by the same retailer data as sponsored products and onsite display, targeting shoppers in the early stages of the purchase journey. Here’s how it works:

Here is how off-site works: First, a shopper visits a retailer site but does not make a purchase.
Later, while browsing a publisher site or the open web, they see an ad for the product they recently browsed.
If they like the product and click on the ad, they will be brought back to the retailer’s page to purchase the product.

Sponsored off-site solutions are:

Usually considered upper-funnel tactics

Used to drive shoppers who have left the retailer back to the site to make a purchase

Meant to drive awareness and push shoppers to consider your brand’s products

On-site Sponsored Products + On-site Display

On-site Sponsored Products and On-site Display each have different objectives and target shoppers in different stages of the purchase funnel. We’ve measured excellent results when advertisers use these tactics in tandem.

We analyzed campaigns that featured both sponsored products and onsite display. Here is what we found:

Running a campaign using both On-site Sponsored Products and On-site Display is a great way to fast track your ecommerce strategy and set your brand up for success.

Full funnel retail media strategy

Every player in the retail media ecosystem benefits:

Benefits for brands/agencies

Reach shoppers right at the digital point of sale with measurable campaigns that can be tied to online and offline sales at the SKU level
Ensure product visibility on the digital shelf and maintain brand equity
Run campaigns using retailer first-party data that doesn’t rely on third-party cookies
Run campaigns in brand-safe environments
For agencies, a retail media platform like Criteo’s streamlines media buying by giving them one place where they can buy ads and manage campaigns across multiple retailers

Benefits for retailers

Add a new revenue stream by offering new and unique inventory ad formats that go beyond shopper marketing needs
Sell directly to brands and control who has access to inventory and data
Have the control to ensure ads maintain a positive shopper experience

What do retail media ads look like?

Retail media ads can be native ads or display ads. The native ads blend in seamlessly with the search results—they look like another product in the list—but have a small “sponsored” label at the bottom or top of the ad. The display ads allow for more impactful creative, blending branding messaging with dynamic, retail-specific features like real-time pricing.

Where do they appear?

Retail media ads can be shown on the home page, category page, search results page, or product detail page to reach consumers at various stages of their journey. Some retail media solutions also enable brands to retarget retailers’ audiences as they browse the open web.

Upper Funnel

Searching – Criteo Audience Extension

Target in-market shoppers across the web to drive product consideration and raise awareness.

Reach high-quality audiences from major retail partners with optimized display formats across the open internet
Drive shoppers back to your retail partners’ sites, gaining a competitive brand advantage
Deterministically measure the impact of your campaigns on actual product sales

Journey Stage	In-Store Equivalent
✓ Create the story ✓ Reach tactical audiences	✓ Drive more ROI and revenue

Mid-Funnel

Considering – Criteo Commerce Display

Reach, influence and engage custom audiences with impactful, dynamic ad formats.

Reach precise shopper targets based on real-time browsing and purchase history Provides greater strategic and creative control via dynamic ad format
Analyze performance via enhanced reporting capabilities

Journey Stage	In-Store Equivalent
✓ Connect with customers ✓ Engage strategic shoppers	✓ Special in-aisle fixtures or displays

Lower Funnel

Ready to Buy – Criteo Sponsored Products

Boost your sales and increase your share and visibility with native e-tail ads.

Reach high-intent shoppers in real-time, converting interest into sales
Accurately tie efforts to sales across retailers and devices
Analyze performance to the SKU-level to guide winning strategies

Journey Stage	In-Store Equivalent
✓ Close prospects ✓ Transform interest into purchase	✓ Products featured within an endcap display

100%

increase in ROAS

”The days of the single-channel shopper are over. Philips is seeking marketing partners that address changes in shopper behavior successfully, as the online channel continues to grow in importance for us. Thanks to Criteo, we have better and deeper insight into our target consumer’s shopping behavior as well as increased sales.”

Mathilde de Plinval |Head of Communication & Digital at Phillips

+93%

increase in CVR

"This type of initiative, reconciling digital media and retail, demonstrates the effectiveness of full-funnel activation throughout the consumer journey.”

Jérôme Bénière |Media & Digital Manager, at Groupe SEB

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Explaining Retail Media’s Rise

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Scale for Retail Media Success

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The Rise of Retail Media on the Open Web

Criteo asked 250 brand marketers and 250 decision makers in media agencies in the UK for their perspective on retail media.

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