Where should retail media networks make their pitch for ad dollars?

Retail media is in a liminal space.

WPP’s 2025 forecast has retail media accounting for almost a fifth of total ad revenue by 2030, and the channel has outgrown retail, with financial and travel businesses getting into the space under the broader umbrella of commerce media. Still, the exponential growth seen in recent years may be hard to maintain.

At the same time, retail media networks have expanded offerings far beyond digital display ads, and making a clear pitch to advertisers and ad buyers is top of mind. That’s a big reason Albertsons Media Collective, the retail media offering for the grocery chain, showed up at the IAB NewFronts this year as a first-time presenter.

“We were there mostly to show all that we have to offer and the breadth and scale of our offering,” Liz Roche, VP of media and measurement at Albertsons Media Collective, told Marketing Brew, noting that the chain has over 47 million loyalty shoppers. “Retail media isn’t just sequestered to the bottom of the funnel. We really do have a full-funnel brand-building channel, so to speak, and a lot of that is enabled by our scale.”

Albertsons wasn’t alone in pitching retail media at NewFronts; Walmart also had a presentation at NewFronts that detailed its combined offering with Vizio, the connected-TV company it acquired in 2024. (The Walmart-Vizio deal was something of a bellwether for retail media and a clear sign of the category’s potential to scoop up brand dollars.) As retail media networks jockey for ad dollars, using arenas like NewFronts or creating something new, like Amazon’s unBoxed or Home Depot’s InFront, making the case for a particular network could become all the more important, which may lead to more of an even bigger presence across major industry events.

Be there or be square

In the past, much of NewFronts has focused on legitimizing digital platforms as well as “storytelling, reach, and content partnerships,” Mike Feldman, SVP of commerce at Flywheel, told us in a LinkedIn message. “Retail media has historically been about lower-funnel conversion and ROAS. Those worlds have been pretty separate.”

But that has begun to change. With retail media evolving beyond lower-funnel, it’s not surprising that those retail media platforms would make a play for brand dollars where other media businesses do, too.

“These are media businesses, and they need to be where media people who buy into media businesses congregate—the upfronts, the NewFronts, the big industry events, whether it’s Shoptalk, whether it is broader, like Cannes [Lions], CES, New York Advertising Week,” Quentin George, partner at McKinsey & Company, said. “Those are the places that it would be smart for you to have some representation.”

The need for representation is obvious. Media networks seeking ad dollars are working to be in the room where ad buyers and advertisers are hearing pitches to get on their radar. One particular benefit for retail media networks that are early movers in getting into industry events is that they can clear up any confusion about offerings or availability for advertisers.

“It’s fragmented,” Ashley Hutchings, VP, head of digital and partnerships at media agency KSM, said. “We are able to access that data and inventory directly through them, through social media platforms, through programmatic buying systems, and DSPs. So I think it makes sense for them to showcase all of the different ways in which you can leverage their data and inventory, because you can access it through really any technology these days.”

Planning season

Having some clarity about the pitch is just one reason why retail media networks may start showing up at events like NewFronts even more regularly. As retail media networks seek to continue driving growth, that will likely require even more advance planning to get brand dollars from advertisers.

While there’s already some advanced planning built into the retail media buying process for endemic advertisers with joint business planning sessions, the broader effort in further planning is likely necessary for continued growth.

“The low-hanging dollars are pretty much all mopped up now,” Sean Crawford, managing director, North America for connected commerce company SMG, told us. “The way for growth is going to be not just about sponsored search and sponsored ads on your site. It’s gonna be a much more omnichannel approach.”

That means that retail media networks will look to “work further out with brands and create holistic campaigns that work in a store, onsite, and offsite,” Crawford said. “It’s not just a case of clicking some programmatic on. It’s going to require a little bit of further-out planning, further-out commitments. That’s actually a good thing for the industry.”