LAS VEGAS — The retail media network explosion mirrors the programmatic advertising boom 15 years ago in a lot of ways to Digitas North America’s’ Chelsea Monaco. As the convergence of shopping, advertising, and media becomes more solidified, the wide retail media could look a lot smaller in the near-future.
“If you look at what happened in 2010, there were all of these programmatic partners that entered the landscape. Fast forward 15 years later, we’re really only talking about five or six major players in the space,” Monaco, SVP, Commerce at Digitas North America, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at Groceryshop. “I feel like the retail media network space is also going in that direction.”
Clean room technology will drive this consolidation by enabling the data sharing and collaboration capabilities that determine which networks can demonstrate clear value differentiation rather than simply offering another place to spend budgets.
Mountains of siloed data
Advertisers possess unprecedented data access but face integration challenges across first-party, third-party, and proprietary technology systems that prevent consumer-first planning approaches.
“The challenge is a lot of this data is siloed, so there’s obstacles across first-party, third-party proprietary tech,” Monaco said. “The biggest obstacle right now is where the data is sitting is so siloed and it really needs to have that consolidation in that integration.”
Digitas addresses these barriers through proprietary in-house technology combined with partnerships across retail media networks, commerce platforms, and national media partners to unlock and integrate multiple data sources.
Clean room collaboration
Clean room technology will become central to retail media evolution as the industry moves through its current fragmented phase toward a more consolidated marketplace.
“Clean rooms are going to be at the heart of that consolidation and really going to be a core factor into what this landscape looks like in the future from a data sharing perspective, collaboration perspective,” Monaco said.
New and emerging clean room capabilities will shape how data collaboration develops as the retail media space matures beyond its current expansionary phase.
Field of dreams: A fallacy
Many retailers assume launching a retail media network automatically attracts advertising investment without articulating clear value propositions or differentiation strategies.
“I call it the ‘field of dreams theory,’ where retailers just feel like they’ve built a retail media network and then all of these dollars are going to come and all of these brands are going to invest,” Monaco said. “What I think is missing in the space right now is really going to market with the value exchange and the differentiation.”
Agencies managing brands across 25-to-30 different retail media networks plus national media partners need networks to explain what makes their data special and how it unlocks both shopper trade and national brand budgets.
AI acceleration speeds up
Artificial intelligence represents the most significant opportunity for advancing data collaboration within retail media and commerce, though the industry has barely begun exploring its potential applications.
“I’m really excited about what AI can unlock from a data and collaboration perspective in the retail media network and commerce landscape. I don’t think we’ve scratched the surface of what that true opportunity is,” Monaco said.
At Digitas, AI has become embedded in the agency’s operations, she noted..
“AI is now at the core of everything we do, and we’re trying to figure out how this helps us not only from operational efficiencies and management within our teams, but also scaling, making business decisions, unlocking data that you can access within seconds that used to take hours,” Monaco said.