Written by Neilson Hall - Managing Director, Commerce
Shopping decisions aren’t linear anymore. A single purchase journey might start on social media, continue through a retailer's website, involve a marketplace search, and end in a physical store. The process has moved from straightforward to cumulative.
While shopping behaviours have shifted, many organisations haven’t. Teams are often working towards the same goal but still using separate processes, pulling from different data sets and measuring success in different ways. The result can be disconnected experiences that make shopping harder for consumers and less effective for brands.
In an increasingly fragmented retail landscape, connection is becoming a competitive advantage. Retail media isn’t solely about visibility anymore. It’s about relevance, reducing friction and creating an easier shopping experience.
The opportunity for retailers and advertisers isn't simply to be present in more places. It's to create a more connected experience across those touchpoints. Internally, teams need to align, data needs to be shared, and measurement needs to be holistic. Externally, brand narratives need to be consistent and digital and physical experiences need to match up. Connecting the dots will create organisational stability and efficiency and lead to a more cohesive output that resonates with consumers.
Bake creativity in from the start
Retail media still often sits in silo rather than as something that’s built into wider strategies from the beginning. As a result, creative teams are being asked to adapt unsuitable assets or are brought in too late, with the result being something that doesn’t quite work for brands or for customers.
Making sure creative is involved early on is an effective way to create operational alignment. When every team needed for a process – from planning to production – is aligned right from the start, this strengthens internal relationships, avoids duplicated work and reduces friction from within.
The siloing of creative also brings to light a bigger issue: organisational disconnects are often the biggest barriers to connected commerce, not technology. Brand teams, ecommerce teams, shopper teams and retail media specialists frequently work independently despite trying to influence the same customer journey. A holistic approach creates internal harmony and a more consistent output for consumers.
For customers, getting creative in early will help you tailor your messaging and match what they need at each stage. Relevance is essential when it comes to retail media and if your creative teams aren’t in the room at the start of planning, you’re already missing a key step.
Bringing creative into strategy sessions also gives you the chance to show consumers something fresh and new. When they’re part of the full conversation, creative teams can come up with ways to make the experience unique and authentic to the brand, showcasing the offering in the best way to really cut through the noise.
Nithya Thomas (Retail Media Manager, dentsu) on why it’s important to bring creative in early
Use your data to stand out
When it comes to audience insights, broad demographics will only get you so far. While they can tell you who a customer is, behavioural and transactional signals reveal what they’re doing and why. Retail media networks are set up to capture exactly those insights, from basket composition to browsing habits. Combining retailer first-party data with your own customer data creates a far richer picture of intent so you can reach consumers at moments that matter most.
According to our Consumer Navigator Report, Checkout Society, consumers are more tolerant of advertising in retail environments than other channels, like social platforms. When customers are already in a shopping mindset, advertising feels less disruptive. But it has to line up with contextual relevance and consumer intent to enhance the customer experience rather than overload.
People want to see ads that are relevant to them. It’s as simple as that. Your first party data gives you insights at your fingertips to make your media highly relevant. Connecting insight with activation, those customer signals can shape audiences and creative strategies and going back to the data every time means you’ll gain a deeper understanding of what drives consumer behaviour.
And don’t forget the ecosystem.
Your retail media data can enhance your traditional channels. This rich data can make broad tactics more focused, enabling brands to move beyond rough outlines and uncover real purchase patterns that guide marketing efforts. This also goes both ways. Data and insights from your other channels can boost your retail media, from showing you which creative assets resonate with your audiences to revealing social trends you can tap into.
The key to using all of these insights is to make sure you’re transferring and sharing data internally so you can get the most out of it. While teams often segment data and view it in isolation, this feeds into the fragmentation of the customer journey. To overcome conflicting priorities and encourage sharing, there needs to be an established value exchange, so teams are willing to put in the extra effort, governance to minimise penalties across an organisation and clear permissions so everyone is satisfied that data is handled securely.
Create consistency for customers
As the shopping journey is becoming more and more fragmented, discovery, validation and purchase are happening across multiple environments. And customers are craving consistency. When they move from websites to socials to stores, they want to have a coherent experience – and they should get it. Consumers navigate seamlessly between online and offline environments, so brands need to ensure they have a seamless experience.
And consistency doesn't just make experiences smoother. It builds confidence. When messaging changes dramatically between touchpoints, consumers need to do more work to validate their decisions. This creates friction which leads to frustration. Useful, relevant and connected retail media helps customers make decisions more confidently.
Retail media should be treated like it’s tied to your other channels rather than something off to the side. Messaging, creative campaigns and tone of voice should all sound like they’re coming from one brand wherever people are encountering them.
Every disconnected experience introduces a small amount of friction. Every connected experience creates trust.
Matt Lane (Retail Media Partner, dentsu) on disconnect between physical and digital retail experiences
Optimise for a joint outcome, not separate wins
A connected customer experience requires connected measurement. Without working towards shared commercial or customer goals, each channel or team will continue going after its own outcome. Everyone is already working towards the same overarching aims. You just need to harness those efforts into one united workstream.
Understanding the combined impact of on-site, off-site and in-store activity will show you what’s working. One customer journey could span all these areas, so activation and measurement should account for that. Creating a measurement framework that includes wins from across digital and physical retail spaces truly shows the impact of creating that connected customer experience. To just focus on conversion on your own website for example disregards the impact that retail media can have on footfall in stores, which then has its own commercial benefit.
And when it comes to iteration and improvements, look at activity across channels holistically to understand where the sticking points are and see where one channel could support the other. Again, taking advantage of retail media isn’t about just creating more. The real benefit comes from looking at what you’re already doing and connecting disparate teams and approaches to achieve one set of goals.
Nithya Thomas (Retail Media Manager, dentsu) on fragmented measurement for retail media
The value of a connected approach
Consumers already move fluidly between channels, platforms and environments. The brands that win won't be those with the most touchpoints, but those that make those touchpoints feel connected.
Including creative teams, making better use of data and creating consistent experiences won't just improve retail media performance – they'll make shopping easier and advertising more useful for consumers. Focusing on providing a connected experience will help you tap into consumer desires for a trustworthy and reliable path to purchase. When the shopping journey is so messy, finding opportunities to simplify and smooth is the way to differentiate your brand.
And having a measurement framework that captures all those moments where friction is reduced, rather than just focusing on direct sales, will help you understand the full impact of your efforts and align teams internally to make the most of what you’re doing.
Ultimately, having a connected team that brings creative in early, a connected process that harnesses your data and a connected output across touchpoints will create the best experience for consumers and keep them coming back.
Want to find out more about harnessing the benefits of retail media? Get in touch to see how we can help.
