A shopper browses an online marketplace. She clicks on a product, compares prices, checks reviews, but decides not to buy. Later, she was shown an ad offering a discount on the same product, delivered through a retail media network. Retail media is slowly beginning to mirror what advertisers have already been doing in programmatic advertising.
Many advertisers treat retail media as an isolated channel rather than an ecosystem. But with the multiplication of retail media networks, a question remains: how can advertisers bring the maturity of programmatic to retail media?
This article discusses the lessons of programmatic advertising that marketers can apply to retail media.
Programmatic Principles That Can Accelerate Retail Media Growth
Here are the programmatic principles that can help with retail media growth.
1. Audience Targeting Instead of Inventory Buying
In programmatic advertising, decisions begin with the audience, not placement. Similarly, retail media can follow suits by leveraging first-party data to construct audience cohorts.
Example: A SaaS company, which sells collaboration tools, targets “IT decision-makers who recently bought laptops” in a retailer’s marketplace.
2. Optimization by Intent Signals
The biggest value of Programmatic lies in real-time performance-based optimization. Retail media can replicate this with demand spikes or cart abandonment signals.
Example: A procurement tech company increases bids on inventory when research activity for “vendor management solutions” surges.
3. Uniform Measurement
Programmatic matured by building out a framework for measuring impressions, clicks, conversions, and ROAS. Retail media still suffers from scattered reporting.
Example: A cloud storage provider advertises across a variety of retail media channels and unifies the reporting to see which retail partner delivers the highest conversion.
4. Automation to Reduce Operational Costs
Automation of media buying programmatically. Automation can help in the setting up of campaigns, budget allocation, and frequency management.
Example: A cybersecurity vendor uses automated rules to scale product ads across various retail platforms.
5. Cross-Channel Integration for Full-Funnel Insight
Programmatic demonstrated this very well: channels shouldn’t exist in a vacuum. When retail media data integrates with search, CTV, and CRM, brands achieve a 360° view of customer behavior.
Example: Insights from a retailer marketplace showing “increasing interest in routers” are fed into LinkedIn campaigns for buyer retargeting.
What Role Do DSPs and SSPs Play in Bridging the Gap in Retail Media?
Below are the key roles of both DSPs and SSPs in bridging the gap for retail media.
1. Multi-retailer buying through DSPs
DSPs provide a single platform for advertisers to plan, buy, optimize, and measure campaigns in a unified manner. This makes the retail media ecosystem less complex.
A cloud software provider can execute retail advertising across multiple retail media networks without overheads.
2. Bringing Standardized Access through SSPs
SSPs help retailers package and monetize their inventory. They ensure that advertisers get better transparency and achieve higher yield.
Example: A hardware distributor utilizes SSP to make sponsored placements, display ads, and CTV available to buyers.
3. Enhancing Targeting via Data
DSPs ingest first-party data and combine it with third-party and behavioral signals, enabling advanced segmentation.
Example: A cybersecurity vendor targeting “network admins researching firewalls” activates search data through a DSP, improving efficiency.
5. Creating Unified Cross-Channel Measurement
DSPs consolidate performance across retail media, off-site advertising, and connected media channels. SSPs ensure the supply of data feeding into that measurement.
Example: A SaaS vendor sees unified ROAS across marketplace ads, CTV retargeting, and sponsored search; CFOs can use this to validate contribution to pipeline.
6. Enabling Retailers to Monetize
With SSPs, retailers can widen their supply of on-site banners, app placements, email inventory, and even in-store screens.
Example: An industrial equipment retailer opens new revenue streams by selling digital signage inventory in their fulfillment centers.
How Targeting and Real-time Bidding Can Enhance Retail Media Efficiency
Below are the ways in which data-driven targeting and real-time bidding enhance retail media efficiency.
1. Tying Ad Spend to BOFU Buyer Behavior
Retail media is rich in intent signals, and combining this with data-driven targeting enables the alignment of spend to purchasing behavior.
Example: A cybersecurity company can advertise buyers who have added firewalls to their organization’s processes.
2. Real-Time Bidding Ensures Budget Allocation
Because of the static budgets, real-time bids increase with growing conversion likelihood and fall when demand slows.
Example: A provider of procurement software experiences increased bidding during end-of-quarter buying surges or trending of categories of products.
3. Creative Relevance Based on Live Signals
Real-time bidding, combined with customer data, allows for the personalization of ad delivery and cuts down on wasted impressions.
Example: A network hardware supplier advertises connectivity solutions to buyers searching for connectivity solutions, and to those viewing data center SKUs.
4. Reduces Manual Effort and Operational Costs
Every impression becomes a data point that informs automation, reducing efforts spent on adjusting budgets and frequency.
Example: A cloud services company automates its retail advertising strategy across multiple marketplaces.
5. Precise Measurement and Efficiency
Data-driven targeting brings clarity to leaders on which buyer cohorts yield the best returns. Real-time bidding leverages it to assign the best possible bid based on the value.
Example: A laptop manufacturer measures the segments that convert the best and allocates the budget accordingly.
Conclusion
Retail media is no longer “just another channel.” It’s where intent shows up in real time. Advertisers need to treat it with the rigor that programmatic brought to advertising. By combining data with programmatic discipline, you can turn retail media into success. Fixing retail media is about upgrading the ecosystem, and that roadmap is in place. Programmatic has already shown the world what effective, transparent digital buying can look like. Now it’s time for retail media to follow in the same footsteps.
