How Full-Funnel Retail Media is Starting to Take Shape in Practice
Industry leaders from Kevel, DG Media Network and The Trade Desk discuss why the future of retail media lies in unified decisioning, connected measurement and commerce data.
Retail media is entering a new phase. As brands move more advertising budgets closer to the point of purchase, US retail media spend is projected to reach $69.3 billion in 2026, an increase of nearly 18% year over year.
Yet the industry’s biggest transformation is not being driven by rising investment alone. It is being shaped by how retail media is evolving from a collection of advertising channels into a connected commerce ecosystem.
As retailers unify data, decisioning, and measurement across every customer touchpoint, the focus is shifting from managing media placements to orchestrating business outcomes. The next era of retail media will be defined less by where ads appear and more by how intelligently interactions work together.
The End of Retail Media’s Split Personality
Retail media has long operated with a contradiction at its core.
Retailers owned some of the richest commerce data in advertising, yet the environments where that data was activated remained disconnected.
On-site placements, embedded within retailer websites and apps, were built around deterministic purchase signals. Off-site campaigns, meanwhile, relied on a separate set of media tools, measurement frameworks, and optimisation strategies.
Together, they formed what often felt like two different businesses rather than one connected ecosystem.
For Jaclyn Nix, COO at Kevel, that separation was never simply a measurement problem or an identity problem. It was an infrastructure problem.
“The biggest barrier hasn’t been identity or measurement in isolation, but that onsite and offsite evolved as completely separate systems,” she explains. “Onsite is deterministic and commerce-driven; offsite has historically been media-driven and channel-specific.”
The consequence was fragmentation across almost every stage of campaign execution.
- Different decisioning engines for onsite and offsite inventory
- Separate measurement frameworks and reporting systems
- Independent workflows that rarely share business logic
- Advertisers forced to optimise channels rather than outcomes
According to Nix, the industry is finally reaching a point where that architectural divide can begin to disappear. Standardised connectivity is allowing retailers to apply the same decisioning logic across both environments, creating a shared operational layer instead of parallel systems.
The shift matters because advertisers think in business results. As on-site and off-site begin speaking the same language, retail media starts behaving less like disconnected inventory and more like a unified commerce platform.
When Decisioning Starts Following Outcomes, Not Channels
For years, media planning has followed a familiar pattern. Budgets were divided first. Channels came second. Outcomes were measured later.
That sequencing increasingly feels outdated.
As retail media matures, advertisers are beginning to optimise around commercial objectives instead of media environments.
Rather than asking how much should be allocated to onsite search or offsite display, they are asking which combination of touchpoints is most likely to generate incremental revenue, new-to-brand customers, or category growth.
Nix believes that the shift fundamentally changes the role of decisioning.
“When you optimise for commerce outcomes, decisioning becomes channel-agnostic,” she says. “Instead of evaluating onsite and offsite separately, the system looks at what action is most likely to drive incremental value right now.”
That philosophy is beginning to influence how retailers themselves build media networks.
Austin Leonard, VP & GM of DG Media Network, argues that campaign planning is becoming far more holistic than it has traditionally been.
“Retail media networks have been built channel by channel, tactic by tactic,” he says. “With this advancement, we can now plan and measure onsite and offsite together throughout the campaign planning and execution process.”
The result is greater visibility across the customer journey. Frequency can be managed more intelligently, channels can be evaluated together instead of independently, and advertisers gain a clearer understanding of how awareness, consideration, and conversion influence one another.
Instead of optimising individual channels, the system begins optimising the customer journey itself.
The Measurement Problem is Finally Becoming Solvable
Retail media has never suffered from a shortage of data. What it has lacked is agreement. Advertisers have spent years stitching together separate reports, platforms, and attribution models simply to understand how media investments influenced commerce outcomes.
Upper-funnel campaigns often lived in one reporting environment, while onsite retail media operated in another, leaving brands to connect the dots themselves.
Matthew Fantazier, VP of Data Partnerships at The Trade Desk, believes that disconnect has remained one of the industry’s most persistent frustrations.
“Brands have invested heavily in channels like connected TV, display, and audio to drive awareness, but when it came time to understand how those investments influenced commerce outcomes, the systems often did not connect cleanly,” he says.
The next phase of retail media is beginning to address that gap by treating measurement as a connected framework rather than a collection of isolated reports. That evolution is changing what marketers expect from attribution.
Instead of asking:
- Which channel generated the conversion?
- Which placement delivered the highest ROAS?
- Which campaign performed best in isolation?
Advertisers are increasingly asking different questions:
- Which media exposures created incremental demand?
- How did upper-funnel channels influence purchasing behaviour?
- Which sequence of touchpoints actually changed outcomes?
As Fantazier puts it, “The industry is moving away from isolated snapshots of performance toward a more connected view of the consumer journey.”
That transition represents more than a reporting improvement. It marks a shift from measuring media activity to understanding commercial impact across the entire path to purchase.
Retail Media is Becoming Commerce Infrastructure
The evolution of retail media is no longer about adding another advertising channel. It is about changing the role retail media plays inside the commerce ecosystem itself.
For years, retailers monetised inventory. Increasingly, they are orchestrating decisions. Every interaction, whether it happens on a retailer’s website, inside a streaming platform, through connected TV, or across the open internet, can now be informed by the same commerce intelligence.
Matthew Fantazier believes the industry’s vocabulary is beginning to reflect that broader reality. “I like to talk about reframing commerce media as ‘commerce data’ and ‘commerce inventory’,” he says.
“Commerce data increasingly becomes the connective tissue across media, while commerce inventory plays an important role at the bottom of the purchase funnel.”
That distinction matters because data is no longer confined to retail-owned properties. It increasingly informs media activation wherever consumers spend their time.
Austin Leonard sees a similar expansion taking place inside retailers themselves. As fulfilment and delivery services continue to grow, retailers gain richer signals about not only what customers buy, but how, when, and where they choose to purchase.
Those behavioural signals strengthen audience strategies, improve measurement, and create a far more complete understanding of the customer journey.
The implication is difficult to ignore. Retail media is gradually becoming less about selling advertising inventory and more about providing the operational infrastructure that connects commerce data, media activation, and business outcomes into a single, measurable system.
The Future Belongs to Retailers that Control the Decision Layer
Retail media’s next competitive advantage is unlikely to come from owning more inventory. It will come from owning the intelligence that decides how every impression, audience, and budget should be deployed.
That decision layer increasingly determines whether retailers can operate a truly connected commerce ecosystem.
According to Nix, “Owning more of the core infrastructure doesn’t mean building everything internally. It means having a unified, API-driven foundation that retailers can extend and integrate as needed.”
That foundation is becoming the point of differentiation.
Retailers that control the decision layer can:
- Apply consistent business logic across onsite and offsite inventory
- Optimise campaigns around commercial outcomes instead of media channels
- Deliver transparent measurement across the full customer journey
- Adapt quickly to new environments, such as CTV, in-store media, and emerging commerce channels, mature
Fantazier believes the industry is ultimately moving toward a simpler objective. Now, advertisers want a unified system that connects brand building and commerce outcomes across the entire path to purchase.
The retail media networks that succeed over the next decade will therefore not be those with the largest inventory footprints. They will be the ones who own the decision layer, where commerce data, measurement, optimisation, and business outcomes converge into a single operating model.
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