Monetizing the Digital Shelf: 3 Steps to Optimize Retail Media for CPG Success

Over the past two decades, the marketing landscape has significantly evolved. Among the myriad new channels that have emerged, few have been as impactful or transformational as digital retail media. Globally, this sector is expected to reach a valuation of USD 179.5 Billion in 2025, following an annual growth rate of 15.4 percent.¹ These figures represent a rapid adoption of retail media advertising, which is easy to understand when considering its unparalleled value for both retailers and manufacturers.

Charting the Rise of Retail Media Advertising

Retail media advertising provides something unique in the marketing ecosystem: Direct visibility to high-intent customers right at the point of purchase. When consumers are ready to buy, retail media ads ensure your brand is right there and at the top of their mind, giving marketers a critical edge. Moreover, it aligns seamlessly with broader marketing objectives, enabling teams to:

• Personalize customer experiences and journeys at the point of sale
• Gain insights into buying trends through data from retail media networks
• Evolve strategies and re-target ads dynamically to improve advertising performance and ROI

While the ability to personalize, optimize and drive sales is compelling, the tangible value of retail media extends even further. Since it appears directly at the point of sale, it is far easier to attribute ROI to retail media than to other advertising formats. With margins reaching 80-90 percent,² this is a channel that brands simply cannot afford to ignore, especially at a time of shrinking marketing budgets.

The Big Misstep in Retail Media Strategies

While the value and opportunity of digital retail media are undeniable, many organizations are falling into a critical trap. This is still a relatively new channel for many CPG companies, and its rapid evolution has outpaced the strategies and processes of those managing it. As a result, retail media is often treated as a siloed initiative, disconnected from broader advertising strategies and spend.

This fragmented approach can prevent teams from realizing the full potential of retail media. As it becomes a cornerstone of advertising portfolios, organizations must integrate it into their broader marketing ecosystems, leveraging all available data to drive cohesive, strategic decision-making.

Turning Data from a Challenge into an Advantage

Retail media networks generate massive data, offering companies critical intelligence on campaign effectiveness and consumer behavior. However, this data deluge also introduces complexity. Without proper integration and analysis, teams risk missing out on actionable opportunities.

Three crucial steps drive long-term retail media success for CPG manufacturers.

 

Step 1

Standardize and Integrate Data from Retail Media Networks

Retail media networks provide advertisers with valuable first-party data. Working with more networks gives companies access to a broader range of data. However, as the number of networks increase, it becomes increasing challenging to maintain a consistent view of which investments are delivering the highest returns.

To optimize retail media spend, it is, therefore, essential to create a unified view of performance across the networks. This requires standardizing the data, which often comes in various formats, to easily compare data points.

 

Step 2

Make Standardized Insights Visible in Real-time

Retail media networks often provide a real-time view of campaign performance – a unique advantage over other advertising channels. To capitalize on this, it is important, post data standardization, to make the data immediately accessible to relevant stakeholders through user-friendly dashboards.

Real-time visibility ensures that insights from any retail media network can be applied to optimize campaign efforts across a portfolio.

 

Step 3

Continuously Compare Performance to Build an Optimized Retail Media Partner Portfolio

With a standardized, granular and real-time view of performance across retail media networks, companies can start making informed spend decisions across all networks and channels.

The standardized data foundation further allows the integration of other contextually relevant customer and marketing data. This ensures retail media decisions are aligned with wider marketing strategies and are finely tuned to maximize ROI.

Key Challenges to Address

While these three steps set the foundation for success, digital retail media presents several key challenges that CPG companies need to be wary of:

1. Data Integration

Retail Media Organizations (RMOs) and networks, such as Amazon Advertising, Walmart Connect and Target Roundel, often use different data formats, structures and Application Programming Interfaces (API), making integration with internal systems complex.

2. Privacy Compliance

Data-sharing agreements must comply with privacy regulations. Brands need robust consent mechanisms and data-handling practices to protect consumer privacy and ensure compliance.

3. Misaligned Metrics

Metrics, terminologies and Key Performance Indicators (KPI) often differ across networks and marketing channels, making it difficult to compare effectiveness and ROI.

4. Analytics Expertise

Building effective optimization models requires advanced analytics techniques and domain expertise, which some teams may lack internally.

5. Delayed Decision-making

Delays in data processing and analysis can hinder timely decision-making, resulting in missed opportunities and reduced ROI.

Anticipating these challenges and developing a proactive strategy ensures that retail media becomes an integral and high-performing part of a transparent and cost-optimized marketing mix.

Case Study: Optimizing Digital Marketing ROI through Integrated Retail Media Data

A global CPG major sought to maximize its digital marketing ROI while navigating the complexities of retail media advertising. Facing the challenge of fragmented data across multiple platforms and channels, the company turned to WNS Analytics for a comprehensive solution that would streamline data integration, enable real-time insights and support smarter marketing decisions.

Make the Most of the Retail Media Opportunity

Digital retail media advertising offers an unparalleled opportunity for marketers. Already a key component of most organizations’ advertising strategies, its rapid growth shows no signs of slowing. However, to fully capitalize on this channel’s potential, CPG companies must adopt a strategic, data-driven approach.

By building a strong foundation to standardize and integrate retail media data, forward-thinking companies can unlock years of optimized decision-making and measurable success. Leaders who embrace a mature, unified approach to managing retail media data are empowered to make precise, real-time optimization decisions. This not only maximizes ROI but ensures they stay ahead of competitors in an increasingly dynamic and high-stakes marketing environment.

Discover how WNS Analytics can help you unlock maximum value from your data and transform your marketing decisions — talk to our experts today or download our marketing mix modeling eBook to learn more.

References

1. Retail Media 2025: The big leap or a bandwagon? | The Financial Express

2. Causation or Coincidence? The Need for Incrementality Measurement in Retail Media | Retail TouchPoints