Interactive Advertising Bureau
27 January 2025

Driving Retail Media Forward: Key Takeaways from IAB Europe’s Q1 2025 Retailer Leaders’ Council 

What a start to 2025! On 22nd January, we headed to London for our first Retailer Council for the year, where we brought some of the brightest minds in the industry together to tackle the challenges and opportunities shaping the future of Retail Media from a Retailer perspective. 

From emerging trends to evolving buyer needs, the insights shared were nothing short of inspiring.

Thank you to SMG for hosting the session and to our Retailer Leaders’s Council members including those from Ahold Delhaize, Bol.com, Rewe Group, Uber Ads, Unlimitail, Ica Gruppen, and Allegro who joined us. 

For those interested in learning more about what the session covered, check out the highlights below:

The Retail Media Landscape with IAB Europe’s Chief Economist Daniel Knapp

Daniel kicked things off with an insightful update on the ad economy and how this is impacting retail media development, highlighting shifts in growth and challenges across regions. Some key takeaways included:

  • Retail Media is catching up with search, as brands look to optimise on-site experiences.
  • Social commerce and off-site Retail Media are emerging as priorities, with off-site seeing rapid growth.
  • Retailers are expanding into video content, taking cues from players like Amazon Prime.

With Retail Media spend concentrated within a small number of players, differentiation is critical. This calls for stronger industry standards and increased data sharing amongst retailers to foster competition and innovation.

Retail Media - From the Buyer’s Perspective

After a period of reflection on the information Daniel shared, guest speakers from GroupM, Uber Advertising and SMG shared key insights with the group. 

Here are some of the key takeaways that were shared by GroupM to provide Retailers with an agency perspective on what brands are looking for from Retail Media. 

Key Challenges for Agencies:

1. Pressure to prioritise: With more limited ad budgets, agencies are facing increasing demands to prioritise projects and allocate spend strategically. Thie requires more granular planning, especially in high-potential areas like Retail Media.

2. Audience Targeting and Insights: 

  • Agencies must target on-site Retail Media with precision, leveraging data to identify consumers based on their interactions with brands, purchase history, and timing in the customer journey.
  • Granular audience targeting is critical, as is understanding how to align on-site tactics with broader campaign objectives.

3. Balancing Ad Load with Experience: Retailers were advised to diversify beyond sponsored ads and consider organic placements and contextual targeting to optimise both performance and customer experience.

4. Off-Site Retail Media Growth: Off-site channels offer significant potential for audience curation and upper-funnel opportunities. However, agencies are finding that they must carefully manage audience and supply parameters to ensure brand safety and access premium inventory.

Opportunities for Agencies:

1. Omnichannel Attribution: Connected, cross-channel attribution is the future of Retail Media. Agencies are looking to push for more sophisticated measurement systems to link on-site, off-site, and in-store media to clear business outcomes.

2. Non-Endemic Brands:  For non-endemic brands, Retail Media presents a chance to stand out. Agencies can help these brands leverage data points to prove audience relevance and drive awareness in a unique space.

3. Collaborative Partnerships: Agencies have a growing role as orchestrators, collaborating with retailers and brands to align strategies and maximise returns. 

The GroupM representatives rounded everything up by encouraging the Retailers to unlock new opportunities by experimenting with innovative ad formats beyond traditional approaches. Video and contextual targeting, in particular, offer significant potential to enhance engagement and performance. In-store media also presents unique advantages, providing brands with opportunities for high-impact reach and engagement.

Retailer Priorities for 2025

The final part of the day brought an open discussion between participants on what Retailers felt should be the priority areas for 2025 and how IAB Europe can support this. 

Here are some of the areas of focus that were discussed: 

1. Importance of Incrementality Measurement: Recognising that Retail Media needs to move beyond Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) the group discussed alignment on defining incremental sales measurement. This workstream will be led by IAB Europe with measurement guidelines coming out in the next couple of months.

2. Building the Retail Media Narrative: The group discussed the need to build the narrative of Retail Media and its USPs in the broader media landscape and IAB Europe encourages all ecosystem participants to lean in on this initiative. 

Thoughts From Our Retailer Participants

“It was my first time attending and I enjoyed it. The speakers and presentations really portrayed Retail Media from different angles and the chance for lots of informal talk amongst retail media experts was great!” Christian Raveaux, Head of Retail Media Connect, REWE Group

"Relevant, high-quality presentations and discussions on standards, certification, incrementally, and more. Joint surfing lessons on The Third Wave, professionalising our industry step by step. Important and fun." Maurits Priem, VP Monetisation Europe & Indonesia, Ahold Delhaize

If you are a retailer or a key player in the advertising ecosystem interested in shaping the future of Retail Media, discover more about IAB Europe’s Retail Media initiatives here and connect with Marie-Clare Puffett at puffett@iabeurope.eu to learn about membership opportunities and how to get involved.

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