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↗ iabot.eu BetaWith third-party cookies diminishing, retailers' first-party data is one of the few scalable targeting assets left. For non-endemic categories such as insurance, telecoms, or automotive, which have no shelf presence at the retailer, retail data offers a genuinely new capability: 58% of advertisers want to use it for audience targeting (eMarketer)
Non-endemic budgets come from outside the trade and shopper pool, so they can grow the retailer's media P&L without cannibalising supplier funding. Much of this spend flows off-site, where non-endemic retail media spend is projected to grow 29.6% in 2026, according to eMarketer's “FAQ on non-endemic retail media: Leaders, data uses, and what's new for 2026.”
Irrelevant ads erode shopper experience, which is why near-endemic matters as a tier: it captures advertisers who bring incremental budgets while staying contextually relevant to the shopping mission, the lowest-risk route beyond endemic demand.
Advertisers displaying brands or products that customers can purchase at the retailer.
Advertisers displaying brands or products that are not sold by the retailer, but that share a category adjacency, complementary use occasion, or overlapping purchase intent with products the retailer does sell. Legitimate association from the shopper would be required.
Advertisers displaying brands or products that customers cannot purchase at the retailer, leveraging the retailer's audience, data, and media reach rather than driving on-platform sales.
The below should be read in two steps. First, the core definitions establish whether the advertiser's product can be bought from the retailer. Second, the sub-categories and relevance spectrum explain how retailers can judge borderline cases where relevance depends on category adjacency, usage occasion, location, loyalty relationships or audience data.
Industry associations, marketing boards, or grower cooperatives promoting a product category rather than a specific brand; the retailer sells the category, but the advertiser has no SKU on shelf.
An avocado council or almond board advertising with a grocer.
Brands not sold by the retailer but connected to it through its loyalty programme, payment partnerships, or rewards ecosystem; the commercial relationship creates the relevance.
An airline, fuel partner or credit card whose points are earned or redeemed via the retailer's loyalty scheme.
Goods not stocked by the retailer but used with, or alongside, products the retailer sells; relevance comes from shared use occasions.
A cooking appliance brand advertising in a supermarket aisle next to relevant ingredients.
Services or subscriptions that activate, complete, or extend products the retailer sells; the retailer sells the hardware, the advertiser sells what makes it useful.
A TV streaming subscription or mobile data plan advertised in a consumer electronics store.
Mars Petcare Insurance for a Grocer, CE Pet Retailer. For example a CE retailers that sells automated litter boxes can target those audiences.
Local businesses or services not sold by the retailer but physically co-located with, or near, the store, sharing the same shopping trip, footfall, and visit occasion. Relevance is created by physical adjacency rather than product adjacency.
A beauty salon in the same shopping mall as a Tesco advertising on that store's in-store screens. This is an in-store only use case.
Non-endemic advertisers using real-world context, weather, season, time of day, or local events, to create moment-based relevance with the retailer's audience.
A sunscreen brand activating campaigns when temperatures rise on a Consumer Electronics Retailer.
Non-endemic advertisers using the retailer's logistics, delivery, or packaging infrastructure as a physical distribution channel for samples, inserts, or trial offers.
Product samples included in a grocery delivery service's orders.
Non-endemic services or subscriptions offered at the point of payment, monetising the transaction moment rather than the shopping journey.
An Apple subscription offered at checkout by a beauty retailer.
Non-endemic advertisers using the retailer's first-party audience and location data to reach defined regions or segments, with the retailer acting purely as a data-rich media owner.
A fitness company targeting shoppers that buy Keto food.
Non-endemic advertisers using the retailer's physical store spaces to create experiences for retailers' customers
Tiktok creating spaces instore for their influencers to have live shootings
Holiday booking companies rent out spaces from stores to advertise their premium holiday destinations
The retailer should act as the gatekeeper for relevance, trust and shopper experience. Non-endemic advertising should not mean opening retail media inventory to any advertiser willing to pay; it should mean expanding demand only where the advertiser creates a credible bridge to the retailer's audience, location, shopping mission, customer journey or trust environment.
The retailer needs to assess whether the advertiser creates a credible relevance bridge to the audience, location, shopping mission, customer journey or trust environment. This protects the customer experience and prevents retail media from becoming generic advertising in a retail setting.
The measurement difference between endemic and near-/non-endemic campaigns is ownership of the outcome. For endemic advertisers, the retailer sells the product and can close the loop entirely within its own transaction data. For near- and non-endemic advertisers, the retailer does not sell the product, so conversion outcomes sit outside the retailer's data and must be captured through third-party sources; the partner's own measurement tools, or matched data via a clean room or agreed data-sharing framework.
For near- and non-endemic campaigns, measurement quality should be agreed upfront. Retailers and advertisers should define the primary outcome, the available data sources, the attribution window, and any clean room or data-sharing requirements before activation begins. Media metrics, impression, viewability, opportunity to see, are measured exactly as for any other retail media format. What changes is the weight placed on them: because closed-loop sales attribution is not natively available, media and engagement metrics become the primary proof of performance, especially where engagement is the campaign's stated goal. The expectation on their rigour and verification is correspondingly higher.
If the campaign is designed to convert, it needs an explicit call to action and a trackable mechanism such as a QR code, promo code, dedicated landing page or sign-up flow, because there is no on-platform purchase to attribute. Sales uplift will depend on the brand partner and will be measured in, or in collaboration with their tools; the retailer's role is to deliver verified media delivery and audience data into that process.
Rather than treating near-endemic and non-endemic as two fixed buckets they can also be ordered from most native to least native to the shopper journey. The closer a sub-category sits to the endemic end, the stronger its default claim to retail media inventory; the further it sits toward pure non-endemic, the greater the relevance-gatekeeping burden on the retailer.
MediaMarkt sells smart tech for dogs. That is a unique targetable audience for pet insurers and pet food brands. These products are Near Endemic to Media Markt and have high relevancy for the shopper across touchpoints. FIGO, the pet insurance targeted and acquired new customers with newsletters , inserts and onsite banners. Good Boy drove awareness by asking customers to take pictures of their dogs and driving a social media context.
