The retail media landscape continues to grow at a breakneck pace, with brands increasingly shifting their budgets toward these high-intent, commerce-driven networks. According to new research commissioned by TransUnion and conducted by the Path to Purchase Institute (P2PI), 70% of companies plan to increase their retail media budgets in 2025. Yet, despite the optimism surrounding the channel’s effectiveness, brands continue to grapple with persistent challenges in scale, targeting, and measurement.
Retail media networks (RMNs) have become an essential tool in modern marketing strategies, offering brands direct access to shoppers at the point of purchase. The findings from the 2025 Annual Trends Study reinforce the value proposition of retail media, but they also highlight areas where brands and retailers need to work together to ensure sustainable growth.
Retail Media’s Appeal: Effectiveness and Incrementality
A key takeaway from the study is the overwhelming belief in retail media’s effectiveness. A staggering 80% of marketers say retail media is as effective or more effective than other digital channels. This enthusiasm has translated into continued budgetary expansion, with 70% of retail media spending being incremental rather than pulled from traditional trade budgets. 
This shift in funding sources is particularly notable. While in 2023, 26% of retail media spending came from trade budgets, this number has declined to 20%, with media budgets now contributing 80% of retail media spending. This evolution suggests that retail media is no longer merely an extension of trade promotions but is being integrated into broader digital marketing strategies.
For brands, this movement signals a shift in priorities. RMNs are being evaluated alongside other performance-driven digital channels such as paid search, social media advertising, and programmatic display. With more marketing teams viewing retail media as a core part of their digital mix, the scrutiny around its measurement and attribution has increased proportionally.
Challenges in Scale, Targeting, and Measurement
Despite the rapid adoption of retail media, brands continue to struggle with some fundamental issues. Among the most pressing challenges are:
- Proving ROI and Sales Lift – 88% of marketers want better proof of retail media’s impact on sales. Unlike channels such as paid search, where ROI calculations are relatively straightforward, RMNs often operate in walled gardens with limited transparency into conversion data.
- Comparable Cross-Retailer Measurement – 45% of brands cite difficulties in benchmarking performance across different RMNs. Each network uses proprietary metrics and attribution models, making it difficult to assess cross-platform effectiveness.
- Standardized Metrics and Definitions – 42% of respondents call for a more uniform approach to measurement. The lack of consistency across networks makes it challenging to develop clear benchmarks.
- Offline and Online Attribution – 39% of marketers emphasize the need for better linkage between online ad exposure and offline sales, an area where retail media has yet to fully deliver.
These measurement gaps create friction in justifying spend and limit retail media’s potential to compete with other digital advertising channels that provide more standardized performance metrics.
National Retailers Have a Competitive Edge
The study highlights a stark divide between national retail platforms and the broader retail industry when it comes to the perceived effectiveness of their retail media capabilities. National platforms are far more likely to be rated as “Very Good” or “Excellent” across key dimensions:
| Capability | National Platforms | Broader Retail Industry |
| Traffic-driving | 45% | 15% |
| Targeting | 50% | 16% |
| Measurement | 49% | 11% |
| Sales Growth | 43% | 13% |
| ROI | 42% | 15% |
The dominance of national platforms is unsurprising. These retailers have invested heavily in their data infrastructure, offering brands more robust targeting and analytics capabilities. Meanwhile, smaller and regional retailers often lack the same level of sophistication, making it harder for them to attract brand dollars at scale.
For brands, this creates a dilemma. While working with a large national platform ensures access to premium capabilities, limiting partnerships to a handful of dominant players can create an over-reliance on a few networks. The study found that brands currently work with an average of eight retail media networks, though nearly half (49%) engage with five or fewer. As the retail media ecosystem matures, finding ways to scale investment beyond the largest players will be essential.
The Path Forward: Solving Retail Media’s Growing Pains
Despite these challenges, the long-term trajectory for retail media remains positive. The industry is still in a nascent phase, and the next few years will be critical in determining whether retail media can live up to its potential as the third major wave of digital advertising, following search and social media.
To ensure continued growth, industry stakeholders must address three primary areas:
- Unified Measurement Standards – The call for standardized metrics across RMNs has reached a tipping point. Retailers must work together—or with third-party verification providers—to establish common benchmarks that allow brands to measure ROI more effectively across networks.
- Improved Cross-Platform Attribution – More work is needed to link online and offline data, especially in categories where a significant portion of purchases still happen in-store. This will require deeper integrations between retailers, brands, and third-party data providers.
- Expanded Participation Beyond the Largest Retailers – National retailers currently set the gold standard in retail media, but for the industry to scale, smaller and regional retailers need to level up their capabilities. This means investing in better targeting, automation, and reporting tools to attract more brand investment.
Final Thoughts: Retail Media’s Growing Pains Are Temporary
Retail media is at an inflection point. As more brands shift budgets into these networks, the pressure to demonstrate clear, measurable results will only intensify. While today’s challenges around scale, measurement, and attribution present barriers to broader adoption, they are not insurmountable.
The parallels with the early days of programmatic advertising are striking. Initially, programmatic suffered from a lack of transparency, inconsistent measurement, and concerns over effectiveness. Over time, industry-wide collaboration led to more standardized metrics, improved attribution models, and greater trust in the channel. The same evolution is likely to unfold within retail media.
For brands, the key takeaway is that retail media is no longer an experimental channel—it is a core pillar of digital advertising. However, ensuring its long-term viability requires ongoing investment in data, technology, and industry-wide collaboration.
Retailers, on the other hand, must recognize that the fastest way to unlock more ad dollars is by making retail media easier to buy, measure, and scale. By addressing concerns around attribution, ROI, and standardization, retailers can position themselves as long-term partners in brands’ evolving digital marketing strategies.
As Mark Rose, senior director of market strategy for TransUnion’s retail business, aptly puts it: “Retail media can reshape how brands connect with consumers, but we must address its challenges head-on to ensure its actual growth meets projections, and in a way that enables broad participation across the retail industry.” If the industry can overcome its growing pains, retail media has the potential to not just reshape digital advertising, but redefine the entire commerce landscape.
Photo by Brad Barmore on Unsplash
