Retail Media Networks Are Extracting Budget Without Accountability, And Procurement Is Letting It Happen

Retail Media Networks Are Extracting Budget Without Accountability, And Procurement Is Letting It Happen 

Retail Media Networks have had an extraordinary run. What began as sponsored listings on retailer websites has evolved into a multi-billion-dollar ad ecosystem with its own inventory formats, audience data products, closed-loop measurement capabilities, and increasingly, off-site programmatic reach. Amazon Advertising is now a top-tier media channel. Walmart Connect, Kroger Precision Marketing, Target’s Roundel, and a growing list of regional and category-specific RMNs are all competing aggressively for trade and brand dollars. 

The pitch is compelling: retailer first-party data, purchase-linked attribution, and closed-loop measurement in a single environment. For CPG, retail, and commerce-oriented advertisers, the strategic logic is sound. 

What is not sound is the commercial structure most organizations have accepted around this spend. 

RMN budgets are frequently trade dollars in media clothing. 

Here is the dynamic that procurement needs to understand: in many organizations, RMN spend originated as trade promotion or co-op marketing investment managed by sales teams, not marketing, and certainly not procurement. As that spend has migrated toward digital formats and expanded off-site, it has started to look more like media. But in many cases the contracts, the governance, and the measurement accountability haven’t followed. 

The result is a budget that lives in a gray zone: too media-like to manage purely as trade, too trade-influenced to hold to standard media accountability requirements. Retailers know this, and they have historically exploited it. Minimum spend commitments negotiated through commercial sales agreements often include RMN components that have never been evaluated on media effectiveness terms. 

Procurement’s opening position in 2026 should be straightforward: if it’s media spend, it gets evaluated as media spend, with reach and frequency measurement, third-party verification, viewability standards, and incrementality testing. If a retailer cannot or will not support that level of accountability, that is a material finding that should inform the next commercial negotiation. 

Measurement is the central battleground. 

RMNs generally offer closed-loop measurement, meaning they can demonstrate that a consumer who was exposed to an ad subsequently purchased the product, within their own environment. This is presented as a significant advantage over open-web advertising. And in some respects, it is. Purchase-linked attribution is more meaningful than click-through rates. 

Closed-loop measurement in a walled garden has the same structural problem as social platform measurement: the retailer is measuring its own performance. The incentive to surface results that justify continued investment is baked into the model. Whether the advertising caused the purchase, or the consumer would have bought anyway, is the question that closed-loop measurement often cannot answer honestly. 

Demand it anyway. The methodology for incrementality testing in RMN environments exists. Some of the more sophisticated networks will engage in it. The ones that won’t should be asked why. 

The proliferation of RMNs is creating fragmentation that benefits retailers, not advertisers. 

Every major retailer now has or is building a media network. The CPG advertiser that historically managed a handful of key retail relationships now faces a landscape of dozens of RMNs, each with proprietary technology, unique measurement frameworks, inconsistent inventory standards, and separate commercial negotiation tracks. This fragmentation is not accidental; it makes cross-network comparison difficult and embeds switching costs at the relationship level. 

Procurement’s response should be to push for standardization wherever possible. The IAB and MRC have developed RMN measurement standards that provide a baseline for accountability. Insisting that any RMN partner operates within those standards is a defensible, industry-aligned position that shouldn’t require extensive internal justification. 

More strategically, consider which RMN relationships are genuinely tier-one, where the data, the audience, and the commercial relationship justify deep investment, versus which are discretionary. Concentration of RMN investment in fewer, more accountable partners often produces better outcomes than spreading budget across a fragmented network of smaller relationships with weaker measurements. 

Retail media is a legitimate and growing channel. But “growing” is not a substitute for “accountable.” Procurement’s job is to make sure the organization knows the difference. 

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