B2B PR Agency Analysis - Retail media is the ultimate example of the medium is the message

Written by Simpatico PR

Posted on 2025-10-24

With Retail Media growing exponentially, it is no surprise there have been a glut of conferences debating it this year, but SMG’s Retail Media Summit is the original and still the biggest and best forum to hear what’s really happening in the space and why.

So, if you missed it here below are some of the hot take outs and points of view from the day. But was there a strategic thrust to the affair – a primary theme that might shape retail media’s route map to the future?

I’d argue all the speakers and panels pointed, in their own specific way, towards the idea that because of its contextual power, retail media can breathe life back into the pre-digital age concept that “the medium is the message”.

This used to be a big idea. It came from Marshall McLuhan – here’s what it means.

Perhaps retail media can make it so again and four things underpin this. The opportunity for retail media to become a brand-building medium – not just performance, that in-store is the biggest untapped opportunity by far and, that using that space with high quality creative thinking is the key to the kingdom, while collaboration between frenemies especially in the data space is a retail media secret sauce.

The tech platforms don’t measure brand building and are stifling media creativity

Rory Sutherland challenged the audience to consider an alternative world where more holistic measurements of success and different time scales are used in conjunction with the metrics that now dominate marketing. If retail media is to become a powerful force across the funnel it should think and measure like a brand-building medium as well as a performance one. While retail media aims for uniformity in measurement, he suggests keeping some diversity wouldn’t be a bad thing.

He argued, “many large PLCs are now too controlled by these short-term ROI metrics to be capable of doing the things that are necessary to building a brand over the long-term.”

Will retail media cure “technoplasmosis”?

And Rory added that the tech platforms had persuaded the finance people who now control the marketing world to adopt metrics which, “not coincidentally, are absolutely in the interest of those businesses”. They don't yet sell creativity, which is probably a bigger determinant of advertising success.

He suggested we’re all mice with the performance marketing equivalent of toxoplasmosis – “we got obsessed with the things that digital advertising could do, that old fashioned advertising couldn't do, but we forgot to account for the things that old fashioned advertising did rather well that digital advertising can’t do, and one of those is contextuality.”

And he concluded that the big opportunity for retail media and for agencies working for brands within it is to recognise the power of contextuality and the value of a small number of brilliant creative ideas and uses of media that are transformative for a client business over the long term.

Would an agency like Naked Communications survive these days?

Rory suggested that media creativity is being stifled by the dominance of tech platforms. As an aside, this got me thinking. I met the boys from Naked Communications on a boat just after the millennium to talk about why they’d launched the agency. They became hugely successful and influential for a time with the idea of creative media strategy. Would / could such a fantastic beast emerge now?

Creativity multiplier – media and the message

Joanna Lawrence, Global Chief Strategy Officer at HAVAS Media Network suggested that the idea of the creative multiplier, when brilliant creative minds get to play with media might well blossom in retail media and the signs of this are to be found in…New Zeeland of all places.

She flagged the best retail media campaign entries to the Cannes Lions this year including Ziploc, which played on the idea of preserving money off coupons for later and won the Grand Prix

and for my money a brilliant example of what’s possible instore – a collaboration between NZ’s favourite bread brand Vogel and retailer The Warehouse in which Vogel rated the performance of toasters. Hopefully we’ll see this sort of thing in the UK.

2026 will be the year of in-store media

Given three quarters to 90% of shopping in the UK and USA happens in-store (yup the audience for RM is not all online) it is going to become the hottest area of retail media investment. Once viewed as the endpoint of the shopper journey, the physical store is emerging as one of the most powerful, and measurable, media channels in marketing, according to research from SMG, Plan-Apps, Colosseum Strategy and Kantar presented by Andrew Lipsman.

Key findings:

Digitisation drives results: Dynamic digital formats outperform static displays by delivering more contextually relevant and creative content.

Foot traffic fuels reach: High-traffic FMCG retailers and entrance displays capture the largest audiences, while smaller stores win through stronger sightlines.

In-store adds incremental reach: It connects with shoppers that TV and online channels miss, boosting cross-media campaign reach.

Media is becoming data, news is becoming retail

A series of presentations flagged the increasing fusion of news brand media and commerce, CTV and retail media, tech platform data and the potential to leverage editorial audience interests to optimise shopping. The data collaboration halo around retail media is getting seriously innovative.

Lauren Dick of Mail Metro Media gave me the impression her outfit is operating like a creator economy vehicle with an absolute focus on distinctive, identifiable content creation as a driver of commerce and unashamedly learning from TikTok but doing it their way – “our billion engagements on TikTok have been described as having the gravitational pull of a neutron star” – love that.

John Mathieson of SMG interviewed Alice Beecroft, of Yahoo Advertising who reminded the retail media world that one of the original dotcom boomers, is still engaged with 10m+ people in the UK. With approximately one in five adults having a Yahoo! email address, the advertising offering is in effect a vast contextual data playground for retail brands to augment and expand what they know about shoppers.

CTV meanwhile is an intriguing connecter with retail media entangling a linear and streamed experience and a fusion of top and bottom funnel media – as Alex Hodge of Warner Bros. Discovery, UK, Ireland & International CTV pointed out the ability to pause a CTV commercial takes you straight to the other end of the shopper journey. And TV is another consumer data playground too.

Can retail media punch through the “financialization of marketing”?

Daniel Knapp, Chief Economist at IAB Europe returned to the macro theme of the “financialization of marketing” pointing to a failure of brand marketing in the context of huge spend being splurged on the platforms.

“Something's broken in the world of marketing. Despite record investments, brands aren't growing anymore. Most aren't giving up. Indeed, we can see in these earnings calls that 60% plan to increase marketing investments globally in the second half of 2025 but you can see the glass ceiling coming pretty close, right?”

With CPG and communications brands doubling down on commerce, data and media capability, is retail media capable of breaking the failing brand growth cycle?

GenAI and mobile will define the future

In-store may offer the biggest untapped audience but what ever happens inside stores will be influenced by GenZ’s symbiotic relationship with mobiles and AI as a means to search, assess and buy product.

“By 2028 we expect that more than half of all of ecommerce sales will be driven by mobile,” said Sarah Marzano of eMarketer citing US market analysis. “Mobile sits at the intersection of digital and physical shopping journeys, which opens up unique opportunities for retailers. And I think retailers increasingly recognise the imperative of extending their retail media strategies into physical stores.”

But retailers need to absorb a radical shift in search behaviour to AI – 70% of US GenZ will be AI users by 2029 and this could well be an underestimate – meanwhile social commerce is on track to be worth $100bn next year.

Agentic commerce - headfirst into the brick wall of human psychology

Because it’s not all about tech, data and measurement. What about us – the humble shopper? Sam Shaw of Canvas8 landed the day back in the domain of human experience arguing the automation and tech might start to cross the fundamentals of people’s instincts and desires.

Reminding us of the failure of Amazon Dash buttons which removed human agency, he challenged the latest Tech Bro orthodoxy - “shopping is important to people, because it's the process of discovery, of comparing options, of weighing it up. An agent that just delivers you the final product strips away all that experience in building conviction.”

Much to consider. The sector is moving on but maximising it potential is complex and challenging. If retail media brands agencies and tech can bring all of this together in a balanced way the shopper experience of retail media may become greater than the sum of its parts. There’s a long way to go.

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