In this article…
Retail media is quickly outpacing other areas of digital advertising and is projected to grow 29% by 2025. Despite this trajectory, retail media is still relatively new compared to traditional digital media and operates like a startup in terms of tech capabilities. Sustained growth will require retail media standardization — creating consistent ways to measure and compare ad performance across retail media networks (RMNs). This standardization will be key for RMNs wanting to understand what’s driving the most value and sales for their business.
In an Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) study, 62% of ad buyers pointed to standardization as a top growth challenge. The current ecosystem’s inconsistent standards have prevented effective investment in measurement and limited ad buyer participation. Standardization will be necessary moving forward for effective adoption and trust in these new channels.
This article explores the challenges marketers face without retail media standardization and the collaborative efforts needed to establish consistent measurement standards across the industry.
How much standardization currently exists?
Retail media standardization is limited industry-wide, with each RMN using its own metrics and definitions; what one network calls a “conversion” might be defined differently by another. Some retail companies also sell ad space within siloed, walled-garden shopping environments, which makes it difficult for advertisers to compare performance across platforms. As a result, the current landscape lends itself to inconsistency, campaign measurement complications, and an unclear view of return on investment (ROI) across RMNs.
This fragmentation stems from how retailers have historically developed and managed customer data platforms and e-commerce websites independently, causing disparities in the types and quality of customer data available and the technologies used to manage it. Each retailer uses a unique technology stack and customer experience strategies, which means data is collected, utilized, and integrated into advertising platforms differently.
Why is standardization important?
A 2023 State of Retail Media Survey highlighted the industry’s lack of standardization as a significant obstacle to growth. The Association of National Advertisers also found that advertisers can’t fully take advantage of their retail media investments because of inconsistent measurement practices. Standardized retail media measurement practices are critical for growth. By setting consistent measurement standards across different platforms, it becomes easier for various players to:
- Assess how ads are performing
- See which strategies work across RMNs
- Optimize ad spending
- Make informed decisions
- Extract more value from advertising budgets
Ultimately, standardized metrics are a must for improving transparency, strategic effectiveness, and ROI.
Who is promoting standardization?
We’re seeing a collective push for retail media standardization by several industry stakeholders wanting a more cohesive and effective advertising ecosystem. One of the most recent efforts came from the IAB and the Media Rating Council (MRC). These organizations collaborated with brands, agencies, and RMNs to develop new guidelines for standardized measurement practices and have given the ecosystem a proposed common language for retail media measurement.
These guidelines were released in January 2024 to provide a consistent framework for the following across retail media platforms:
- Audience measurement
- Reporting
- Incrementality
- Transparency
- Viewability
- Ad delivery
- In-store advertising
Microsoft Retail Media, an early adopter of the framework, has experienced greater data transparency, accuracy, privacy, and security, which has benefited advertisers and retailers and advanced Microsoft’s position as a retail media industry leader. Widespread adoption of these guidelines has the potential to drive innovation, attract more advertisers, strengthen collaboration, grow the industry, and improve the consumer experience.
The benefits of industry standardization
A standardized retail media framework for performance measurement can benefit advertisers, retailers, media agencies, and other stakeholders in the ecosystem. Here are some ways each entity stands to benefit.
Benefits for retailers
Standardization makes it easier for retailers to demonstrate their credibility and the value of their retail media program. With uniform measurement across channels and campaigns, they can provide clear, comparable data that reflects their impact, builds trust, and encourages advertiser investment. Better campaign management efficiency also reduces the operational burden, so retailers can focus on improving customer experiences and driving sales.
Experian’s Activity Feed helps you measure performance — and understand how ads impact shopping behavior — by providing you with ad exposures in one environment (web or connected TV) that you can connect to an action in another (in-store purchase). Learn more about Activity Feed and see it in action here.
Benefits for media agencies and marketers
With standardized metrics, advertisers and media agencies have an easy, reliable way to compare metrics and assess the effectiveness of various campaigns across RMNs. This “apples to apples” comparison helps them determine which channels are truly driving better ROI so they can effectively optimize spending.
Standardization also improves collaboration with retailers and leads to more effective campaigns. Consistent guidelines can help teams create, carry out, and optimize retail media strategies and easily compare platform effectiveness.
Benefits for industry stakeholders
Industry stakeholders like technology providers and regulatory bodies can greatly benefit from standardized retail media measurement practices. Consistent measurement provides a common framework that improves transparency and trust among parties. With reliable and comparable metrics, standardization helps everyone speak the same language when it comes to performance evaluation and decision-making. This uniformity facilitates smoother interactions and partnerships between the buy and sell sides, so it’s easier to negotiate and collaborate.
Strategies for implementing retail media standardization
Standardizing measurement will require industry-wide coordination around several strategies, as outlined in best practices frameworks from standardization proponents like IAB/MRC and the Albertson’s Media Collective.
Unify reporting and performance measurement
To address the lack of standardization in performance metrics, RMNs must adopt uniform definitions and calculation methodologies for key metrics. Unified reporting in retail media requires successful stakeholder collaboration to:
- Agree on critical KPIs and reporting metrics like impressions and conversion rates
- Adopt standardized data formats and reporting tools
- Educate stakeholders
- Ensure data quality and compliance
- Continuously improve based on industry feedback
The IAB/MRC framework provides a basis for standardizing metrics for media delivery and engagement, as well as sales and conversions. This consistency helps advertisers compare performance across platforms effectively, enhancing transparency and decision-making.
Standardize product specifications
It’s important for advertisers to have consistent product specifications, as it makes it easier to create and deploy ads across multiple RMNs. To achieve this, RMNs should align ad formats, file sizes, animations, and video specifications with IAB guidelines. Following these standards will help RMNs eliminate compatibility issues, simplify adoption, and save time and resources. It’s also vital for RMNs to maintain flexibility for unique ad formats in order to encourage innovation while still benefiting from standardized specifications.
Introduce third-party verification and disclose capabilities
Introducing third-party verification for ad placement, fraud detection, brand safety, and competitive separation can improve an RMN’s credibility and transparency. By disclosing the third-party providers used and the types of verification offered, RMNs build trust with advertisers and give them the confidence they need to invest.
Additionally, RMNs should disclose their staffing, processes, technology, inventory management, targeting, creative management, and self-service offerings. Transparency in these areas helps advertisers make informed decisions, optimize ad buys, and increase efficiency. Using existing IAB verification and capability disclosure guidelines ensures reliability and a more trustworthy, efficient advertising environment.
Future retail media standardization trends
The future of retail media is poised for significant growth, especially as standardization guidelines are widely adopted and implemented. Here are some trends we expect to see as retail media ad spending grows.
Widespread RMN adoption and spending
Standardization could spur greater RMN spending and drive broad adoption by advertisers who hesitated before due to concerns about metrics and performance comparability.
New partnerships and collaborations
Standardization may lead to new partnerships that weren’t possible before:
- Brands and retailers might team up to blend advertising and sales data for better-targeted campaigns.
- AdTech companies could also partner with multiple retailers to offer unified advertising solutions.
- Retail media networks and analytics firms could collaborate to provide deep insights into consumer behavior and campaign performance.
- Partnerships among retailers, including smaller ones seeking retail media measurement uniformity, may drive further standardization and create new advertising opportunities across product categories with audience overlap.
Ad format innovation
Agreeing on common standards simplifies how ads are measured and understood. Standardization may drive down costs and free up space for more imaginative, engaging ads in the future. For instance, the IAB/MRC’s common language is helping to promote consistency and clarity and fuel innovation across the board.
Incrementality focus
As standardization becomes more widespread, there may be a growing trend toward incrementality measurement, which measures the additional impact of advertising campaigns compared to what would have happened without them. Standardized metrics can help advertisers accurately gauge and optimize campaign effectiveness and maximize their marketing investments.
Growth of cross-platform ad targeting
Standardization may drive the growth of cross-platform ad targeting. With consistent metrics and measurement standards, advertisers will be able to track and compare their ad performance across platforms more accurately. This unified approach will improve ad targeting precision and ensure a consistent impact across RMNs.
Commerce media
Commerce media is changing retail advertising with its focus on verified data and real-time transaction insights, making campaigns more efficient. This shift could push for more uniform measurement standards across platforms and level the playing field. As commerce media gains traction, its emphasis on targeted advertising and ROI measurement might pave the way for universal metrics and clearer guidelines across retail networks.
Where does this leave modern advertisers?
Retail media is still at a crossroads. If standardization doesn’t occur soon, its growth may slow. For now, advertisers are resorting to custom strategies or relying on whichever network they feel is most effective for their products. They are likely to continue investing significantly in retail media, maintaining or increasing spending in the next year.
Although RMNs continue to be challenging without formally recognized standardization guidelines, the proposed IAB/MRC guidelines provide an effective starting point.
Join forces with a strategic RMN partner
RMN success requires overcoming complicated technical hurdles that may exceed non-media business capacities. Managing data complexities, resolving identities, utilizing audience insights, and ensuring precise measurement requires specialized expertise and technologies.
We recently announced a solution tailored for RMNs. This offering enhances RMNs’ strength in first-party shopper data by using Experian’s #1 ranked identity and audience services. Our solution helps RMNs unlock expanded customer insights, enriched audiences for activation, identity resolution for cross-channel audience targeting, and real-time measurement and attribution. This comprehensive solution is designed to help RMNs capture more advertising revenue.
If your organization could benefit from a partner with the requisite technological tools and insights into the retail media landscape, contact us to discover how we can help you achieve RMN success.
Latest posts
2013 has been a milestone year for those lobbying on behalf of expanded rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) Americans. With 12 states and the District of Columbia now formally recognizing same sex marriages and two highly anticipated rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court expected shortly, the momentum is currently on the side of those seeking greater recognition and support of LGBT-related issues. The speed with which public attitudes have shifted towards greater acceptance of LGBT individuals and their causes has left many marketers scrambling to devise plans that are not only inclusive of LGBT consumers, but in many instances, designed to overtly and publically court this influential and growing consumer segment. The 2013 LGBT consumer report out from Experian Marketing Services delivers insights marketers need to better understand the market that is on everyone’s radar. In this first of a series of blog posts, we’ll highlight key data from the report. Readers can download the full report at any time here. Living out Loud In 2006, when Experian Marketing Services first began measuring sexual orientation among respondents to our Simmons® National Consumer Study, we found that 3.4% of all non-Hispanic adults self-identified as either lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered (LGBT), a figure consistent with what leading LGBT researchers predicted at the time. However today, 4.3% of the non-Hispanic adult population self-identifies as LGBT, a figure that has risen slowly but steadily year-after-year. Younger adults have consistently been more likely to identify as LGBT, and in fact today, 5.8 percent of 18 to 34 year olds say they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered. As a result, the adult LGBT population predictably skews towards the younger age cohorts. Specifically, 36% of LGBT adults today are aged 18 to 34 versus 26% of the heterosexual population in that age range. Likewise, while 20% of heterosexual adults are age 65 and older, just 16% of LGBT adults are in this age range, though our data shows that the share of adults age 65 and older identifying as LGBT has also risen. Home and Family As a growing number of U.S. states pass laws recognizing same-sex marriages and civil unions, we see an increasing percentage of gay and lesbian Americans reporting that they are married. In 2007, for example, when only Massachusetts allowed same-sex marriage, 8% of gay men and 14% of lesbian women said they were married. Today, 17% of gay men and 16% of lesbian women are married. Marriage rates among lesbian and gay adults still lag well behind those of heterosexuals, but the gap is closing from both sides. In fact, while marriage rates are rising among lesbians and gays, they’re falling among heterosexuals. Today, 58% of heterosexual men and 53% of heterosexual women are married, compared to 60% of heterosexual men and 55% of heterosexual women who were married in 2007. The Pink Dollar Income levels are important to consider when targeting consumers, but more important is determining the amount of money left over for non-essentials after the other bills are paid. Despite earning nearly identical salaries, gay men have lower annual household discretionary expenditures than heterosexual men. Likewise, lesbian households have fewer dollars than those of heterosexual women to spend on non-essentials. This is mostly likely due to the fact that both lesbian and gay adults tend to reside in larger cities where the cost of living can be considerably higher than average. Interestingly, when household size is brought into the equation, we see that gay males actually have higher discretionary spending per capita than heterosexual men. In fact, gay men live in households that devote $6,794 per capita annually to non-essentials, which is $753 more than what heterosexual men spend. Forthcoming posts from this series will include insights into the automotive and food vertical markets; the mobile habits of LGBT consumers; and an examination of online visitors to LGBT content sites. Don’t want to wait? Download the full report now. Also, learn more about the Simmons LGBT Consumer Study, the only syndicated, national probability sample survey that measures the lifestyles, attitudes, media habits and brand preferences of the LGBT population giving marketers actionable insights into this powerful consumer segment that can be directly compared with those of heterosexuals.
The importance of affiliate marketing as a marketing channel is evident; it ranks as one of the most effective marketing channels for retailers, along with paid search and e-mail. While effective affiliate marketing relies on two groups, the publishers (affiliates) who display advertisements online and the advertisers (merchants) who aim to increase sales for their online shop, incorporating insights from Experian Marketing Services’ Hitwise can strengthen affiliate programs. I recently worked with Rakuten LinkShare on a webinar which highlights how their affiliate marketing services partnered with Hitwise create a proven package for success by providing valuable and actionable insights to affiliate marketers in understanding and targeting key consumer segments. Identify sites sending traffic to your category For our case study, we examined a custom category of Rakuten LinkShare department store clients and compared them with a category of department store non-clients. Using Hitwise, we examined which publisher sites sent traffic to each of the categories in order to identify the best affiliates to partner with. Among the top 20 publisher websites, a number of fashion and style content websites were sources of traffic to LinkShare Department store clients. Fashion and trend focused affiliate sites, namely ShopStyle and Polyvore, pointed to clear fashion editorial interest amongst those who visited LinkShare department store clients. Consider search terms used to capture consumer interest and intent Next, we looked at generic terms that sent traffic to affiliate site ShopStyle. Terms included searches for products sold in department stores such as variations of “heels” and “dresses”. The data indicates that ShopStyle is a good candidate to partner with because it attracted visits from those who are interested in fashion, looking for a deal, and who are likely in-market for specific products. Monitor effectiveness of affiliate programs and make timely decisions Hitwise can also be used by marketers to evaluate the effectiveness of their affiliate partnerships. For this example, we were able to show that Rakuten LinkShare affiliates sent a larger share of traffic to department store clients versus non-clients, pointing to a clear benefit from affiliate partnerships. As affiliate marketing is an increasingly critical channel for marketers, the importance of selecting the best and most relevant publishers is clear. When used in conjunction with affiliate marketing programs, Hitwise enables marketers to understand competitors’ online distribution and sources of traffic, select the best affiliates to partner with, and quantify the return on investment from partnerships.
New data from Experian Marketing Services’ Simmons® ConnectSM mobile and digital panel sheds light on the way smartphone users spend time using their phone, with the average adult clocking 58 minutes daily on their device. On average, smartphone owners devote 26% of the time they spend on their phone talking and another 20% texting. Social networking eats up 16% of smartphone time while browsing the mobile web accounts for 14% of time spent. Emailing and playing games account for roughly 9% and 8% of daily smartphone time, respectively, while use of the phone’s camera and GPS each take up another 2% of our smartphone day. *Activities include use of a smartphone’s native features dedicated to each activity as well as downloaded apps whose primary function falls under the given activity. For instance, “watch video” includes the act of watching video on the smartphone’s native video player as well as use of video apps such as YouTube, Netflix, etc. iPhone versus Android users Smartphone users may constantly debate which operating system is supreme, but we see clear differences between the ways consumers use their phone depending on the operating system that runs it. For starters, iPhone users spend an hour and fifteen minutes using their phones per day, a full 26 minutes more than the typical Android phone owner. Additionally, iPhone and Android smartphone owners use their phones in markedly different ways. For instance, 28% of the time that Android users spend using their phones is dedicated to talking, whereas iPhone users spend only 22% of their smartphone time talking on the device. Android owners also devote a greater share of time visiting websites on their phone than iPhone owners. On the other hand, iPhone owners spend a disproportionately greater share of smartphone time than Android owners texting, emailing, using the camera and social networking. Note on time spent It may surprise some to read that an activity like watching video accounts for such a small share (less than 1%) of the typical adult’s daily smartphone use. However, for the charts above to sum to a single daily total it was necessary to calculate individual activity contribution using a base of all smartphone owners, including those who don’t spend any time engaging in a given activity during a typical day. The chart below provides additional insights into the time spent engaging in the major smartphone activities examining only those individuals who engaged in each activity during a 24-hour period. I’ve also added into the chart a reach and frequency metric to indicate the popularity of each activity and the number of times per day that individuals engage in them. In the chart, the activities with the largest bubbles are those in which the greatest share of smartphone owners engage during a typical day and include the usual suspects: talking (79%), texting (76%), visiting websites (62%), emailing (61%) and social networking (52%). Activities with the fewest daily participants are: watching video, which 2.3% of smartphone owners do during a typical day, and reading, which just 0.5% of smartphone owners do daily. Given that nearly 98% of smartphone users don’t watch videos on their phone during a typical day, it’s easier to understand why video comprises such a low share of the average adult’s daily smartphone use. However, the chart above reveals that those who do watch video on their phone spend, on average, 5 minutes a day watching videos spread out over 4.2 different viewing sessions. For more information on consumers’ usage of smartphones, digital tablets, computers and other traditional and digital media platforms, check out Simmons Connect.