Are you retail media ready?

“Retail media was flagged by nearly half the members of our WFA Media Forum as a top 3 priority for 2024."

There’s no hiding from the rapid growth of retail media. WFA research shows the proportion of paid media budgets allocated to this channel will double in 2024 compared to 2022, on track to become a $130 billion market worldwide.

It is projected to command a bigger share of paid media budgets than linear TV in the US in 2025 – and this milestone will be reached worldwide only two years later.

Despite many similarities with existing media channels, this is a new discipline and therefore requires new thinking and ways of working. It’s vital to address any frustrations before they become entrenched so advertisers maximise the value of the opportunities retail media allows.

Improving the quality of partnership

Retail media was flagged by nearly half the members of our Media Forum as a top 3 priority for 2024, so since the start of the year WFA has been seeking to apply its tried and trusted peer-to-peer learning approach by building a community of retail media experts.

The intention of this voluntary initiative is to share best practice, improving the general skill levels, and allow us to highlight key common issues to the wider industry.

Ultimately, the objective is to provide support to advertisers towards their individual strategic marketing goals which they may choose to rely on or not on a voluntary basis.

So far, our work has included:

• A set of clinics with the WFA Media Forum, hearing first-hand about the challenges faced by brands. Although the retail landscape, ownership and practice varies enormously by market, we were struck by the fact that many of the issues were common from country to country.
• Assembled a task force of subject matter experts drawn from Media Forum members to help us develop our programme of learnings, research and future activities.
• Ran a Media Forum in April dedicated to retail media, featuring contributions from our new task force on what their businesses are doing now and next in order to inspire all practitioners to ensure greater returns from their rising investment.
• Joined with the national associations from the UK and Denmark in particular, but also the ANA in the US to promote some of the work that has been done in these markets and sharing it internationally.
• Connected with the wider industry, including agencies via a series of international inspiration as well as joining the IAB Europe Retail Media Council to help educate the sell side on what brands are looking for.

The first output from these efforts is a new document: Questions to Ask Your Retail Media Partners (please note that this document is WFA member content only; if you'd like to know more about WFA membership, get in touch with membership@wfanet.org).

As brands start to establish new relationships with the sell-side, it’s important that they know what they are buying and the right questions posed up front will help ensure that these are enduring partnerships that deliver for both sides.

By helping members and retailers identify what matters, we believe we can help brands get more from retail media and ensure this growing channel fulfils its promise of sales growth.

Our ambition is to run regular forums and create advice for any brand that wants to enhance its retail media performance, build a knowledge bank for learnings and inspiration then develop a charter, in a similar vein to the WFA’s Media Charter, identifying the needs of advertisers as they seek to continue to grow investment in this channel.

If you’d like to join our Retail Media journey, please contact Tom Ashby.