Retail media has no single source of truth — and that’s the problem
Retail media is at a tipping point. Even though WARC projects that the vertical will eclipse traditional TV and connected TV ad spend in 2026, retail media leaders are working through major measurement issues. The Current spoke with nine executives to understand why measurement has broken down and what it will take to rebuild it.
Global retail media ad spend is projected to hit $197 billion in 2026, according to WARC, but it is slowing from 39% in 2021 to 14% this year. And it’s expected to further slow to 11% in 2027.
Retail media networks (RMNs), brands, agencies and data players alike are quick to acknowledge that campaign reports look good but don’t always translate into overall sales lift for brands. That’s due to several factors, including differences in methodology between RMNs, complexity with third-party measurement, the desire for standardization without a push to operationalize it and misaligned business objectives, both internally and externally.
While there’s no easy solution to all these issues, with nearly $200 billion on the line, leaders are rethinking measurement. Tactics to inspire more confidence include transparency in methodology, prioritizing metrics like customer lifetime value, clean rooms, in-store measurement advances in the U.S. and tighter links between national and shopper budgets.
Inconsistent metrics
“The metrics that we have today aren’t sufficient,” Liz Roche, vice president of media and measurement at Albertsons Media Collective, told The Current. “They don’t accurately reflect what’s going on in the business. One of our big pushes right now is to move into longitudinal measurement, lifetime value and start cohorting customer sets. We want to understand how customers are moving through that brand relationship.”
This push is about moving retail media from a bottom-of-the-funnel play to a full-funnel experience that creates long-term brand awareness and brand loyalty.
The trouble with retail media’s most cited metric, return on ad spend (ROAS), is each network calculates it differently, leading to wild gaps in what’s reported. Albertsons, Northwestern University and Ovative Group found there was a 63% fluctuation in how ROAS is calculated network to network, with 11 variables swinging the figures depending on methodology.
“There are inconsistent methodologies, inconsistent data standards and inconsistent delivery,” Cara Pratt, Circana’s president of global retail and media, told The Current last year. “It is near impossible for a brand marketer to look with consistency and continuity about how dollars are returning business results and business outcomes when you look across the magnitude of retailers in the ecosystem.”
Standardization in name only
Roche believes the onus is on retailers to simplify measurement, which is where standardization comes into play. In theory, standardization should make things easier. Albertsons is in favor of it, along with Kroger’s Christine Foster and DoorDash’s Peter Giordano. The IAB outlined measurement standards in late 2024, but they haven’t been adopted by the wider industry.
“The tech is there to execute on standards; [some retailers are] just not interested,” LiveRamp’s vice president of global measurement products, Christine Grammier, told The Current. “There’s not a real motivation for that. It’s not like someone’s telling you you’re going to get more money if you use standards.”
LiveRamp enables retail media networks like Kroger Precision Marketing to close the loop and match exposed audiences to retail sales. The retailer is able to report on incremental sales from programmatic campaigns because 95% of sales in its grocery stores are connected to loyalty accounts. While Roche suggested being open to partnering with other retail media networks on measurement to make things easier for brands, for now Albertsons and Kroger are emphasizing transparency within their methodologies.
“We want [our partners] to feel really confident in our results,” Roche added. “And that means being real. That means the good and the bad.”
No single source of truth
Cross-merchant measurement is the real challenge, as brands worked with an average of six retail media networks in 2025. Normalizing reporting across all those networks creates real complexity, which is where agencies like Tinuiti come in to help decode measurement questions.
Subscribe to The Current
Retail media’s promise has always been closed-loop measurement. But working across retailers has created the need for more third-party measurement than anyone anticipated, according to the agency’s vice president of commerce media, Elizabeth Marsten.
“I kind of want to set the whole thing on fire,” Marsten said.
There’s fragmentation even within third-party measurement, as brands have to accept a majority of measurement is modeled, missing or untraceable. One of Marsten’s clients told her they use Tinuiti’s media mix modeling capabilities alongside two other third-party measurement companies.
“Why would you pay all that money for all those things?” Marsten said. “And it’s because they can’t just have a single source of truth.”
Her advice for brands: Focus on top-line sales and new-to-brand metrics versus ROAS or incremental ROAS (iROAS).
“We have a lot of retailers talking about incrementality — do they get incremental sales,” Marsten said. “Incremental to what? The brand? The store? The SKU? Is it the audience I’m looking for? And you can’t compare one [media network] to the other. From our perspective, that’s the hardest thing.”
To combat that, retailers and brands are leaning into clean rooms to understand the customer journey, according to multiple leaders. But access to many retailers’ clean rooms is locked behind joint business plans, making accuracy dependent on investing enough to use those clean rooms.
The thirst for a more complete view of transaction data has led companies like PayPal, which says it sees one-third of global transactions, and Chase to create their own media networks. While this creates a new option for buyers, it also introduces a new consideration into an already complex system.
Getting closer to real-time reporting
The measurement gap doesn’t stop at digital. Around 90% of purchases at retailers still happen in store, and connecting those sales within the bigger picture may be retail media’s next big challenge.
Albertsons has made multiple advancements with its in-store measurement in the past year, including launching incrementality figures and its first-ever NewFronts presentation.
Paul Brenner, senior vice president of global retail media and partnerships at In-Store Marketplace, compared the evolution of in-store measurement in the U.S. to a football team “just receiving the kickoff and calling a fair catch.”
The urgency to figure out measurement is real. All sides want to get closer to real-time reporting on consumers’ habits so that “the next six weeks is informed by the last six days,” Circana’s Pratt said. “That’s the speed of change. We’ve got to go from months to moments.”
Now that retail media is on every media plan, expectations have hit a new level. If measurement can't keep pace and create trust, budgets could move.
“Absent rebuilding trust on the measurement side, this industry is going to slow down on growth,” Pratt said.