Survey data reveals that the rise of retail media has caused a growing frustration between brands and retailers

Turbyne, the first solution built for retailers and designed to simplify retail media, today released a state of retail media industry report, “Retail Media Mirage: How the growing divide between retailers and brands threatens retail media’s potential.” The big takeaway: an in-depth survey of stakeholders on both sides shows a major disconnect between retailers and brands that needs to be resolved to ensure the channel meets the potential being forecast. The survey consists of over 300 retail media decision makers among brands and retailers.                         

“The cracks in retail media’s foundation have begun to show in a big way,” said Greg Stevens, Founder and President of Turbyne. “78% of brands surveyed said it is difficult or very difficult to justify increasing their investment. That’s a troubling statistic given that most brands work with just a handful of retail media networks; 40% of brands work with less than three retail media networks and another 42% work with four to six. The channel’s forecasted growth is dependent in part on brands expanding their spending to other retail media networks.”

Among a wide range of insights across multiple categories, the survey reveals that:                                          

There’s a massive gap between retailers’ perceptions of the value their retail media networks (RMNs) deliver and brands’ actual satisfaction with those same RMNs.

• Underwhelming Experience: Only 6% of larger brands ($500m+) would give their retail media experience an A, despite 65% of retailers stating they expected their clients would grade it an A.
• Exhaustive Partner Proliferation: Brands, on average, worked with 25 media partners, 22 media agencies and 23 ad tech platforms over the previous three months.
• Complex Buying Process: 40% of brands cited having to execute individual buys across each RMN as one of the top three barriers to increasing their retail media spend.
• Subpar Value Proposition: The net result is that 44% of brands do not see it as worthwhile to work with any new RMNs in the next 24 months.

Brands and retailers agree on the solution: Simplifying the buying and selling process is critical.

• Both brands and retailers individually said that the key to growth was the ability to buy (or sell) and execute retail media across multiple channels/tactics in a single location.
  • 47% of brands surveyed would spend budget with midsize retailers if they had the ability to buy and execute across multiple channels/tactics in a single location and 26% would do so if the platform offered an automated buying process.
  • 70% of brands would invest more in retail media if in-store tactics were able to be combined with digital into a single retail media offering.