Retail media is quickly becoming one of the most important areas of digital commerce, but it is also one of the most delicate to get right.
On the surface, the opportunity is obvious. Retailers sit on enormous amounts of customer and transactional data, brands are looking for more effective ways to reach increasingly fragmented audiences, and media networks create entirely new commercial opportunities within retail environments.
The challenge is that customer attention is finite.
As retailers continue to expand their media capabilities, the balance between commercial ambition and customer experience is becoming increasingly important. The businesses that navigate that balance well are likely to create meaningful long-term value. Tand, tose that don’t risk turning already crowded customer journeys into even noisier experiences.
In the latest episode of The FODcast, Dean Harris, Head of Co-op Media Network, and Anders Henricson, CEO of Grassfish, shared some really interesting perspectives on how retail media is evolving, the opportunities it creates, and the operational challenges retailers now face as media, commerce, and customer experience become more closely connected.
Why retail media strategy matters more than ever
One of the clearest themes throughout the discussion was the growing value of retailer-owned data.
Traditional advertising channels have become increasingly fragmented, while changes in privacy, tracking, and customer behaviour continue to reshape how brands reach audiences online. Retailers, however, remain in a uniquely strong position. They have direct access to customer behaviour, purchasing habits, and transactional insight at a scale many other channels simply cannot replicate.
That is what makes retail media so attractive.
As Dean discussed through the work being done within the Co-op Media Network, retailers are now able to offer brands highly targeted opportunities built around real shopping behaviour and real moments of intent. With millions of transactions taking place every week, the scale of insight available is significant.
However, what came through strongly during the conversation was that successful retail media strategy cannot simply become a race to place more advertising in front of customers.
The customer experience balancing act
One of the more interesting areas explored during the discussion was the risk of communication overload.
Customers already navigate huge amounts of messaging across digital platforms, social channels, websites, apps, email, and increasingly in-store environments too. Adding more promotional messaging into retail experiences may create new revenue opportunities, but it also increases the risk of fatigue and disengagement if not handled carefully.
That is where relevance becomes critical.
The retailers making the strongest progress in this area are typically not those creating the most noise, but those creating the most useful and contextually relevant experiences. Retail media works best when it complements the customer journey rather than interrupting it.
This feels particularly important in environments like grocery retail, where convenience, familiarity, and speed are already central to the shopping experience. Customers are rarely looking for more friction or more decision-making complexity. In many cases, the role of retail media should be to simplify decisions, not complicate them.
As Anders highlighted during the conversation, the physical and digital customer journey is also becoming increasingly interconnected, which raises the stakes further. Retailers are no longer simply managing isolated digital campaigns. They are managing joined-up experiences across stores, apps, loyalty programmes, ecommerce platforms, and digital touchpoints simultaneously.
Why data alone is not enough
Data may sit at the heart of retail media, but another important theme from the conversation was that access to data alone does not automatically create strong customer engagement.
Many retailers already have vast amounts of customer information available to them. The challenge lies in how effectively that insight is interpreted, operationalised, and applied across the wider business.
Understanding customer behaviour is one thing. Delivering genuinely relevant experiences from it is something else entirely.
That requires more than technology investment. It requires strong collaboration between marketing, ecommerce, customer, operations, and commercial teams, alongside clear governance around how retail media activity supports the wider customer journey.
As retail media networks continue to mature, the businesses that stand out are likely to be those capable of combining data capability with strong customer understanding and operational discipline, rather than simply increasing advertising inventory.
The governance challenge behind retail media growth
Another point that came through strongly was the importance of maintaining long-term thinking.
Retail media creates understandable commercial temptation. New revenue streams are attractive, particularly in challenging economic conditions, and there is always pressure to maximise inventory opportunities wherever possible.
The risk, however, is that short-term revenue goals begin to outweigh the long-term customer relationship.
Retailers therefore need clear frameworks around campaign quality, customer relevance, and operational oversight to ensure that retail media enhances the customer experience rather than detracting from it. Without that structure, there is a danger that the shopping journey becomes overly commercialised and ultimately less effective for everyone involved.
The retailers navigating this best tend to treat retail media as part of the overall customer experience strategy, not simply as a standalone advertising function.
The capability challenge behind retail media
One of the wider themes that continues to emerge across digital commerce is the growing importance of cross-functional capability.
Retail media now sits across ecommerce, advertising, customer experience, data, partnerships, operations, and commercial strategy. That means the talent required to manage it effectively is becoming increasingly broad and increasingly difficult to find.
Retailers need teams capable of understanding customer behaviour, interpreting data, managing commercial relationships, and balancing revenue generation with customer experience objectives. Those skillsets do not always exist neatly within traditional organisational structures.
From our perspective, this is becoming one of the defining challenges behind retail media growth. The opportunity itself is substantial, but long-term success depends heavily on having the right operational maturity and talent capability in place to support it.
Final thoughts
What came through clearly in this conversation is that retail media is evolving into something far bigger than a new advertising channel.
As Dean and Anders highlighted, the real opportunity lies in creating more connected, relevant, and useful customer experiences that work for both brands and shoppers without compromising trust or usability along the way.
For retailers, that means balancing commercial ambition with customer expectations, while also building the operational structures and talent capability required to support increasingly sophisticated retail media ecosystems.
A huge thank you to Dean and Anders for sharing their insight and experience on this topic. If retail media strategy is something your business is currently exploring, the full episode is well worth a listen.
