What Advertising Week 2025 Got Right About Retail Media
Advertising Week 2025 made one thing clear: retail media has moved from experiment to essential. It is no longer a niche channel or a shopper-marketing sideshow—it is the connective tissue of modern advertising. Across two standout sessions, Beyond the Cart: Retail Media Goes Omnichannel and Beyond Retail: Innovation in Commerce Media, leaders from Instacart, Publicis, Marriott, and Adobe all pointed to the same truth. The next era of retail and commerce media is not about adding more networks. It is about building smarter, more connected ones that can prove outcomes.
As Andrew Lipsman, media analyst and longtime observer of the category, said, “The first era of retail media was really just about on-site ads driving online sales, a nice, tight, closed loop. But now we’re getting into the era of connecting all these dots across off-site, in-store, and streaming.”
That shift from closed systems to connected ecosystems defined the week.
The Old Way
Retail media’s first chapter was built on on-site performance and sponsored search. It was powerful but narrow. Networks were designed for conversion, not connection. They proved short-term sales lift but rarely built long-term brand equity. Budgets were scattered across shopper, performance, and trade teams, leaving few mechanisms for full-funnel planning.
Ray Velez, Chief Technology Officer at Publicis Sapient, captured the inflection point: “Make sure you’re treating this like an enterprise product. You’re not just serving the traveler. You have a new customer now, the advertiser.”
That mindset applies across every category. Treating retail media as an enterprise product means having scalable infrastructure, transparent reporting, and interoperable data that connects beyond a retailer’s own walls.
The New Way
The new phase of retail media is omnichannel, collaborative, and infrastructure-led. Off-site, CTV, and shoppable formats are driving growth, and the data backs it up.
New findings from Infillion’s 2025 research report “Getting Real About Retail Media” reinforce what those panelists described:
- Off-site media still accounts for just 16% of RMN budgets
- More than 1 in 5 U.S. retail media dollars are expected to move off-site in the next year
- CTV already represents 23% of spend—making retail media a true omnichannel force
For brands, this shift means choosing partners who can bridge the gap between closed retail environments and omnichannel strategies. That’s precisely why we built our Retail Media Networks solution: to connect retail data with broader campaigns and prove outcomes across the full funnel.
Ali Miller, General Manager of Advertising at Instacart, described the same evolution: “Our second act was moving up the funnel with shoppable display and video ads, measuring true incremental lift. Now we’re focused on connecting first-party data beyond the store walls.”
The sentiment was echoed by Ali Nazer of Adobe, who said, “Interoperability is at the core of everything we do. We call ourselves the Switzerland of data collaboration.”
That flexibility, working across clouds, partners, and ecosystems, is exactly what Infillion’s technology delivers. Our research shows that infrastructure gaps are the number one frustration among heavy retail media users. They are ready to scale but are limited by inconsistent measurement, high costs, and closed systems.
Chris Norton, SVP of Marketing at Marriott International, put it best: “We spent five years getting our data house in order before launching our media network. Without structured data and a unified view of the customer, none of this works.”
For retailers, the opportunity is not about scale. It is about proof. The brands and platforms that can connect data, creative, and outcomes across the full funnel will define this next phase of growth.
Building What’s Next
The next phase of retail media will be defined by connection, not scale, and the results already prove its value.
Walmart Connect Mexico illustrates how retail media, powered by first-party data and precision segmentation, can deliver real performance impact. By combining audience targeting with closed-loop attribution, Walmart Connect Mexico achieved a 13.2 return on ad spend, demonstrating that retail media can drive measurable engagement and strong conversions.
That success reflects exactly what Infillion’s retail media solution was built to do. Powered by MediaMath’s omnichannel DSP, our platform unifies on-site and off-site activation within a single transparent ecosystem. Retailers can safely collaborate with partners, integrate their data, and measure outcomes across every channel—all in one place.
Infillion delivers what the industry has been asking for: connected technology that proves performance. Because the future of retail media will not be defined by who owns the data, but by who can turn it into outcomes that grow the business.
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