Retail media measurement is set to “come of age” in 2025 as advertisers, retail media networks, agencies and partners increasingly leverage customer and media data, according to Tesco Media’s client strategy manager, Ed Sellier.
“We believe that the retail media industry is in its young adult phase,” he said on Friday (17 January) during a webinar for Tesco Media’s 2025 ‘Shape What Britain Buys’ report.
Measurement has long been a challenge for advertisers navigating the rapid growth of retail media. Retailers often dictate which metrics are shared, leading to inconsistencies as different networks share varying data points. Additionally, measurement often lags behind innovations in media, such as the proliferation of channels.
As advertisers weigh the growing number of options in terms of which retail media networks to partner with or combine, standardisation also becomes important. Sellier noted that different metric definitions across networks makes it “very difficult” to compare performance.
“As we move toward fragmented retail media networks, brands will need to make a choice about whether they want to go more centralised or take the risk of going more fragmented and analysing performance across different partners, and this means facing difficult conversations with transparency and clarity,” he said.
“Some meetings might feel difficult. Sometimes it might require different iterative conversations in order to get to a robust test outcome that you can then scale across the wider business,” he noted.
The challenge is to ensure retailers and advertisers are “in control” of the various methodologies used to measure retail media while understanding how different channels perform individually and in combination at various stages of the customer journey.Tesco outperforms festive market as Sainsbury’s hits six-year high
Sellier also emphasised the importance of establishing benchmarks for retail media measurement and conducting analysis during campaigns.
In October last year, Tesco expanded its retail media offering with a new measurement framework developed in collaboration with advertisers, agencies and industry bodies with the intention of setting a new industry standard for retail media measurement.
The retailer claims the full-funnel measurement approach includes a range of solutions to provide “detailed and incremental” insights for advertisers, with omnichannel attribution to follow this year.
“If we don’t know how well we’re performing relative to something else, we can never truly understand the value of our media,” Sellier said.
“Sure, we might have driven sales, but how did the category perform? Was it on during a promotion? How do we separate amongst media and the promotion effect?”
Blended approach
Elsewhere, Tesco observed an increase in what it calls “blended shopping”, where shoppers research online before making in-store purchases.
“We’re receiving many more users, many more orders, but outgrowing these still is our growth in overall traffic to the site,” explained client strategy manager, Jamie Howett.
“We believe this is reflective of what will continue to be the growing influence of online informing purchase decisions across all environments, as shoppers spend more time mentally curating their baskets.”
Over half of Tesco.com users visit the site to check prices and promotions, while many also seek product information and inspiration for their next shop. In the past year, average monthly traffic to Tesco.com has risen by 12%.
“Brands have a bigger opportunity than ever to realise more growth by coordinating the complementary roles of digital and physical environments embedding strategies that make their products easy to find, therefore easy to research and ultimately easy to buy.”
