The number of retailers launching their own media, commerce or travel networks continues to grow, with ad dollars flowing in that direction.

Retail media investment has quintupled since 2019, with off-site spend alone forecast to surpass $28bn (£20.7bn) in the UK by 2028, according to eMarketer.

Now, with the expansion of commerce media networks (CMNs) into categories such as travel and finance, networks are trying to stand out as brands demand more robust measurement and stronger creative services.

Brands want proof of effectiveness, more engaging creative and full-funnel solutions. It makes sense considering almost two-thirds (63.9%) of respondents to Marketing Week’s Language of Effectiveness study say the quality of the creative is one of the more influential factors in overall marketing effectiveness.

While retail networks have invested heavily in infrastructure and data, many still rely on formats such as static banners and product carousels. These formats deliver reach and clicks but often lack the engagement consumers now expect, shaped by short-form video platforms like TikTok.

I can see a world where it’s evolved into retailers becoming content creators.

Helen Johnson, Capture

Unlike retail media, commerce media allows businesses across sectors to monetise customer data without needing to sell products directly. Advertisers can use these networks to reach relevant audiences with targeted offers, without going through a retailer’s supply chain.

Travel networks, in particular, have been quick to expand their creative services, building in-house production teams to support advertisers. Expedia Group, for example, runs a dedicated creative unit that works directly with brands to design campaigns.

“We have a creative services group in-house that helps think about some interesting solutions to those problems,” explains Expedia Group’s senior vice-president of media solutions, Rob Torres.

One such campaign was with Atout France, the destination marketing organisation, to promote the Côte d’Azur in winter. The team developed creative spanning out-of-home, native display and sponsored listings, alongside hotel discounts.

More than 90% of bookings from the campaign were for low- or shoulder-season stays, delivering a 20% year-on-year uplift in winter visitors.

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Helen Johnson, managing director at commerce media agency Capture, part of SMG, believes there has been a shift in how networks approach creative execution.

“The narrative around retail media has shifted in a good way, because 12 months ago, it was really focused on all the media opportunities available, for example, tech advancements, inventory options and data,” she explains.

However, the conversation is shifting more towards understanding the role of creative in driving ROI.

“Before [retailers] would come up with some creative adaptation. Now, I can see a world where it’s evolved into retailers becoming content creators, which is more of an elevated level of creative services being offered,” she says, explaining that this could range from networks using influencers in these campaigns to creating content for TV, for example, the Boots and Love Island partnership.

The next stage, she argues, is helping brands understand what effective creative looks like within each media format.

At the end of last year, Trainline formally launched its ads business, giving brands access to its first-party data for the first time to enable contextual targeting.

Since launch, the company has seen a “significant appetite” from brands for creative, according to Trainline’s head of UK ad sales and account management, Sam Eads. Specifically, in creating content for Trainline’s in-platform video offering.

“From a marketing perspective, there is still a barrier whereby budgets are tight on creative, and in order to test a new partner, you have to offer the ability to help with that creative. That’s something we’ve started to try and lean into,” he says.

As Trainline’s media network is still growing, Eads notes its small creative studio works alongside the brand’s larger brand and marketing team.

“Marketers are bombarded on a daily basis by everyone trying to build relationships and ultimately drive revenue. So I think we do have to offer a really tangible service to stand out as a partner,” he adds.

In-store media measurement

Brands are putting pressure on retail and commerce media networks to demonstrate not only short-term ROI but also long-term brand impact. Marketers are asking for evidence of how campaigns impact consideration, recall and affinity, alongside longer-term business metrics such as customer lifetime value.

For consumer packaged goods and FMCG brands, the challenge is heightened by the fact that a majority of purchases still take place in-store. Retailers recognise the importance of consistent measurement but face hurdles due to fragmented and outdated legacy systems.

“As a brand, you want to compare apples with apples,” Johnson explains. “The intent is really there. The challenge is that all the complex legacy systems are different.”

Co-op launched its media network early last year and quickly had to “reframe” how it presented itself to advertisers, says Dean Harris, head of Co-op Media Network.

The ambition is to be recognised as a “media owner” rather than a “retailer selling media”.

“Forget the products and the tills in our shops,” Harris says. “Look at the media metrics – the same ones that convince you to buy TV, radio or billboards. Would you still buy Co-op Media? That’s what we’re trying to act like. The fact tills are there is a bonus.”

With many advertisers not considering retail media as a brand building channel, the challenge is demonstrating that retail media can help build brands as well as drive sales.

“Advertisers told us: retail media can’t do a job for brand. Customers barely notice it. There’s no storytelling, happiness or humour. Even if it did work, it wouldn’t do better than channels we already use,” Harris recalls.

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Determined to prove the opposite, Co-op commissioned research with eye-tracking and attention specialist Lumen. The hypothesis was that smaller store sizes, combined with high shopper frequency, would mean messages in convenience stores were more visible and better recalled than in larger outlets.

According to the research, a shopper who walks into a convenience store has twice the visibility for advertising, triple the attention and quadruple brand recall compared to a large store.

At the same time, advertisers remain frustrated about measuring the incremental impact of retail media, especially when campaigns run across multiple networks.

“Advertisers were telling us, ‘Every retailer says it’s raining cash. But the factory isn’t producing more products, and I’m not booking holidays to Barbados. Something doesn’t add up’,” Harris says.

To address this, Co-op partnered with market research company Circana, which holds raw sales data from retailers to analyse a sales uplift in products in competitor stores in the same vicinity as a Co-op.

“For example, how do we prove that someone saw a Corona ad in a Co-op, didn’t buy it there, but picked it up the next day in Tesco? It could still have been triggered by the Co-op ad, whether consciously or subconsciously,” Harris explains.

It uncovered that advertising in Co-op shops can lead to longer-term incremental sales uplifts in surrounding stores, including those which are not Co-op, of up to four times the amount of the immediate sales.

Growing pressure to prove effectiveness

To help standardise measurement, the IAB has introduced retail media standards that define metrics for on-site, off-site and in-store activity, aiming to create transparency and a common language across a fast-expanding sector.

Networks are also aiming to build their own closed-loop measurement solutions. Torres says Expedia is developing self-service and managed tools that allow advertisers to track performance across on-site and off-site channels.

“The tough part of that is we have a very good sense of what [consumers] are doing when they’re on our sites. If they have touched our sites, then we can follow them pretty [well] and get a sense of where they’ve gone, but we don’t necessarily know if they converted elsewhere, unless somebody shares that back to us,” he explains.

The next stage is creating lookalike audience segments to help target and market Expedia’s advertising partners. The company hopes AI will help consolidate data and deliver more digestible insights.

“My nirvana is you have your own tool that you can access all the time and see how you’re doing,” he adds.

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Trainline is also refining its measurement offer. “This is a fast-evolving area,” Eads says, noting with every partner, Trainline has a conversation about what exactly the advertisers want to measure.

“We try and be very agnostic in this respect, to ensure that it’s not a case of marking our own homework. We’re exploring conversations with partners that really add value to our current offering. Naturally, we can do all the standard measurement reporting, but I think as the industry continues to evolve in this area, that’s where we’re being open in terms of where these conversations go,” he adds.

Looking ahead, AI is expected to accelerate progress. Johnson predicts that hyper-personalisation could soon become the norm and within a couple of years, brands may be able to run branded campaigns with mass personalisation at scale, she says.

“You could run 100 different messages to 100 different audience groups. And then, based on an individual level where that person is within the purchase journey, you can serve them different messages,” she adds.

Yet measurement alone will not unlock commerce media’s full potential. Johnson warns that the complexity of buying systems remains a barrier.

“If you’re a brand and you want to harness that power, it’s really hard when networks have all got very different buying systems and structures. We’re going to have to really work together as an industry to make that simple.”