In this edition of the Glossy+ Research Briefing, we examine how retail media may be headed toward maturation as a marketing channel and the challenges marketers face on RMNs, as seen in Glossy’s 2025 CMO Strategies report on the state of retail media advertising.
RMN negotiations grow more complicated as new retail partners enter the mix
Retail media advertising has been the subject of a fair amount of industry buzz, but there are signs that the marketing channel could be heading toward maturation. For instance, 27% of marketers said retail media is one of two marketing channels that took the highest portion of their company’s budget as of first-quarter 2025, down 4 percentage points from first-quarter 2024. This is according to Glossy+ Research’s recently released CMO Strategies report on retail media.
There are several factors that are likely affecting the way marketers are investing in retail media. For one, as the number of retail media networks (RMNs) continues to grow, brands have become more selective about where they spend their ad dollars.
As a result, some RMNs are working more closely with brands to earn their ad dollars by improving the quality of their data and measurement tools. Ulta Beauty CMO Kelly Mahoney said the data the retailer gathers from its 44 million loyalty program members has been especially valuable for its brand partners.
“We saw the importance of first-party data at Ulta Beauty for a variety of reasons,” Mahoney said. “One, just to personalize core experiences that we wish to personalize. And, we also saw the need to help our brand partners grow their businesses. So, we made sure we had high-quality data, not just transactional data, but data about who the beauty enthusiast is, how they like to shop, ways they like to engage in beauty — whether that be in our stores, on our app, socially. … That’s our real claim for having a large high-quality data set that allows our brand partners to utilize that data and grow their business within our business.”
When asked about the biggest challenge they face when working with the top retail media networks — Amazon Ads, Walmart Connect and Target’s Roundel — marketers’ responses varied by platform. Cost of media is the largest challenge marketers said they face on most RMNs, including category-specific players like Nordstrom and Best Buy. In fact, all marketers chose cost of media as their top barrier on eBay Ads. Historically, the cost to advertise is marketers’ top challenge across these RMNs, especially as the possibility of a recession looms in the U.S.
However RMNs are addressing these growing pains by continuing to modify their real-time bidding options and standardize their buying process to simplify the buying process and make it easier for brands to understand where their ad spend is going.
To learn more on how multi-category RMNs like Amazon and Walmart compare to the burgeoning offerings of category-specific RMNs like Ulta’s UB Media and Gopuff’s Gopuff Ads, check out Glossy+ Research’s full report.
