What must a retail media network be able to report to a buyer?
A retail media network must be able to report campaign performance that a buyer can act on: self-service, real-time, ad-attributed campaign metrics together with tailored performance read-outs 1. Most retail media solutions can attribute sales directly to advertising activity within their reporting, and buyers expect that link between spend and purchase 2.
What buyers ask for
- Full-funnel reporting that runs from awareness through to customer action and yields deep customer insights 1.
- Benchmarks against competitors, wanted by 41% of the brand and agency marketers in the BCG survey of 2025 1.
- Audience-specific insights, wanted by 32% of those marketers, and further insights on campaign performance, wanted by 23% 1.
- Reporting that is standardized and aligned with the Interactive Advertising Bureau's retail measurement guidelines, so that buying across many networks does not mean managing each one individually 1.
Why the reporting bar keeps rising
Media excellence, including programmatic ad buying and real-time reporting, is becoming table stakes as retail media competes directly in the digital advertising market 1. Media buyers must invest training and communication in each new retail media business, so networks with large reach and simple buying interfaces hold an advantage 1. Brands increasingly describe what they want as data-as-a-service with fulfillment attached 1.
Reporting quality rests on input quality. Product data, pricing accuracy, availability and shopper signals must be aligned and accessible for a retail media network to win 3. Retail media networks draw on first-party data and access to the consumer purchase journey to measure the impact of the advertising that reaches consumers 14.