It’s time to prove retail media’s real impact – or risk losing budget
Retail media is evolving fast and proving incrementality is now mission critical. Matthew McGinley, head of CPG and retail at Uber Advertising, argues here that brands must act now to measure true impact and win back their share of shrinking marketing budgets.
Retail media has quickly become one of the hottest conversations in marketing circles – and with good reason. As retail platforms scale, and first-party data becomes more powerful in a privacy-conscious world, brands have flocked to retail media with big expectations.
But despite the hype, one critical question has lingered beneath the surface: how do we know what actually is working?
For years, the challenge of proving incrementality – genuine, net-new impact driven by retail media – has dogged the category. Too often, ad exposure has been conflated with effectiveness. Number of impressions, not the lasting impression made.
When measurement is available, it’s been typically focused on last-click attribution or closed-loop sales, rather than more robust, independent views of shopper behaviour and market share movement.
Here’s why that matters more than ever: marketing budgets are under ever-increasing scrutiny. For some that’s a cap on increasing budgets, for others it’s a need to reach new audiences while also maintaining current successful strategies reaching existing or more traditional audiences. Indeed for others, it means real reductions in marketing investment altogether.
Planning cycles are long, and spend is being scrutinised like never before. Waiting six to nine months to validate what works could mean missing out on customers, revenue and hard-won internal buy-in. Now is the moment to prove incrementality – or risk losing the chance to win back budgets that are already slipping away.
It’s exactly this challenge – proving incrementality, at speed – that we’ve been working to solve. As part of this focus we ran a series of full funnel campaigns powered by Criteo technology, across categories like snacking, alcohol and ice cream.
We want to go beyond clicks and attribution to understand real, lasting incrementality. The good news is that there is light at the end of the ROI tunnel – but the lessons challenge some commonly held assumptions in the retail media space.
Always-on beats always-changing
Retail media is often treated as a short, sharp burst: time-boxed campaigns with tight seasonal windows, often disconnected from broader brand-building efforts. But what we’ve learned is that consistent, always-on visibility within a high-intent environment drives stronger cumulative impact.
In fact, the most successful campaigns didn’t chase novelty – they chased presence. A snacking and confectionery brand that maintained an ongoing footprint saw a 15% increase in product detail page (PDP) views, and a wider brand halo meant PDP share in related categories increased by 11%. Ultimately, the brand’s revenue share increased by approximately 10%.
The message is clear: attention compounds. And in high-frequency environments, showing up consistently matters more than shouting loudly once.
Don’t forget the halo
While retail media has traditionally focused on driving conversions for a specific product, our recent campaigns have highlighted something just as powerful: the halo effect.
When campaigns are well-designed and strategically executed the benefits shouldn’t stop at the advertised product. For example, an alcohol brand that ran a Commerce Display campaign not only saw a 54% lift in revenue share for its core product, but also recorded a 44% increase across related categories.
The campaign also drove a positive halo effect with a 23% lift in PDP share for adjacent products – reinforcing that when a brand is visible in the right place at the right time, consumers engage beyond the single product in front of them.
This isn’t just a lucky side-effect. It’s something marketers should be planning for. Running retail media with a narrow focus on one product or promotion risks missing the broader opportunity: influencing perception, driving discovery, and ultimately increasing share of basket across the entire portfolio.
What it proves is that incrementality doesn’t just come from a single click or conversion – it comes from the ripple effect of well-placed, consistently delivered campaigns that work harder across the board.
Matthew McGinley
The incrementality conversation must evolve
One of the most illuminating takeaways came not from the media itself, but from how it was measured.
Rather than relying solely on attribution models, we took an organic activity-based approach – comparing exposure vs non-exposure to understand actual differences in behaviour. What emerged was a more honest picture of how media drives change.
Incrementality is not about proving that ads “caused” a sale – it’s about proving that ads changed shopper behaviour.
The window is closing
Retail media is maturing fast, and the next phase won’t be defined by more impressions or more platforms. It will be defined by better measurement, the powerful leveraging of crucial first party data, more strategic use of the halo and a deeper commitment to always-on brand presence – not just product pushes.
And the growth is real. Uber’s retail and commerce media business continues to scale rapidly, driven by demand from brands that want to act quickly and prove true business impact.
The days of assuming closed-loop equals ROI are numbered. It’s time to think bigger, measure better and focus on what really moves the needle: incremental growth, not incidental exposure.
Source – Criteo and Uber Internal Data: Share was compared between the campaign ON period (when ads ran) and a matched OFF period (same timeframe with no Criteo ads). All data is indexed for comparison purposes; absolute values are not shown.
Keep up to date with the latest in media and marketing
Have your say