Retail Media goes full funnel: data alone no longer convinces advertisers

Retail media is 2026 turning from a performance channel into a broad media business. A recent comparison of eleven major US networks shows what providers are actually competing on today: no longer just access to purchase data, but full-funnel reach, better measurement and as many ad placements as possible inside and outside retail.

Digiday evaluated pitches from Home Depot, Albertsons, DoorDash, PayPal, Macy’s, Chase, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Instacart, Chewy and Walgreens, among others. Despite very different business models, three themes recur: advertisers want incrementality, they want campaigns delivered across more touchpoints, and they want data that reaches beyond a single store visit.

Incrementality moves from bonus to requirement

The most important common denominator is whether a campaign actually generates additional sales – or merely claims purchases that would have happened anyway.

Home Depot manager Arun Ramaswamy told Digiday that incrementality is a central requirement for advertisers. This fits the developments of recent months: DoorDash now has its incrementality measurement independently verified, because platform-owned ROAS alone is becoming less convincing for larger media budgets.

In Europe this point is also becoming more formal. IAB Europe updated its Commerce Media Measurement Standards V2.1 in January 2026. For the first time they formally define incrementality and link it to approved measurement methods. The standards also harmonise terms such as gross and net sales and keep a 30-day lookback window for standard reporting.

For media buyers this matters more than the next new ad placement: if every retail media network defines conversions, sales and new customers differently, budgets are hardly comparable.

Retail media no longer wants only the last click

The second trend is a move up the funnel. Retail media originated mainly with sponsored products and other ads close to the purchase. Now the networks also want to win branding and awareness budgets.

Albertsons, for example, relies on video and storytelling formats in the digital shopping experience and in store. Instacart connects e-commerce, apps and in-store inventory via its Carrot Ads technology. Walgreens announced a network of digital screens across 1.200 stores.

This blurs the lines with classic media channels. Retail media increasingly competes with CTV, display, OOH and social for the same full-funnel budgets.

This development is also visible in Europe. IAB Europe expects retail media digital ad volume of around 29 billion euros by 2028. The association's current capability map therefore already distinguishes between onsite, offsite and in-store offerings.

PayPal shows why "retail media" is now too narrow a term

The shift is especially clear at PayPal. The company is not a retailer in the classic sense, but it holds transaction data across many different merchants.

PayPal positions its advertising business precisely on this: not just seeing what someone bought in a single shop, but recognising purchase patterns across merchants and categories. PayPal Offsite Ads is now also available in Germany and, according to the current product page, uses transaction signals for display, video and CTV campaigns outside the company's own platforms.

For German marketers this is an important signal of where the category is heading. "Retail media" is increasingly becoming commerce media: payment providers, delivery platforms, marketplaces and retailers compete for the same ad budgets, each with different first-party signals.

We have already seen a similar model with the Simon Media Network: there, location and transaction signals from more than 200 shopping centres are made usable for targeting and impact measurement outside the malls.

Instacart sells not just reach, but infrastructure

Another route to differentiation is supplying other retailers with the retail media technology itself. Instacart's Carrot Ads is a white-label infrastructure that lets retailers run their own advertising offerings on websites, apps and now also in-store inventory.

Instacart currently names more than 9.000 advertising CPG brands in its ecosystem and connects campaigns across hundreds of retailer and commerce sites. The core idea: brands should not need a completely separate technical and operational setup for every smaller retail media network.

Here too, standardisation becomes a selling point. Instacart has already had parts of Carrot Ads measurement accredited by the Media Rating Council. For advertisers, this is likely more valuable in the long run than yet another proprietary dashboard.

What changes for media buyers

For brands, choosing a retail media network becomes more complicated. The question is no longer just: "Does this retailer reach my target group?"

At least four levels become relevant:

Data quality: Which real purchase, transaction or behavioural signals does the provider have?
Reach: Does activation work only in the shop, or also offsite, in CTV, apps and physical locations?
Measurement: Can the provider show incremental impact rather than only attributed sales?
Interoperability: Can campaigns, creatives and reporting be connected to existing media systems?

This also explains why large brands are thinking about their budgets more across channels. Campbell's, for example, wants to shift 85 percent of its working media budget into digital channels such as social, influencers, e-commerce and AI-supported platforms. In such plans, retail media must compete not only with other retailer networks but with practically every other digital activation.

The real competition starts with comparability

The large number of new retail media offerings does give advertisers more first-party data and purchase-close inventory, but also new walled gardens. The more networks emerge, the bigger the problem of inconsistent metrics, formats and attribution becomes.

That is why the most striking trend in the current pitches is not any single ad product. Almost all providers are trying, in different ways, to answer the same three doubts of advertisers: Am I reaching more than existing buyers? Can I use the campaign across the entire funnel? And can I prove it actually generated additional sales?

Providers who can answer these questions credibly and comparably will probably win more budgets in the next phase than the one with the biggest dashboard full of first-party data.