You broke me, Cara Pratt: "Retail Media is Media." But most of us in retail? We're not quite there yet.

I'm often asked: is it 'retail' or 'media' first? My answer has always been retail first. But as we watch the astronomical rise of Amazon and Walmart — capturing upwards of 85% of the retail media market and outpacing even the biggest global media businesses — it begs a new question: what makes them different?

The answer? They're media companies.

What we're seeing across North America is a mad dash to follow suit, often emulating the giants without fully understanding how they got there. As Jeff Leitch put it, it's "retailers skipping steps to the end state without setting up the proper foundation."

And that foundation? Retail media not as a side hustle, but as a core pillar of the business: embedded in strategic operations, fueling customer experience, and reshaping how teams work.

For most retailers, media can't exist without retail. Why? Because the scale, pricing, planning, and buying complexity just don't line up with the broader media ecosystem. And here's the kicker: retailers have something no other media company does — the purchase.

If you understand what people buy, how often, and why, you can reverse-engineer influence. You can power advertising that isn't just audience-based — it's outcome-based. As Duncan Painter put it, "the holy grail… is joining consumer demand to sales."

Retail media isn't a one-size-fits-all ad business — it's a transformative force that has the potential to influence and shape the business of retail. — Sarah Marzano

And to become a transformative force, you need to be much more than a traditional publisher — the retailer and the media company in one.

Part No. 01It's the steps inside the stages.

A bit ago I wrote Retail Media Doesn't Grow on Trees, where I pointed out that in the early stages, growth comes relatively easy:

In the initial migration stage of growth, retail media simply absorbs dollars from other areas, already preallocated to that individual retailer. Not net-new, not incremental — just shifted from other areas of the business. — Drew Cashmore (me!)

What troubles me about this stage is that it sets a false precedent. It creates the illusion that retail media will always grow this easily — that all you have to do is centralize some budgets and watch the revenue pour in. But then you hit a wall. Because after the initial migration stage, the growth gets harder. A lot harder.

Take Walmart. It took us nearly 15 years to evolve from absorbing pre-existing dollars to building a scaled, integrated, high-margin media business. Fifteen years of hiring, learning, testing, and integrating retail media into the core fabric of the company. Today, most retailers sit in the first two stages of that same journey — repeating the steps slowly, phase by phase, lesson by lesson.

But here's the opportunity: you don't have to walk the same path at the same pace. It's not the stages that matter — it's the steps inside them: internal change management, securing funding, establishing the right technology architecture that simplifies buying, building workflows, defining measurement, aligning teams, embedding strategy, commercializing.

The motions are necessary. The years spent going through the motions? Optional — if you know what to prioritize.

The value in doing it faster:

Part No. 02The stages of maturity, and what they mean.

These stages dictate peak revenue potential, revenue per head, costs and efficiencies, and fair share vs. incremental. They highlight the control and ownership you have over your own destiny — and they determine, more than anything, whether revenues are truly incremental or simply a lift-and-shift.

Stage 01Absorb shopper marketing.

This is the "tape and glue" phase. Retail media starts as a series of disconnected efforts, often rooted in traditional trade and shopper budgets. Manual processes. Multiple partners. Lots of spreadsheets. It's messy and hard to buy — and it peaks early, especially in today's world, because there are so many more efficient alternatives.

Stage 02Introduce tools & agency support.

This is about creating lift. Teams begin to implement tools to manage workflow and bring in agency support to fill functional gaps. Things get a little smoother. But this phase can drag on too long if the business becomes over-reliant on outsourced scale or passive demand.

Stage 03In-source key functions.

Here's where momentum builds. Core roles — sales, strategy, client management — come in-house, or sit with a partner committed to your individual growth. You invest in better tooling (or start building your own). The business starts to hum, and workflows begin to align. This is when you move from operating to incrementality.

Stage 04Workflow automation for scale.

This is the flywheel. Buying is omni-channel — offered as both self- and managed-service. Operations are tech-powered and efficient. Investment in systems and talent now drives outsize growth. This is what it means to run retail media like a media business: measurable, profitable, and built for longevity — truly competitive and incremental. This is a retailer as a media company.

Part No. 03Does every retailer have the right to be a media company?

It's easy to mistake the trappings of retail media — ad units, budgets, campaign reports — for the transformation itself. But there's a world of difference between capturing spend already destined for your ecosystem and earning net-new, incremental investment.

To do that, you're no longer just competing with other retailers. You're competing with every media option on the table — from CTV to social to search. And the bar is higher. Retailers who want to make that leap need to prove more than reach. They need to prove performance, ease of buying, and long-term value — the infrastructure, the measurement, the talent, and the strategic discipline to hold their own alongside the world's best publishers.

For retailers, the question is less whether there is a retail media opportunity for them. The challenge is getting the customer data right, and building out what is a complex media business. — Colin Lewis

The good news? You don't need a $100B balance sheet to do it. You need the right strategy, the right partners, and the right operating model. You can skip the bloated tech stacks and multi-year transformations. But you can't skip the fundamentals.

The harder questions
What functions need to shift? What processes need to be rebuilt? What investments are we deferring that are actually foundational?

It means committing to the long game while aggressively shortening the learning curve. Yes, this is a journey — but one where the path has already been paved by those who've done it before. If you want to leapfrog, learn from them, then act decisively.

Most importantly, retailers are not just part of the media ecosystem. They're redefining it. As Andrew Lipsman notes, "the future of retail media is the future of ALL media."

The value of retail media — when built with intent — extends far beyond media itself. It reshapes merchandising, redefines marketing, and unlocks new margins in places retailers didn't even know to look.

So let's not settle for quick wins or short-term lifts. Let's build it the way it deserves to be built: strategically, sustainably, and with the full weight of the business behind it.

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