Normalizing inefficiencies.

About fifteen years into this retail media thing and I'm still a bit fuzzy on this point: we do the harder thing in perpetuity, because the easier thing is seemingly harder to conceptualize or action in the moment.

If you've been in this space long enough, you've likely run into — or struggle with — one of the following:

• Status quo biasA preference for keeping things the way they are.
• Complexity biasComplexity reads as sophistication or credibility.
• Sunk cost fallacyAlready paid in time, effort, money — so we can't change.
• Effort justificationThe harder the work, the more valuable it must be.
• Escalation of commitmentDoubling down on a failing path for fear of admitting failure.
• Illusion of controlManual effort feels like it gives you more control.
• Choice overloadToo much choice makes it hard to decide on a path.
• Upward communication aversionThere's a term for what I've got!

Whatever the reason, complexity hides in plain sight. Campaigns take longer to plan, launch, and reconcile. Teams work harder than they should just to keep things moving. And the real cost is lost speed, lost revenue, lost advertiser trust — that rarely shows up on a dashboard.

In this week's Retail Media Leapfrog Series — a collection of thoughts designed to help retailers leapfrog incumbents by learning from the past — we're talking about how to break the habit of normalizing inefficiencies, before it breaks you… dun dun dunnnnnnnnn.

Part No. 01Defining inefficiency.

Inefficiency is any process, tool, or habit that burns more time, money, or energy than the value it creates. It's not always obvious, and though the general themes are consistent, the specific approach is unique to each retailer. Some examples:

• Sales & Planning
  Sellers jumping between 6–7 platforms just to scope a single campaign.
• Creative Trafficking
  Assets living in email threads, Dropbox links, and Google Drives with no standard naming conventions.
• Campaign Execution
  Onsite, offsite, in-store, and sponsored products all running on different ad servers — with no unified reporting.
• Billing & Reconciliation
  Finance manually matching IOs to exports from three different systems.

Sometimes inefficiency is outright brokenness — steps that don't need to exist. Other times it's subtle friction — steps that made sense once but haven't been challenged in years.

Part No. 02The foundation of inefficiency.

I have a hunch that a lot of people in our space are tired. For years we've been fighting an uphill battle in organizations that don't truly get — or often appreciate — what we do. It's on us to fix that, but that task is arduous and draining.

Overwork often shuts down optimization efforts, because survival mode leaves no room for improvement. Decision fatigue limits future decision ability. Burnout messes with your imagination.

This is to say: it's not your fault… it's not your fault… it's not your fault…

Except it kinda is.

So we…

• Keep duplicating work because "we'll clean it up later."
• Keep passing data through three different hands because "that's just the flow."
• Keep building on spreadsheets because "it's too late to change now."

And over time, these become the cultural identity of your RMN. Teams start to see themselves as the ones who can make it work under impossible conditions. We romanticize the firefight. We wear our inefficiencies like badges of honor — proof we can handle complexity.

We take the hardest path.

Part No. 03Redefining efficiency in retail media.

Let's be clear on a few things:

• You cannot scale without efficiency. This isn't about being lean for the sake of it — it's about freeing capacity to grow. We are too far along to 'throw people at the problem.'
• Efficiency drives competitiveness. Faster planning, faster launches, faster billing = faster reinvestment.
• Teams need permission to fix things. Efficiency isn't just a tech problem — it's cultural.

The urgency now is different than it was five years ago. Retail media is no longer a novelty — advertisers have heightened expectations, and those that have evolved with this space see sophistication at the top of the market.

Breaking the cycle.

Fixing inefficiency isn't about launching a six-month 'process transformation project' that dies in committee. It's about making space, in the middle of the chaos, to challenge the way things are done. It's about listening to your team and expecting them to come back with a recommendation on how things could be done better. It's about being obsessively curious about the status quo. Here's where I'd start:

• Map the mess. Document every step from first advertiser conversation to final invoice. Circle every manual handoff, duplicated task, and approval bottleneck in red.
• Price the pain. Don't just say something's inefficient — show the revenue delayed, margin eroded, or advertiser dollars lost because of it.
• Simplify the stack. Reduce the number of logins, systems, and disconnected workflows with an orchestration layer.
• Empower the fixers. Give your process-savvy people permission and time to solve problems instead of firefighting them forever.
• Kill sacred cows. "We've always done it this way" is not a reason to keep doing it. "We need more resources" is not an acceptable barrier.
• Reward efficiency. Celebrate people who improve speed, accuracy, or scalability with the same energy you celebrate hitting a revenue target.

The point isn't perfection — it's momentum. Every bottleneck removed is time, money, and energy you can reinvest into growth. And what we know to be true is that the time value of money is incredibly valuable in retail media.

The retailers who make it easier to buy, easier to operate, and easier to measure will win the next phase of retail media. Not because they had the biggest sales team — but because they built the cleanest, fastest, most resilient engine.

If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, commenting — it helps spread the word. And subscribe to the Retail Media Leapfrog Series for more.