LONDON – The exploding retail media advertising sector may have hit a roadblock on its path to maturity, with a persistent lack of common measurement rules hindering its potential for scaled investment.
To overcome this, the industry must move toward a future where standardized measurement is the default setting, not the exception.
This is the view of Jason Wescott, global head of commerce solutions, WPP Media, who believes a critical mass of adoption is necessary to unlock the channel’s full potential. “My ambition is that within the next two years, we have a critical mass of retailers who are retail media measurement standard certified,” Wescott said in this video interview with Beet.TV.
The enemy of scale
Wescott should know. He is also chair of IAB Europe’s Retail & Commerce Media Committee, where he has been calling for industry-wide standardization.
That call reflects a core demand from advertisers seeking to invest more heavily in the space:
- A recent report from Emarketer notes, that while retail media is the fastest-growing ad channel, challenges like a lack of standardization could temper its trajectory.
- “Within my role at IAB Europe, I chair the retail and commerce media committee,” Wescott said. “For two years in a row, we do a report based on a survey which is called the Attitudes to Retail Media report. And for two years in a row, the top blocker for further investment or the top barrier to further investment has been a lack of standardization on measurement.”
For a major holding company like WPP, which buys advertising at enormous volume, this fragmentation creates significant operational friction.
“We do buy media on a huge scale, and fragmentation and lack of standardization is the enemy of scale,” Wescott explained. “As long as standardization is in the benefit of our clients’ objectives, which is buying media at scale in a standardized way, then it’s something that we’ll remain to advocate for.”
A timeline for certification
Wescott outlined a timeline for achieving this goal, imagining a tipping point where certification becomes the industry norm.
“It’s off to a steady start, but a slow start. So I’m really motivated to start speeding things up,” he said. The certification process is managed by third-party auditors, which ensures rigor but can be time-consuming. “It can be quite a slow and very thorough process and it needs to be to show that that level of rigor to the market,” Wescott added.
The goal is to transform the landscape significantly by the end of the decade. “Hopefully by 2028, it looks like if you don’t have a certification, you’re the odd one out,” he said. The strategy involves a phased rollout, targeting key players in major markets first. “I think that needs to start with the top two or three retailers in each of the top European markets standardized through next year.”
Bringing commerce to connected TV
When it comes to retail media playing out in connected TV, Wescott pushed back against the notion that the UK is lagging behind the US.
He noted that partnerships between broadcasters and retailers, such as ITVX and Tesco’s Dunnhumby and Channel 4 and Sainsbury’s Nectar360, have existed for over two years. The main difference in Europe, he said, is the strict privacy regulations that necessitate the use of privacy-enhancing technologies.
He also sought to correct what he sees as a common misconception about the role of retail data in the brand-centric world of CTV.
“There’s a dichotomy of thinking between brand advertising and performance advertising,” Wescott said. “Because CTV exists very much within the brand world, bringing retail data into that, the perception is it’s making it more of a sales harvesting type of play.”
He stressed that the two goals are not mutually exclusive, concluding, “retail media within the CTV channel can drive brand outcomes as well as commerce outcomes.”
You’re watching coverage from Beet.TV’s Global Leadership Summit with WPP Media, filmed in London, presented by Criteo, Index Exchange, Seedtag & The Trade Desk. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
