LAS VEGAS – The retail media sector is entering a pivotal year marked by consolidation, self-service tools and less fragmentation across retailers, said Sherry Smith, president of retail media at Criteo.
Speaking with Beet.TV Editorial Director Lisa Granatstein at CES 2026, Smith argued that true growth in retail media networks (RMNs) will depend on brands’ ability to activate campaigns across multiple retailers in a unified, efficient way, rather than managing each network in isolation.
“Retail media is moving beyond trade and shopper budgets,” Smith said. “Brands want to work across many RMNs at once, and they want to do it through self-serve platforms, not manual, hands-on-keyboard processes.”
Self-serve seen as key to unlocking budgets
Smith said Criteo is focused on helping RMNs transition to unified, self-serve platforms that allow brands and agencies to plan, activate and optimize media across retailers from a single interface.
That shift, she said, is critical to unlocking incremental budgets and empowering brands to execute faster, with more transparency and control.
While retailer relationships remain essential, especially for top-tier brands driving growth, Smith said efficiency is increasingly non-negotiable. Brands want tools that are easy to use, transparent and capable of optimization across their entire retail media ecosystem.
“There’s room for both managed relationships and self-serve execution,” she said, adding that retailers will need to evolve their data strategies, APIs and internal capabilities to support that balance.
Less fragmentation, more media sophistication
Smith described 2026 as a period of rapid innovation, driven by self-serve tools, agentic technologies and more sophisticated media buyers entering both brand and retailer organizations.
She contrasted the current moment with the early days of RMNs during the pandemic era, saying the market is now primed for scale rather than experimentation.
“We’re going to see organizations change, capabilities change and far less fragmentation,” she said.
Breaking down silos inside retailers
Another major shift, according to Smith, is the breakdown of silos across merchandising, retail media, fulfillment and user experience teams.
From the consumer’s perspective, she said, those internal divisions are invisible and increasingly irrelevant. What matters is a fluid, personalized shopping experience.
Smith said true optimization requires retailers to think holistically about page design, data and monetization, rather than treating retail media as a trade-off against merchandising.
“If it’s done right, the customer should simply feel understood,” she said, adding that better integration ultimately builds trust.
From keywords to conversations
Smith also pointed to a fundamental change in how consumers discover products, as shopping shifts from keyword-based search toward conversational prompts powered by AI.
That evolution, she said, will reshape media buying, measurement and creative execution. Success will no longer be defined solely by keyword ROI, but by how discoverable and relevant brands are within conversational and agent-driven environments.
“It’s about serving the right experience for the individual,” Smith said, “not just matching a product to a keyword.”
The result, she said, is more value for brands and consumers alike, an outcome the industry is increasingly aligned around as retail media enters its next phase.
You’re watching “Beyond the Buy. Making every shopping moment smarter, a Beet.TV Leadership Series, presented by Criteo ” For more videos from this summit, please visit this page.
