Taking Down the Wall in Retail Media

A ‘walled garden’ in retail media is the boxed in ecosystem where the retailer controls all aspects of advertising. This includes data, data usage, channel allowances, media formats, and measurement. Over the last decade, the wall has been built up, getting higher and higher and making it more difficult for organizations to leverage the benefits of what is on the other side. That is, unless you had the dollars to pay for it. Translating this to the Pharma landscape, this made producing media  that much more challenging, having to layer on federal regulations, new consumer privacy legislation, and product considerations made by the retailer who ultimately decides whether a product can be introduced to the marketplace through their media networks.

As media moves into 2025, there is an obvious crack forming in the wall. In the past, few players in the space held most of the data wealth, however, that is no longer the case. Organizations in beauty, apparel, footwear, pharmacy chains, and more are all developing their own Retail Media Networks (RMNs). These networks establish millions of loyalty members opted-in and willing to receive more information from that retailer. The starting of the crack is formed here, opening new avenues for partnership, new marketing channels, inventory, and ways to diversify your audience, increasing reach and awareness down the funnel to conversion.

A Shift in Retail Media Networks (RMNs)

These newly established RMNs are the result of marketers re-evaluating how they are doing business. Over the last five years, major organizations from Rite Aid to Toys R Us to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and many more have shuttered their doors both physically and digitally. This has led to surviving retailers strategically crippled and narrowly focused only on channels that historically proved profitable and left them with no risk, no testing and learning, and no downside.

How Does This Change Affect Marketers?

During this shift in mindset, marketers began to ask questions and dive deeper into how they could make their marketing more efficient, more impactful, and more direct to their end user than they had been able to previously. Marketers brought forward several key areas of concern, including lack of data transparency, brand safety concerns, and the ability to build trust with their audience.

While many have run from the ‘walled garden’ and look to the open internet, broad spectrum marketing channels like connected TV or digital out of home, there is a new approach and a new wave of partnership that will wash over 2025 and become an established practice into 2026.

Effective Systems for Improvement

Honesty and transparency in partnership will be paramount in the wall finally coming down. This transitional phase has started with co-branded media efforts with big name US based retailers. Today, multi-million-dollar programs across social media, programmatic, search, and more are actively being purchased, developed, and executed with partnership not just sitting in back-room dealings, but in the forefront of the media where two brands are standing together to promote better outcomes for HCPs, patients, and caregivers across a multitude of treatment areas.

Cobranding serves two main purposes. The first is the data partnership between the marketer and the retailer. Developing this partnership opens the retailer’s first party audience, brand identity, and brand loyal consumers. These three areas are what differentiate retail marketing practices from commercial open internet providers. The ability to leverage the retailer’s brand allows for communication to brand loyal consumers who inherently trust what the brand stands for, the value it provides them, and the positive impact it has on their lives. This leads to the transference of that trust in the products being co-promoted on their various screens and in-store.

The second piece to this is now that there is a developed partnership, the marketer benefits from increased reach to first party audiences, built on data from look-a-like audiences at the point of pharmacy to front of store shopping and cross-category shopping patterns, as well as omni-dynamic interactions with both media and product. Having this access through partnership has led to outcomes of 15% incremental script lift in-store and 2x greater audience quality digitally compared to commercial use cases.

While this is a step in the right direction, there is a lot of work to be done. For one, retailers still have final say on the products that they are willing to support. Second, retailers still sit behind the now shorter wall unwilling to share audience sizes or make measurement guarantees. Finally, retailers are maintaining a strong hold on the media by having final approval of content and retaining hands on keyboard work requiring all programs to be managed service.

What Steps are Taking Place to Eradicate These Walls in Media?

There are two ways of demolishing what is left of the wall. The first is the mutual sharing of data. Over the last decade, many marketers have likely felt the need to play on Facebook or Amazon because they were told ‘that is where your audience is’. While that may be true, the only ‘winners’ from an investment standpoint during this era were Facebook and Amazon. It is now time to turn that on its ear by bringing something to the table that no tech giant has: the direct access and understanding of a brand’s CRM database and consumers lead to greater outcomes in marketing on any platform.

Over the next year, major retailer RMNs are going to open doors using clean rooms and third-party vendors, allowing marketers to BYOD (bring your own data) to their marketplaces. Marketers bringing their data and audiences forward will allow for enhanced targeting efforts on platform, whether retail owned platforms or DSPs, networks, etc. This will also increase reach and awareness to individuals not within these BYOD cohorts, advanced look-a-like models and competitive conquesting.

The second way of bringing down a wall is always transparency. This idea is historical, technical, philosophical, and literal. However, the most impactful way to be transparent in retail media is direct access to data. Marketers trust their investments placed on platforms like Meta, Amazon, Walmart, DSPs such as the Trade Desk, PulsePoint, and elsewhere and often are at the will of these organizations to provide evidence-based data. If you have been in retail media over the last decade, there is a case to be made that the data that marketers are provided isn’t always telling the full or the most accurate story.

New Forms of Data Access in the Making

This year, retailers are going to transition into becoming dashboard heavy. Marketers are going to want direct access to data, and they are finally going to get it. This will happen through the initial move for self-service media. This is a simple lift with retailers providing audiences and gaining access to the marketers’ data from self-served media. In this scenario, the marketer has much more control over the execution and the retailer still has visibility to impact and performance.

The second approach will be the data dashboard that comes post media execution. This dashboard will be held on the retailer side and will not hinge upon whether the media is managed or self-service. This dashboard will have real time media metrics with the ability to manipulate the data into graphs and charts that allow marketers to clearly and accurately articulate the performance of the media that was placed into market.

The next five years are going to be removing the final bricks of a wall that was put into place in the early 2010s. This ‘walled garden’ will not be able to stand any longer and the media is going to make major shifts in formats, creative capabilities and allowances, and placements.

To broaden consumer bases, major retailers will not be held to investing into RMNs from competitors or partners. Instead, there will be major consolidation that takes place, already seen by SPARC Groups’ takeover of JCPenney to form Catalyst. Retailers and marketers alike will also simply walk away from properties where they don’t have real insight. With such a focus on the bottom line, marketers are going to look to solutions that they can trust. Retailers that understand this like Ulta, who has a RMN which simply lives by ‘come one, come all’ and allows for brands that don’t even sell in Ulta stores to promote, will flourish. Retailers that don’t show movement in this direction, opening new possibilities and ease of access, won’t last.

What to Expect in the Upcoming Year

Today’s generation of savvy, price competitive shoppers, will go as far as to move their prescriptions from one retailer to another if it means saving. These shoppers will no longer stay brand loyal if all the retailer provides is noise. Retail media is going to rely heavily on partnership, personalization for each audience, and an inherent trust between retailer and marketer to effectively keep consumers coming back for more product, refilling scripts, and continuing to trust in the brands that flood their inboxes.

As 2025 continues, look for a reshaping of the Pharma vertical in retail. With an understanding of how important owned data is, a deeper understanding of your consumer base, and greater partnerships, look for an increase in available inventory. This will start with in-store screens that exceed just the pharmacy but include the aisle and the endcaps. Look for out of home screen availability to increase as well outside of retail focused on QSR (quick stop retailers). Finally, look for existing digital programs to move towards self-service models, allowing for agencies and brands alike to manage their own digital media in-house. Retail is only at its’ infancy in pharma and will continue to grow. Stay tuned for what is still to come.

Jacob Harrison is the VP, Point of Purchase, CMI Media Group