Criteo, which defines its business as a “commerce media company,” surveyed 251 UK retail CMOs and found 96% have a waiting list for brands who want to place ads on their site. 

Some 70% of survey respondents said monetizing commerce media is a “strategic priority.”

Perhaps it’s because CMOs now have the ability to directly link revenue with results and campaigns. Revenue from the ads rose 24% during the past 12 months, according to the data. 

The research was done in partnership with Censuswide, a global research company. 

Brian Gleason, CRO at Criteo, said in a separate interview, commerce media supports “personalization,” something very important in online purchases.

“We’re on a third wave of digital,” he said. “We had search, social followed, and now we have commerce media.”

He said the industry has always had performance marketing behind it to get new shoppers in stores, but now marketers have a newer tactic called commerce retail media, which has become popular in the past few years.

“It lets brands have the opportunity to engage in the customer journey, and they benefit from the measurement and the optimization of media dollars, online and offline,” he said.

A previous study by Criteo identified 52% of media agency respondents in the UK expressed too few retailers currently offer brands attractive advertising environments. Some 69% of CMOs also said they would consider testing retail media offerings, but are yet ready to bring the strategy to market within their companies.  

Among services being tested or sold to advertisers, 44% say they offer onsite sponsored or promoted products, 35% say they offer onsite display ads such as banner, and 32% offer brands other offsite media such as video ads. 

Walled gardens continue to be a challenge because one company’s data solely alone rarely captures a full view of the whole purchase journey of several different audience groups, according to Criteo. Success relies on retailers and publishers opening to the idea of data collaboration.

Some 41% of CMOs raised publisher willingness to match identifiers that unlock the value of first-party data as a major hurdle to overcome. Some 41% also flagged understanding among internal stakeholders as an inhibitor.

The revenue potential of retail media has resulted in new, shared roles and responsibilities within the boardroom. While 55% of respondents agreed the CMO holds at least some of the responsibility for the retail media strategy, 49% of CMOs expressed responsibility lies with the CEO. 

Just 8% of CMOs feel retail media strategy rests with the Chief Data Officer (CDO), despite 64% agreeing the CDO has the main responsibility for first-party data management, potentially highlighting some of the remaining hurdles in reorganizing leadership roles. 

When asked how to structure retail media in the organization, 18% suggested deploying retail media as a dedicated unit like “Boots Media Group,” while 81% of CMOs expect it would become a subset of marketing. 

Criteo, which defines its business as a “commerce media company,” surveyed 251 UK retail CMOs and found 96% have a waiting list for brands who want to place ads on their site.