The Current State of Unified Retail Media Buying
A new Koddi x RetailX report highlights the growing demand for integrated retail media solutions among advertisers.
According to the findings, 94% of advertisers want the ability to activate onsite, offsite, and in-store campaigns from a single platform — a clear sign that holistic retail media operations are now a strategic priority.
Additionally, 69% of respondents prefer to transact through retailer-controlled platforms, underscoring the rising importance of first-party data ownership within the retail ecosystem.
Evolving Investment Patterns in Retail Media
The study reveals shifting media investment priorities:
- Social media still leads in offsite ad spend.
- 66% of advertisers are increasing investment in shoppable video and immersive, TikTok-style content.
- 52% are reallocating budgets to streaming media, targeting increasingly fragmented audiences.
Despite the variety of channels, measurement and attribution remain major challenges.
Nearly 40% of respondents struggle with cross-platform performance comparisons, citing the need for transparent benchmarks and consistent attribution models.
Understanding how diverse data sources can be unified for accurate insights is key to addressing these gaps.
To avoid pitfalls in data flow and campaign setup, read:
👉 Common Mistakes in Product Feed Uploads – NotPIM
Retailer-Led Data Curation and DSP Integration
Another notable insight from the study is the rise of curated media deals — packages that merge retailers’ first-party data with publisher inventory, delivered through data-driven DSP integrations.
This marks a structural shift from traditional demand-side platforms and direct publisher relationships toward retailer-led audience curation.
Retailers are increasingly positioning themselves as central data and distribution hubs, expanding their influence over targeting, measurement, and monetization within the ad supply chain.
As these data relationships grow more complex, understanding data formats and integration standards becomes critical.
Learn how to prepare structured data effectively in our guide:
👉 CSV Format: How to Structure Product Data for Smooth Integration – NotPIM
Why This Trend Is Transformative for E-commerce Infrastructure
The acceleration of unified retail media buying has far-reaching implications for e-commerce systems, content infrastructure, and catalog data management.
Impact on Product Feeds and Catalog Management
Unified retail media campaigns depend on accurate, standardized product data flowing seamlessly between retailer systems and advertising platforms.
Feeds must now support multi-channel attribution, real-time updates, and dynamic metadata enrichment to ensure ad relevance and compliance.
Retailers and brands are adopting automation-first feed management, where AI-driven validation and no-code mapping tools maintain product integrity across ecosystems.
This aligns closely with NotPIM’s vision of automated feed conversion, catalog enrichment, and cross-platform synchronization — the backbone of scalable omnichannel operations.
Role of AI and Automation in Retail Media
AI now powers campaign optimization, audience segmentation, and creative testing across retail environments.
Automated ad-to-product mapping ensures listings reflect accurate information — from availability to pricing — while reducing manual workload.
As retailers consolidate ad and commerce platforms, composable architectures and API-based integrations enable faster adaptation, connecting feed data directly to DSPs, ad servers, and analytics suites.
These same principles underpin modern product data ecosystems, where automation ensures content accuracy at scale — a function that tools like NotPIM directly enable.
Conclusion: Unified Retail Media as a Strategic Priority
The RetailX–Koddi study captures a defining moment in retail media’s evolution.
Unified buying capabilities, powered by high-quality data infrastructure, advanced content management, and seamless integration, are rapidly shifting from optional to essential.
Both brands and retailers are being driven to invest in scalable, automated, data-driven operations across the product and content supply chain.
For a deeper look at how product feeds support this transformation, see:
👉 Product Feed – NotPIM
As investment priorities shift and measurement complexity grows, no-code and AI-driven tools are redefining how businesses participate in retail media at scale.
E-commerce operators must modernize content infrastructure, catalog completeness, and workflow automation to stay competitive in the omnichannel era.
Further reading: CMO Room, Adtelligent.
NotPIM Perspective
This shift toward unified retail media buying underscores the foundational importance of robust, accurate product data.
High-quality product feeds, consistent catalog structures, and automated data governance are no longer technical luxuries — they are strategic necessities for brands operating in this interconnected environment.
At NotPIM, we help businesses:
- Automate and standardize product feeds across multiple channels.
- Enrich and validate catalog data for accuracy and compliance.
- Integrate seamlessly with advertising and analytics ecosystems.
By streamlining data preparation and synchronization, NotPIM empowers retailers and advertisers to focus on strategy and creativity, not manual data handling.
The complexity of retail media demands automation — and NotPIM delivers it, ensuring that product data remains the most powerful asset in a rapidly converging commerce and advertising landscape.