Retail media continues to expand rapidly, but for brands and agencies, managing campaigns across multiple retail platforms has become increasingly difficult. As more retailers launch their own advertising networks, advertisers are now required to juggle different interfaces, reporting standards, and optimisation approaches — often simultaneously.
Against this backdrop, retail media platforms are steadily expanding the number of networks they support. One recent example is the addition of Instacart Ads, Staples, Target, and Whole Foods to RMIQ’s retail media management platform, extending coverage across grocery, general merchandise, and B2B retail environments.
The move reflects a broader industry trend rather than a single product update. As retail media spend grows globally — including among UK brands selling into US and international markets — fragmentation has emerged as one of the sector’s defining challenges.
Why Retail Media Has Become Harder to Manage
Retail media’s appeal lies in its proximity to purchase. Unlike traditional display or social advertising, retail networks operate close to the point of sale, using first-party data to target consumers with active buying intent. That advantage, however, comes with operational complexity.
Each retail media network typically operates as a closed ecosystem, with its own campaign structure, metrics, attribution logic, and optimisation rules. For brands advertising across multiple retailers, this often results in parallel workflows and limited visibility across channels.
Agencies operating as an Instacart advertising agency or managing activity across grocery, general merchandise, and specialist retailers face similar challenges, particularly when reporting needs to be consolidated for clients.
Expanding Coverage Across Shopping Contexts
The newly supported retail networks represent different shopping behaviours rather than overlapping audiences:
- Instacart Ads focuses on online grocery and convenience purchasing
- Whole Foods targets premium food shoppers
- Target ads cover a broad mix of consumer categories
- Staples provides access to B2B and office-focused buyers
Combined with existing integrations such as Walmart Connect and Kroger, the expanded coverage allows campaigns to span multiple retail moments rather than being isolated within a single network.
This type of breadth is becoming more relevant as brands attempt to follow consumers across different shopping occasions rather than optimise each platform independently.
The Role of AI in Retail Media Aggregation
As platforms aggregate more retail media networks, automation has become central to making that data usable. Analysing performance across multiple retailers manually is increasingly impractical, particularly as campaigns scale.
RMIQ’s platform applies AI to compare performance trends across networks, helping identify patterns related to spend efficiency, product performance, and audience behaviour. Rather than focusing on optimisation within a single retailer, the emphasis shifts toward understanding how retail media performs as a portfolio.
For UK-based brands operating internationally, this type of cross-network analysis can inform both tactical decisions and longer-term planning.
From Paid Retail Media to Broader Growth Strategy
Another emerging theme in retail media is its relationship to longer-term visibility and demand. While retail networks are primarily performance channels, insights from paid activity are increasingly used to support programmatic organic growth strategies across marketplaces and retail search environments.
Understanding which products perform well in paid placements, for example, can influence catalogue optimisation, pricing, and content strategy beyond advertising alone.
An Industry Moving Toward Consolidation
The expansion of multi-network retail media platforms points to a gradual shift toward consolidation. As more retailers enter the space, advertisers are looking for ways to reduce operational overhead while maintaining access to high-value audiences.
Rather than relying on separate tools for each retail partner, brands and agencies appear increasingly willing to centralise execution and analysis — not to simplify retail media, but to make it manageable at scale.
In that sense, developments like these are less about individual platform features and more about how the retail media ecosystem is adapting to its own growth.
