Retail Media Is More Than Ads. Here’s How to Use It as a Commerce Intelligence Engine

Most brands begin their retail media journey in a familiar place: sponsored placements, search ads, display inventory and promoted products on a retailer’s platform.

That is a logical starting point. The targeting is sharper than many other digital channels because it is built on real shopping behaviour. The attribution is often clearer because the transaction can happen inside the same environment. And in a world where third-party tracking is becoming less reliable, retailer data has become more valuable.

But if retail media remains only an advertising line item, brands may miss the larger opportunity.

The real shift is not just from TV, social or search into retail media.

The more important shift is from retail media as inventory to retail media as commerce intelligence infrastructure.

As AI is built into retail media platforms, the real advantage will not come from buying more impressions. It will come from how well brands turn commerce signals into sharper decisions across media, pricing, loyalty, content and customer experience.

The Macro Reality

Retail media is no longer a niche performance channel.

In its 2025 Mid-Year Global Advertising Forecast, WPP Media projected global retail media revenue at US$169.6 billion, rising to US$252.1 billion by 2030. A later WPP Media forecast, reported by Marketing-Interactive, put broader commerce media at US$178.2 billion in 2025, or 15.6% of global ad revenue, surpassing TV ad revenue for the first time. This broader definition includes more than retail media alone.

The bigger point is not just the size of the spend. It is the shift in role.

Retail media is moving from an experimental budget line to a strategic layer for customer data, commerce intelligence, loyalty, AI-enabled optimisation and closed-loop measurement.

In Southeast Asia, the opportunity is also becoming more material. GrabAds and Kantar have projected that retail media network ad spend in the region will reach US$4.7 billion by 2030. The same GrabAds/Kantar study also highlights Indonesia at a projected 13.41% CAGR, ahead of Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia in the appendix data. It also projected global RMN ad spend growth of 73% over seven years, ahead of search at 47% and social at 45%.

But the brands most likely to benefit will not simply be those spending more.

They will be the ones using retail media differently.

Here is what the fuller opportunity looks like.

1. First-Party Data Access and Enrichment

Retail media platforms sit on high-intent behavioural data.

Every search, abandoned basket, repeat purchase, category switch and price comparison can carry a useful signal. These signals are valuable not only for ad targeting but also for broader customer understanding.

We can explore how retailer data, clean rooms, co-marketing partnerships, or privacy-safe audience insights can enrich your customer intelligence.

IAB describes data clean rooms as a secure environment for brands to collaborate with retailers, improve targeting, advertising performance and closed-loop measurement. Snowflake similarly describes clean rooms as a way for brands to plan, buy and measure advertising without exposing consumer PII.

The mechanism may include:

• Clean room partnerships

• Co-marketing agreements

• Aggregated category insights

• Audience overlap analysis

• Loyalty-based customer segmentation

• Privacy-safe measurement frameworks

It takes participating brands from “How do we perform better on your platform?” to “What do we learn here that makes us smarter everywhere else?”

That second question matters because retail media can inform far more than media buying. It can shape customer strategy, segmentation, product development, pricing, availability, content and loyalty planning.

This is especially important in a post-cookie environment where brands need more reliable, consent-based ways to understand demand.

2. On-Platform Content and Brand Experience

Retail media is not only about paid placements. Major retail media networks now offer branded storefronts, enhanced product pages, richer product content, video formats and other commerce-led brand environments. These are not just better-looking product listings. They allow brands to shape the narrative at the point where the customer is already in a buying mindset.

This is where performance and brand often collide. A product page is no longer just a conversion asset. It is also a brand asset. A storefront is no longer just a digital shelf. It is part of the customer experience.

The blind spot is organisational. This work often sits awkwardly between performance marketing, brand, e-commerce, trade marketing and retail teams. Because ownership is unclear, the experience can become fragmented. That gap is also an opportunity.

Brands that treat their retail media presence as a full commerce experience, not just as ad inventory, can improve both conversion and brand trust.

3. Loyalty and CRM Integration

If a retailer has a loyalty programme and your brand sells through that retailer, there may be a much bigger opportunity than campaign activation. Retail media can serve as a bridge between retailers’ loyalty infrastructure and your own CRM strategy.

This could include:

• Co-funded member offers

• Exclusive member pricing

• Early access to new product drops

• Personalised bundles

• Category-specific lifecycle campaigns

• Joint retention and reactivation programmes

• High-value customer segment analysis

Done well, this is not a race to the bottom on discounts. It helps you identify, understand, and deepen relationships with valuable customers using the retailer’s scale and infrastructure.

The goal should not only be a short-term sales lift. The better goal is to understand customer lifetime value more clearly and to design interventions that increase repeat purchases, basket size, loyalty, and category participation over time.

For APAC brands, this is especially relevant because loyalty ecosystems are often deeply embedded into super-apps, marketplaces, payment platforms and social commerce behaviour.

4. Closed-Loop Measurement and Category Intelligence

This may be the most underused part of the retail media opportunity. Retail platforms can provide market signals that traditional syndicated research may not capture quickly enough.

For example:

• Which search or AI discovery terms are rising in real time

• Which products are being compared before purchase

• Where shoppers go after rejecting your product

• Which competitors are gaining share in specific sub-segments

• Which price points appear to affect conversion

• Which promotions drive repeat purchase, not just one-time purchase

• Which content changes improve conversion quality

This information acts as category intelligence. Used properly, these insights can inform product development, pricing strategy, range, packaging, content, channel planning and demand forecasting.

Brands that treat retail media data only as a ROAS dashboard will get only one level of value. Brands that treat it as a strategic input for the broader business may gain a more durable advantage.

5. AI-Powered Commerce Intelligence

The next phase of retail media is likely to be shaped significantly by AI.

This is not just about better ad targeting. AI can help brands make sense of the volume and speed of retail media signals across search behaviour, basket data, content engagement, pricing response, promotion effectiveness and loyalty activity.

One practical example is Lazada’s Sponsored Max product, which references an AI-powered algorithm for automated bidding and performance optimisation.

For example, AI can support:

• Faster category trend detection

• Better audience segmentation

• Predictive customer lifetime value modelling

• Dynamic creative and content optimisation

• Product recommendation strategies

• Promotion and pricing simulations

• Forecasting of demand shifts across markets

• Identification of early signals from search, basket and loyalty behaviour

This is where retail media starts becoming more than a media-buying system. It becomes an intelligence layer.

But there is an important caveat. AI is only useful if the underlying data, permissions, measurement architecture and governance are strong enough. If the inputs are fragmented, biased, incomplete or poorly governed, AI may automate weak assumptions at greater speed.

For brands in APAC, this matters even more because customer behaviour differs sharply across markets. A model trained on one market’s shopping behaviour may not translate cleanly into another. Super-app usage, live commerce, marketplace habits, loyalty mechanics, payment behaviour and price sensitivity all vary significantly across the region.

The opportunity is not to let AI run retail media on autopilot. The opportunity is to use AI to turn retail media signals into better decisions across marketing, commerce, product, pricing, loyalty and customer experience.

6. Commerce Media Beyond the Retailer’s Walls

The next stage of retail media is not limited to the retailer’s own site or app.

Large platforms are increasingly extending retail audiences and shopping signals into off-platform media environments. Amazon DSP is one of the more mature global examples, allowing advertisers to reach audiences across Amazon properties and third-party apps and websites. In Southeast Asia, Lazada and other retail media players are expanding beyond on-platform placements, with Lazada Sponsored Solutions explicitly offering off-platform solutions designed to reach audiences outside Lazada and bring them back as shoppers.

This matters because it changes the role of retail media. It is no longer only about capturing shoppers who are already on a retail platform. It can also help you reach relevant audiences across the broader digital ecosystem by using stronger commerce signals.

That does not mean every off-platform use case will automatically work. Brands still need to test incrementality, manage frequency, protect brand safety and understand how much value is truly being created.

But directionally, this is where retail media starts becoming more than a channel. It becomes a commerce signal layer that can support broader omnichannel growth.

Where to Start If You Are Ads-Only Today

If your retail media strategy is still largely ads-only, that is not a bad place to be. It is a normal starting point, but brands can do much more.

Here is a practical sequence.

1. Fix the Content and Storefront Foundation First

Before increasing spend, audit the basics.

Are your product pages strong enough?
Are titles, images, descriptions and enhanced content optimised?
Is your brand story clear inside the retail environment?
Are reviews, ratings and FAQs being actively managed?
Is the storefront working as a brand and conversion asset?

This is often the fastest and lowest-cost lever.

There is little point in buying more traffic if the retail experience is weak.

2. Ask Your Retail Media Partners Better Questions

Do not only ask about media packages and campaign formats. Ask what insight, measurement and data collaboration options are available.

For example:

• What audience insights can be shared?

• Are clean room partnerships available?

• Can we understand category search trends?

• Can we access aggregated basket or repeat purchase insights?

• Can we analyse audience overlap?

• Can we measure incrementality, not just attributed sales?

• Can we link retail media exposure to loyalty behaviour?

Many brands assume the answer is no, so they never ask. The answer may not always be easy, but the question is worth putting on the table.

3. Bring CRM, Loyalty and Retail Teams Into the Same Room

Retail media cannot remain only a media conversation. The right stakeholders usually include:

• Media

• E-commerce

• Retail sales

• Trade marketing

• CRM

• Loyalty

• Data and analytics

• Legal and privacy

• Brand

This matters because the highest-value opportunities often sit between functions. If CRM and loyalty teams are not part of the retail media conversation, the brand may end up optimising only for short-term campaign performance instead of long-term customer value.

4. Capture Category Intelligence From Day One

Even if your organisation is not yet ready to act on every signal, start capturing the data. Track search trends. Track competitor movements. Track basket behaviour. Track pricing patterns. Track which content and offers change purchase behaviour.

Over time, the patterns become more useful. Retail media data becomes more powerful when it is treated as a learning system rather than just a reporting system.

5. Build AI Readiness Before Automating Decisions

As retail media platforms add more AI-enabled capabilities, brands need to be careful not to confuse automation with intelligence.

Before using AI to optimise audiences, content, bids, offers or customer journeys, ask a few basic questions:

• Is the data clean enough?

• Do we understand where the data came from?

• Do we have the right permissions to use it?

• Can we explain the decision logic well enough?

• Are we measuring incrementality or just attributed sales?

• Are we checking whether recommendations differ by market, customer segment or platform?

• Do we have human review for high-impact decisions?

This is where the human-agent ratio matters.

Some retail media workflows can be highly automated, such as bid adjustments, product feed optimisation or basic creative testing. Others need more human oversight, especially where brand positioning, customer trust, pricing, loyalty strategy or sensitive customer data are involved.

The objective should not be maximum automation.

The objective should be better decisions, made faster, with the right level of human judgement and governance.

The APAC Reality Check

The retail media playbook cannot simply be imported from Western markets and applied wholesale across APAC.

Market structures differ. Consumer behaviour differs. Platform ecosystems differ. Payment habits differ. Loyalty mechanics differ. Adoption of social commerce and live commerce differs. Data rules and regulatory expectations also vary across markets.

Southeast Asia is especially distinct because mobile-first behaviour, super-app ecosystems, marketplace dynamics, social discovery and loyalty-led engagement often shape commerce.

This creates opportunity, but also complexity. Brands need a local operating model, not just a global retail media template.

The Governance Layer

There is also a governance question that should not be ignored.

As retail media becomes more data-driven and AI-enabled, brands need to be clear about consent, privacy, data-sharing rights, measurement transparency and how customer intelligence is being used.

Clean rooms and privacy-safe collaboration models can help, but they do not remove the need for clear internal governance.

The more retail media is connected to CRM, loyalty, AI models, and customer intelligence, the more important it is to involve legal, privacy, and data governance teams early.

This should not slow the business down.

It should make scaling more responsible and more durable.

The Honest Caveat

There is a lot of nuance here.

Clean room partnerships can be complex. Cross-border data rules can vary significantly. CLV modelling requires data maturity. AI models are only as useful as the data and governance around them. Off-platform commerce media is still developing across many APAC markets. And not every retailer will be equally ready to support advanced data collaboration.

But the direction of travel is clear. Retail media is moving beyond ads. It is becoming a strategic layer for customer intelligence, loyalty, measurement, commerce experience, AI-powered insight and omnichannel growth.

If your retail media investment is currently ads-only, that is a perfectly acceptable place to start.

The opportunity lies in whether you have a roadmap to move up the stack, or whether ads-only has quietly become your permanent ceiling.

The brands that build the right data, governance and AI readiness now will be better placed to use retail media as a decision engine, not just a campaign channel.

That is an opportunity to include in your next marketing strategy review.