ISBA Reveals Results of First Retail Media Study

The findings from ISBA’s qualitative Digital Retail Media Study have been published, with strong calls to all ecosystem stakeholders to work towards establishing strong, shared standards of governance in order to unlock its full promise and continue to grow beyond 2025's estimated UK value of £4-5bn (Source: IAB Europe).

The report’s five areas of findings are structured around, People, Strategy, Partnerships, Standardisation and Value. The report sets out principal areas of commonality and complexity that stakeholders face in each area.

Building on ISBA's experience of cross industry facilitation and collaboration and extending the industry work established with the Retail Media Framework in 2023 and 2024, ISBA has worked with partner MediaSense to produce in-depth insights that surface all stakeholder perspectives. These findings will underpin a further piece of quantitative research that MediaSense will carry out in the last quarter of 2025.

The report examines the importance of internal collaboration for brands, where breaking down silos between commercial and marketing teams is seen as a principal challenge to fully unlocking the value of digital retail media. It also provides insights into emerging best practices and routes for continued collaboration and cooperation with external partners, including agencies.

The report findings highlight the need for improved governance across the supply chain, the need to build corporate confidence and support growth through cross-functional teams, separate contractual templates, clear customisable definitions, and validation of media delivery and value.

Commenting on the study, Thomas Gosschalk, commercial sales transformation senior manager Essa, PepsiCo said, “There is so much unexplored data in there, if we were really sharing data transparently, we could definitely do more and grow together… hence the need for a mindset shift: how can we really drive collaboration?"

Dan Larden, head of media, ISBA said, “This level of insight gives us the mandate to do quantitative work that can help measure incremental value delivered by digital retail media. It also points to the need to build a template for a retail media contract outside of shopper / trade agreements and beyond our existing Media Services Framework. ISBA is committed to work on behalf of its members to drive much needed standardisation across the ecosystem.”

Sam Tomlinson, chief client officer, MediaSense added, "All study participants were excited by the opportunities in retail media, with its strong customer data, intent and proximity to purchase, and closed-loop attribution. But they were also clear that rising spend inevitably attracts increased scrutiny, meaning good governance will be crucial to fuel scalable growth. We hope this study is a positive step towards that future."

ISBA has already begun talking with its industry counterpart trade bodies across the ecosystem to address, for example, contractual frameworks, collaborative definitions, developing workshops that bring commercial and marketing teams around a shared agenda, establishing a case study database to share good practice.

Find the full report here.