Retail Media’s Biggest Identity Crisis: Why Brands Are Asking the Wrong Question - Retail Media Breakfast Club

Summary6 min read

Podcast Summary: Retail Media’s Biggest Identity Crisis — Why Brands Are Asking the Wrong Question

Podcast: Retail Media Breakfast Club
Host: Kiri Masters
Episode Date: June 9, 2026
Duration: ~10 Minutes

Episode Overview

This episode centers on the ongoing “identity crisis” in retail media, particularly how brands and agencies grapple with defining the role and measurement of retail media investments. Kiri discusses shifting industry perspectives, drawing from recent thought leadership, key commentary from industry figures, and her own earlier writings. Through these, she argues that brands and agencies are asking the wrong questions — focusing on category labels and inherited metrics, rather than on clear objectives and outcomes. The episode also explores the challenge of measuring retail media’s true business impact, and the importance of organizational clarity in making retail media work.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The “Cop-Out” Brief: Awareness vs. Sales

[00:00] Brands often brief agencies with the catch-all objective to “build awareness and drive sales.” Agencies push back: which is more important?
- Kiri argues this dual-objective brief sidesteps a real strategy discussion:
  - “Awareness and sales? Sure, mate, that’s why we all have jobs. But how much of each and which one wins when they inevitably resist each other?”

2. Channel Label Confusion: Is Retail Media Just Search?

18 months ago, Kiri examined if “retail media is part of search, or if search is part of retail media,” highlighting that old channel labels are unhelpful.
- She cites a LinkedIn poll showing 73% see digital channels as subsets within retail media, yet:
  - “Retail media is CTV, and it’s digital video, and it’s search. We’re measuring it often as a separate line on the chart, while the formats inside it are often identical…”

3. The Budget Origin Problem

The real question centers on where the budget comes from and how retail media is measured.
Notable quote [02:30]:
- John Flugstad (Chief Business Officer, metarouta):
  - “Treating retail media like a channel misses the point. It’s a way of buying media where the gravitational pull is the connection to the audience and the transaction.”

4. Vinny Rinaldi’s Provocative Essay

Recent essay by Vinny Rinaldi, VP Customer Connections at Hershey, reframes the conversation:
- Retail media “didn’t just get funded oddly, it inherited an entire job description from the budget it came out of... Same job description, but a different invoice.”
- When funded from search, retail media inherits search’s brief, metrics, and ceiling:
  - “You’re optimizing against intent that already exists. You’re capturing demand. You’re not creating it.”
- Key point: Demand creation and capture should be seen not as two budgets, but “one system.”

5. Real-World Example: Hershey’s Integrated Approach

Rinaldi describes how Hershey brings commerce media planning “upstream” into the brief — integrating it with other channels, and “feeding purchase signal back” into planning:
- “The brand investment creates new intent, the commerce investment converts it at the moment of decision, and the data closes the loop. That only works if both halves are briefed together…” [06:10]

6. Brand Perspective: Avoiding Retail Media “Blobs”

Lauren Weinberg (CMO, Supergoop):
- “I don’t want to see retail media as a line item on my campaign plan from my agency.”
  - Not a complaint about retail media, but about its undifferentiated treatment rather than strategic integration.

7. The Performance Legacy & Organizational Clarity

Retail media often fails brand objectives not due to capability, but because it’s boxed into inherited “performance” expectations.
Shay Murtaugh (CEO, Hoffman Murtaugh):
- “Retail media didn’t fail brand objectives because of capability. It failed because it inherited performance briefs, performance metrics and performance expectations before most brands ever asked what role it should play.” [07:20]
Jordan Whitmer (Salt XC) likewise stresses: whoever owns the budget decides retail media’s role.

8. Measurement: Can vs. Won’t

Debate: Even with a clearer brief, can platforms actually measure brand impact?
- Adam Heimlich (Co-founder, Chalice AI):
  - Argues platforms cannot (it’s hard to model new-to-brand sales or household penetration).
- Rick Wattrell (Founder, MLogics AI):
  - Argues platforms can, but choose not to (execution, not capability, is lacking).
- Instead, many brands opt to “bring their own measurement,” normalizing results across retailers using trusted third-party methods.

9. Where the Industry Goes Next

Brands should not wait for Retail Media Networks (RMNs) to perfect attribution, but integrate retail media into their own frameworks now.
- “Not waiting for RMNs to build the perfect attribution model, but plugging retail media into the measurement framework they already have.”
The larger issue: budget silos and figuring out exactly what the investment is meant to accomplish—and proving it.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

[00:32] Kiri Masters:
- “If you’ve spent any time in agency land, you’ve heard that brief a thousand times. It sounds like a strategy, but it’s really just a cop out.”
[02:30] John Flugstad:
- “Treating retail media like a channel misses the point. It’s a way of buying media where the gravitational pull is the connection to the audience and the transaction.”
[04:18] Vinny Rinaldi:
- “When the money comes from search, retail media inherits the brief of search, the metrics of search, and the ceiling of search. You’re optimizing against intent that already exists. You’re capturing demand. You’re not creating it.”
[06:10] Kiri, paraphrasing Hershey’s approach:
- “The brand investment creates new intent, the commerce investment converts it at the moment of decision, and the data closes the loop. That only works if both halves are briefed together, which is exactly the part that a lot of brands skip.”
[07:20] Shay Murtaugh:
- “Retail media didn’t fail brand objectives because of capability. It failed because it inherited performance briefs, performance metrics and performance expectations before most brands ever asked what role it should play.”

Timestamps for Key Segments

[00:00] – The “cop-out” brand brief & setting up the core question
[01:20] – Channel confusion: retail media vs. search
[02:30] – John Flugstad on treating retail media as an audience/transaction lever
[04:18] – Vinny Rinaldi: On inherited budgets and the real job of retail media
[06:10] – Hershey’s practical approach to integrating commerce media upstream
[06:45] – Lauren Weinberg on avoiding “line item” retail media
[07:20] – Shay Murtaugh on inherited expectations and brand failure
[08:00] – The measurement debate: platform limitations and brand-led normalization
[09:30] – The industry’s next steps: organizational clarity, breaking budget silos

Episode Tone and Language

Kiri’s approach is candid, slightly irreverent, and grounded in industry reality. She uses direct quotes to reinforce her points, often drawing attention to practical challenges and persistent misconceptions with a mix of humor and straightforward critique.

Takeaway

The episode urges brands and agencies to move past inherited labels, briefs, and budget silos to ask the right questions: not where retail media fits on an org chart, but what business objective it should serve. Measurement systems and organizational clarity — not just new tools or formats — are key to realizing retail media’s full potential. The conversation is ongoing, but the change momentum is real.

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Transcript1 lines

[00:00]
A
A lot of you listening would be familiar with this kind of conversation. The brand says to the agency, our objective is to build awareness and drive sales. The agency says to the brand, sure, but which one do you actually want? If you've spent any time in agency land, you've heard that brief a thousand times. It sounds like a strategy, but it's really just a cop out. Awareness and sales? Sure, mate, that's why we all have jobs. But how much of each and which one wins when they inevitably resist each other? 18 months ago I wrote a piece asking something that felt slightly heretical at the time. Is retail media part of search, or is search part of retail media? And on Sunday, over the weekend, Vinny Rinaldi, who is the VP Customer Connections at Hershey, he published an essay that really got a lot of traction in my network. And reading it, I realized that he'd answered a key question that I had posed back then. So I went back and reread my own piece. My argument back then was that our channel labels had stopped making sense. Retail media is ctv, and it's digital video, and it's search. We're measuring it often as a separate line on the chart, while the formats inside it are often identical to the ones that we had been buying for years. And so back then, I ran a LinkedIn poll and I asked, is retail media part of search, or is search part of retail media? And 73% of respondents said that traditional digital channels were subsets within retail media. 18% said it depends on who's asking, as in, is the CMO asking about it or is a CFO asking about it? And only 9% of respondents saw retail media as a subset of search. Now, keep in mind that my audience on LinkedIn is largely people working in retail media. So that might skew how this question would get asked if you asked a broader set of media buyers what they would say. But the question that really matters here is where the budget comes from and how you measure it. John Flugstad, who is now the chief business officer at metarouta, put it really well in the comments of that post from last year. He said, treating retail media like a channel misses the point. It's a way of buying media where the gravitational pull is the connection to the audience and the transaction. So I had the diagnosis, but I didn't really have the why. I could see that retail media was funded oddly and measured oddly. But Vinnie's piece really articulates why that approach has been so persistent, even when it's recognized as less than ideal. Vinnie says in his piece that retail media didn't just get funded. Oddly, it inherited an entire job description from the budget that it came out of. Same job description, but a different invoice, Vinnie says. When the money comes from search, retail media inherits the brief of search, the metrics of search, and the ceiling of search. You're optimizing against intent that already exists. You're capturing demand. You're you're not creating it. And that is a real job. But it's not the only job that retail media could be doing. Demand creation and demand capture aren't two budgets, he argues. They're one system. I had been asking where retail media sits, but the better question is what it's for. If you give it a real brief, the funding will follow, according to Vinnie. Now this reminded me of a comment that I heard at Possible this year on a panel at the Adweek House. Lauren Weinberg, the CMO of Supergoop, said, I don't want to see retail media as a line item on my campaign plan from my agency. Now that isn't a complaint about retail media being on the plan. It's that retail media gets plopped in there as one undifferentiated, amorphous blob. And going back to Vinnie in his piece, he isn't just sort of theorizing from an ivory tower. Here he describes at Hershey how they are pulling commerce media upstream into the brief and planning conversation, evaluating it against the same objectives as every other channel, and feeding the purchase signal back into who they target and and what they put behind a brand next quarter. The brand investment creates new intent, the commerce investment converts it at the moment of decision, and the data closes the loop. Now, that only works if both halves are briefed together, which is exactly the part that a lot of brands skip. The agentic AI revolution is here, and the competitive edge belongs to those who move faster than disruption itself. Join Miracle Ads and me in New York City on June 10, 2026 for strategies, insights and connections built for the era of agentic commerce. Discovery is shifting. Media economics are following, and the brands and retailers who figure out what comes next won't be the ones who wait. They'll be the ones already moving. Join me at the Miracle Summit in New York City on June 10th. Link to register in the show, notes Shay Murtaugh, who is the CEO of the agency. Hoffman Murtaugh said wisely in the comments on Vinny's post. She says retail media didn't fail brand objectives because of capability. It failed because it inherited performance briefs, performance metrics and performance expectations before most brands ever asked what role it should play. And that is a similar argument that Jordan Whitmer of Salt XC made in a live stream that we did together a few weeks ago. And the way he describes it is that whoever owns the budget decides what retail media is allowed to be Better measurement, More transparency. These are the things that brands consistently say are what is holding retail media spend back. But what if it's really more about organizational clarity? It seems from this collection of responses that a lot of brands still don't have it. Now, so far this all sounds like consensus, and it mostly is, but not entirely. On Vinny's post on LinkedIn, a familiar question surfaced. Even if you give retail media a real brief, can the platforms actually measure against it? Adam Heimlich, co founder of Chalice AI, made the case that they cannot that modeling new to brand sales and household penetration is genuinely hard and the platforms that RMNs run on weren't built for it. Rick Wattrell, the founder of MLogics AI, took the other view. The capabilities are there, but the execution is not. So this comes down to a debate of can't versus won't. And there's a related move happening here that I keep hearing about, which is brands bringing their own measurement to the table rather than relying on retailer provided metrics. They want to normalize results across retailers, and fairly or not, they trust a third party more than the retailer that is grading its own homework. This all sidesteps the can't vs won't debate in a pretty useful way. If you don't trust the platform to measure brand impact, stop asking it to and bring your own yardstick instead. And that's probably the more practical path for for most brands right now. Not waiting for RMNs to build the perfect attribution model, but plugging retail media into the measurement framework they already have. So what's next? The budget silo problem I flagged last year is squarely within the industry discourse, and I'm so glad that we're talking about it like this. But even after we agree on the problem, we're still left deciding what the money is supposed to do before it gets split spent and then arguing about whether our tools can even prove that it did the job. I asked an okay question 18 months ago. Vinnie just asked a better one. The answer is still up for grabs, and honestly, that's the most interesting place for it to be.