Jason, before we get into the detail, what first got you involved in retail media standards? And how did you come to chair IAB Europe’s Retail and Commerce Media Committee? 

I got involved because retail media was scaling fast but lacked a common language—definitions, measurement, and processes varied widely. As retail media budgets scaled and more retailers mobilised, it became clear that robust, industry-wide standards were essential to unlock consistency and trust.

That led me to join IAB Europe’s Retail Media Working Group in its early days, where I was an active member across several workstreams and helped deliver the group’s early outputs through late 2023 and into early 2024. At the end of 2023, the IAB Europe Board decided to formalise the group as the Retail Media Committee, and I was elected Chair in January 2024.

Since then, standardisation has been front and centre of our agenda. We’re fortunate to have a strong cohort of retailers alongside technology and media partners on the committee, which allowed us to kick off the work of building standards the whole industry can adopt.

Retail media is growing fast, but it’s still relatively new compared with other channels. From an agency point of view, how mature do you think the market really is – and where are the biggest gaps right now?

The question highlights a common misconception: retail media isn’t a single “channel.” It’s an approach that activates multiple channels—onsite search and display, offsite programmatic, social, video, audio, and increasingly instore. Powered by retailer owned inventory and first party data.

From an agency perspective, it’s hard to assign a single maturity score to “the market.” Maturity varies by retailer, category, and country, and is strongly influenced by how established a retailer’s network is and by consumer tech adoption. In every market you’ll find a spread: a few highly mature networks alongside newer entrants still building out their product, data, and ops. We even comprised Retailer Capability Scorecards to help our clients make sense of this space. 

If you include Amazon Ads, the picture is skewed. Amazon Ads is an outlier in media scale and capability. It’s often more useful to assess the rest of the market independently. Outside of Amazon Ads, many retail media networks are progressing by leveraging their physical assets and loyalty schemes, valuable initiatives that will help grow the category.

The biggest gaps we see today:

• Measurement standards: consistent definitions and application for campaign reporting
• Measurement reporting: data granularity, reporting cadence, self-serve platform access
• Interoperability and identity: privacy-safe data collaboration
• Fragmentation: too many different buying platforms
• Creative and capability building: stronger creative guidelines and shared playbooks to upskill teams.

Retail media is advancing quickly, but its maturity is uneven by market and retailer. With standards and better interoperability, we anticipate the retail media landscape, outside of Amazon Ads, will accelerate and become far easier for agencies to plan, buy, and measure at scale.

What kinds of problems do inconsistent definitions and self-reported results create for agencies trying to plan across different retail media networks and different media channels?

Advertisers are rightly risk averse: when definitions and methodologies vary, confidence drops. Inconsistent definitions and self reported compliance create several practical and strategic problems for agencies:

• No apples to apples planning: KPIs are calculated differently so outcomes aren’t comparable i.e. how is attribution modelled in relation to ROAS in retailer A vs retailer B?
• Weak benchmarking and forecasting: cross retailer baselines and MMM inputs break, making budgets and expectations unreliable.
• Budget inertia and misallocation: spend consolidates in channels with perceived certainty slowing investment in newer networks.
• Slower test and learn: experiments aren’t transferable across retailers when methodologies differ.
• Operational overhead: teams build custom taxonomies and manual reconciliations per retailer, delaying decisions.

If agencies can’t convey clear, consistent value, budgets gravitate to the few places with trusted reporting. Common definitions and independent auditing restore comparability, reduce risk, and unlock scaled planning across retailers and channels.

The IAB Europe Retail Media Certification is now live. How does this programme actually close those measurement gaps, and what does certification prove in real terms?

The certification operationalises the industry standards and closes measurement gaps by turning agreed definitions and methodologies into audited requirements. Built collaboratively with input from 15 of the region’s leading retailers and a group of industry experts, it enforces common KPI calculations, attribution windows, and it requires transparent outputs that make performance comparable across retail media networks.

For the buy side, the certification badge is a shorthand for comparability and trust. Agencies can benchmark and optimise across retailers without rebuilding taxonomies; finance and procurement get auditable proof, and brands gain confidence to scale beyond the incumbents. Measurement standards are only as effective as the certification that verifies them—and this programme is the mechanism the market can buy into.

Independent auditors play a central role in the certification process. Why is that external audit step so important, and how does it strengthen confidence in the certification itself?

External audit is the difference between self assertion and evidence. When the outputs of a certification will influence where ad budgets go, a neutral third party removes the conflict of interest and ensures the findings carry weight—far more than a retailer “marking their own homework.”

Independent auditors add rigour. They don’t just review documents; they test methodologies, replicate KPI calculations, and sample underlying data. That scrutiny proves the results are accurate, repeatable, and comparable—not one-off claims.

The net effect is confidence. Agencies, brands, and finance teams can trust that certified networks are meeting the same bar, calculated the same way, and can reproduce results under audit. That credibility reduces due diligence overhead, de‑risks investment, and makes certification a reliable signal the buy side can act on.

From your view at WPP Media and IAB Europe, what difference would it make if agencies started asking every retail media partner to become certified before trading?

If agencies made certification a pre‑trade requirement, it would compress years of standardisation into a much shorter timeline and change how retail media is bought. Once a critical mass of networks are certified, we can treat retail media as a true category, like search or social, rather than a collection of disparate, bespoke retailer buys. That shift unlocks comparable planning, forecasting, and benchmarking, across the board.

From my vantage point, the impacts would be clear. First, it creates a strong demand side incentive: retailers that want brand budgets must meet a common, audited bar. That raises the baseline for KPI definitions, and reporting outputs, and it makes results reproducible under audit rather than self reported. Procurement and finance gain a reliable signal, reducing due diligence overhead and de-risking investment.

Second, it improves operational efficiency. Agencies can use common taxonomies and workflows, unify reporting, and automate more of the buying and optimisation process. Teams spend less time reconciling metrics and more time on analysis that will inform optimisations and better strategies.

Third, it levels the playing field. Newer networks can compete on quality and transparency, not just scale, while incumbents benefit from fair, apples-to-apples comparison. As comparability increases, budgets can diversify beyond the few platforms that already provide certainty.

Finally, certification becomes a flywheel for continuous improvement: periodic re‑audits keep methodologies honest, and shared standards make tests transferable across retailers. With retail media plannable at a category level, confidence rises, and the market’s full growth potential is more likely to be realised across the board, not only by established leaders.

What happens if retail media networks don’t raise their game? What risks do you see if the industry carries on with its own separate systems of measurement?

If networks don’t raise their game on measurement, the market hits a complexity ceiling and growth concentrates with a few incumbents.

As per IAB Europe’s Attitudes to Retail Media report (July’25), buyers are broadly positive and are spreading spend across more partners, but there’s a clear signal of strain: the biggest year-on-year growth was in the 4–6 and 7–9 partner brackets, while use of 10+ partners declined. That looks like a practical tipping point. Without common standards, the buy side simply can’t manage the operational and governance load of double-digit partner sets.

The risks of carrying on with separate systems of measurement:

• Budget consolidation: spend defaults to platforms that already provide certainty, starving newer networks of incremental budgets.
• Cap on partner counts: agencies will set hard limits on how many RMNs they can run concurrently, shrinking access for new entrants.
• Inefficient planning and reporting: bespoke KPIs, windows, and inclusion rules drive manual reconciliation, higher overhead, and slower decision making.

The risk is the category underperforms its potential. New entrants find it harder to break through, innovation slows, and advertisers retreat to a smaller set of “safe” buys. 

Finally, if you had one ask of retailers, one of brands and one of agencies to help accelerate maturity over the next 12 months, what would they be?

Retailers: be bold and lean in. Make the commitment and investment to become certified over the next 12 months. That’s what many advertisers want to see, and it’s the fastest way to build trust, comparability, and access to brand budgets. Publish clear methodologies, align KPIs and reporting to the standard, and be ready for external audit and periodic re‑certification so buyers know your results are accurate and repeatable.

Brands: demand more from retail and commerce media networks. Don’t take numbers at face value—ask what sits behind the metrics, require transparent methodology documentation, and insist on apples-to-apples. Make certification a condition in RFPs and partnership frameworks so you unlock the highest level of accountability and value.

Agencies: keep being the connective glue between retailers and brands. Set and communicate clear expectations on measurement and standardisation, including preferred methodologies, KPI definitions, and make certification a strong preference (or requirement) in briefs. At the same time, articulate how retail media fits within the broader mix as planning, activation, optimisation, and reporting become increasingly automated in the age of AI, so client stakeholders can scale budget with confidence on a common standard.

Thanks Jason. Appreciate you taking the time to provide that insight on key steps the industry can take to maximise Retail Media’s potential.

To learn more about the standards shaping the market, and how independent certification works in practice, visit our Retail Media Certification page for a straightforward starting point.