Effective Retail Media measurement requires the food industry to ask the right questions first in order to build transparency and trust.
By Mark Baum, Chief Collaboration Officer & Senior Vice President, Industry Relations, FMI
Before the industry can agree on standards, it must first agree on expectations.
Across the conversations we had in the FMI Master Retail Media Series, leaders were asked what they wanted most from retail media measurement. The answer was not additional metrics. There was clarity around the objectives and outcomes they could trust.
As one retail executive put it plainly, “If I can’t explain the result to both marketing and finance, it’s not a usable metric.”
Measurement as a Trust System
Retail media measurement now serves a dual role:
- It guides optimization and growth.
- It establishes trust between brands, retailers, and platforms.
Key metrics like iROAS and iROI are gaining traction. They move measurement away from surface-level activity and toward incremental business outcomes. But metrics alone are not enough.
Leaders emphasized that “good” measurement must also answer the following questions:
- How was the result generated?
- What assumptions were made?
- Where are the limits of the data?
Transparency is no longer optional, it is foundational.
What Leaders Say “Good” Measurement Includes
When asked to describe effective measurement systems, series participants consistently pointed to common characteristics:
- Business relevance: Metrics tied to incremental growth and profitability.
- Transparency: Clear documentation and disclosure of methods, internally and across trading partners.
- Speed: Insights delivered in time to influence decisions.
- Comparability: Results that can be evaluated across partners.
- Responsible data practices: Privacy-safe, auditable approaches.
Notably, leaders stressed that alignment does not mean uniformity. Retailers want to differentiate their platforms. Brands want flexibility in execution. What both want is confidence that results can be trusted and mutually understood.
Asking the Right Questions Early
Recent platform evolutions across the industry have reinforced a crucial lesson: retailers must consider trust and transparency at every layer of their retail media offering, not after the fact.
Brand owners are no longer satisfied with performance claims alone. They are asking deeper questions earlier in the process about methodology, incentives, and governance.
Those questions are healthy. They signal that retail media channels are maturing.
From Principles to Practice
This is where industry collaboration matters most.
FMI, working alongside NielsenIQ and Think Blue, is helping the industry move from shared principles to practical alignment, which started with senior-level dialogue at the FMI Midwinter Executive Conference and continues through deeper, firsthand work at GroceryLab in June.
Retail media has proven its value. The next step is to prove that value consistently, transparently, and at scale.
The future of retail media will belong to those who ask the right questions early and build measurement systems worthy of the trust now being placed in them.
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