The partnership between Criteo and Microsoft reveals that, as retail media expands, strategic alliances and innovative platforms are crucial to overcoming fragmentation and inefficiency. This will enable retailers, brands, and agencies to fully capitalize on the opportunities within the space.
As retail media expands, it becomes more complex and creates significant challenges for retailers, brands, and agencies. For instance, fragmentation within the space creates a cumbersome and inefficient buying process, hampering the widespread adoption and growth of retail media networks. There is a pressing need to develop multi-retailer, multi-channel, and multi-format platforms driven by ROAS to address this issue.
These platforms would enable retailers and brands to fully capitalize on the opportunities within retail media, ensuring that advertising remains relevant and effective at every stage of the consumer journey.
In response to these challenges, companies like Criteo are forging strategic partnerships to simplify and scale retail media operations. For instance, Criteo’s collaboration with Microsoft Advertising aims to streamline the monetization of retail media inventory through a unified omnichannel platform.
We spoke with Brian Gleason, Chief Revenue Officer at Criteo and Lynne Kjolso, Vice President of Global Partnerships and Retail Media at Microsoft Advertising, about how their partnership can empower retailers to connect with meaningful demand and enhance the shopping experience by leveraging first-party data to deliver more relevant ads.
Andrew Byrd: What are the main challenges retailers face with platform complexity, and how can these be simplified to benefit omnichannel retail media programs? 
Brian Gleason: As retail media continues to scale, platform complexity is creating an increasingly fragmented ecosystem for retailers, brands, and agencies. Currently, brands are buying retail media via multiple platforms, leading to a cumbersome buying process that, in turn, impacts widespread adoption and growth for retailers’ media networks.
The retail media ecosystem must prioritize the development of ROAS-driven multi-retailer, multi-channel, and multi-format platforms that allow retailers and brands to capitalize on the booming opportunity effectively. With shoppers increasingly returning to physical stores, ad tech providers must connect retailers to meaningful and relevant demand that allows them to speak to audiences at all stages of their purchase journey — wherever and whenever they shop.
With Microsoft naming Criteo its preferred partner to serve the onsite needs of its retailer clients, the two companies intend to help retailers monetize their valuable retail media inventory through a simplified omnichannel platform and program management.
AB: How can the advertising experience be improved to enhance relevance for shoppers and reduce marketplace inefficiency?
BG: Retail media is inherently consumer-centric by harnessing first-party data, but there are still inefficiencies that can be optimized to provide a better experience for consumers as they shop across the open internet.
For example, product-first retail media strategies reduce fragmentation in the market by allowing brands and agencies to scale their campaigns across multiple retailers. At Criteo, we’ve integrated SKU-based planning into our platform, which allows brands to promote their products on any retailer in our network where their product is sold in one streamlined campaign activation, management and optimization workflow with closed-loop measurement.
This, in turn, creates additional opportunities for brands to reach consumers with relevant ads. At the same time, they browse the open internet while ensuring the products they choose to buy are in stock and available for purchase at their desired retailer.
AB: How does the integration between Criteo and the Microsoft Advertising Network aim to simplify and scale demand access for advertisers?
BG: Our relationship with Microsoft Advertising builds on our strengths to drive scale, simplicity, and innovation in retail media. Specifically, our planned strategic collaboration would bring Microsoft Advertising’s extensive demand to Criteo’s global network of 225 retailers, empowering Microsoft Advertising’s 500,000+ global active advertiser clients to achieve stronger, measurable performance for their campaigns.
Overall, our collaboration would benefit all parties within the retail media ecosystem. Retailers would have access to increased global demand, while brands and agencies would have increased supply options that help them diversify their campaigns and reach shoppers with personalized advertising through a single point of entry, driving performance growth with scale.
AB: Can you provide more details on the planned innovations with Microsoft Curate and the AI-powered Retail Media Creative Studio and how these will benefit advertisers and retailers?
BG: Through our collaboration with Microsoft Advertising, we’re exploring opportunities for our advertiser clients to tap into Microsoft Advertising’s generative AI and innovations, such as its AI-powered Retail Media Creative Studio. Harnessing tools like the Retail Media Creative Studio would make it easier for Criteo clients to create and optimize their ad creative at scale with the power of generative AI while providing retailers with creative advertising formats to drive engagement on their owned and operated properties.
AB: Considering current trends and challenges, what do you envision as the future of retail media in the next five years?
BG: Over the next five years, retail media will progress through greater unification to unlock the full potential of the $150 billion retail media market, focusing on efficiency, integration, and growth. As the industry scales, retailers will increasingly operate as media companies, using their valuable first-party data to enhance customer engagement and drive transactions.
As we continue to address platform complexity and fragmentation issues, solutions like Criteo’s Commerce Media Platform will drive the adoption of multi-retailer, multi-channel, and muti-format campaigns. The industry will also embrace a full-funnel approach, combining onsite display with offsite ads to create a unified consumer journey and leveraging closed-loop measurement for enhanced performance.
Increased investment will prompt brands to scale their retail media efforts and optimize return on ad spend, highlighting the need for advanced tools like AI that will drive agile optimization. As this investment increases, industry-wide standardization will become crucial, with collaboration among key players like the IAB and MRC helping to reduce fragmentation.
AB: Your blog post alludes to retail media still being in its teenage years. What steps need to be taken to prepare it for adulthood? 
Lynne Kjolso: There is a lot of promise in retail media, but evolution and maturity are required to fully take advantage of the opportunities.
Specifically, there is platform complexity with so many point solutions flooding the market. Retailers would benefit from more simplicity in their options and the ability to activate omnichannel retail media programs.
Additionally, ad buyers pay a heavy operational tax due to fragmented buying challenges. With more unified ways to access retailer supply, like in our collaboration with Criteo, buyers can access retail media supply seamlessly and at scale.
Lastly, the advertising experience is often poor for consumers due to a lack of a cohesive approach and standardization. We can address this marketplace inefficiency by putting the consumer at the center of the equation. For example, retailers can use Microsoft Curate to extend and monetize their onsite audience with curated deals available in any DSP. This makes it easier for advertisers to seamlessly buy off site retail media in the same place as their other digital media buys.
AB: How does Microsoft Advertising plan to address the fragmented buying challenges caused by the proliferation of retail media walled gardens?
LK: Our collaboration with Criteo is an important step in addressing fragmented buying challenges. As a company, our goal is to empower the entire ecosystem to achieve more. In retail media, this equates to bringing scale, simplicity, and innovation to the market. By bringing our scaled demand to Criteo’s retail media supply, we’re breaking down walls and helping advertisers access a rich array of retailers through a single entry point.