Retail media is projected to grow at more than twice the rate of overall ad spend in 2025, according to the IAB 2025 Outlook report, which surveyed buyers at brands and agencies across the US. The brands capturing that growth aren’t simply buying more marketplace placements. They’re connecting those placements to every other touchpoint in the shopper’s path to purchase.
Omnichannel retail media is the practice of combining retail advertising channels and customer data into one connected shopping experience, spanning marketplaces, retailer websites, mobile apps, social platforms, search engines, physical stores, and connected devices.
A shopper might discover a product through a social ad, research it on a retailer’s site, see a retargeted display ad while reading the news, and complete the purchase in-store. The best omnichannel strategies for retail media account for all of those moments, not just the last click.
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Why Brands Need an Omnichannel Approach to Retail Media
A single-channel retail media presence is no longer enough to stay competitive. The brands winning on retail platforms are the ones investing in coordinated strategies rather than isolated placements.
Four forces are driving this shift:
- Fragmented shopping paths: customers move across marketplaces, apps, social platforms, search, and physical stores before buying, with no single predictable route
- Increasing platform competition: standalone sponsored product ads become less efficient as more brands bid for the same placements
- Demand for sales proof: brands now need to show channel-level revenue impact, not just impressions
- The online-offline gap: most consumer spending still happens in-store, yet most retail media runs online, leaving a significant data and targeting blind spot
10 Best Omnichannel Strategies for Retail Media
These strategies cover the full picture of what omnichannel retail media looks like in practice, from audience building through measurement and ongoing optimization.
1. Connect Retail Media Campaigns Across Multiple Shopping Touchpoints
The most effective retail media strategies treat every channel as part of a single campaign system rather than a set of separate ad buys. Shoppers rarely move in a straight line from discovery to purchase, and campaigns that follow them across channels perform better than those that don’t.
A connected campaign typically spans marketplace ads and retailer search placements, display campaigns on and off retailer sites, social ads reflecting what a shopper has already browsed, and email touchpoints tied to purchase history.
Mobile experiences also play a role, reinforcing messaging across apps and keeping the brand present at moments that desktop campaigns miss. Consistent, coordinated visibility at every step is what keeps a brand in consideration regardless of where the shopper is looking.
2. Use Retailer Data to Build More Accurate Audience Segments
Retailer first-party data is one of the primary reasons retail media has grown so quickly. It allows advertisers to build audience segments based on verified purchase behavior rather than modeled assumptions.
Segments built on retailer data can reflect:
- Purchase history by category, brand, or product type
- Browsing behavior across retailer sites and apps
- Shopping frequency and recency patterns
- Customer lifecycle stage from new buyer to lapsed purchaser
- Category interest signals from search and product views
Better segmentation means fewer wasted impressions and more relevant ads delivered to shoppers likely to respond.
3. Combine Sponsored Product Ads With Brand Awareness Campaigns
Brands that rely only on sponsored product placements are investing almost entirely at the bottom of the funnel. That generates short-term sales but limits growth because there’s no consistent pipeline of new shoppers.
The best omnichannel strategies for retail media combine sponsored product ads for purchase intent, sponsored brand placements for discovery, and display or video campaigns for broader awareness. Each layer serves a different purpose.
Sponsored product ads capture shoppers already searching. Brand campaigns introduce the product to shoppers browsing related categories. Awareness campaigns build recognition before the shopping mindset is active. A full-funnel approach supports both immediate sales and longer-term brand equity.
4. Create Consistent Product Messaging Across Channels
A shopper who sees a different price, promotion, or product description depending on which channel they check is less likely to convert. Consistency isn’t just a brand standards issue; it’s a conversion issue.
Strong omnichannel campaigns maintain alignment across:
- Product benefits and brand positioning across all placements
- Promotional offers and timing, so a deal isn’t live on social but absent on the retailer site
- Visual identity and creative tone across formats and channels
- Pricing across marketplaces, retailer sites, and owned channels
Inconsistency most often appears between social ads and retailer product pages, or between online promotions and in-store pricing. Catching and closing those gaps before launch tends to improve conversion rates meaningfully.
5. Use Personalization to Improve Shopping Experiences
Retail media data makes personalization at scale possible in a way that few other advertising environments can match. Purchase history, browsing behavior, and loyalty program data all feed into more relevant ad experiences without relying on third-party cookies.
Personalization across top omnichannel retail media strategies takes several forms:
- Product recommendations based on past purchases or category browsing
- Dynamic creative that adjusts headlines, imagery, and offers by audience segment
- Tailored promotions timed to shopping frequency and customer lifecycle stage
- Lifecycle campaigns that treat a new customer, a repeat buyer, and a lapsed shopper differently
Personalization works because it reduces the distance between what the shopper is already thinking about and what the ad shows them.
6. Integrate Online and Offline Retail Data
Even as ecommerce grows, most consumer spending still happens in physical stores. According to EMARKETER’s November 2024 forecast, 80% of consumer spending is in-store, yet 90% of retail media advertising runs online. Bridging that gap is one of the biggest opportunities in top omnichannel retail media strategies today.
Connecting online and offline data means linking in-store purchase history to digital profiles, using loyalty program data to create complete customer records, and factoring local inventory into campaign targeting.
It also means tracking store visit lift from digital campaign exposure. Brands with this combined data can measure the true sales impact of their campaigns across every channel, not just those ending with an online checkout.
7. Use Retargeting to Re-Engage High-Intent Shoppers
Shoppers who browse a product, add it to a cart, or search a category are signaling intent. Retargeting captures that signal and brings them back into the path to purchase.
Effective retail media retargeting targets users who have viewed specific products or categories, added items to carts without completing checkout, interacted with previous retail media campaigns, or visited physical stores.
The message should shift depending on where the shopper dropped off. A cart abandoner needs a different prompt than someone who only browsed a category page. Matching the message to the specific drop-off point is what separates retargeting that converts from retargeting that just follows people around.
The ASTRAD guide to mobile retargeting best practices breaks down exactly how to structure these approaches to increase conversions.
8. Optimize Campaigns Based on Sales and Customer Value Metrics
Impressions and clicks tell you how much activity a campaign generated. Sales metrics tell you how much of that activity actually mattered. The best retail media strategies measure both, weighting optimization decisions toward sales-side metrics.
The core measurement framework for omnichannel retail media:
| Metric | What It Measures | Why It Matters |
| ROAS | Revenue per dollar spent | Direct efficiency signal for channel investment |
| CPA | Cost per acquisition | How efficiently the campaign converts |
| Incremental sales | Sales above a baseline | Separates true campaign impact from organic demand |
| Repeat purchase rate | Customer loyalty after first buy | Indicates quality of acquired customers |
| Customer lifetime value | Long-term revenue per customer | Shows whether acquisitions compound over time |
Optimizing toward these metrics identifies which channels genuinely contribute to revenue versus which ones simply appear in the attribution window.
9. Use Programmatic Advertising to Extend Retail Media Reach
Retail media campaigns running only on retailer-owned inventory are limited to shoppers already in a retail mindset. Programmatic advertising extends reach to relevant audiences across the open web, apps, streaming platforms, and connected TV.
Retailer audience segments power targeting of the same shoppers off-site through display, video, native, mobile, and CTV placements. This gives brands the ability to reach a shopper while they’re reading the news or watching a streaming service, with messaging informed by their actual retail behavior.
Programmatic inventory also offers more control over frequency, placement quality, and creative format than many on-site retail media placements allow.
What’s changing fastest in programmatic channels and targeting right now is laid out in this overview of programmatic advertising trends shaping the industry.
10. Continuously Test and Improve the Omnichannel Strategy
Retail media performance is not static. Seasonality shifts shopping behavior, competitive pressure changes auction dynamics, and customer preferences evolve in ways that make last quarter’s winning strategy less effective today.
Continuous testing should cover:
- Audience definitions and segment performance by channel
- Creative formats, messaging angles, and offer structures
- Channel placements and bidding approaches
- Promotional mechanics and timing
Campaign data from each cycle feeds the next one, making the strategy sharper over time. Brands that treat retail media as a system to iterate on consistently outperform those that set campaigns and let them run.
How to coordinate that testing across every channel is covered step by step in ASTRAD’s end-to-end campaign management guide.
What the Best Retail Media Strategies Have in Common
Successful omnichannel retail media connects three things that weaker strategies leave disconnected: customer data, advertising channels, and the shopping experience itself.
The best retail media strategies don’t work in isolation. Audience segmentation makes connected campaigns more precise. Online-offline integration makes measurement more accurate. Programmatic reach makes retargeting more effective.
The brands seeing the strongest results from top omnichannel retail media strategies aren’t necessarily outspending competitors. They’re investing more coherently, using retailer data to inform every channel decision and measuring performance in ways that reflect actual sales impact.
The brands that connect every retail touchpoint create stronger customer relationships and drive more sales. Starting with two or three of these strategies and building toward a fully integrated approach is the most sustainable path.
Build Your Omnichannel Retail Media Strategy With ASTRAD
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FAQ
Multichannel advertising runs campaigns across several channels independently, with each measured separately. Omnichannel retail media connects those channels so audience data, creative, and measurement flow through a unified strategy. The key difference is integration: signals from one channel inform targeting and messaging in another.
Sponsored product and search ads on the retailer platforms where your category sees the most traffic are the right starting point, since they capture shoppers with active purchase intent. Once those run efficiently, adding retargeting and off-site display extends reach without abandoning the high-intent placements already working.
Omnichannel strategies allow brands to segment existing customers by purchase history and lifecycle stage, then reach them with relevant post-purchase campaigns, loyalty offers, and replenishment reminders. That ongoing relevance increases repeat purchase rates significantly cheaper than acquiring new customers.
Yes, though implementation scales with budget and data availability. A small brand can start by connecting sponsored product ads to a basic retargeting campaign and using available retailer audience segments. The core strategies, including consistent messaging, audience segmentation from purchase data, and intent-based retargeting, are accessible even at modest spending levels.
Retail media is growing faster than almost every other ad channel, but it complements rather than replaces traditional digital advertising. Programmatic display, social, and video advertising remain essential for reaching audiences before they enter a retail mindset. Retail media performs best as the performance layer of a broader strategy.
