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In recent years, "commerce media" has begun appearing alongside, and sometimes in place of, "retail media" in industry conversations. The two terms are often used interchangeably, but they describe different things. Understanding the distinction helps brands and retailers choose the right partner and ask better questions when evaluating their options.
Commerce media uses transaction data to gain audience insights, improve targeting, deliver relevant experiences, and connect impressions to sales, both online and in-store.
In practice, it extends the retail media model beyond traditional retailers. Any organisation that sits on rich transaction data (airlines, banks, delivery platforms) can monetise that data by offering targeted access to advertisers, in the same way a retailer would through a retail media network.
British Airways, for example, offers access to a travel audience that carries genuine value for advertisers selling hotels, restaurants, car hire, or travel accessories. Those advertisers are not selling through British Airways directly. They are accessing a specific, high-intent audience to promote their own products and services.
Retail media refers to advertising platforms that allow brands to access a retailer's first-party data to reach consumers with targeted, contextually relevant messaging, onsite and offsite.
Find out more about retail media networks and how they can help your business.
It is worth being clear on that last point. Retail media is not limited to sponsored product listings on a retailer's website. Mature retail media networks can reach consumers across display, premium offsite publisher placements, connected TV, and more. The channel breadth of a well-built retail media network is often underestimated.
Retail media has been around for a long time, with roots in trade marketing and in-store promotions. Its digital evolution has made it one of the fastest-growing segments in advertising, and one of the most fragmented. Major UK retailers including Tesco, Sainsbury's, Ocado, Boots, M&S, and Asda now each operate their own network, which creates both opportunity and complexity for brands trying to manage multiple partnerships.
The core difference comes down to who is operating the network and what data they are using.
Retail media is powered by retailer first-party data: purchase history, browsing behaviour, and in-store transactions from shoppers on that retailer's platform. The advertisers are typically CPG or brand partners who want to reach those shoppers while they are actively in a buying mindset.
Commerce media extends this logic to any organisation with valuable transaction data, not just traditional retailers. The audience access may be equally rich, but the relationship between the advertiser and the data owner is different, and so is the measurement model.
In short: retail media is a type of commerce media. Not all commerce media is retail media.
The right choice depends on your audience, not your channel preferences.
If you are a CPG brand looking to influence purchase decisions at the point of consideration (competitive conquesting, category driving, nurturing repeat purchase), a retail media network gives you direct access to high-intent shoppers in context. That is difficult to replicate elsewhere.
If you are a brand with a lifestyle or travel-adjacent product, commerce media can give you access to audiences defined by their transaction behaviour rather than their demographics. A financial services brand or a hotel group, for instance, might find more relevant reach through a commerce media partner than through a traditional retail media network.
Across both, the same risk applies: brands can miss a significant portion of their potential customers if the underlying identity and activation infrastructure is not built to find, reach, and measure against audiences wherever they are online, not just the easy-to-reach, logged-in segment.
Retail and commerce media networks vary significantly in capability. Three factors tend to separate the best from the rest.
Connected cross-channel strategies. Look for a network that can reach consumers offsite as well as onsite, ideally without reliance on third-party cookies.
Data collaboration. Can the network facilitate first-party data activation and measurement in a controlled, privacy-safe environment? GDPR compliance is a baseline requirement in European markets, but the quality of consent capture and data matching varies considerably between providers.
A unified experience. Fragmented technology stacks create inefficiencies for retailers and a poor experience for shoppers. When multiple technology providers are powering a single retail media network, the lack of coordination shows in data loss, inconsistent measurement, and slower campaign execution.
A unified platform, one that handles identity resolution, ad serving, activation, and measurement without handing off between vendors, avoids these compounding inefficiencies from the outset.
Epsilon's retail media platform delivers end-to-end managed service across onsite and offsite channels, underpinned by COREid, our proprietary identity resolution technology. COREid tracks the same person across app, web, and in-store touchpoints, enabling retailers to reach a more complete shopper audience from day one, including infrequent shoppers, in-store-only buyers, and shared-device households that most networks miss entirely.
Our integrated approach means retailers and brands are not stitching together multiple providers. Identity, ad serving, activation, and measurement sit within a single platform, reducing data loss, improving match rates, and connecting every impression back to actual purchase outcomes.
If you want to explore what that looks like for your retail media strategy, get in touch with our EMEA team.
