Retail Media Isn’t Eating Trade. Trade Is Evolving Into Retail Media

Why the future isn’t replacement, but modernisation
Retail media gets the headlines. New networks, new formats, new acronyms. The loudest prediction has been that retail media will “eat” trade budgets. But inside retailers, it feels very different. Trade is absorbing retail media and that might be the best thing that could happen.

Retail media didn’t arrive to wipe out trade. It arrived to modernise it. When retailers connect trade with data, planning, packaging and creative execution, what used to be fragmented activity becomes a commercial engine. Not theory  operations. And this is where platforms like Zitcha come in: not to sell ads, but to give retailers a system for it.

Trade vs Retail Media Was Always the Wrong Question
Historically, trade meant co-op spend, displays, end caps, promo calendars and a dozen spreadsheets. Retail media introduced digital pipes: audiences, attribution, closed-loop reporting.

It’s not trade vs media. It’s endemic vs non-endemic.

• Endemic: suppliers already in your joint business plan
• Non-endemic: brands who value your audience, even if they don’t sell on your shelves
  
  

Retail media doesn’t replace endemic trade it upgrades it. But that only works if retailers can treat it like a product, not a process.

The Unified Front Door: Where Trade Starts Acting Like Media
Most retailers still can’t see everything they have to sell: onsite placements, in-store screens, sampling, email, seasonal displays, search, even the humble shelf wobbler.

If you can’t see it, you can’t package it. If you can’t package it, you can’t price it. If you can’t price it, you can’t scale it.

A unified front door solves that one view of every asset, who owns it, how it’s sold and how it performs. It’s the bridge where merchandising and RMN teams stop competing for budget and start planning together. That’s exactly the kind of operational model platforms like Zitcha were purpose-built to support.

JBPs: The Real Operating System
Joint Business Plans are where supplier budgets live  and where the friction lives too.

When merchandising and retail media operate on different systems, you get:
✔ Double counting
✔ Slow approvals
✔ Missed opportunities

When they share a platform, you can package, price and plan holistically.

For example:

• An unsold end cap can be bundled with in-store video and homepage takeovers
• A category overperforming online can shift spend from static POS to high-impact video — with incrementality proven, not assumed
  
  

This isn’t workflow. It’s commercial orchestration.

The Next Unlock: Creative
Retail media borrowed the pipes from digital advertising. Now it needs the creative mindset.

Think: PDP video, product-level storytelling, dynamic creative powered by product data, and brand-safe templates for in-store screens. In social, creative optimisation drives ROAS. In retail, it will drive conversion only if assets live in a system that can test, track and optimise.

Who Owns It?
Long term, this sits with merchants. They control category strategy, supplier relationships and margin. Retail media isn't a separate empire it’s an evolution of trade.

The retailers who win will run merchandising, media and data teams off a single commercial view of the business.

Not Every Retailer Needs a Network
Below roughly $500M GMV, retail media won’t become a standalone business. But it can modernise trade  automating packaging, pricing and approvals without increasing headcount.

Above that line? A unified front door with JBP integration becomes a profit engine.

The Punchline
Trade isn’t being replaced.

It’s being modernised  packaged, priced and measured like media.

Catalog it. Measure it. Build it like a product, not a process.

Do that, and retail media stops being a side hustle.  It becomes the modern form of trade and that’s exactly what platforms like Zitcha are here to enable.

About the Author
Dominik Elias is a Product Marketing Manager and one of the founding members at Zitcha. With 15+ years in B2B marketing, she loves solving problems and connecting teams which is why Zitcha’s mission to make retail media better for everyone just fits.