In this article, "merchant" refers to the buyers and category managers responsible for product assortment, inventory, pricing, and profitability.
A merchant does not think in impressions. They think in inventory.
Every SKU on the shelf is a bet. The merchant placed it months ago, with real dollars, against a forecast. If the bet pays off, the product sells through at full margin. If it does not, the merchant starts giving margin away, and each markdown cuts deeper than the last. The merchant is judged on that scoreboard, and it is unforgiving.
Down the hall, the retail media team is judged on a different scoreboard entirely. Impressions. Clicks. ROAS. Those numbers can look spectacular in a quarter where the merchant's category is drowning in unsold inventory. Two teams, one building, no shared KPI.
This is not just a theory. In a 2025 survey by Bain & Company and EMARKETER, more than a third of retail media leaders said internal alignment was one of the biggest barriers to scaling their retail media network. More than half pointed specifically to friction between retail media and merchandising teams.
Those merchants, buyers, and category managers have been trusted with the retailer’s P&L for a century. Yet many remain unconvinced that retail media has a meaningful connection to the commercial outcomes they're responsible for.
That’s the irony. They want the same thing.
The merchant wants the product to sell through before any price reduction becomes necessary. The retail media network wants to prove its media moves product. Those are the same goals stated in subtly different ways.
When aimed correctly, retail media can and should be an alternative to a markdown. It's just that, historically, there's very little confidence in this tradeoff. A campaign that accelerates a slow SKU protects the margin the merchant was about to give away. That is not a retail media outcome dressed up for the merchant. That is a merchant outcome, delivered by media.
ROAS will happily report a 10x return on a campaign that pushed a product the merchant was going to sell anyway.
Merchants see through it. That's why many have lost confidence that retail media is contributing to the broader business.
The fix is not a better media metric. It is a shared one. Show the merchant, brand by brand, that promoted products are selling through faster than non-promoted products in the same category. That is a sentence a category manager can act on. It asks nothing of the merchant except to look at numbers they already trust. It asks nothing of the retail media team except to be measured on what the retailer actually sells. It asks both to work from the same set of facts. That is the entire idea.
Retail media was supposed to be the thing that connected marketing spend to commercial outcomes. It has not delivered on that yet, because the media side and the merchant side have been working toward different measures of success. Put them on the same scoreboard, and retail media becomes more than an advertising business. It becomes another commercial lever the merchant can use to improve sell-through, protect margin, and grow the category.
Retail media has spent years trying to prove its value to marketers. The next phase of retail media will be won by the platforms that prove their value to merchants. When merchants trust retail media to help them sell more inventory at full price, it stops being an advertising product and becomes part of the retailer's commercial strategy.
At Zitcha, this philosophy sits behind everything we're building, including Margin Manager, which helps retailers connect merchandising priorities, inventory signals, and retail media investment around shared commercial outcomes instead of isolated media metrics. f you're working through any of these challenges, let’s talk.