Offsite media retail represents a growing opportunity for advertisers and retail media networks (RMNs), as outlined in a session during EMARKETER's Commerce Media Trends Summit last week.

• US offsite retail media ad spending will reach $17.05 billion in 2026, up 29.5% YoY, EMARKETER forecasts.

RMNs have a role in helping improve potential roadblocks for advertisers, according to experts. Addressing these issues can help advertisers run more effective campaigns through offsite channels as demand increases.

Onsite ad density

Advertisers are flocking to offsite channels because traditional onsite channels are getting crowded, industry leaders say.Last year, ad density was up 50% on key apparel channels, according to Jason O’Toole, head of connected commerce and media for Gildan.

As commerce media matures, brands have to get more creative about reaching customers on relevant, meaningful channels. Ad costs in CPAs were up double-digit percentages in some cases for Gildan, according to O’Toole.

“There's less reliance than ever on organic placement…to achieve your [point-of-sale] growth results,” said O’Toole. “So it's naturally going to push advertisers offline to find more affordable inventory and ways to essentially skip the line of search results pages to get the consumer directly to [product display pages].”

Difficulty connecting the dots

Advertisers facing higher ad density and costs onsite depend more on measurement to prove that ads are influencing sales and to ensure a cohesive campaign.

“Historically, we've always used panels and modeled out data to target customers offsite,” said Bayer’s paid media and retail senior lead Ryan Verklin, at the EMARKETER summit. “And with the rise of offsite retail media, with all the retailers having access to that deterministic retailer data, that one-to-one, or you know, they're buying your brand, they've bought your category before, is kind of the holy grail to companies that don't own that point of sales data.”

To make measurement for offsite campaigns work better for brands, RMNs should be open to ways for brands to use their own methodologies.

“Recently at Bayer, we've been making some progress working with the retail media networks and allowing us to use our [multi-touch attribution] measurement that we use for the rest of our national media on our offsite retail media campaign, so we can have an apples-to-apples comparison, which is great,” said Verklin.

Aligning goals with offsite ad placement

Offsite retail media can include connected TV (CTV), social and other digital channels, meaning that advertisers have a broad canvas to execute campaigns. It helps to have clear goals for each offsite channel so advertisers and retail media partners can measure success.

“Offsite is meant to accomplish a couple different things,” O’Toole said. “There are brand-building strategies, and then there are also commercial outcome strategies.”

He added: “[Offsite media] is challenging brands who have a traditional mindset of only creating assets for a certain period of time, or a certain number of assets for a calendar year. And so I think that's caused a lot of operational complexities within the walls of brands.”

The top challenge Verklin named was integrating offsite retail media with national campaigns.

“Because you are buying the same inventory, and depending on the retailer, depending on the brand, there is a lot of audience overlap between both buys. So, making sure your retail media dollars are the most efficient is a big challenge,” he said.

Watch the full session.

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