Solving the Retail Media Relationship Issue

It happens multiple times an hour: A shopper scans her loyalty card at checkout and a screen shows her a discount for something she bought last week, not what she's holding now. The data was personalized, but the relevance was not.

That gap is the one retailers have been battling for decades because personalization in advertising is multidimensional. Does the media fit the moment like a grocery ad in a recipe app? Does it reflect what someone has actually done, like a category affinity, browsing or past purchase? Is it applying intent or signals of what someone is about to do next? How about checking the local weather or traffic? Retailers can check every one of these boxes and still lose.

Personalization is a mechanism, but relevance is driving the outcome. In the world of commerce media, getting the transaction some of the time isn’t enough. The retailer truly wins when it crafts a shopping experience that creates consistent purchases by establishing a relationship with its customer that goes beyond a standard personalized ad.

Bridging the Personalization to Relevance Gap

Finding where personalization and relevance meet is where marketers can unlock valuable outcomes. The key is a positive outcome for all three stakeholders: the brand, the merchant and the shopper. An ad that's contextually perfect but doesn't move someone toward a purchase, a click, or a meaningful brand impression becomes irrelevant because it failed to connect all three players. Each of these stakeholders owns a piece of the media moment and each of them contribute a building block of that relevance.

To better find that bridge, retailers and merchants must think like a shopper by asking themselves, "How well does this experience match the shopper’s needs and recent actions?", “Does this respect the moment they're in?” and "What did that match actually produce?". The answers to these questions lay in assessing shoppers’ signals and intent continually as they move throughout the day and week interacting with the brand in various forms, following the shopper’s pulse.

Understanding said pulse shows a care for relevant experiences that in turn pay off for those same three stakeholders because they’ve weaved in personalization at every step. It’s where conversion rates, incremental lift, basket size, and repeat purchases become the scoreboard.

Personalization is a Mechanism, Not a Metric

The real goal for retailers should be a better experience, not just better numbers. Chasing outcomes, without care for the shopper’s actual time or values, erodes affinity and trust among the brand, merchant and shopper.

The best media experiences treat personalization as a value-add stitched into someone's day: a timely reminder, a genuinely useful comparison, a discovery they didn't know they wanted. Ads should be described as enlightening rather than intrusive and insightful rather than repetitive.

This care reframes media from an interruption into a small moment of utility on any and every platform with seamless connection.

Put together correctly, personalization and relevance aren't in tension, they're balanced and complementary across the stakeholders. Personalization earns its keep through relevance, and performance is sustained when personalization respects the shopper enough to add real value to their day.

Retail media players that can do both well will drive outcomes while enriching an experience. This relationship is where that bridge becomes secure enough to support growth without buckling: trust is intact, great moments are experienced and desired performance outcomes are achieved.

Kerri Bailey is advisor and head of partnerships, in-store at Fluent, a commerce media platform.