Retail Media Should Be Part Of Holistic Brand Strategy: Digitas’ Lanzi

Retail media, for a long time, has been perceived as emerging from non-traditional media budgets.

This perspective is now changing, with funds coming out of more traditional media budgets.

That is according to Amy Lanzi,who, as CEO, Digitas North America, is taking a keen interest in the trend.

The Changing Landscape of Retail Media Budgets

Retail or ecommerce media – in which ecommerce operators carve out ad inventory in their store to sell to brands – is growing fast.

The evolution of retail media has led to various agencies carving out a niche in the sector, and specialist agencies popping up to service brands keen to place ads in ecommerce media.

Lanzi believes in the importance of integrating retail media into a broader agency solution. “My point of view is eventually you need to be able to think holistically across and that it should be part of a broader agency solution,” she says.

“We need to make it easier on our clients and they need us to be simplified.”

Standardization in Retail Media

When asked about the complex and increasingly crowded space of retail media, Lanzi advocates for standardization and measurement. She credits the IAB for leading retail media towards this much-needed structure.

“The retail partners are all in different levels of maturity in terms of their offering,” she says, “There’s a wide variance in what you get.

As everything becomes shoppable and retail media continues to heat up, Lanzi emphasizes the importance of not losing sight of upper-funnel branding.