By Leah Logan, Vice President, Retail Media Transformation
Retail media is built on measurement—but not all metrics drive the outcomes brands actually need. As investment grows, so does the pressure to prove performance, and too often that performance is reduced to a single number: ROAS.
In Episode 2 of Retail Media Confessions, Andrew Lipsman (Founder & Chief Analyst at Media, Ads + Commerce), Matt Fanatazier (Vice President of Data Partnerships at Tradedesk), and I dig into one of the industry’s most persistent challenges: the overreliance on ROAS as a primary KPI. While it’s widely used to gauge efficiency, it often masks what really matters—incremental growth—and can unintentionally steer investment toward tactics that look good on paper but fail to deliver meaningful impact.
In Episode 2 of Retail Media Confessions, we unpacked why the industry’s go-to KPI may actually be holding brands back from driving real growth.
The Problem with ROAS
ROAS is easy to measure and easy to report. But it often rewards the wrong behaviors.
When teams are optimized against ROAS alone, investment tends to flow toward tactics like branded search and retargeting—strategies that capture existing demand rather than create new demand.
The result? Campaigns that look efficient on paper but fail to drive incremental impact.
It’s Not Just a Metric—It’s an Incentive Issue
This challenge runs deeper than measurement.
Brands, agencies, and partners are all operating within systems that prioritize cost efficiency. From procurement pressure to highly prescriptive RFPs, decisions are often made based on CPMs and guaranteed outputs—not business outcomes.
By the time campaigns go live, strategy has taken a back seat to execution.
What Should Change
If the goal of retail media is growth, then incrementality—not efficiency—should guide decision-making.
That means:
- Aligning on outcomes (new customers, frequency, basket size) upfront
- Allowing flexibility in how media plans are built and optimized
- Shifting accountability from hitting metrics to driving impact
It also means getting comfortable with an uncomfortable truth: Driving incrementality may lower your ROAS.
A Better Way Forward
Instead of asking, "How do we improve ROAS?" Brands should be asking, "Are we driving real growth?"
Because the most efficient plan isn’t always the most effective one. And in retail media, effectiveness is what actually moves the business forward.
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