Harnessing CDPs and First-Party Data for Retail Media Networks
Last updated June 17, 2025Retail media is no longer just a trend. It’s the new frontline of growth.
Retail media represents the third major wave of digital advertising, building on the earlier successes of search and social media. While search helps users find information and products, and social media leverages influencer marketing and social commerce, retail media utilizes retailers’ first-party data to place ads on their owned properties. This could include owned channels (websites, mobile apps, SMS, digital receipts), in-store or fuel pump displays, and physical touchpoints (end caps, shelf tags).
Retailers and brands are now the center of commerce and attention, evolving from mere distribution points into media platforms. This makes it the next significant step in the evolution of digital advertising.
With worldwide spending projected to reach $150 billion this year and continuing to grow rapidly, the surge in retail media networks (RMN) is driven by a number of factors: heightened consumer expectations for personalization, the limitations of traditional digital advertising, changing privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA, cookie deprecation, and the siloed nature of walled gardens.
To help retailers and brands embrace the benefits of retail media networks, we asked two experts to share their insights on a recent webinar, Retail Media Networks: Driving Revenue with AI, Data, and CDPs:
- Art Sebastian, Founder/CEO of NexChapter, a boutique consulting firm specializing in all things digital, retail media, and customer data. He’s also an executive advisor to Treasure Data.
- Vishal Patel, VP of Strategy at Treasure Data, who has overseen over 100 CDP implementations.
Their key takeaway? Retail media success hinges on robust first-party data. Start now: Prioritize your customer data for retail media networks, ask for help to set your strategy, and don’t get left behind.
Let’s dive deeper into their insights, depending on where you are in your journey:
I’m just getting started with first-party data. How can I improve my readiness for a retail media network?
Retailers and brands face three core technical challenges to retail media network success: fragmented systems, audience blind spots, and measurement gaps.
- Fragmented systems: Customer data is scattered across multiple platforms, making it difficult to access, unify, and act upon.
- Audience blind spots: Retailers often don’t fully know their shoppers, even with loyalty programs, leading to incomplete customer profiles.
- Measurement gaps: Retailers struggle to provide evidence of the impact of advertising investments within their networks.
These challenges are conquerable. If you’re sitting on data, have digital surfaces to monetize, and want to build real partnerships with CPGs, you have what it takes. What you need is a plan, the right customer data platform (CDP), and the initiative to start.
Here’s where to begin:
- Conduct an assessment of your first-party data across loyalty, POS, mobile, and e-commerce
- Audit identity gaps to understand how much of your traffic is addressable
- Define high-value use cases (e.g. fuel-to-store conversion, food attach offers, in-store screen monetization)
- Identify supporting technology requirements such as a CDP built for enterprise scale and agentic intelligence
I have first-party data. Do I need a CDP to launch a RMN?
Retail strategist Art Sebastian gives his perspective on why CDPs and RMNs are a power duo
There’s a trifecta of critical capabilities a CDP provides that help you unlock the most value out of your data for retail media networks.
Identity
Retailers must communicate with all customers. There is immense value in understanding your identified loyal customers on a deeper level, but also the anonymous shoppers transacting with you. Identifying unknown and known customers is essential and impossible without the right technology.
Building a first-party ID spine is crucial for understanding your customers comprehensively. This ultimately leads to significant business impact, specifically higher CPMs. By accurately identifying your audience, brands can precisely target their desired customers on your network.
Without a CDP vs with a CDP
Without a CDP, customer data likely resides in separate systems, unable to communicate. You might be able to go in and stitch together some of it together with SQL queries or IT requests, but that’s time-consuming, hindering campaign execution.
Identity resolution is a foundational capability of a CDP. It unifies disparate customer identifiers (email, credit card, phone, cookies, etc.) to create comprehensive profiles. Best-in-class CDPs deterministically and probabilistically link these for a complete customer view. A CDP provides real-time, updated customer data and segments, enabling immediate, confident campaign launches and targeted advertising, without IT delays.
Activation
Activation gets your data where it’s needed: to the right person, at the right moment, in the right channel. Activation requires creating high-value, real-time segments with up-to-the-minute data and syncing them across all channels.
Without a CDP vs with a CDP
Manual activation across channels is inefficient, resource-intensive, and prone to errors. Without a CDP, you may also run into limitations on activating at scale if you’re dependent on uploading simple lists to platforms like Facebook or Google.
A CDP offers native integrations with a wide array of marketing and advertising channels, accessible with just a few clicks. It connects the full picture, syncing audiences across DSPs, ad networks, and owned media, making it easy to reach customers. A CDP with AI decisioning and real-time personalization also adapts messaging and recommendations instantly based on live data and customer behavior. Ultimately, you’ll see improved click-through and conversion rates, providing real value for advertisers.
Measurement
Fewer advertisers can skate by on impressions alone; they need conversion proof at the SKU level to justify continued investments. According to Bain & Company, only one-third of retail media networks today can report sales at the campaign level – a major gap and opportunity.
Without a CDP vs with a CDP
You don’t want to leave advertisers in the dark. Without a CDP, it’s difficult to prove your network is working for advertisers. This can be due to limited closed-loop attribution across onsite, offsite, and in-store, as well as no consistent metrics or campaign feedback loops.
A CDP enables closed-loop measurement, linking ad exposure to purchases, eliminating guesswork, and proving ad effectiveness. CDPs scale to link vast volumes of impression and transaction data, building advertiser trust through comprehensive reporting. Better insights lead to smarter campaign investments, higher CPMs, and increased ad spend.
Retailers: The time to move is now
Retail media networks are a strategic imperative for retailers and brands seeking their next phase of growth. The chief benefits of retail media networks are their ability to unlock significant new revenue streams by monetizing valuable digital and physical real estate. Networks that succeed will be undergirded by an AI-powered CDP that enables trusted data, smart segmentation and activations, and closed-loop proof.
And remember, when considering a CDP to help power your retail media network, conduct a proof of concept. As Vishal said during the webinar, “Never buy a CDP without kicking the tires first. That’s the best advice I can give for anybody getting into CDP.”
Watch the webinar to get the full set of insights from Art and Vishal.
