Leadership1 publisher2 min readPublished
Five UK retail media networks count an attributed sale five different ways
ISBA and MediaSense audited five major UK retail media networks and found five definitions of an attributed sale. For marketers choosing among more than 200 networks worldwide, the basic unit of return can change from one network to the next.
The Board Room · Leadership desk
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What happened
- The audit scored the networks against more than 200 criteria and reported significant inconsistencies across their metrics.
- McDonald's and Citi became the latest companies to launch into commerce media last week.
- McDonald's CMO Morgan Flatley told investors the company aims to grow its media network into a $1 billion business, selling access to 70 million daily customers.
- EMARKETER expects global retail media spending to pass $320 billion by 2030, up from about $203 billion this year.
- The IAB in the US and IAB Europe began publishing retail media measurement standards in 2024, but adoption remains patchy.
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Why it matters
- decision By Dunn's account, a marketer on six networks runs six playbooks, so each network added this quarter trades extra reach against results that can be compared.
- exposure Marketers who defend budgets with network-reported sales are trusting the seller to grade its own homework, the position early walled-garden social media buyers were in.
- cost Advertisers buying one audience across banking, ride and grocery apps can pay several times for the same person, while networks have a growth incentive to keep adding ad slots.
- precedent If the sector follows O'Brien's call for a standards body like those in other media, the definition of a sale would be set outside any single network's control.
The board-deck version of retail media is short. A company sells ad space it already owns to suppliers it already deals with, and first-party data near the point of purchase shows whether the ad drove a sale [20]. McDonald's CMO Morgan Flatley gave investors that version last week. "It's an opportunity to generate revenue for the system with little in the way of additional cost, no operational complexity, and no disruption to our customer experience," Flatley said [9]. EMARKETER's forecast implies global spending grows by at least 58% between this year and 2030 [1].
The deck falls short at its last step, which is proving the sale. A sale is the one metric a buyer would expect to be settled. "Money exchanges hands at some point," Clare O'Brien, associate media advisor at ISBA, said [4]. Even so, the five audited networks produced one definition of an attributed sale each [2].
Rob Edwards, head of media and digital at Arla Foods, is blunter about what that means for buyers. "There's a little bit of snake oil," Edwards said [10]. The networks' own pitch is that closed-loop data ties an ad to a purchase [20], and inside one network that may hold. The difficulty starts at the second network. "That makes it hard to plan, compare performance, and scale," Kevin Dunn, chief revenue officer of Experian Marketing Services, said of marketers who work across several [6].
The sellers are under more pressure than the growth forecast suggests. Jeanniey Walden, CMO of the commerce adtech company Fluent, counts fewer than 50 of the 200-plus networks earning enough to mention in earnings reports, which is under a quarter of the field [12][3]. By Walden's count, fewer than five can show a lift to company earnings. That is under 2.5% [4]. "Walk into any room of retail media network leaders, and they will share their stress locking down advertisers who offer both incremental dollars and customers to the network," Walden said [13]. I think that gives large advertisers leverage this quarter. A network that needs committed budgets is poorly placed to refuse a buyer who asks for its sale definition in writing before signing.
A shared standard takes years, going by the IAB's progress since 2024 [16]. The budget decision is due this quarter. A CMO who scales spend now on each network's own definition will take as many baselines as networks into next year's review. The audit sampled five UK networks [2], and nobody yet knows how far the rest of the 200-plus networks diverge [1].
What to watch
- Whether ISBA or another trade body moves to set up the retail media standards body O'Brien called for.
- Whether any of the five audited UK networks publishes or changes its attributed-sale definition after the ISBA/MediaSense findings.
- Whether McDonald's begins reporting its media network revenue separately as it pursues the $1 billion target.