Coca-Cola, P&G, Coty, RMS Beauty: Retail Media Must Break Its Silo

Retail media has become one of the fastest-growing segments in advertising, creating billions of dollars in new revenue for retailers and attracting increasing investment from brands. But according to leaders from The Coca-Cola Company, Procter & Gamble, Coty, and RMS Beauty, the industry''s next phase of growth will require a fundamental shift in thinking.

Speaking during "Brands Unfiltered on Retail Media," a panel discussion at Shoptalk Europe 2026 in Barcelona moderated by Colin Lewis of Retail Media.Works, executives agreed that retail media can no longer operate as a standalone marketing channel. Instead, it must become an integrated business capability that connects brand building, commerce, customer insights and long-term growth.

The discussion highlighted a common theme across organisations of very different sizes. Retail media delivers the greatest value when it is planned around consumers rather than channels.

Retail Media Is Becoming a Business Strategy

For Ana Afán, Global Retail Media Director at The Coca-Cola Company, retail media sits at the intersection of brand building and driving transactions.

Rather than viewing retail media as simply a lower-funnel advertising tool, Coca-Cola uses it to influence shoppers across the entire customer journey. That includes onsite retail media, offsite activation powered by retailer first-party data, and in-store experiences that help consumers discover products wherever they choose to shop.

Because Coca-Cola sells across supermarkets, convenience stores, restaurants and foodservice channels, retail media has become one of the few capabilities capable of connecting physical and digital shopper journeys within a single strategy. Afán illustrated this with the FIFA World Cup: for a campaign of that scale, the strategy is to deploy a full-funnel, omnichannel approach anchored on first-party retailer data, converting global buzz into local visibility and in-store availability. For always-on campaigns, the dial shifts entirely, focusing on maintaining visibility and defending position through bottom-of-funnel activity rooted in weekly shopper behaviour.

At RMS Beauty, the approach is equally holistic. Alejandra Tenorio, VP of Digital Marketing & Ecommerce at RMS Beauty, explained that retail media sits within the company''s broader omnichannel growth strategy, supporting retail partners alongside Amazon, TikTok Shop and its direct-to-consumer business.

Instead of evaluating channels in isolation, RMS Beauty measures how every investment contributes to overall business performance, recognising that today''s customer journeys increasingly move across multiple platforms before a purchase is completed.

Breaking Down Silos Is the Next Challenge

Although retail media budgets continue to grow, many organisations still treat retail media as an isolated function.

Rob Manhoudt, VP of Digital Commerce, Europe at Procter & Gamble, said the company deliberately avoids separating retail media from broader commercial planning. Instead, retail media forms part of a single business strategy focused on serving consumers rather than individual departments or media channels.

Manhoudt argued that brands should stop measuring success channel by channel and instead evaluate total business outcomes, allowing retail media to play whatever role is most effective within the wider commercial strategy.

Afán echoed that perspective, explaining that Coca-Cola''s complex operating model requires close coordination between global teams, bottling partners, commercial organisations and agency networks. Without clearly defined responsibilities and shared planning processes, retail media risks becoming disconnected from the wider business. For global organisations, governance has become just as important as technology.

AI Is Changing How Consumers Discover Products

Artificial intelligence emerged as one of the defining themes of the discussion.

Manhoudt believes the biggest disruption facing retail media is not the technology itself, but the way consumers are changing how they discover products. He pointed to figures that make the scale of that shift concrete: in beauty, between 60 and 70% of new product discoveries are now happening through social media rather than retailer websites, whether through macro influencers, micro influencers or affiliates. For higher-consideration categories such as electric toothbrushes or shavers, that discovery journey is moving to large language models, where consumers ask specific questions about their needs and receive a recommendation rather than browsing a product catalogue.

The consequence for retail media is direct. Networks built around sponsored search and onsite display are optimising for a shopper journey that is already changing shape beneath them, and retailers must now create experiences that genuinely help consumers solve problems and discover relevant products. Those that continue prioritising advertising inventory over customer experience risk becoming less relevant as AI adoption accelerates.

Afán added that brands must also rethink how they appear within conversational AI environments, ensuring products remain discoverable while protecting brand integrity and maintaining safe, trusted interactions.

Every Campaign Should Begin With a Clear Business Objective

For Wiktoria Malicka, Global Retail Media Director at Coty, successful retail media starts with defining the objective, not selecting the channel.

Whether the goal is increasing awareness, driving conversion, defending category share or improving customer retention, the campaign objective should determine the role retail media plays within the broader marketing strategy.

As retail media networks expand into connected TV, social media and upper-funnel activation, organisations also need governance structures that ensure marketing, media and commercial teams remain aligned around shared business outcomes.

Better Measurement Starts With Better Questions

Measurement, attribution and incrementality remain some of the most debated topics in retail media.

Tenorio explained that RMS Beauty has spent nearly two years building what the company calls its triangulation method, a measurement framework that combines marketing mix modelling, multi-touch attribution and incrementality analysis.

Rather than relying on a single methodology, the company looks for consistency across multiple models before making investment decisions. Tenorio was candid about what that process reveals: what you think is working often turns out not to be, and what you believe is driving the business forward is frequently more questionable than it appears. The right response, she argued, is not to cut spending but to come together cross-functionally, understand why an investment was made in the first place, and then optimise from there. If the attribution, measurement and incrementality models are all pointing directionally in the same way, even from very different formulas and outputs, the conclusion holds.

The objective is not simply proving return on advertising spend, but understanding how retail media contributes to broader business growth across every revenue channel.

Malicka agreed that incrementality remains one of retail media''s most important but misunderstood concepts. Before attempting to measure incremental sales, organisations must first define what incremental value means for their business. Without that alignment, even sophisticated attribution models risk producing misleading conclusions.

Retail Media''s Future Will Be Built Around Consumers

Despite representing different organisations, the panel reached a remarkably consistent conclusion. Retail media should no longer be viewed as a tactical advertising budget or simply another source of retailer revenue.

Instead, organisations should embed retail media into their broader commercial strategy, align marketing and sales teams around shared objectives, and design campaigns around consumer needs rather than individual channels.

For Coca-Cola, that means integrating retail media across every stage of the customer journey. For Procter & Gamble, it means breaking down organisational silos and evaluating total business performance rather than individual channel metrics. For RMS Beauty, success comes from understanding how every retail media investment contributes to the wider omnichannel ecosystem. For Coty, it begins with establishing clear objectives and strong governance before any campaign goes live.

As artificial intelligence, social commerce and changing shopping behaviours continue to reshape retail, the panel''s message was clear: the future of retail media will not be defined by who sells the most advertising, but by those who create the greatest value for consumers while delivering measurable business outcomes.

Lewis closed the session by asking each panellist for two or three things the audience could act on the following Monday.

Afán said the priority for any organisation is to embed retail media within the total media planning, execution and measurement process. The moment it sits inside the broader ecosystem rather than as a bolt-on, she argued, it stops being a bottom-of-funnel tactic and becomes a genuine growth engine. She added that establishing clear cross-functional roles and responsibilities is equally critical, because the moment all teams speak the same language around objectives and success metrics, retail media stops being a tactical lever and starts functioning as a real driver of growth.

Manhoudt distilled his advice to three words: focus on the consumer, break down silos, and build one unified business plan. Total return on investment across the whole mix, he said, is the only metric worth managing.

Tenorio urged the audience to ask "why" before every investment decision, align cross-functionally around a shared objective, and let that objective determine the channel mix rather than the other way around.

Malicka recommended picking one priority retailer and shifting the conversation from media spend to growth planning: why is this investment an enabler, what does it need to deliver, and how will success be measured. Her second piece of advice was to test at least one campaign using a closed-loop attribution model, following the customer journey from upper-funnel discovery all the way through to conversion. Without testing, she said, it is impossible to build the proof points needed to justify further investment.