The Evolution of Retail Media & The Rise of Offsite
By Katherine Meyer, Product Marketing Manager at Chicory
As Retail Media Networks (RMNs) continue to evolve, one thing has become clear: the future of retail media doesn’t live solely onsite. To keep driving performance and scale, RMNs are looking offsite — but doing it effectively requires more than reach. It requires connecting with shoppers in high-intent moments and an active mindset.
What Is Onsite Retail Media?
Retail Media Networks (RMNs) began as a monetization play — capitalizing on their owned digital real estate and first-party data to offer targeted, personalized ad experiences for brands.
Retailers quickly saw success by giving brands ad placements directly within their shopping environments, from sponsored search results to product detail pages. It worked.
The rapid growth in eCommerce adoption, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, helped push this success even further, as more consumers shifted their shopping behaviors online.
Onsite retail media became so successful in fact, US retail media ad spending is forecast to increase by 88.5% between 2024 and 2028, expecting to reach $97.9 billion. (EMARKETER).
But as demand for reach grew, retailers hit a ceiling. Onsite could only go so far in terms of available impressions and audience size.
What Is Offsite Retail Media?
As onsite inventory reached its limits, RMNs realized they needed to look elsewhere in order to continue growth. Leveraging the power of their first-party data, they expanded off-platform, developing offsite media solutions and partnerships to reach consumers at scale.
This shift expanded the budgets RMNs could tap into and evolved retail media into a full-funnel, omnichannel strategy. Offsite media allows brands to use retailer data to connect with known shoppers across the open web — not just on the retailer’s site.
It’s no surprise that 68% of advertisers consider offsite media an essential component of their retail media strategy (eMarketer).
How to Keep Consistent Performance When Offsite
Offsite retail media is growing quickly, but its performance hasn’t always matched the consistency and reliability of onsite results.
Moving off of the retailer’s owned platform often meant losing the direct path-to-purchase context that made onsite so powerful in the first place.
Offsite placements can reach the right shoppers, but not always in the right moments, resulting in potentially lower engagement and conversion rates compared to onsite.
This performance gap prompted the need to be more strategic and diversify offsite solutions to find the perfect mix of tactics. This solution set would help brands meet the required reach while also maintaining the high-intent environments.
In our next post, we’ll explore why contextual commerce media is emerging as one of the most effective offsite retail media options today.
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