By Sean Crawford, Managing Director, SMG North America
It’s the buzzword dominating retail media conversations right now. Everyone is talking about orchestration. Yet few retailers have successfully connected media, merchandising and measurement into a truly unified operating mode. In a market that prides itself on retail innovation at scale, the US.
And yet orchestration will define the next era of retail media in North America.
At its core, orchestration is about connecting the dots across an entire media ecosystem. Done properly, it allows retailers and brands to plan campaigns more intelligently from the outset, activate media across every touchpoint simultaneously, optimize campaigns in real time and measure outcomes holistically instead of channel by channel.
In the UK & Europe, retailers across grocery, drug, beauty, department store and even quick commerce are already moving towards building a single source of truth for campaign performance across channels, connecting digital media, in-store environments, merchandising and customer behavior into one coherent commercial system. The result is stronger proof of effectiveness, which in turn drives greater brand investment, and enables further infrastructure development.
In North America, however, most retailers remain structurally siloed, hampering progress.
That matters because without orchestration retail media risks becoming increasingly fragmented and overdependent on a narrow set of revenue streams.
The structural problem at the heart of US retail media
Most US retail media networks (RMNs) were built as digital-first enterprises. Sponsored search became the growth engine, ecommerce teams drove investment, and retail media divisions evolved rapidly around digital performance metrics.
Meanwhile, the physical store, where roughly 80% of retail transactions still occur, remained under separate leadership structures, typically tied to merchandising and buying functions with entirely different KPIs, systems and incentives.
The result is fragmentation at every level.
A shopper might receive a highly targeted digital campaign promoting one brand while walking into a store saturated with signage, displays and promotions for its direct competitor. The retail media team may have no visibility into what is happening in-store while merchandising teams often lack insight into the digital campaigns running simultaneously. Both functions optimize toward their own objectives, but the customer experience remains disconnected.
The issue extends beyond campaign execution.There’s a disconnect between the retail media teams, the merchandizing organizations, the retail marketing teams, the store operations teams. In fact, many large US grocers still cannot accurately quantify their total commercial relationship with a major brand partner because revenue is fragmented across buying teams, experiential activations, trade marketing, ecommerce media and RMNs.
There is no unified measurement framework. No consolidated revenue view. No single source of truth. As retail media matures, this becomes increasingly difficult to sustain.
What orchestration actually looks like
The first step for retailers is rethinking how they define retail media altogether, moving beyond channels and formats to create a unified orchestration layer across the entire media ecosystem.
This orchestration layer brings together:
- Media inventory across digital and in-store channels.
- Data sources including loyalty, POS and shopper behavior.
- APIs and technology integrations.
- Measurement and reporting systems.
Whether a retailer works with Criteo, Meta, The Trade Desk or Yahoo, orchestration creates a live, unified view of campaign performance across both digital and physical
environments.
Importantly, the buying platforms themselves still sit outside the system. Walled gardens remain walled gardens. Retailers continue to control their own first-party data and approval processes.
That point is critical because retailers do not want to lose ownership of their commercial relationships or data infrastructure. Effective orchestration preserves that control while removing the fragmentation underneath it.
The goal is a single point of entry for advertisers. A system where brands can plan, activate and measure campaigns across the entire retail environment, from on-site and off-site to in-store experiences, in real-time.
Spend can be shifted dynamically based on live performance. Creative can adapt faster. Measurement becomes continuous rather than retrospective. And when that system works properly, it creates a flywheel effect.
Retailers plan better. Campaigns perform better. Measurement becomes more accurate. Brands gain greater confidence in effectiveness. More advertising dollars flow into the ecosystem because advertisers can finally see what is working and optimize faster.
In effect, orchestration allows physical retail media to operate with the same responsiveness and intelligence marketers already expect from digital advertising.
Why AI could accelerate the shift
Artificial intelligence may become the catalyst that forces orchestration from ambition into necessity.
As agentic AI reshapes commerce discovery and automates more shopping behavior, retailers will likely be forced to think more holistically about omnichannel customer journeys and diversify revenue streams beyond sponsored product advertising.
AI is already accelerating the operational side of this transition. Reporting that once took weeks can happen in seconds, while AI-powered recommendations can help retailers optimize campaigns more quickly.
While fully autonomous campaign management remains a long way off, AI is already speeding up the case for orchestration dramatically.Those that have already invested in orchestration will be better positioned to adapt.
The first mover movement
Retail media leaders are now asking tougher questions:
- How do we continue scaling?
- How do we diversify revenue?
- How do we prove effectiveness more convincingly?
- How do we protect existing sponsored product income while building future-ready infrastructure?
Increasingly those questions lead back to orchestration.
Retail media has always been highly competitive and highly reactive. The first retailer capable of demonstrating a materially superior revenue model through orchestration, one that genuinely connects digital media, stores, merchandising and measurement into one commercial engine, could trigger a domino effect across the market.
For years, retail media’s growth story has been built on expansion: more networks, more inventory, more sponsored search.
The next era will be built on delivering connected customer experiences. It’s time to break down historical silos and champion integration.
