This month’s stories reflect a new mood in retail media, less fanfare, more focus. The experimentation phase is over. Now it’s about operationalising what works, building fit for purpose networks, and navigating a growing web of complexity: AI-powered journeys, localised media nodes, omnichannel touchpoints, self-serve platforms, and now, shifting search behaviours driven by generative AI.

Whether you’re running a national store estate or a tightly defined retail vertical, the same challenges are emerging: how to measure, how to scale, and how to stay contextually relevant when everything’s moving in real-time. With platforms like Google fragmenting discovery, the pressure is on retailers to take control, making products easier to find, content easier to act on, and media more connected to outcomes. This edition takes a clear look at what that shift means in practice.

1. Six disruptions changing retail at speed

In June, Bain & Company published The Future of Retail: Six Disruptions That Could Shape the Next Decade – a timely report spotlighting the structural shifts already reshaping global retail. Here’s how those shifts are landing in the retail media space, and what retailers should be doing now:

Automation replaces operational advantage – core decisions like pricing, promotions and range are increasingly handled by algorithms. Legacy processes no longer differentiate – execution and visibility do.
AI agents displace brand loyalty – as smart assistants make routine purchases, emotional loyalty fades. If a product isn’t optimised for machine discovery, it doesn’t even make the shortlist.
Context beats price – relevance now trumps discounts. Personalised offers, lifecycle timing and localised nudges are redefining what a ‘deal’ looks like.
Retailers act like FMCG brands – own-label innovation, direct-to-consumer plays and content-rich campaigns are turning retailers into brand owners, not just distributors.
Store networks shrink, digital estates grow – physical space becomes showroom or fulfilment hub. Meanwhile, digital surfaces (site, app, DOOH, social) become the dominant retail media estate.
Cross-border media becomes the norm – global retailers are scaling unified retail media platforms, enabling brand partners to activate across markets with consistency and reach.
Together, these shifts mark a power transfer – from operations to influence, from static assets to dynamic media. Retail media isn’t a bolt-on. It’s now the commercial front line for discoverability, relevance and growth.
At id8, we believe the retailers who win next will be those who rewire both mindset and infrastructure. That starts with making media machine-readable. Whether targeting people or bots, clean product feeds, structured metadata and schema-compliant content are now essential. Visibility in AI-driven environments depends on it.
It also means thinking in moments, not channels. Shoppers expect intelligent, well-timed prompts: a loyalty nudge here, a restock reminder there, an in-store trigger that links to last week’s app journey. Media must reflect that rhythm – joining the dots, not repeating them.
And crucially, it requires treating media as a platform, not a by-product. With automation eroding old competitive moats, media becomes one of the last creative levers left. Retailers who treat their digital and physical surfaces as monetisable, brand-worthy spaces – and their teams as publishers – will lead.
We’re already working with clients on modular campaigns that respond to real-life triggers, AI visibility audits for product listings, and playbooks to help own-label teams think like media owners. If that’s a conversation worth having, let’s talk.
Find out more here.

2. Currys powers up omnichannel with store tech

Currys has been quietly reworking its high-street presence, investing in upgraded store formats, digital tools and smarter in-store operations. From a retail media perspective, several moves stand out:
The introduction of digital queuing systems, staff headsets and electronic shelf-edge labels isn’t just about efficiency. These upgrades create real-time, media-ready touchpoints, campaign triggers linked to stock levels, shopper movement or staff interactions.
A 24% increase in online orders completed in-store shows how shoppers are blending channels seamlessly, using physical space for discovery and digital for fulfilment. That flow creates natural retail media handoffs.
Expanding into health, wellness, pet tech and seasonal categories is carving out new attention zones, ideal for branded content, demo units or contextual promotions.
Even security led tech upgrades are enabling media. With headsets and connected shelf tech now standard, there’s scope for geo-triggered ads, guided suggestions and real-time upsell prompts.
Currys isn’t just modernising, it’s building a media-capable retail estate. With shoppers moving fluidly across channels, messaging can now be sequenced across app, email, shelf and signage, aligned to behaviour rather than format.
Each store becomes a localised media node, where promotions respond to stock, demographics or footfall patterns in real time.
Currys is showing what a scaled, media-aware omnichannel estate can look like. For retail media strategists, the lesson is clear, store infrastructure isn’t just operational spend, it’s a media investment. The more digitally enabled the store, the more context-rich, localised and reactive the media opportunity becomes. This isn’t just a Currys story, it’s the direction of travel for any retailer serious about commercialising every layer of the customer experience.
Find our more here.

3. Scaling the Story: Cotswold Outdoor launches Retail Media Network

Cotswold Outdoor, along with sister brands Runners Need and Snow+Rock, has officially launched a retail media network across its 75 UK stores and online platforms. It’s a move that marks a significant shift in how specialist retail is approaching media monetisation.
Unlike many early RMNs that focused purely on digital, Cotswold is going full-spectrum from day one: in-store digital screens, on-site sponsored product listings, off-site campaigns via Meta and YouTube, and a self-serve platform that allows brands to activate across all channels in one go.
This isn't just a box-ticking exercise. The product offering reflects a maturity in the retail media space:
-          Brands can plan, activate and measure omnichannel campaigns through a single interface
-          Off-site activation is baked in, not bolted on
-          Store estate is treated as campaign inventory, not just a distribution channel
It’s also a reminder that retail media is no longer the exclusive territory of grocery giants or ecommerce first players. Specialist, experience led retailers with loyal, high intent audiences now have a media proposition that’s commercially viable, and creatively rich.
The Cotswold launch matters because it reflects a wider pattern we’re seeing across the retail media landscape - retailers with smaller estates and tighter vertical focus are realising that contextual quality often trumps raw scale.
Their audiences are niche but valuable, and the physical environments, flagship stores, brand led experiences, product demo zones, are incredibly well-suited to media formats that go beyond just banners or end caps. And crucially, specialist retailers are less encumbered by legacy ad ops or internal silos, meaning they can build modern, fit for purpose networks with speed and simplicity.
Cotswold’s move is smart, strategic, and signals to the market that retail media isn’t about size, it’s about intent, clarity and execution. Expect more vertical specialists to follow.
Find our more here.

4. Google’s AI shift is driving advertisers toward RMNs

Google’s rollout of AI-generated ‘Overview’ results is beginning to reshape search behaviour, and advertisers are already adjusting. Traditional search journeys are getting shorter, messier, and harder to attribute. Clicks are down, zero-click searches are up, and product discovery is being redirected or bypassed entirely.
This shift is pushing brands to look for alternatives with clearer signals and stronger outcomes. According to eMarketer, 83% of advertisers now plan to hold or increase their retail media spend in 2025, with many citing search disruption as a key driver. RMNs are stepping in to meet the moment.
Retailers have what search is losing: clean intent, real transaction data, and closed-loop reporting. They know when someone’s browsing, buying, reordering or switching.
Advertisers are increasingly treating RMNs as discovery platforms, not just conversion channels. Product visibility, personalisation and performance now need to happen further up the funnel.
That shift comes with new expectations. RMNs are being asked to behave like search engines - serving relevant, structured content in context, surfacing products based on behaviour and need, not just targeting logic.
As generative AI reshapes how people find products, the pressure is on for RMNs to make their environments indexable, navigable and self contained. The goal is to capture demand before it leaks out to someone else’s algorithm.
Retailers will need to invest in cleaner content, stronger categorisation, and media assets designed for both human and machine consumption. It's no longer enough to surface products, you have to make them easy to find and easy to act on.
On-site search, sponsored listings, curated recommendations and real-time inventory are all becoming part of the retail media toolkit, not separate systems, but one discoverability layer.
This isn't just a response to Google, it’s a broader shift in how discovery is happening across platforms.
We see this as a strategic inflection point - RMNs must evolve from ad sales models to intent-led ecosystems. Discovery, personalisation and performance now sit on the same page.
Find our more here.

What links Bain’s macro shifts, Currys’ store-level execution, Cotswold’s vertical media play and Google’s AI-led search shake-up is a shared reality: retail media is no longer a side stream, it’s the current. But that doesn’t mean it’s straightforward. The pressure to be everywhere, personalise everything, own discovery, and measure across fragmented journeys is growing. What we’re seeing now isn’t just evolution, it’s fragmentation, acceleration, and decision-making at speed.

The takeaway? Success isn’t about size or spend, it’s about clarity and control. The retailers pulling ahead are the ones who understand that media isn’t a layer, it’s the architecture. They know what it’s for, where it lives, and how to use it to serve both shopper and brand in real time.

This month’s edition is a snapshot of what that looks like in practice.

Retail Media Radar – June 2025: Strategy, Scale and Search in Motion

Retail Media Radar– May 2025: Data, Direction and Disruption