Podcast Summary
Retail media has grown fast. Most brands still treat it as a way to chase ROAS. Tom Limongello sees it from the other side of the table.
He joins Shreshta Joy on Season 2 Episode 12 of the Digital Shelf Insider podcast. Tom is the Co-Founder of Nextipedia and host of The Middlemen Podcast. He has spent two decades working across brands and retailers, starting at Unilever in China and Chicago and later leading digital work with grocery, mass, and dollar chains. In this episode, he shares how retail media is shifting from a pure performance channel into a full-funnel play.
Episode Highlights
02:48 Tom’s background and how retailer brand power dynamics shifted
03:55 From ROAS obsession to full-funnel: how retailers unlock higher brand budgets
07:13 The Kroger blueprint: integrating on-site, off-site, CTV, and in-store measurement
09:00 Fixing the internal friction between trade, media, and merchant teams
13:06 In-store retail media: digital endcaps, sampling, and the jobs creative has to do
17:01 Grocery vs apparel, legacy vs challenger: who’s really collaborating with retailers
19:19 AI-assisted shopping, shopper missions, and the metrics we don’t have yet
Key Themes
The conversation is built around five core ideas:
The Power Shift Has Changed the Rules of the Game
Twenty years ago, brands held the leverage in the retailer relationship. Today, closed-loop measurement has handed that leverage to retailers, and Limongello is clear that this has been both a gift and a trap. The gift is precision at the point of purchase; the trap is that too many brands narrowed their entire retail media view to sponsored search ROAS and stopped funding everything else.
Full-Funnel Retail Media Is Finally Breaking Through
For years, retailer inventory was strong at the lower and mid-funnel and could not credibly reach for higher brand budgets. That is now shifting, and Kroger is a useful case in point. By pulling identity into the retailer stack, connecting TikTok Discovery Commerce to on-site sponsored search, and closing the loop through in-store digital signage and POS data, retailers can finally show brands a single measurable journey from awareness to purchase.
Internal Org Friction Wrecks Retail Media Performance
Merchants optimize for sales velocity, media wants brand reach, and trade wants shelf space, and these goals often collide. Whether retail media reports into the CMO, the CDO, the CFO, or sales changes what gets prioritized and what gets ignored. The org design conversation is slower and less exciting than the tech conversation, but it is where most of the actual upside sits.
In-Store Retail Media Needs a Job Before It Needs a Screen
A digital endcap is entertaining, but the harder question is what job it is meant to do inside the shopper mission. Sam’s Club is a strong example here; by turning sampling into a retail media capability with tablet-based ratings capture, they lifted online ratings from 3.8 to 4.5 in three days. Programmatic remnant thinking imported from digital out-of-home does not translate cleanly to the aisle, and brands that treat in-store as a place to accelerate the commerce journey will get more out of it than those who treat it as more impressions.
AI-Assisted Shopping Is Reshaping the Funnel Faster Than the Metrics Can Catch Up
Instagram now surfaces products relentlessly through retargeting, and ChatGPT is playing the role of a patient, informed doctor for high-consideration and sensitive categories where shoppers cannot easily ask a friend. The combination is compressing the funnel in categories where trust and vetting used to take weeks. The measurement layer to see how these journeys actually convert does not yet exist, and the brands that start mapping it now will define the standard.
Quick Takeaways for Brands
Five things brands can put into motion this quarter:
1. Stop grading retail media on sponsored search ROAS alone.
Sponsored search will always look like the winner because it sits closest to the transaction, but grading every dollar against that benchmark will keep starving your mid- and upper-funnel work. Build a measurement view that credits discovery and consideration alongside conversion.
2. Push for identity to live inside the retailer stack.
The retailers who can send audiences into TikTok, Meta, and CTV while keeping measurement and frequency capping on their own side are the ones unlocking full-funnel budgets. Prioritize partners who are investing in that plumbing, because it is the foundation everything else sits on.
3. Get your trade, media, and merchant teams in the same room.
The most expensive gap in retail media today is internal, not technical. Align these teams on shared commercial goals and shared success metrics before you brief the next campaign, or you will keep paying for friction inside your own org.
4. Give every piece of in-store media a job.
Before you sign off on a digital endcap, a shelf-edge screen, or a sampling program, define exactly what shopper problem it solves and what it is meant to move. If the answer is only “more impressions,” rework the brief until it earns its place in the aisle.
5. Start mapping AI-assisted shopping journeys in your priority categories.
Shoppers are already using ChatGPT to vet products they cannot comfortably discuss with friends, and Instagram is warming demand in parallel. The formal metrics are not here yet, but the brands that begin logging how their category shows up across these surfaces will be the ones writing the playbook when the measurement layer arrives.
Retail media is quietly evolving from a performance channel into an operating model spanning discovery, consideration, aisle, and conversion. Tom Limongello’s view from the retailer side is a useful reset for any brand still running its retail media plan on last year’s assumptions.
Listen to the full Digital Shelf Insider Podcast episode with Tom Limongello on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube to hear how retail media, in-store activation, and AI-assisted shopping are reshaping the commerce journey in 2026 and beyond.
Disclaimer: The content shared in the Digital Shelf Insider Podcast by MetricsCart is for general informational and discussion purposes only. The insights, opinions, and perspectives expressed by hosts and guests are their own and do not constitute professional advice, recommendations, or endorsements by MetricsCart or any affiliated entity.
