As budgets consolidate and scrutiny intensifies, retail media networks are being asked to prove their value in the same way that the rest of digital media does.

That shift was on full display at CES, where platform updates from Albertsons, DoorDash, Instacart, and Walmart Connect signaled a deeper evolution underway. Rather than chasing more inventory or novel formats, retail media players are investing in the foundational capabilities that underpin long-term credibility: measurement, data access, and intelligence.

“Today, we're seeing retailers being pushed to measure results more precisely,” said our analyst Sarah Marzano at EMARKETER’s virtual summit on commerce media. “Sustaining growth will require solving for a mounting set of challenges, especially around measurement, reporting and data technology. These are the enablers that will separate those who can scale profitably from those who are still trying to prove their value.”

Inching towards incrementality: Albertsons Media Collective’s new in-store incrementality measurement framework directly addresses one of retail media’s most persistent credibility gaps: Whether in-store media actually drives net-new sales or simply captures demand that already exists.

• By isolating causal lift at the store level, Albertsons is aligning in-store media with the same performance standards marketers expect from digital channels.
• The approach compares similar stores to each other to show what sales would have looked like without advertising, works across different store formats nationwide, and measures performance on both existing and new in-store screens.

In a recent campaign for Mondelēz, Albertsons paired in-store digital screens with high-engagement onsite and offsite media to build awareness and drive conversion among shoppers.

• Using the new incrementality methodology, the in-store activation delivered a $2.41 matched-market iROAS, a 1.5% conversion rate, more than 5.5 million impressions, and a 14% lift in in-store sales across 116 banner locations.
• This is evidence that in-store media, when measured causally, can contribute meaningful incremental value rather than simply capturing demand at the shelf.

Stitching it all together: Commerce intermediaries like DoorDash and Instacart are doubling down on data connectivity, rolling out new tools that give advertisers greater visibility, control, and interoperability across the consumer journey.

DoorDash Ads has rolled out a series of new capabilities for CPG advertisers, including:

• A new audience targeting solution that uses real restaurant ordering behavior to identify consumers with specific food interests
• Expanded retailer targeting for sponsored products that gives CPG brands greater flexibility to reach high-intent retail shoppers and drive channel-specific strategies
• New self-serve dashboards that provide a direct view of brand health and competitive position on DoorDash

Meanwhile, Instacart’s launch of its data hub clean room reinforces how central data interoperability has become.

• The data hub gives marketers deeper visibility into key customer behaviors, including lifetime value, new to brand, and repurchase frequency, while also providing access to Instacart's first-party grocery shopping data.
• Advertisers can also build custom audience segments, analyze behavioral patterns, product affinities, and shopping insights across the Instacart Marketplace, and measure campaign impact with flexible attribution approaches.

The AI-enabled future: Walmart Connect’s updates point to another structural change: AI is becoming the connective tissue of commerce media.

• The retailer is testing ads within its AI shopping agent, Sparky, helping advertisers stay competitive amid evolving search and discovery behaviors.
• 81% of surveyed Walmart customers said they’d used Sparky to check product availability and review product specifications before making a purchase, said the retailer.

In addition, Marty, Walmart’s agentic AI tool helps advertisers build, optimize, and troubleshoot campaigns using plain-language, conversational guidance.

• The tool is currently in beta for Sponsored Search, but broader availability is coming soon, with expanded capabilities planned.
• Early usage shows highly customized adoption, with 97% of queries being unique.

Looking ahead, Walmart Connect envisions AI enabling advertisers to automatically generate and scale creative across channels, optimize campaigns in real time, and evolve measurement from static reporting to predictive, real-time insights.

This was originally featured in the Commerce Media Weekly newsletter. For more marketing insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.