Why Retail Media Feels Transactional Instead of Strategic

I came from a world where strategy, creativity, insight, and narrative are the product.

I entered retail media because I saw a chance to apply those skills in a new environment.

What I found instead feels like selling insurance.

That might sound harsh, but it’s not meant to be dismissive. It’s structural.

Retail media doesn’t feel this way by accident. It feels this way because of how it’s being built.

Agencies and media organizations are designed around one core belief:

Value comes from thinking.

Not just execution, but framing problems, interpreting signals, making tradeoffs, and using creativity to unlock leverage. In that world, strategy is the product.

Retail organizations are built around a different logic:

Value comes from control, scale, and predictability.

When retail leaders build media businesses, they don’t ask,

“How do media businesses create value?”

They ask,

“How do we monetize what we already have?”

That single difference explains almost everything.

When monetization is the starting point, you don’t get strategy-first systems.

You get bundles, packages, tiers, rate cards, and predefined offerings.

This is logical.

It is also limiting.

It turns media into a product catalog instead of a problem-solving engine.

That’s why so much of retail media feels transactional instead of strategic.

This isn’t a critique of retail. It’s a mismatch of mental models.

Retail instincts optimize for stability, consistency, and control.

Media instincts optimize for learning, adaptation, and iteration.

Neither is wrong.

They just aren’t interchangeable.

And when retail logic runs a media business, ambiguity feels dangerous.

So it gets designed out.

What’s left looks like media but behaves like retail.

Retail media will be powerful.

It will drive revenue.

It will reshape how brands and retailers work together.

But power doesn’t guarantee depth.

If retail media wants to mature into a true media business, it has to decide:

Is it monetizing inventory?

Or is it creating value?

Those are not the same thing. And the answer determines everything that follows.