At iPX26 in Austin, impact.com CEO Dave Yovanno declared retail media the third pillar of performance marketing alongside search and social. This designation changes what a performance-led media strategy for retail partnerships has to look like.
By 2028, retail media is projected to represent nearly one in four ad dollars in the U.S., reaching $129.93 billion in spend according to eMarketer’s 2026 Retail Media Guide.
For most brands, the response to that growth has been to fund it separately—in paid media, in ecommerce, in shopper marketing—while the partnership program runs its own playbook. The result is two marketing programs funding the same customer journey, with neither one able to see the full path.
The brands most exposed to that cost are those where the partnership team is the natural lead for retail media and doesn’t yet know it.
The org design question—who should own retail media—hasn’t been settled at most enterprise brands. The partnership team is best-positioned to win that answer, and the team that doesn’t is cut out of the fastest-growing channel in the stack. The question is whether you’ll make the case before paid media or ecommerce does it first.
- Retail media closes the loop other partnership channels can’t
- Why your partnership program is the right home for retail media
- What a performance-led retail partnerships strategy looks like in practice
- 3 ways to make the case for partnership ownership of retail media
- Your partnership program is built for retail media. Now claim it.
Retail media closes the loop other partnership channels can’t
Amazon built the model for what retail media can become. The company is expected to generate $82 billion in ad revenue in 2026, according to eMarketer’s “Behind the Numbers” podcast—placing it alongside Meta and Google in the top three global ad businesses by revenue.
The retail media model works because of proximity: it reaches buyers at the moment they’re making a purchase, typically driving conversion rates higher than traditional search or social.
Yovanno put it this way: “Retailers are no longer just retailers. They’re also publishers. They’re media companies. Every shelf is a placement. Every surface is shoppable. The place where people buy has now become the place where people are influenced.”
“Retailers are no longer just retailers. They’re also publishers. They’re media companies. Every shelf is a placement. Every surface is shoppable. The place where people buy has now become the place where people are influenced.”
– Dave Yovanno, CEO of impact.com
Buyers have already followed retailers into that role. At iPX26’s “From D2C to Retail: Expanding performance partnerships everywhere customers shop” panel, Tim Hemingway, Seth Hagerty, and Justin Hayashi sat down together to talk through exactly this.
Hemingway, Senior VP of Commerce at Havas Media, said, “When they’re looking to buy a product specifically, consumers are going to retail websites and looking there before they’re going to search engines. We need to be there, meeting the customer where they want to shop.”
Closed-loop measurement gives retail media a data advantage no other channel can match at the point of purchase. The retailer sees the impression, the click, and the purchase in a single place, turning attribution from a contested estimate into a defensible fact.
“When they’re looking to buy a product specifically, consumers are going to retail websites and looking there before they’re going to search engines. We need to be there, meeting the customer where they want to shop.”
– Tim Hemingway, Senior VP of Commerce at Havas Media
Why your partnership program is the right home for retail media
Retail media most often sits in paid/digital media, ecommerce, or shopper and trade teams today—not in affiliate. At most enterprise brands, it’s already gravitating toward digital media and ecommerce.
Yet the partnership team already operates on the mechanics retail media run on: performance-based commissioning, co-op structures, retailer relationships, and partner-level attribution. “This group has deep expertise that is hyper relevant outside of a DTC use case,” says Hayashi, CEO of New Engen.
The problem is that retail media is a blind spot for this team. Paid media claims it by default because they think to ask, and partnership managers lose because they don’t recognize their own mechanics in action.
Brands that fail to see the alignment between partnership and retail media programs pay a direct cost for it. A creator driving traffic to a Best Buy product page and an affiliate linking to a Walmart listing are part of the same customer journey as on-site retail media—but brands running those programs separately are cutting two checks for one sale, a commission and a media fee, and crediting neither correctly.
“Two budgets, two teams, two attribution models, zero connection between them… When the rails connect, momentum compounds. When they don’t, you lose momentum between the turns and your competitors pass you on the next climb.”
– Dave Yovanno, CEO of impact.com
What a performance-led retail media partnerships strategy looks like in practice
For partnership managers moving from interest to execution, here’s what the practitioners who’ve already shipped these programs are actually doing.
Bundling budgets instead of carving out new ones
Requests for a budget line almost always stall—partnership managers know the conversation well. Hemingway has navigated it enough times with clients to know what framing gets approved.
“Once we bundle [creators or affiliates] with part of the client’s retail media program, then we’re not asking for a separate creator or affiliate budget—we’re just saying, ‘hey, we want to expand this program,’” said Hemingway, “We just kind of package it together. That’s really where we’ve seen the most success.”
The bundling approach also gives partnership teams a more precise deployment of retail media budget.
Hemingway described using creator campaigns to drive traffic to products in specific channels where the retailer needed volume—rather than spreading the entire budget across category-level placements. It’s a more efficient use of the same spend.
“We’re not asking for a separate creator or affiliate budget…. We just kind of package it together. That’s really where we’ve seen the most success.”
– Tim Hemingway, SVP of Commerce at Havas Media
Speaking to the metrics vendors actually care about
Hagerty has led performance marketing at Best Buy for 11 years—long enough to know exactly what the brands funding those programs expect. “Vendors are very sophisticated. They want incrementality. They want performance. They want to focus on their SKUs. They want innovation,” he says.
Incrementality, performance, and SKU-level focus are partnership metrics—the tools the affiliate team already handles and the media buyer’s playbook doesn’t include. Traditional media buyers don’t speak to them.
| Channel results | Traditional media buy | Partnership program |
| Impressions, reach, share of voice | ✓ | — |
| Incrementality measurement | — | ✓ |
| SKU-level performance tracking | — | ✓ |
| Commission-funded accountability | — | ✓ |
Moving faster than the org can reorganize
The org design question isn’t just internal—competitors are answering it too. Every quarter a brand spends debating who owns retail media is a quarter a competitor spends getting access to a productive, fast-growing channel first.
“The world of retail media, partnerships, affiliate, creator is shifting much faster than the org design can actually change. More agile, earlier-stage companies are mobilizing against retail creator partnerships much faster,” says Hayashi.
Enterprise brands face more friction: shopper teams, retail teams, brand-level budgets, and retailer-level budgets all running in separate silos. The brands that move first inside those structures are building advantages that won’t be easy to replicate quickly.
For larger brands, the path forward is staging the expansion in phases—each one producing the proof that justifies the next ask, rather than requesting the full build at once.
According to Hagerty, Best Buy spent a year establishing its creator storefront program before moving into retail media, using that foundation of vendor relationships and performance data to make the expansion a natural extension of their program rather than a new ask.
“The world of retail media, partnerships, affiliate, creator is shifting much faster than the org design can actually change. More agile, earlier-stage companies are mobilizing against retail creator partnerships much faster.”
– Justin Hayashi, CEO of New Engen
3 ways to make the case for partnership ownership of retail media
Landing the strategic argument inside your org requires different language for different leadership audiences. Here’s how to translate it.
1. Reframe the question leadership is asking
Leadership is probably framing it wrong: “Should retail media be in our partnership budget?” That frame makes the ask sound like a budget expansion—and those are easy to defer.
The stronger internal argument repositions the question. The ask is actually already funded because the team runs the mechanics retail media requires:
- Performance-based commissioning
- Co-op structures
- Retailer relationship management
- Partner-level attribution
If leadership hasn’t raised the question yet, surface it before paid media or ecommerce does. Ownership questions often get answered by default. Whoever claims it first shapes the structure.
2. Work through the org design friction
At large companies, retail, shopper, and partnership teams are operating separately, even as retail media, affiliate, and creator programs converge in practice. A full reorg isn’t realistic. Moving headcount and budget across retail, shopper, and partnership teams means multiple VPs signing off on a plan that takes quarters to execute—all for a channel still proving its case.
The structure that works, Hayashi said: “Set up SWAT teams or cross-functional meetups to provide best-in-class expertise. I’m a huge fan of matrix and not letting bureaucracy and rigid lines bog you down from doing what’s right.”
| Team | What they bring |
| Partnership team | Attribution systems, performance-based commissioning, partner measurement |
| Retail team | Retailer account relationships, vendor co-op budget |
A meeting cadence and a shared goal are enough to start—no reorg required. It’s also how the partnership team maintains its ownership claim while the org design catches up.
3. Lead with the performance data leadership maps to revenue
The metrics retail media produces—incrementality, SKU-level attribution, and point-of-purchase conversion—directly connect to revenue. Leadership trusts them because they trace back to actual transactions instead of modeled estimates. The partnership team needs to demonstrate it can produce those metrics.
At Best Buy, Hagerty starts with a shared forecast—what merchants and vendor brands expect to sell online and in-store. “I have a rough idea of what the contribution from our partnership marketing should be, then try to push the envelope on that and increase that share. Tying it to a business forecast and working backward is the way to talk about what your share of the budget should be,” he said.
A forecast tied to retailer revenue targets, vendor SKU objectives, and incrementality data doesn’t require anyone to accept the org-design argument on faith. The numbers persuade where the org chart argument can’t.
“Tying it to a business forecast and working backward is the way to talk about what your share of the budget should be.”
– Seth Hagerty, Senior Director of Performance Marketing at Best Buy
Your partnership program is built for retail media. Now claim it.
The brands that connect retail media to their partnership program stop paying for the same customer journey twice. The ones that don’t will keep funding two programs that can’t see each other—and crediting neither correctly.
Retail media ownership is an open question at most enterprise brands today. Once it settles in paid media or ecommerce by default, moving it requires a political effort most partnership teams won’t win after the fact. The brands building the connection now won’t have that problem.
The early movers are building retailer relationships, measurement systems, and vendor partner trust—and by the time latecomers recognize the gap, those advantages won’t be for sale.
Interested in learning more about retail media? Check out these articles:
- Retail media marketing: A guide to optimizing your ROI (blog)
- How top brands boost sales with retail media networks: 5 key benefits revealed (blog)
- Content creators and retail media: a new opportunity for brands to drive growth at retail (blog)
FAQS
Partnership teams are better positioned to own retail media than media buying teams because they already operate on the mechanics retail media requires: performance-based commissioning, co-op budget structures, retailer relationship management, and partner-level attribution.
Media buyers can execute placements, but they don’t have the systems to measure incrementality or manage SKU-level performance—which is what sophisticated retail vendors now expect.
The most practical path at enterprise brands is to establish a cross-functional structure that brings partnership expertise to the retailer account relationships retail teams already own.
Affiliate marketing pays partners—creators, publishers, cashback sites—for driving a sale, usually through a tracking link. Retail media is advertising sold directly by a retailer on its own inventory, with closed-loop attribution because the retailer controls both the placement and the purchase data.
The distinction matters for ownership: both run on the same commissioning, co-op, and attribution mechanics, which is why the partnership team can manage retail media without building a new capability.
The business case for adding retail media to a partnership program starts with a forecast, not a budget request. Tie the opportunity to what merchants and vendor brands already expect to sell online and in-store, then show the partnership team’s projected contribution against that number.
Seth Hagerty, Senior Director of Performance Marketing at Best Buy, uses this approach: “Tying it to a business forecast and working backward is the way to talk about what your share of the budget should be.”
Framing the ask around forecasted revenue—not a new budget line—makes the case about the outcome partnership teams already deliver, not a request for more headcount or spend.
