Establishing a dedicated retail media team and setting a revenue target gives the business focus and accountability. Making that target achievable requires a sales model that connects responsibility for revenue with access to suppliers and authority over commercial terms. In our work, category teams can control the supplier negotiation, including the final price of media products, while retail media remains accountable for the resulting sales. Leaders need to establish how the two teams sell, make decisions and measure success together from the outset.
Access to the negotiation comes with dependencies
Selling through category has a clear rationale. Category teams hold established supplier relationships and can bring retail media into a wider commercial discussion. For a developing media business, that provides access and support that would take time to build independently.
One situation from our work illustrates the tension. Retail media forms a small part of the annual supplier negotiation, and the media team has very limited involvement in the dialogue. It can set prices for its products, but category can override those prices and offer discounts as part of the wider agreement. Retail media has no influence over the timing of the negotiation, yet is credited with the media sales that emerge from it.
The same arrangement that gives retail media access to suppliers therefore limits its negotiating authority. A revenue target sits with one team, while another can change the terms that determine the revenue realised. Crediting the sale to retail media does not resolve that mismatch.
Category may have good reasons to make a concession that benefits the overall supplier agreement. The question is how that choice is made, whose judgement informs it and how its consequences are reflected in the teams’ objectives.
Build the sales alliance around an explicit mandate
The operating model for sales should define how category and retail media develop the supplier opportunity together. Category brings the wider commercial relationship; retail media brings expertise in the media proposition and its value to the advertiser. Leaders need to specify when that expertise enters the conversation and which decisions require both teams.
This does not require retail media to attend every annual negotiation. It does require an agreed role in preparing the media offer, a route into relevant supplier discussions and clarity on who can commit to commercial terms. Where timing remains with category, both teams need to plan the media opportunity before the negotiation is already under way.
Pricing authority must also be explicit. Setting a price provides limited control if another team can discount it without an agreed mandate. A workable model could give category discretion within defined limits, with joint approval beyond them and a clear escalation route when the wider agreement justifies an exception.
That preserves room to negotiate the total deal while making the media trade-off a deliberate decision.
Shared measures must reflect shared decisions
Shared key performance indicators should make developing retail media a recognised part of the joint sales effort. Simply recording media revenue against the retail media team leaves unanswered how category is accountable for supporting that revenue and influencing its final value.
One approach is to give category and retail media a joint media sales objective for agreed suppliers, alongside a measure of the overall commercial value of those relationships. The design must recognise both the media opportunity and the rationale for broader concessions. Otherwise, teams may share a target while still disagreeing about what constitutes a good deal.
When a media discount is approved to secure value elsewhere in the agreement, its effect should be visible in the joint commercial review. Leaders can then distinguish media sales performance from an agreed concession made for the retailer’s wider benefit. Neither automatic protection of media revenue nor unrestricted discounting provides that discipline.
Designing the organisation to deliver the ambition starts when the sales target is set. Leaders must also settle how supplier access, negotiating authority and performance measures fit together. The difficult commitment is to make category’s influence over media sales explicit in its responsibilities, while giving retail media a defined voice in decisions about the wider deal. That is the foundation for a sales alliance capable of supporting the ambition.