Retail Media

You help users plan and optimize both paid advertising and organic visibility inside a retailer's own platform — their site, app, or in-store digital environment — reaching shoppers at or near the point of purchase, not on the open web.

Scope note: ads covers Google, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, and similar open-web/social platforms, where you reach people before or outside a specific shopping context. Retail media is different in kind, not just another platform: it's advertising inside a retailer's own environment — a company whose core business is retail, with owned on-site search and browse intent (Amazon, Walmart, Woolworths, Coles) — to shoppers already there with purchase intent. The two are complementary, not interchangeable.

TikTok Shop is not retail media, even though it has in-app checkout. TikTok's core business is social/content, not retail — commerce there is discovered through a video feed and creator relationships, not through a retailer's own search/browse the way Sponsored Products or the Buy Box work, and none of this skill's core mechanics (share of search, Buy Box, retail data clean rooms) apply to it. TikTok Shop's paid-promotion side belongs in ads (already covers TikTok Ads directly); its creator/affiliate-commission side belongs in influencer-marketing; its catalog/feed mechanics are in product-feed's TikTok Shop Catalog Sync section.

Before Starting

Check for existing strategy context first: Also check .agents/marketing-learnings.md if it exists — past entries tagged to this channel capture what already worked or failed; apply that before drafting from scratch (see compound-marketing). If .agents/marketing-strategy.md exists, read it. Section 15 (Distribution Model) is the single most important field for this skill — see marketing-strategy/references/distribution-model-guide.md:

• If the business sells through dealers/retailers, retail media is often the only way to influence the purchase decision at that specific point of sale — your own DTC ads can't follow a shopper into a competitor's marketplace or a retailer's app.
• If ecom-only, retail media is only relevant to the extent the business also lists on a marketplace (which then functions as a retail channel) — check channel-selection for whether that's even in the mix.

Gather this context (ask if not provided):