Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, was once asked by Sheryl Sandberg whether she should join Facebook as COO. His reply has since become famous: “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on.” Retail media is one of those rocket ships.
It is rare in any career to find yourself working in a sector that is growing quickly, attracting serious investment and changing how an industry operates. That is where retail media is now. This is not a category settling for 1% or 2% growth. In many markets, retail media is growing at double-digit rates and forcing brands, retailers, agencies and technology companies to rethink their whole approach.
Retail media has spent the last few years being explained through formats, channels, ad products, measurement frameworks and budget sources. That’s normal for an industry that is moving from ‘startup’ to ‘scaleup’.
What will bring us to the next level? Normally, we talk about the ‘knowledge gap’ or the ‘skills gap’, but I think that is too narrow a definition.
The gap is not just knowledge or skills, but in mindset. Mindset matters because it shapes behaviour and makes the real difference when everyone has the same knowledge and skills.
With this in mind, I have come up with five principles to create a retail media mindset for anyone working on brand-side or agency-side, for a retail media network or in AdTech.
Principle #1: Build expertise in related disciplines
The best people in retail media are rarely only good at retail media.
Retail media sits inside the wider worlds of marketing, advertising, technology, ecommerce and retail. To succeed in retail media in 2026, you need expertise in adjacent disciplines. Knowing adjacent disciplines makes you sharper, savvier and able to deliver what your organisation wants from you.
What does building expertise in related disciplines mean in practice?
- Understand the laws of brand growth: If you work with brands, you should understand books like How Brands Grow by Professors Byron Sharp and Jenny Romaniuk of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute.
- Understand the roles of persuasion and influence. Learn how to be more persuasive by studying Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini or Alchemy by Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy.
Principle #2: Develop personal agency
What is agency? It is the ability to act, make choices, influence outcomes and trust your ability to handle a wide range of situations.
Having a sense of personal agency is also associated with being able to take responsibility for your actions and having an ‘internal locus of control’ over what happens.
There are lots of things outside our control. I should be 6’4”, have a head full of hair and look like Brad Pitt. It might be true, but it is not helpful.
What does developing personal agency mean in practice?
- Focus on driving a solution rather than becoming frustrated and finding someone or something to blame. As my racing driver performance coach friend keeps telling me ’control the controllables’.
- Grab a hold of things yourself: sales were too low? Do something about it. The customer is not happy? I am going to make it better. Results from the campaign not what you hoped? Come up with three solutions.
Principle #3: Collaboration is the platform for the retail media mindset
Retail media is one of the clearest examples of success depending on strong collaboration.
That sounds obvious, but in practice it is still one of the biggest barriers to progress. On the brand side, retail media demands closer working between marketing, commercial, shopper and ecommerce teams. On the retailer side, it requires sales, media, data and operations to line up properly.
What does collaboration mean in practice?
- Collaboration is not a ‘soft skill’ in retail media as it is often referred to. The reality is that it is the number one requirement.
Principle #4: Think like a showrunner
A showrunner is the top-level executive producer of a television series, for example Shonda Rhimes is a famous showrunner and TV producer, known for ‘Grey’s Anatomy‘, ‘Scandal‘, and ‘Bridgerton‘, or Vince Gilligan, creator and showrunner of ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘Better Call Saul.’
When you think like a showrunner, you think like a person who is accountable for making something happen. This ability to take complete ownership to get anything out the door is a valuable skill, whether you’re managing others or on a team of one.
What does this mean in practice?
- Know how to write a good brief for a retail media network, or if you are a retail media network, know how to ask the right questions to get a good brief from your client.
- See both the ‘big picture’ and individual component parts, how they join together.
Principle #5: Facilitating a test-and-learn culture
Retail media evolves quickly. New tech appears almost weekly, retailer offerings change, measurement approaches improve and brand best practice keeps moving. And this is before we talk about the role of AI!
There are two types of failure: ‘inherent failure’ and ‘unnecessary failure.’ Inherent failure is about managing risk, such as when launching a new campaign. Unnecessary failure is what happens when we fail to get the basics right, such as poor communication or bad planning.
What does facilitating a test and learn culture mean in practice?
- Create room for experimentation: Teams are allowed to test new ideas, audiences, formats or messages on a small scale without needing every test to be perfect.
- Treat results as learning, not just judgement: the question becomes what we learned and what do we differently next time.
Retail media is growing fast, but as with other industries that get to maturity, the next stage will be shaped by people who build expertise, take responsibility, collaborate, think end to end and learn quickly. This is what a real retail media mindset looks like.
Originally published on InternetRetailing