Building Confidence in Retail Media: A Q&A with WPP Media's Jason Wescott

Jason, before we get into the detail, what first got you involved in retail media standards? And how did you come to chair IAB Europe's Retail and Commerce Media Committee? I got involved because retail media was scaling fast but lacked a common language-definitions, measurement, and processes varied widely. As retail media budgets scaled and more retailers mobilised, it became clear that robust, industry-wide standards were essential to unlock consistency and trust.

That led me to join IAB Europe's Retail Media Working Group in its early days, where I was an active member across several workstreams and helped deliver the group's early outputs through late 2023 and into early 2024. At the end of 2023, the IAB Europe Board decided to formalise the group as the Retail Media Committee, and I was elected Chair in January 2024.

Since then, standardisation has been front and centre of our agenda. We're fortunate to have a strong cohort of retailers alongside technology and media partners on the committee, which allowed us to kick off the work of building standards the whole industry can adopt.

Retail media is growing fast, but it's still relatively new compared with other channels. From an agency point of view, how mature do you think the market really is - and where are the biggest gaps right now? The question highlights a common misconception: retail media isn't a single channel. It's an approach that activates multiple channels-onsite search and display, offsite programmatic, social, video, audio, and increasingly instore. Powered by retailer owned inventory and first party data.

From an agency perspective, it's hard to assign a single maturity score to the market. Maturity varies by retailer, category, and country, and is strongly influenced by how established a retailer's network is and by consumer tech adoption. In every market you'll find a spread: a few highly mature networks alongside newer entrants still building out their product, data, and ops. We even comprised Retailer Capability Scorecards to help our clients make sense of this space.

If you include Amazon Ads, the picture is skewed. Amazon Ads is an outlier in media scale and capability. It's often more useful to assess the rest of the market independently. Outside of Amazon Ads, many retail media networks are progressing by leveraging their physical assets and loyalty schemes, valuable initiatives that will help grow the category.

The biggest gaps we see today:

Measurement standards: consistent definitions and application for campaign reporting

Measurement reporting: data granularity, reporting cadence, self-serve platform access

Interoperability and identity: privacy-safe data collaboration

Fragmentation: too many different buying platforms

Creative and capability building: stronger creative guidelines and shared playbooks to upskill teams.

Retail media is advancing quickly, but its maturity is uneven by market and retailer. With standards and better interoperability, we anticipate the retail media landscape, outside of Amazon Ads, will accelerate and become far easier for agencies to plan, buy, and measure at scale.

What kinds of problems do inconsistent definitions and self-reported results create for agencies trying to plan across different retail media networks and different media channels? Advertisers are rightly risk averse: when definitions and methodologies vary, confidence drops. Inconsistent definitions and self reported compliance create several practical and strategic problems for agencies:

No apples to apples planning: KPIs are calculated differently so outcomes aren't comparable i.e. how is attribution modelled in relation to ROAS in retailer A vs retailer B?

Weak benchmarking and forecasting: cross retailer baselines and MMM inputs break, making budgets and expectations unreliable.

Budget inertia and misallocation: spend consolidates in channels with perceived certainty slowing investment in newer networks.

Slower test and learn: experiments aren't transferable across retailers when methodologies differ.

Operational overhead: teams build custom taxonomies and manual reconciliations per retailer, delaying decisions.

If agencies can't convey clear, consistent value, budgets gravitate to the few places with trusted reporting. Common definitions and independent auditing restore comparability, reduce risk, and unlock scaled planning across retailers and channels.

The IAB Europe Retail Media Certification is now live. How does this programme actually close those measurement gaps, and what does certification prove in real terms? The certification operationalises the industry standards and closes measurement gaps by turning agreed definitions and methodologies into audited requirements. Built collaboratively with input from 15 of the region's leading retailers and a group of industry experts, it enforces common KPI calculations, attribution windows, and it requires transparent outputs that make performance comparable across retail media networks.

For the buy side, the certification badge is a shorthand for comparability and trust. Agencies can benchmark and optimise across retailers without rebuilding taxonomies; finance and procurement get auditable proof, and brands gain confidence to scale beyond the incumbents. Measurement standards are only as effective as the certification that verifies them-and this programme is the mechanism the market can buy into.

Independent auditors play a central role in the certification process. Why is that external audit step so important, and how does it strengthen confidence in the certification itself? External audit is the difference between self assertion and evidence. When the outputs of a certification will influence where ad budgets go, a neutral third party removes the conflict of interes

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