1. Start with the science: Brands grow through penetration

Every serious empirical marketing dataset (eg Kantar) shows the same law: brands grow by increasing penetration.

Penetration increases when two things improve:

1. Mental Availability – making the brand easier to think of in buying situations.
2. Physical Availability – making the brand easier to find and buy.

Most media channels affect only the first. Retail Media affects both, simultaneously, and often dramatically. This is the RMNs unique, incontestable competitive advantage.

2. Educate Marketers on the importance of presence

Most marketers and media agencies underestimate physical availability because they don’t own, understand or measure it. Commercial teams do. When a brand gains:

• More stores
• Better shelf location
• A gondola end
• First row of the digital grid
• Prime placement in search

…penetration jumps.

Every commercial director knows this

But many marketers wrongly attribute these leaps to their media campaigns - because physical availability improvements are not in their field of vision.

Retail Media is the bridge that reconnects marketers to the true growth drivers of their brands.

3. Show How Retail Media Creates Transformational Presence

A sponsored product ad is often described as “high-intent, near-purchase media.” That’s the old performance-marketing frame.

Here is the real scientific frame:

Sponsored Product Ads = Instant Physical Availability Upgrade

When a brand buys first-row placement, they gain:

• Guaranteed visibility
• Guaranteed accessibility
• Guaranteed discoverability

In physical stores, only listing decisions can do this. Online, only Retail Media can do this.

Unless a brand is the category default (rare: eg Selfridges sells 3,200 perfumes; most supermarkets have hundreds of SKUs per category), most brands would never appear in these prime positions organically.

That jump in presence is a major driver of penetration because it removes friction, increases salience, and makes the brand “easy to buy” at precisely the moment of category entry.

4. Position In-Store screens and instore media as dual-effect growth tools

When a brand buys:

• A digital screen in-store
• An aisle fin
• A FSDU
• A hero shelf
• A gondola end

…they are not only buying awareness. They are upgrading physical availability, which drives measurable increases in category entry, trial, and repeat.

This is what makes Retail Media categorically superior to TV, digital display, OOH, and social.

Those channels build only mental availability.

Retail Media builds both - and brands need both.

5. Create a simple, CEO-friendly positioning for Agencies and CMOs

Here is the message you want the industry to hear:

“Retail Media is the only marketing channel that delivers both mental and physical availability — the two scientifically proven drivers of brand growth.”

Everything flows from this.

6. Make penetration the “north star” of your RMN Story

Shift the conversation away from:

• ROI
• Last-click attribution
• Performance efficiency
• ROAS
• Impressions

These are small effects compared with the category-entry and discoverability effects of physical availability.

Instead, educate partners:

“Penetration grows when presence grows. Presence grows through Retail Media.”

When you say this repeatedly, confidently, and scientifically, you win the strategic narrative.

7. Reframe Retail Media as the growth engine for Brands (not a tactic)

Many brands see retail media as either:

• A lower-funnel performance tool
• A tax on distribution
• A defensive necessity

Your role is to reframe it as:

A branded-growth system that enhances mental & physical availability, driving penetration and long-term share gains.

This is a fundamentally different and far more valuable proposition

#retailmedia