The Rent You Can't Negotiate

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You spent years acquiring customers. Building loyalty programs. Running CRM campaigns. Turning first-time buyers into repeat purchasers.

Now Walmart wants you to pay to reach them.

That's retail media. A toll road built on top of relationships you already own.

Retail media networks grew 14.1% last year. Fastest-growing digital channel. Faster than video. Faster than social. While paid search stayed flat.

The money is moving because the power shifted. And it didn't shift toward you.

The landlord problem

Nobody says this out loud in budget meetings: Your P&L is now partially controlled by Walmart's ad sales team.

Walmart, Amazon, Kroger, Target, Instacart sit between you and your customers. They have the purchase data. They have the captive audience. They have the shelf, physical and digital.

You can negotiate trade spend. You can optimize bids. But you can't opt out. If you sell through retail, you pay the toll.

A decade ago, you worried about Google owning the demand signal. Now the retailers own the transaction. That's a tighter chokepoint.

Why this happened

Two forces converged.

First, AI fragmented search. 800 million people use ChatGPT weekly. Organic traffic is down 15-64% depending on category. Google's grip loosened.

Second, retailers realized they were sitting on something more valuable than search intent: purchase behavior. Not "interested in protein bars." Actually bought protein bars. Last Tuesday. At this store. With this basket.

Closed-loop attribution that Google can't touch.

So they built media businesses. And now they're monetizing access to customers you already paid to acquire.

The uncomfortable math

When someone searches "protein bars" on Google, they might click to a retailer, a review site, or a competitor. Leak rate is enormous.

When someone searches "protein bars" on Instacart, they're buying. Right now. In the next 30 seconds.

That's why retail media CPMs are higher. The audience is qualified. The attribution is clean. The moment is real.

But it also means you're bidding against competitors, in front of your own customers, on someone else's platform.

The retailer wins either way. You pay to show up, or you lose the sale to whoever did.

The negotiation you're not having

Most brand teams treat retail media like any other media buy. Bid on inventory. Optimize ROAS. Report the numbers.

That's leaving money on the table.

Retail media should be negotiated alongside trade spend, co-op, and in-store placement. Retailers want total investment. They'll trade margin in one bucket for spend in another.

If your retail media team doesn't talk to your shopper marketing team, you're negotiating against yourself.

The question for your board

Digital is now 83.7% of ad spend. Retail media is the fastest-growing slice. Your CFO is going to ask why.

The honest answer: we're paying rent to access distribution we used to own.

The retailers built better pipes. Now they're charging for the water.

Your job: negotiate the best rate and make sure the spend drives incrementality, not just attribution credit.

Because the retailers will happily take your money to show ads to people who were already going to buy.