The FMCG Marketer’s Guide to Speaking “Retail Media” without The Buzzwords
If retail media lingo feels like alphabet soup, you’re not alone. Here’s a no-jargon guide to the terms you’ll hear—and how to translate them into business outcomes.
Ten terms, in plain English
Retail media network (RMN): A retailer’s ad business. Think Tesco or ASDA selling media based on their shopper data.
Why it matters: reach real buyers.
Clean room: A secure place to match brand and retailer data without sharing raw personal info.
Why it matters: privacy-safe measurement.
Verified sales: Sales confirmed by a retailer’s loyalty/EPOS data.
Why it matters: proof, not modelled guesses.
Incrementality: The extra sales caused by your ads vs. what would have happened anyway.
Why it matters: true ROI.
New-to-brand: Shoppers who bought your product for the first time.
Why it matters: penetration growth.
Identity frameworks (PAIR, RampID, UID2): Ways to recognise users across channels with consent.
Why it matters: reaching people without third-party cookies.
Offsite vs. onsite: Offsite = ads outside retailer properties; onsite = retailer app/site.
Why it matters: different identity strength and costs.
Attention: A proxy metric (e.g., view time) that can predict outcomes.
Why it matters: creative quality lever.
Footfall: Store visits.
Why it matters: leading indicator for in-store impact.
Closed-loop measurement: Connecting ad exposure to actual sales.
Why it matters: accountability.
How to use this in a meeting
Replace “optimise to CPA” with “we’re optimising to cost per incremental sale.”
Replace “test new channels” with “we’ll shift 15% to the channel that wins on verified sales in the control test.”
Replace “we need better data” with “we need a privacy-safe way to match exposures to retailer sales across networks.”
How MediaSight helps
Turns these terms into one scorecard you can explain to non-specialists
Keeps the focus on business outcomes your finance team cares about
