And here's something fresh for this newsletter: some positive news, something that we seem to be doing right as an industry.
Sometimes I get a bit disheartened by the goings-on in the retail media industry. Most recently it was the Amazon v FTC case. I concluded that despite how icky it all felt, nothing much is likely to change. There's also the talk of better measurement being a pipe dream, and the fact that we still are defending ourselves against the assumption that retail media is just sponsored product ads with no role to play in brand-building.
But I discovered something pretty cool recently, which is that 44% of US RMNs are led by women.
That's much higher than the 35% of VP roles and 32% of SVP roles that McKinsey has compiled in this research.
To get a precise number, I created a database of all the named P&L leaders of retail media networks for the top 100 US retailers, per the NRF's 2026 rankings.
This definition means that prominent media networks like eBay, Instacart and Doordash are not included, as technically they are not retailers. I would like to do a more comprehensive analysis that extends out to CMNs and internationally, as well.
But for now, this is more of a community note than deep analysis, a conversation-starter – I have some questions down below and would love to hear your reaction.
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To what do we owe this phenomenon?
I shared the preliminary results with a couple of folks to get their reactions and theses about why this is the case.
Industry analyst Andrew Lipsman posited that retail media as a category is a rare "non-asshole segment of the media industry." That foots with my own largely positive personal experience in the industry. But my question was, why?
Co-founder of the community Women In Commerce Media Collective, Ana Laura Zain, says that women who land top jobs tend to have a wider network, and a closer female inner circle. "That's why at WCM we care so much about building experiences that provide the right environment to build meaningful relationships," she told me.
"Organizations like WCM and so many others exist not only because we want to empower each other, but also because I believe we - women- love getting together, and connecting at a deeper level."
Another possible reason put forth to me: that retail media often sprouts out of a retailer's marketing function, which itself is a function that often has a higher female ratio versus other exec roles.
It also seems unlikely that this is s "glass cliff" situation: one where a woman is brought into a senior position in a turnaround situation, and is unwittingly set up to fail. There are too many successful female leaders who have been successful enough to move on to their next big leadership position for that to be true.
What next
I would love to hear from readers what they make of this trend.
- What do you think the reason is?
- What are we doing well here, perhaps without realizing it?
- What should we do with this information as an industry?
Get the database
If you're subscribed to the Retail Media Breakfast Club newsletter, you can view the database of US RMN leaders which I compiled for this analysis.
