Creators and retail media. If you've been anywhere near this industry in the last year, you've heard that these two things are coming together, that it's a big deal, and that you're probably late.
I kept hearing it too. Creators paired with retailer shopper data. Closed-loop measurement on influencer content. An under-appreciated opportunity.
Where does "retail media times creators" begin and end? Who funds it? Who measures it? And one I kept quiet about because I was afraid of sounding stupid: is this actually different from any other creative a brand commissions — or is it just another way to make an ad?
This is a fact-finding mission where I don't have it all mapped yet. But I've got enough to share what I've learned, and I want to hear from you on the rest.
Let's start with the mood.
The Enthusiasm Is Real
On Episode 4 of Inmar's "Retail Media Confessions" series, hosts Andrew Lipsman (Founder & Chief Analyst, Media, Ads + Commerce) and Leah Logan (VP, Retail Media Transformation, Inmar Intelligence) were joined by Austin Leonard (VP & GM, DG Media Network) to talk about the convergence of creators & retail media. The mood was enthusiastic
Andrew: ...there's a beautiful symbiosis between creators and retail media and now is the time to fulfill its potential.
Leah: Yeah, I'm just happy everybody else is here with me now.
Austin: You have been banging this drum for a while.
Leah: I've been a little bit passionate about the topic. I was a little lonely. I'm glad you all are here.
And here's what I'm excited about: Creator content is culturally resonant in a way that a product imaged photographed in a studio will never be. It's a real person, telling a story with a good hook, in a format people actually choose to watch. Now take that, and pair it with the thing retailers have that nobody else does: first-party shopper data, and the ability to tie exposure back to a transaction. Suddenly the most human, least measurable corner of marketing gets some real numbers behind it.
So far so good.
So Where Does This Begin and End?
But "creators in retail media" gets used to describe a bunch of things that aren't actually the same thing.
Amazon Live has creators. LTK and affiliate programs have creators. TikTok Shop runs on creators. Brands have been contracting with influencers directly for a decade or more. And now retail media networks are running creator content too. Are those all the same thing?
They're not. And the cleanest way to sort them is to use the IAB's own definition of retail media.
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The IAB defines retail media as advertising space, data assets, and in-store opportunities owned by a retailer or marketplace, made available to brands — with campaigns using first-party retail data for planning, targeting, execution, and measurement.
That's a test we can run a bunch of things through.
- A brand paying an influencer directly to post about their product — that's influencer marketing. No retailer data, no retailer property. Not retail media.
- LTK and affiliate links — commission-driven, the creator's own audience. The retailer pays out on a sale but isn't running it as a media product with their data. Not retail media.
- TikTok Shop — that's TikTok's inventory, TikTok's data, TikTok's checkout. Social commerce. Not retail media.
- Amazon Live - this one breaks the frame, but in doing so, shows us where the edges are.
Most of Amazon Live is creators in the Influencer Program earning commission on what they sell. Brands can sweeten that through Creator Connections — bonus commission on top, brand sets the rate and budget. That's affiliate. Same bucket as LTK. Not retail media.
But Amazon also sells Amazon Live as an ad product. A brand funds the stream, and as of last year the viewer signals flow into Amazon Marketing Cloud — so you can build audiences off who watched and measure detail-page views, add-to-cart, orders. That version is brand-bought, retailer-data-targeted, retailer-measured. That one's retail media.
Same surface. Same creator. Same livestream. One is affiliate, one is retail media — and the only thing separating them is who paid and whether the data did the targeting. Which is the whole point. The format doesn't decide it. The surface doesn't decide it. The money and the data do.
"Creator," in retail media, is a creative format. The same creator video can be influencer marketing on Monday and retail media on Tuesday. The only thing that changed is whose data targeted it and whose property it ran on.
Who Funds it? It Depends
I asked Allison Fowler, Director, Media & Consumer Engagement Strategy at Rust-Oleum, how her brand actually uses creators.
She told me that Rust-Oleum runs plenty of creator work through their own brand-dollar influencer campaigns — brand money, paid to creators, with no retailer in the middle. But they also run creators through retail media networks, for two reasons. First, when the content runs from the retailer's own social handle, the brand gets the retailer's clout attached to it. Second, they make sure the creator is enrolled in the retailer's affiliate program, because a creator is more motivated to promote your product if they're earning a commission on it.
So it's about whose handle the post runs from, and whether the creator has a commission incentive.
When Kimeko McCoy at Digiday dove into this last year, she found the financial structures are still custom and evolving, deal by deal:
- A fee structure built into an agency's offering
- A retailer sorting out a cost structure directly with creators
- Sometimes it's unclear how much of the spend is even earmarked for the creator versus the media
Allison at Rust-Oleum told me that of the retailers she works with, some have creator programs stood up and some don't. This isn't evenly distributed infrastructure.
Is It Actually Different From Any Other Creative?
So here's my real question. Strip away the excitement: is creator-led retail media different in kind from any other creative a brand commissions?
Here's Leah Logan of Inmar Intelligence describing how brands should actually run it:
"Find a way to look at your creator spend the same way you would a retail media spend. You can look at creators and who they reach and build an audience for targeting. You can optimize based on the different channels that you extend that content to, in and out of social... you can measure creator just like anything else... it's not enough just to offer creators in retail media, it has to be bought the same way as all of the other tactics."
Buy it like every other tactic. Measure it like every other tactic. Leah's right to push for that rigor. But if it should be bought, targeted, and measured like everything else in the plan, then it starts to sound kind like everything else in the plan.
And this is where DGMN's Austin Leonard jumped in: "We also need to be careful not to get too into that closed loop trap. Just because we can measure it doesn't mean that it should be measured the same way as the rest of the tactics."
The thing that makes a creator valuable — authentic, top-of-funnel storytelling — is the thing that doesn't show up in a closed-loop ROAS report. Measure it like a sponsored product and you'll optimize the soul right out of it.
The Real Takeaway
So did everyone go gaga over nothing? No. Creator content performs, and pairing it with retailer data and measurement is a reasonable thing to want.
But here's where I land. Creator-led retail media isn't a new species of advertising. It's a creative format (a good one!) running through targeting and measurement infrastructure retail media already had. The creator is the asset. Retail media is one of several wrappers a brand can put around it, alongside brand-direct influencer marketing and affiliate programs. What's new isn't the creator. It's the retailer's data and measurement layer reaching out to claim a creative format brands were already buying.
Which, if you've followed my coverage of RMNs reaching for brand budgets, should sound familiar. Same land-grab, more interesting outfit?
