This post was originally published to my column at The Drum on February 17, 2026. It has been reproduced here with permission.

Most retail media executives talk about growth trajectories and untapped opportunity. Parbinder Dhariwal would rather talk about what the industry is getting wrong.

"Retail media has a PR problem," Dhariwal, vice president and general manager of CVS Media Exchange, said on the CPG Guys podcast earlier this year. "We've gone in as we've built certain retail media networks and we've gone in and strong-armed the marketing departments to spend money. It's like, 'Hey, you gotta spend money. And if you don't, there's ramifications.'"

It's a lively admission from someone running the retail media arm of America's largest pharmacy chain. But Dhariwal – known industry-wide as Parbs – believes the reckoning is overdue. His argument: if retail media networks can't prove efficacy for every dollar spent, the industry's explosive growth will stall before it reaches its potential.

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The trust deficit

Dhariwal's candor stems from 25 years in digital advertising, including stints at Spotify, CBS Interactive, and most recently Walmart Connect before joining CMX. That background gives him perspective on how advertising channels mature – and how they can squander credibility.

"We've gotta take a step back and we've gotta be able to drive performance for every single dollar that's coming through our networks," he said on the CPG Guys podcast. "If we do not provide that level of transparency, it doesn't matter whether you're a brand or you're a shopper marketer or anywhere in between. You're not gonna trust the numbers."

The stakes are higher than most retailers acknowledge. Retail media has predominantly been funded through trade marketing dollars – money brands allocate specifically to individual retail partnerships. But the real prize is national brand budgets, the larger pools controlled by CMOs who allocate based purely on performance. To capture those dollars, retailers must prove they're genuine media partners, not just another line item in a joint business plan.

"If we're gonna move into the brand dollars, we've also gotta be able to connect with the same metrics that we're being judged against," Dhariwal explained on the Beyond the Shelf podcast. Brands considering shifting investment from established channels to retail media need to see comparable measurement – and right now, many networks can't deliver it.

On transparency

Dhariwal's solution centers on standards adoption and what he calls "deterministic" data – real shoppers making real purchases, not modeled audiences or probabilistic matching.

"Transparency is a pillar of CMX," he said on the Floor 9 podcast. "We adhere to all of the IAB standards. I would say we definitely move towards the gold standard of the IAB measurement standards for retail media."

CMX was the first health and wellness retail media network to adopt the IAB and MRC's retail media measurement guidelines, which were published in January 2024. That might sound like table stakes, but adoption across the industry remains uneven. Many networks still rely on proprietary measurement that advertisers can't independently verify.

"We're not grading our own homework," he said on the Beyond the Shelf podcast. The phrase captures a tension I've observed across retail media – networks that mark their own performance while asking brands to trust the results.

His critique extends to how campaigns are measured. On the Floor 9 podcast, he urged brands to scrutinize reporting that doesn't reflect actual purchase behavior: "Question it across the industry. Question when you feel as if the reporting that's coming back of the campaign that you run is not really designed based on real shoppers and is more probabilistic than it is deterministic."

The ExtraCare advantage

Dhariwal's transparency push is enabled by something most retailers lack: a loyalty program with genuine scale and purchase attribution. CVS's ExtraCare program counts 90 million addressable members, with what Dhariwal describes as a 90-plus percent one-to-one match rate on transactions.

"The connective tissue that we see across CVS – and we've been doing this for 20-plus years – is our ExtraCare business," he said on the CPG View podcast. That longitudinal data allows CMX to track how consumers move between digital and physical channels in ways that retailers without robust loyalty programs simply cannot replicate.

The pharmacy context matters too. CVS operates in categories – health, wellness, beauty, personal care – where consumer trust is paramount. "Not all retail is created equal," Dhariwal noted on the Beyond the Shelf podcast. "We visit different retail outlets for different need states. And in the same regard, not all retail media is created equal."

That positioning shapes how CMX approaches measurement. Rather than claiming credit only for sales at CVS, Dhariwal acknowledges the omnichannel reality: a consumer might see a CMX ad, recognize they're in-market for a product, and purchase it elsewhere.

"We are also realistic," he said on the CPG View podcast. "A consumer might see a message from a CMX ad because we know that they're in-market for a particular product. But they might also not buy that product at CVS." His response: measure total category impact, not just retailer-specific sales. It's a more honest accounting than many networks offer.

Building bridges, not walls

Where Dhariwal's vision gets interesting is in how CMX is extending its attribution capabilities beyond owned properties. While most retail media networks build walled gardens, CMX has pursued partnerships that position retail media as connective tissue for other platforms.

The Reddit partnership, announced at Cannes in 2024, exemplifies this approach. By combining CMX's 90 million ExtraCare members with Reddit's 108 million weekly active users, brands can reach health and wellness consumers in authentic community conversations – and then attribute purchases back through CVS's transaction data.

"We're not just engaging with the consumer when they're in the CVS ecosystem," Dhariwal explained on the Floor 9 podcast. "How are they engaging with other brands and other content on other platforms?"

Similar collaborations with Pinterest and LiveRamp allow brands to co-mingle audiences in clean room environments and build attribution models that span the fragmented media landscape. The common thread: retail media's first-party data becoming infrastructure for the broader advertising ecosystem rather than a proprietary asset hoarded behind walls.

"Retail is positioned best to connect those," Dhariwal said on Floor 9. "The CVS consumer is also a customer of all of these social media channels. They are also connected to all of these CTV, and they are browsing the worldwide web."

The in-store opportunity

Dhariwal is also betting heavily on physical retail as a media channel – an area where most networks remain stuck in pilot purgatory. CVS operates 9,000 stores with 5 million daily visitors, and CMX has deployed digital screens in pharmacy waiting areas, audio advertising across more than 7,000 locations, and is testing digital end caps.

The early results suggest the investment is warranted. Dhariwal cites internal research showing 60% of CVS shoppers find in-store screens useful in their journey, and one in five consumers will make a purchase as a result of what they see on screen.

"In-store can really be a creative canvas for brands to be thinking about different ways to communicate," he said on the Floor 9 podcast. But he's also applying the same transparency standards to physical formats – using IAB guidelines to measure in-store effectiveness rather than relying on impressions alone.

What's at stake

Dhariwal's candor about retail media's credibility gap reflects a broader industry tension. Growth is decelerating – 15.6% in 2025 versus 25.1% in 2024, according to IAB data – and brands are scrutinizing every retail media dollar. The easy money from repackaged trade funds is running dry.

For networks outside the Amazon-Walmart duopoly, proving clear value isn't optional – it's survival. Dhariwal seems to understand this. His bet is that transparency and standardization will differentiate CMX in a market where many competitors still operate black boxes.

"If we get that right and we use the data sets in the right way, and marketers really lean in there and use the right channels to communicate with those consumers, we are gonna lead to more personalization and campaigns, better attribution, better insights," he said on Floor 9. "Which ultimately gives the consumer a better experience with the ads. It gives the brand a better experience. And it will also give the advertising partners a better experience with the channel too."

It's a virtuous cycle – if networks are willing to be held accountable. The question is whether the rest of the industry will follow CMX's lead on transparency, or whether the PR problem Dhariwal diagnosed will continue to undermine retail media's potential.