A decade ago, retail media barely existed as a line item on corporate ad budgets. Today, with U.S. retail media spending projected by EMARKETER to hit $69.3 billion in 2026 and on track to anchor a $142.1 billion commerce media market by 2030, the channel has solidified itself as the fastest-growing sector in modern advertising.
However, the explosive growth of retail media networks (RMNs) is exposing a major structural bottleneck: digital sponsored product listings are approaching saturation. On-site retail search units face diminishing marginal returns as bidding competition escalates. To sustain double-digit growth rates, enterprise commerce media networks must look beyond mobile screens and ecommerce web apps toward physical, real-world touchpoints.
Today’s appointment of Adam Skinner, the former Chief Operating Officer of CitrusAd and Managing Director of Retail Media at Epsilon, as Chief Executive Officer of out-of-home (OOH) media platform Onescreen marks a clear turning point for the category.
Skinner, who helped scale CitrusAd from fewer than 10 clients to over 150 global retailers prior to its acquisition by Publicis Groupe’s Epsilon, spent fifteen years building the underlying architecture that made digital retail shelves buyable, comparable, and provable. His pivot to physical space signals that the “off-site” commerce media frontier is moving directly out-of-home.
The core challenge facing off-site retail media expansion has historically been operational fragmentation. While on-site digital media offers instant platform access, physical spaces have been bogged down by manual transactions and disconnected media sellers. By introducing automated supply-side consolidation, commerce marketers can now treat real-world placements as seamless extensions of their digital ad stacks.
“Retail media didn’t win because shoppers suddenly fell in love with sponsored listings. It won because someone made fragmented inventory buyable, impressions comparable, and outcomes provable,” said Skinner. “Out-of-home has better inventory than retail media ever had, but it has lacked that connective infrastructure. Budgets follow legibility, not enthusiasm. What drew me to Onescreen is that the hard part is already done – the team has made real-world media plannable and accountable on the front end, before the money leaves the account. Extending that into retail and commerce media, right as the standards arrive and the budgets line up behind them, is the most interesting problem in media today.”
For CPGs, D2C brands, and retail media network operators, applying supply-side retail media standards to out-of-home media lets physical campaigns placed right outside retail store doors be activated with the same data rigor and automated ease as digital shelf units. As physical and digital commerce continue to merge into unified omnichannel strategies, running the 2020 retail media supply playbook in physical space may be the key to unlocking the next $70 billion in commerce media growth.
