Retail Media's Four Eras (Part 1 of 2)

Retail media technology has already gone through several major reinventions. From retailers building their own ad tech stacks, to point solutions, cloud-based composable technology, and now AI-ready data infrastructure.In this episode, I’m recapping my recent article for The Drum, and exploring the four eras of retail media tech. More importantly, why these eras aren’t necessarily sequential. Across retail media networks today, you can find very different technology architectures operating at the same time, and I dig into what led up to this moment. Tomorrow, in part two, I’ll look at another framework for thinking about retail media technology investment and what all of this means for the brands actually buying retail media.This episode is sponsored by GrowthLoopTimeline00:00 — Why legacy ad servers are still holding retail media networks back02:35 — The four eras of retail media technology03:25 — How economic cycles influence build vs. buy decisions04:22 — The rise of cloud and composable retail media technology04:51 — Why AI is changing the requirements for retailer data07:18 — Why the four “eras” are actually happening simultaneously08:40 — The budget clock vs. the career clock in retail mediaLinks & ResourcesA version of this piece originally appeared in my column at The Drum last week. I've split it into two parts for RMBC; this is part one of two.On 20 August 2026, current RMBC sponsor GrowthLoop launched an end-to-end commerce media network solution that's pre-integrated with The Trade Desk, Moloco, Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks and identity provider Audience Acuity.Read my related articles:Costco Is The First US RMN To Reveal Its Entire Tech StackAce Hardware's RedVest Media: Notes From My Interview With Molly HjelmHow an RMN's tech stack impacts your advertising resultsCheck out Basket Case, a project I’m part of with The Drum and QSIC, an irreverent and lively podcast series where we talk shop.I'm sharing comedy skits on Instagram about retail media! Follow along: @retailmediabreakfastclubSubscribe to Retail Media Breakfast Club's daily newsletterFollow Kiri Masters on LinkedIn