How media network operators can retain their highest-investment advertisers

Advertisers that already spend the most on media networks are about to invest significantly more, and their expectations will define your network’s growth.  

90% of high-investment advertisers (those who’ve spent 30%+ of their total budget with media networks over the last year) are planning not-so-modest increases: 26% will raise budgets by at least 25% in the next 12 months, and 38% by 10-24%.

As a retail media network (RMN) or commerce media network (CMN) operator, you must keep pace with this group’s distinct needs to preserve their partnership and sustain growth. But what exactly do they expect? 

For starters, they’ve reconsidered RMN/CMN investments because of measurement and attribution gaps and difficulty proving ROI to leadership, making these crucial areas to focus on for a competitive advantage.

The 2026 Commerce Media Investment Index reveals how advertisers are prioritizing their RMN/CMN investments and the must-have capabilities to prove ROI. The following findings can ground your strategy to appeal to high-investment advertisers and fulfill their needs around measurement, audience transparency, and self-service capabilities. 

High-investment advertisers use 4+ media networks actively, so you’ve got competition

Advertisers that allocate less of their budget toward media networks typically work with three or fewer partners. This gives each operator more breathing room because they are compared alongside fewer competitors. 

The same luxury isn’t true when partnering with high-investment advertisers. 

Those investing 30%+ of their budget toward media networks are more likely to use 4-6 networks (36%), 7-10 (14%), or even 11+ (9%). When advertisers work with many networks, they can easily spot those lagging in experience or ROI, adding pressure for operators to keep pace with the competition. 

Full-funnel performance is gaining importance for media network advertisers

Advertisers share a fairly consistent set of success metrics and objectives when investing in a media network. But high-investment advertisers, specifically, use media networks to:

• Increase brand awareness (41%)

• Drive online sales (34%)

• Acquire new customers (33%)

• Improve full-funnel media performance (33%)

• Launch or promote new products (30%)

The strong focus on improving full-funnel media performance is unique to the high-investment group. Their media network partner selection is driven by on-site and off-site media capabilities, the ability to incorporate their own first-party data, and a strategic relationship with the retailer or commerce partner, which mirror their full-funnel media performance aspirations. 

What they shared about desired capabilities reinforces the need for RMN/CMN partners who can support diverse, agile campaigns. 

Audience transparency and campaign agility are non-negotiable

Most advertisers, regardless of spend, agree that audience targeting capabilities, reach, and segmentation depth are more important than price when selecting a media network partner. 

But more differences  emerge when examining the reasons advertisers reduced, paused, or reconsidered their RMN/CMN investment. For the high investors, critcal areas include:

• Cost relative to other channels (42%)

• Measurement and attribution gaps (40%)

• Difficulty proving ROI to leadership (35%)

• Limitations in audience availability or quality (31%)

• Slow audience or campaign activation (31%)

Campaign speed and measurement are more important to this group than to others, so operators can quickly differentiate themselves by increasing measurement speed. This also aligns with the broader marketing industry focus on agility and AI integration; campaigns are most likely to succeed when teams can access real-time performance data and adjust campaigns across channels while they're still active.  

Let’s dig further into the requirements of these advertisers. 

What level of visibility do high-investment media network advertisers want?

Advertisers need transparency around any network’s measurement capabilities and available audiences. But for high-investment advertisers, these are the top priority areas for media network visibility:

• Data methodology and measurement transparency (62%)

• Audience reach and size before activation (56%)

• Campaign performance in real time (50%)

• Incrementality measurement (42%) - Unique to this high-investment group

These priorities give critical insight into how you can retain advertisers:

• Provide clear, reliable information before campaign activation.

• Enable agile measurement (within a day, if not in real time).

• Prove the ROI can only be traced to your media network and would not have occurred otherwise.

Given that high-investment advertisers work with the most network partners, it is especially important to know which metrics they receive from other RMN/CMN partners to remain competitive. Consistent metrics are essential to streamline your advertisers’ internal processes and build trust with your partnership. 

Audience capabilities and security drive media network spend

The insights so far suggest how to attract and retain advertisers by offering the capabilities they need. But what encourages advertisers to spend more with any given network? 

• Provide more audience segments - 64% of high-investment advertisers strongly agree and 34% somewhat agree they’d increase spend with an RMN/CMN partner if they provide access to more audience segments.

• Fulfill audiences faster - 58% strongly agree and 40% somewhat agree they’d increase spend with partners that provide faster audience fulfillment. (86% even say they’d reduce spend or stop working with a partner that has slow audience fulfillment.) 

• Offer same-day audience fulfillment - 58% strongly agree they’d pay a premium for same-day audience fulfillment, and 34% somewhat agree. 

• Enable self-service audience-building - 60% are extremely likely to increase spend with partners that offer self-service audience-building capabilities, and 38% are somewhat likely.

• Protect PII - 57% strongly agreed they’d invest more if they could activate audiences without exposing personally identifiable information, which is notably higher than the other advertiser segments. 

There’s clear consensus that high-investment advertisers will pay more not only for access to more audience segments, but for access to audiences faster and the ability to build audiences with self-service tools. (Without sacrificing data security, of course!)

Agile media networks will win advertisers

The Commerce Media Investment Index shows that media network advertisers share fairly common objectives regardless of investment size, but high-investment advertisers are more likely to demand additional audience segments, greater transparency, and faster measurement.

Your media network can stay competitive by designing the experience for those already investing heavily in media networks. The high standards of high-investment advertisers will guide their ongoing vendor selection and strongly influence media operator growth next year.

Charting your media network’s evolution toward agility and robust measurement may reveal critical gaps in your resources or infrastructure. A warehouse-native media network addresses privacy concerns and enables self-service access, with a scalable foundation to expand your measurement capabilities. Learn more about how a Composable Commerce Media Solution positions your team for lasting success.