Retail Media Optimization: NielsenIQ and Skai Share Strategies To Align Insights With Campaign Activation

Retail media is a top priority for brands. According to the State of Retail Media 2025 report, 92% of companies rank this marketing channel as the most important. Challenges remain, however, with 25% citing difficulty with integration across other channels, and 32% concerned about tracking and measuring return on investment (ROI).

In a 2025 Digital Shelf Summit session, “Breaking Silos: Aligning Insights and Activation for Smarter Retail Media,” Jack O’Leary, director of ecommerce strategic insights at NielsenIQ (NIQ), Salim Bachatene, SVP of global ecommerce sales at NielsenIQ, and Kevin Weiss, VP of commerce media at Skai, explore how companies can align data-driven insights with campaign activation — and what’s holding them back.

The Current State of the Consumer 

“We’ve determined that every shopper is an omnishopper,” O’Leary says. “Ninety-one percent of buyers buy both in-store and online.” 

And these omnichannel shoppers come with evolving expectations. According to Salsify’s “2025 Consumer Research” report, 54% of shoppers have abandoned a purchase because product content was inconsistent across channels, and 69% participate in ambient shopping, which happens when customers purchase while engaged in another activity, such as scrolling social media or streaming TV.

On the plus side, 87% of customers say they’ll pay more for products from brands they trust. The caveat? Trust is earned, not given. 

So Close, yet So Far: The Data Disconnect

“Consumer goods brands are facing an increasingly complex and fragmented operating environment in which to manage retail media and ecommerce,” O’Leary says. “There is a plethora of rich datasets to access, but a challenge of harmonizing those datasets and acting on them correctly.”

For many brands targeting digital transformation, the scope and scale of data create a common challenge: silos. 

Applicational Silos

Marketing and sales staff utilize multiple applications to track conversions, monitor inventory levels, and gain valuable customer insights. If these applications are disconnected — if each operates in its own “walled garden” — teams are left with only part of the picture. 

While they can piece together data from multiple apps to gain insight, this takes time away from other, sales-focused initiatives. 

Organizational Silos

Organizational structures are another source of silos. For example, sales and marketing may have separate but parallel processes that use similar data but don’t facilitate the exchange of information. This creates two problems. 

First is the potential for duplicate work. For example, if both put in the effort to pinpoint ideal audiences for new product releases, that’s double the time and effort for the same result. Siloed operations can also lead to conflict. 

Consider a marketing team that identifies an opportunity to showcase new products across multiple channels. Sales teams, however, discover an inventory issue that could lead to stockouts and customer frustration. If these teams don’t talk, the result is efforts that work at cross-purposes. 

“The reason why we invest is to increase sales,” Bachatene says. “But the problem is that if the media team or the ecommerce team that is in charge of this investment is not collaborating with the supply chain, with the store teams, there isn’t enough fulfillment, and it gives exactly the opposite outcome versus the one we were expecting.”

Retail Media Success: Step by Step

Skai sees more than $9 billion worth of ad spend flow through its platform every year, Weiss says. This offers a bird's-eye view of what works, what doesn’t, and what companies can do to deliver better results. 

Weiss describes four phases of retail media evolution.

1. Crawl

“You have to crawl before you can walk. You need to start by dissecting the retail media analytics that you have,” Weiss says. They include fundamentals such as tagging, labeling, and tracking data as it moves through marketing and sales funnels. 

2. Walk

For Weiss, “The walk phase is where we see digital shelf signals being fundamental. You’re taking the data that you’re getting from NielsenIQ and you are connecting that into your activation to create ads that will run automatically, pause automatically, and turn back on when certain signals are sent into your activation program.”

In practice, this makes it possible to stop ad campaigns when stock levels are running low — something that’s commonsense but actually complex to achieve without data availability and connected platforms.

3. Run

The run phase focuses on using competitor signals, such as out-of-stock or availability, to help your business expand its market share. By combining these signals with your own advertising data, you’re better prepared to capture consumer interest.

4. Fly

Flying expands the use of market and sales signals across multiple activations. In other words, you’re not just applying data to a single retail media campaign or product. Instead, you’re leveraging data across multiple campaigns to create a consistent omnichannel presence.

Solving the Silo Problem

“One of the ways to remove complexity is to break down the silos between different teams,” Bachatene says. “And what is needed to do that is accurate data.” He also notes that it’s important to consider this data in multiple contexts.

For example, if your brand runs a product campaign that results in a 50% sales increase across all stores, that’s an easy win, right? Not quite. 

If further data analysis reveals that in five of 20 locations, the product was out of stock weeks after the campaign started and was never replenished, the metrics change. While the overall campaign was a success, there’s certainly room for improvement.

Bachatene suggests six questions retail media teams should ask to improve their next campaign.

What Is the Optimal Spend?

Previous campaign data can help find a middle ground that balances spending with ROI.

Where Should I Spend? 

As noted above, omnichannel is now the expectation. Answering this question lets teams determine where spending has the most impact on sales. 

What Keywords Should I Use? 

Not all keywords are created equal. Some applicable terms are also too generic — so many brands use them that it’s hard to stand out from the crowd. Some are too niche; while they apply to your product or service, they won’t generate traction. Effective strategies combine high-volume keywords with those that are unique to your brand.

What Type of Strategy Should I Implement?

Under the broader banner of omnichannel are multiple strategy types, including social media campaigns, product pre-releases, and personalized offers for loyal customers.

What Time of Day Should I Run Ads?

Business-to-business (B2B) companies see steady sales during the day and during the week, while business-to-consumer (B2C) ecommerce retailers often see the opposite.

Which Audience Am I Trying To Target?

The more you understand about your target audience, the better equipped you are to create targeted and effective campaigns.

From Insights to Action

Data drives retail media success. But data isn’t enough on its own. Information stored in multiple apps that don’t integrate or are handled by multiple teams that won’t communicate creates silos that limit campaign impact while consuming more resources.

Identifying silos is the first step in moving from insights to action. Next is determining your marketing maturity level — do you need to crawl before you can walk, or are you ready to take flight? 

Finally, you need to break down barriers by sharing data across applications and considering this data in different contexts.

The result will be broken silos and a better chance of capturing omnichannel customers.