Retail media has a pretty clear answer on what AI should optimize for
We’re willing to bet that this pitch sounds familiar to any retail media buyer: hand the campaigns to AI, let it move budget and bid on its own, and stay out of its way.
If that works, great. But what should it be optimizing toward?
We asked 500 people across retail media that question for our new report, Ready or Not: Media's race toward agentic buying. The answer was more lopsided than we anticipated.
What buyers told us
Among brands and agencies, 58% want AI optimizing toward incremental return on investment, and only 23% want it chasing last-touch ROAS. That's better than two and a half to one, from the people actually spending the money.
The sellers said the same thing
Networks built their reporting around ROAS. It's on every dashboard and it usually looks good, which is handy when they’re asking for more money. You'd think the sell side would want to keep it.
Mostly they don't. Sell-side respondents picked incremental return over last-touch ROAS too, 54.4% to 16.7%. Buyers and sellers rarely agree on how media should get graded, and this is about as close as they come.
Why it matters more when AI is the one buying
A human running a campaign against ROAS usually knows a chunk of those sales would've happened anyway. They discount it in their head, and they get suspicious when the numbers come back too clean.
An AI agent doesn't have that instinct. Point it at last-touch ROAS and it'll get very good at finding shoppers who were going to buy anyway and taking credit for them, faster than any person could and with more of your budget. It gets good at whatever you tell it to chase. Judging by these numbers, most of the market has figured that out.
Whether the measurement behind those agents can keep up is a different question, and it's where the rest of the report goes.
Get the full report
The full report goes further, including:
The autonomy ladder: how much leeway brands, agencies, and retailers are giving AI.
Why the buyers furthest up that ladder are about twice as likely to still want last-touch ROAS.
How many teams already let AI move budget with no approval step.
Where respondents say autonomy goes next, and why the measurement underneath isn't keeping up.
