The rise of retail media networks and what it means for AdTech teams in 2026

Retail media was supposed to be a trend. It turned into an industry faster than most people expected.

Amazon built the blueprint, but what’s happening now is much broader. Walmart, Target, Kroger, and hundreds of other retailers followed, and at this point almost every company with a meaningful audience and a loyalty program is asking the same question: how do we monetize the data and traffic we already have? The answer, increasingly, is a retail media network. What’s less obvious is what it actually takes to build one.

What’s changed going into 2026 is not just scale, but complexity. Retail media is no longer limited to sponsored products or display placements on a retailer’s own site. It now connects to CTV, programmatic infrastructure, offsite inventory, and increasingly to AI-driven targeting layers that sit on top of first-party data. When you look at a mature RMN today, the underlying stack starts to resemble a DSP more than a traditional marketing function.

That shift has direct implications for how teams need to be built. Many retailers are trying to scale retail media with talent profiles that were designed for e-commerce, trade marketing, or brand partnerships. Those skill sets are still relevant, but they’re not enough to operate the level of complexity RMNs now require.

The profiles that are starting to matter are different. Companies need people who understand how both sides of the ecosystem connect, who are comfortable moving between commercial conversations with brands and more technical discussions around infrastructure, data, and activation. In practice, that often means hybrid profiles that didn’t exist in most retail organizations a few years ago.

That’s also where the hiring challenge becomes real. The number of companies building or scaling retail media has grown faster than the number of people who have actually done this before. In multiple searches, we’ve seen companies compete for the same narrow group of candidates who combine programmatic knowledge, retail media exposure, and the ability to operate in cross-functional environments. Most processes end up slower than expected not because of a lack of interest, but because the profile itself is still relatively scarce.

If you’re hiring for a retail media team today, you’re not just competing with other retailers. You’re competing with Amazon, with large marketplaces, and with AdTech companies that have been building similar capabilities for years. The talent pool is growing, but it hasn’t caught up with the speed at which the opportunity expanded.

What this creates is a structural tension. Companies want to build sophisticated retail media offerings, but the teams required to do it are still forming. The ones that move faster tend to be those that are willing to hire for adjacent experience and train into the gaps, rather than waiting for a fully formed profile that may take months to find.