Choosing a retail media agency is harder than it looks from the outside. Most agencies will tell you they are experts in Amazon, Walmart, Instacart and everything else, and most pitch decks look alike. The differences show up later: in how fast they react to a stock problem, how honestly they report, and whether your account is run by the people you met in the pitch.
In short: choose a retail media agency by testing it against the work you actually need done. Check which networks it runs day to day, who will staff your account, how it handles measurement and reporting, what it charges for and what it expects from you. Ask for process, not promises, and be wary of any agency that cannot explain where its results come from.
1Start With Your Own Requirements
Before you speak to any agency, write down what you need. A brand with a few hero products on one marketplace has a very different brief from a manufacturer selling through a dozen retailers across several countries. Agencies tend to sell what they are good at, so a vague brief will get you their default package.
Useful questions to settle internally first: which retailers and networks matter now and in the next year, whether you want sponsored ads only or also offsite and in-store, who owns catalog and content on your side, how sales are currently measured, and what a good result would look like. If you are still mapping the landscape, our guide to retail media networks helps you shortlist where to be.
It also helps to decide who on your side will be the day-to-day contact. Retail media touches sales, brand, e-commerce and finance, and an agency that has to chase four people for approvals will move slowly. A single named owner, with a clear route to the others, usually gets better work from any partner.
2The Main Types of Agency
The label "retail media agency" covers several different businesses. Knowing which type you are talking to explains much of what they will propose.
| Type | Typical strength | Typical limit | Best suited to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marketplace specialist | Deep knowledge of one platform, often Amazon, including catalog and sponsored ads. | May be thin on grocery, offsite and in-store. | Brands whose sales are concentrated on one marketplace. |
| Full-service agency with a retail media team | Joins retail media to brand, social and programmatic planning. | Retail media may be a small team within a bigger business. | Brands that want one partner across channels. |
| Commerce or performance specialist | Focus on sales outcomes, feeds and conversion. | May underweight brand and upper-funnel work. | Brands with a strong direct sales target. |
| Operations and managed-service partner | Reliable daily execution across many networks, often white-label. | May expect you or another agency to set strategy. | Agencies and brand teams that need hands-on capacity. |
None of these is better in general. The question is fit. A marketplace specialist is a good choice if one platform is your business, and a poor one if your growth depends on grocery chains.
3Evaluation Criteria That Matter
Use the same criteria for every agency so you can compare like with like.
- Network coverage: which networks they manage in live accounts today, as opposed to ones they have read about. Ask for the specific ad products they run on each.
- Strategy and execution: whether they can both plan across networks and handle the daily work, or whether one is outsourced.
- Team and continuity: who will actually work on your account, what their experience is and how handovers work if someone leaves.
- Measurement approach: how they separate attributed from incremental sales, and what tools they use for analysis.
- Reporting: format, frequency, definitions, and whether you can see the raw network data.
- Catalog and content skills: whether they will flag listing problems that hurt ad performance.
- Commercial terms: fee model, minimum commitment, what is included and what is extra.
- Transparency: who owns the accounts, who holds the data and what happens if you leave.
4Questions to Ask in the Pitch
Good agencies welcome detailed questions, because they separate real experience from slideware. These are worth asking, and the answers matter as much as the confidence behind them.
- Walk us through your first month on a new account. What gets set up, in what order, and what do you need from us?
- Tell us about a time results disappointed a client. What did you find, and what did you change?
- How do you decide how much budget goes to each network, and how often does that change?
- Which of the metrics in your report come straight from the retailer, and which do you calculate yourselves?
- How do you test whether ads are creating new sales, rather than capturing sales that would have happened anyway?
- Who on your side will I speak to every week, and who is on the account behind them?
- What do you do when a product goes out of stock or a price changes mid-campaign?
Listen for specifics. An agency with real experience will mention particular tools, particular failure modes and particular trade-offs. One without it will answer in generalities.
A useful extra test is to ask how the agency would handle a hard situation: a retailer changes a rule, a key product is suppressed from search, or results fall for no obvious reason. Strong teams describe a diagnostic order, such as checking availability, price, content and bids before changing strategy. Weak ones jump straight to spending more or blaming the network.
5Red Flags
Some warning signs are easy to spot once you know them. Guaranteed returns are the first: no agency controls a retailer's auction or shopper behavior, so any promise of a specific outcome is a sales line, not a forecast. The second is a reporting package built entirely on retailer-attributed sales with no discussion of incrementality.
Be cautious, too, of agencies that claim formal status with a retailer or platform that they cannot show, of case studies with no named method behind the results, and of contracts that make account ownership or data access unclear. A good agency will give you admin or appropriate access to your own accounts and be comfortable with you looking at them.
Finally, watch the pitch-to-delivery gap. If the senior people disappear after signing and the account is run by someone you have never met, ask directly how the team is structured and whether named people are committed to your business.
Pay attention to how the agency talks about your team. Good partners ask what you already have: product data feeds, brand assets, retailer contacts, previous reports. They treat your internal knowledge as an input. If a pitch assumes you will hand everything over and wait, expect a hands-off relationship that is hard to steer later.
6Understanding Fee Models
Agencies charge in a few common ways, and each shapes behavior. A percentage of media spend scales with your budget and aligns the agency with growth, but it can reward spending more rather than spending well. A flat retainer is predictable and rewards efficiency, though scope needs to be written clearly. Hybrid models combine a base fee with a variable element, and per-task or per-account pricing suits operational support.
Ask what is included: setup, creative adaptation, catalog work, reporting, measurement studies and platform fees. Ask about minimum terms and notice periods. And compare proposals on the same scope. Our article on pricing models for outsourced ad operations explains the trade-offs in more detail and applies equally well here.
7Running a Fair Selection Process
A structured process saves time and reduces bias. Shortlist a small number of agencies based on fit, send the same written brief to each, and hold a working session rather than only a presentation. Ask each to review a real or sample account and tell you what they would fix first. That reveals how they think more than any credentials slide.
Check references with brands in similar situations, and ask those references about reporting honesty, responsiveness and how problems were handled. Where the stakes are high, start with a defined pilot on one or two networks, with agreed goals and a review date, before committing to a wider scope.
If you want to see how a managed model works in practice, read about our retail media marketing services or get in touch to discuss your brief.
Also plan the first review in advance. Agree what you expect to see at the end of the first month, the first quarter and the first half-year, and what would lead either side to change course. That keeps early conversations about results grounded in what was agreed, not in memory.
8Making the Final Decision
Score each agency against your criteria, but let the scoring inform judgment rather than replace it. The best fit is usually the agency that understands your business, is honest about what it does not do, and shows a clear method for finding out what works. Chemistry matters too: you will be in frequent contact, and a team that explains things plainly will save you time every week.
Before signing, confirm account ownership, data access, reporting cadence, notice terms and the named team in writing. A clear agreement at the start prevents most of the disputes that arise later.
