Profitero's Andrew Pearl Argues Retail Media ROI Starts on the Digital Shelf

Retail media conversations tend to focus on where an ad runs. Andrew Pearl, VP Industry Insights at Profitero, made the opposite case at Retail Media Pioneers. He argued that the condition of a brand’s product page is quietly deciding how much value that media spend actually returns, and most media teams don’t control that page directly.

Three problems are quietly draining retail media budgets

Pearl grounded the session in Profitero’s newest thought leadership research, released the week before the event. It covers over 1,400 retailers down to store level. Three problems came out of that research clearly.

Measurement remains slow. Roughly half of the 2,000 global brands surveyed still analyze and optimize media only monthly or quarterly. That leaves them with what Pearl called “almost not zero visibility” into performance.

Content quality is a second issue. Profitero found that 44 percent of the media campaigns it analyzed were driving shoppers to product pages with poor content. That undercuts the media spend before it has a chance to convert.

The third problem is organizational. Roughly a third of businesses keep onsite and offsite budgets in separate silos with different owners and different goals. Pearl said this drives inefficient spend and missed opportunities, particularly the chance to target competitors’ products the moment they go out of stock.

Optimized content changes the return on the same media dollar

Pearl backed each finding with a specific figure. Product pages with optimized images, video, and shopper-driven keywords saw close to a 30 percent uplift in performance compared with non-optimized pages.

Profitero worked with content optimization partner Vizit to test this further. Every one-point improvement in a content or image score corresponded to a 10 percent increase in revenue per dollar invested in retail media. A high-scoring image drove up to 45 percent more revenue than a low-performing one on the same product.

Ratings and reviews showed a similar pattern. Sponsored search on products with more than 40 reviews produced a 15 percent improvement in ROAS compared with products with fewer reviews. Products rated above 4.4 stars saw a 7 percent ROAS improvement over lower-rated listings. “Should you be doing it?” Pearl asked, referring to brands still directing media budget toward poorly rated products. Many teams, he said, haven’t even connected their digital shelf data to their own reviews to see what’s driving the low ratings in the first place.

Automation closes the gap between shelf health and media execution

The throughline across Pearl’s examples was connecting digital shelf signals directly to media platforms, so spend adjusts on its own. He cited a multi-channel case with Alien. Linking Profitero’s digital shelf data to Skai meant sponsored keywords and media activated automatically the moment a competitor went out of stock. That produced a 25 percent sales increase and a 4 percent ROAS improvement on Amazon in Italy.

A similar approach in the Philadelphia market connected digital shelf data to search execution. It drove a 28 percent increase in new brand buyers.

Pearl also pointed to AI as a way to scale content and keyword optimization beyond what manual teams can manage. A case study with BIC used AI tools to optimize content and search performance. The result was a 35 percent increase in sales alongside an eight-point average improvement in organic rank. “So you’re naturally getting more organic rank,” he said, “and therefore you can really hone your investments in areas where it’s actually needed.”

Three connections that tie the strategy together

Pearl closed with three priorities for brands applying this research. Connect teams to the right digital shelf data to avoid wasted spend. Connect the right insights to improve digital shelf performance so media lands on strong pages. Connect that data to technology partners so execution can automate and react with speed.