Retail media is very good at explaining why an ad reached the right shopper. It’s often less convincing at explaining why that shopper should care.

That tension is at the heart of the October 12 episode of Rethink Retail’s Media Mondays, where I spoke with Lisa Zielinski of Ipsos about its Creativity Over Clicks research and what it means for brands and retail media networks.

The episode description points to research involving more than 21,000 simulated shopping trips on Amazon and Walmart. That’s a useful backdrop for a question the industry should be asking more often: are we building better advertising, or merely better ways to deliver it?

Targeting isn’t the same thing as persuasion

Retail media’s pitch is compelling. Retailers know a great deal about shopping behavior and can connect advertising activity to transactions in ways that many other channels struggle to match.

But knowing when someone might buy something isn’t the same as giving them a reason to choose your brand. An ad can be well targeted, correctly attributed, and utterly forgettable—all at the same time.

When every network is competing on data, inventory, and measurement, creative effectiveness deserves a much bigger seat at the table.

The danger of optimizing only what is easiest to count

Clicks, conversions, and return on ad spend are useful signals. They are not a complete description of what advertising does.

Sometimes the goal is to build familiarity. Sometimes it’s to introduce a product that shoppers didn’t know existed. Sometimes it’s to shift perceptions before a purchase is even under consideration.

Reducing the entire exercise to the nearest measurable transaction risks rewarding the ads that are easiest to attribute rather than those that create the most durable value.

What should change?

I’d like to see retailers and brands treat creative quality as a strategic variable, not an afterthought once the audience and media plan have been decided. That means testing ideas, questioning repetitive formats, and making room for distinctiveness even in environments built for conversion.

The next phase of retail media shouldn’t simply be about adding more screens and more impressions. It should be about making those impressions matter.

My takeaway: retail media has spent years proving it can find shoppers. Now it needs to prove it can move them.

Find “Retail Media’s $170 Billion Creative Problem” in the Rethink Retail podcast feed.