The Maze: Retail media has spent the last few years selling a clean story: retailers own the shopper, the shelf, the transaction data, and the ad surface. Bain and EMARKETER's latest survey pokes a hole in that pitch. Among US sell-side leaders focused on strategy and innovation, the biggest expected disruption is not another walled garden or a new ad format. It is zero-click and GenAI search disrupting discovery. Translation: the shopper may not reach the retailer's digital aisle at all.
AI search is the top fear, not retail media fragmentation. The survey's leading response is zero-click/genAI search disrupting discovery at 36%. Agentic AI changing ad-buyer decision-making follows at 28%. RM fragmentation across walled gardens lands at 24%. That ordering matters. The industry has obsessed over measurement gaps, inconsistent formats, and network sprawl. Those are still real. But leaders now see a larger risk upstream: AI can compress product research into an answer before the retailer gets the visit, the ad impression, or the merchandising moment.
The same threat appears twice because it attacks both ends of the funnel. Zero-click/genAI search disrupting discovery ranks first at 36%, while zero-click/genAI disintermediating the path to purchase still reaches 22%. Discovery and checkout used to be separated by many messy steps. Search, comparison, retailer page, sponsored placement, basket, payment. AI search and shopping agents start to collapse that chain. Google's AI Mode shopping updates show the direction of travel: product help, comparison, and purchase support can happen inside an AI-led search layer. Retail media was built around controlled onsite attention. The next layer may sit above the site.
Buyer-side automation creates a second squeeze. The 28% response for agentic AI changing ad-buyer decision-making is not a cute future-of-work note. It points to budget allocation. If brands use agents to plan, bid, compare networks, and optimize campaigns, retail media networks lose some of their relationship advantage. The buyer's agent will ask dull but brutal questions: Which network drives incremental sales? Which audience is duplicated? Which margin outcome beats return on ad spend? That connects directly to Sarah Marzano's post, where 54% of leaders cited measuring incrementality beyond ROAS as a major challenge.
The operating model is still the weak link. Only 28% of retail media networks have incentives aligned between RMN and merchandising teams, per the post. That is the quiet killer. Sponsored ranking can fight organic ranking. Media revenue can fight product margin. Offsite spend can look good for the ad P&L while doing little for the merchant. Andreas Reiffen's comment captured the issue well: separating retail and media comes at a high price. AI will not politely respect internal structures. It will route shoppers, budgets, and recommendations toward whichever system looks most useful.
The survey is small, but the signal is strategically loud. The visual is based on 34 US sell-side leaders who self-assessed around strategy and innovation, so this is not a market-size forecast. It is a priority map. Regulation at 23% and commerce media convergence at 20% still matter. But the top cluster is about control. Who controls discovery? Who controls buying decisions? Who controls the path to purchase when AI can answer before the store opens?
Why it matters: Retail media networks cannot defend the next phase with more ad units alone. They need incrementality proof, merchant-aligned incentives, and product feeds good enough for AI surfaces. The strategic question is shifting from "How do we monetize retailer traffic?" to "How do we stay visible when traffic is no longer guaranteed?" That is a harder question. It is also the right one.
