Many South African marketers, brand managers and retailers will remember the days when their retail marketing strategy was static, and really just a cost of doing business. Brands invested primarily into “trade or shopper marketing” to maintain in-store visibility with key retail partners.
With the public launch in 1995 of the ‘Earth’s biggest bookstore’, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos gave many people their first glimpse into the exciting world of e-commerce with his fast-growing online store that went on to make around $16 million in revenue in its first full year.
The gradual shift toward e-commerce gained momentum from the early to mid-1990’s up to 2019, and coincided with increased, and more targeted, shopper marketing and the emergence of modern-day retail media.
The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns acted as a powerful accelerant, aligning South Africa more closely with global online consumption trends. Over this period, 68% of South African consumers reduced the frequency of their visits to physical stores and supermarkets, while 37% increased their online shopping activity.
This evened out in the years thereafter and in 2025, the value of e-commerce transactions in South Africa is expected to surge to R225 billion.
Today, retail media’s influence extends beyond e-commerce, with in-store playing an even more critical role than ever before. This evolution, coupled with marketers’ demand for greater accountability, has propelled retail media into a core marketing investment and strategic lever that drives brand strategy and measurable outcomes.
Brands embracing retail media as more than just a channel – but rather viewing it as a growth engine – will be the ones winning today, and tomorrow.
Influencing the last mile
The true power of modern retail media lies in the ‘last mile’ – the critical point where consumers transition from consideration to conversion – making it an essential part of any performance-driven strategy.
These are not just impressions: they’re high-intent moments when consumers are actively deciding what to buy. Retail media influences these decisions, making it a transformative pillar in the modern marketing playbook.
This ‘last mile’ effectively bridges the gap between upper-funnel brand awareness and lower-funnel conversions. This is true not only for e-commerce platforms but extends to the in-store experience as well.
In-store still reigns
Forward-thinking media strategists understand that the role of in-store media is more crucial than ever, especially in South Africa where it remains the primary shopping environment for most consumers.
Retailers such as Shoprite and Checkers are increasingly leveraging digital signage – such as entrance and checkout screens – to deliver targeted messages at key points in the buying journey. These digital touchpoints are powered by advanced analytics and shopper data, enabling precise audience targeting and optimised ad spend.
Rainmaker Media, for example, utilises data from billions of transactions annually to connect brand with 80% of South African shoppers, driving measurable sales conversions. This data-driven approach allows brands to target the right customers, in the right place, at exactly the right time.
Closed-loop measurement
Marketers are often frustrated by their inability to accurately measure the success of their advertising campaigns. A recent study by Dr Nelson-Field, a leading media science researcher, analysed over 130 000 online advertisements and found that 85% failed because the adverts didn’t meet the critical attention threshold necessary for the advert to land.
Additionally, a Forrester Research analysis estimated that about 37% of ad spend is wasted due to imprecise targeting.
Retail media offers a solution by integrating conversation data into its omnichannel strategies, enabling the optimisation of campaign performance in real time. For instance, incorporating in-store sales data enables Rainmaker Media to close the loop between online engagement and offline purchases by linking media spend directly to sales.
This approach provides brands with a 360-degree view of shopper behaviour, unlocking granular attribution and accurate Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) measurement – capabilities that traditional media channels struggle to deliver.
This level of accountability is highly appealing to performance-driven marketers, as it not only justifies increased budgets but also demonstrates Return on Investment (ROI) at a campaign level.
Targeting is everything
In a privacy-first world, with ever-tightening regulations and diminishing third-party data, what sets Retail Media apart is its access to real-time, first-party shopper data at scale – something few other channels can acquire.
Rainmaker Media, for example, offers brands the ability to deliver personalised ads directly within the shopping environment. This means we can target customers when they are in the right frame of mind to receive the advertising message, as opposed to interrupting their experience while watching TV, for example.
You may have heard the term ‘The Third Wave’ being associated with retail media, and this relates directly to transactional data – which performs 33 times better than ‘interest data’ (used during the first and second waves) according to some case studies.
Transactional data allows us to reduce ad wastage significantly because where your customer is buying into a certain category, there is far more certainty that your ad will land with them.
The new rules of engagement
The most pertinent question marketers should be asking themselves today is: what should we expect from retail media in this new era? As a marketer or brand strategist, your investment in retail media should
- Empower you to be more strategic with your advertising
- Provide you with data to understand your customers better
- Guide your channel selection
- Proactively identify specific audience segments with real-time insights into their preferences, needs, and behaviours
There is much more to explore that will benefit brands, retailers, and agencies. As a member of the MMA (Mobile Marketing Association), Rainmaker Media was invited to participate in the MMA South Africa CMO Summit on 10 September 2025 to present a session called Measuring What Matters: Evolving Retail Media Metrics for Next-Level Performance.
It unpacked how to track and interpret campaign results with more sophisticated KPIs (beyond impressions and clicks) including sales lift, customer lifetime value (LTV), and unified attribution.
This will be available on the MMA Global site in due course.
Tanja de Korte is managing director of Rainmaker Media and MMA SA member.
