Why trusted editorial brands matter in retail media

At the recent PPA Festival, a session on ‘How to think like a retailer’ explored one of advertising’s fastest-growing opportunities: commerce media. Amanda Wigginton, strategic consultant, shares her take outs from the session, and what the rise of commerce media means for publishers, platforms and, crucially, advertisers.

As commerce media accelerates, advertisers are looking for partners that can do more than simply deliver a sale. Trusted editorial brands offer a powerful combination of audience attention, authority, context and conversion, helping brands influence decisions, build trust and drive action and longer term brand growth.

Commerce media is no longer a niche performance play. In the UK, retail media was reported as a standalone channel for the first time by the Advertising Association and WARC, with spend rising 17.5% year-on-year in 2025 to £3.7bn, while fourth-quarter growth reached 30.5%. The pace of growth underlines just how quickly advertiser investment is moving into environments that can connect media exposure to measurable outcomes.

One of the themes from the session was that commerce media is far more complex than it first appears. Success depends on much more than just increasing ad inventory. Publishers and retailers alike need to balance monetisation with user experience, protect audience trust and prove genuine incrementality, not just conversion.

As Stefano Biondi, General Manager at Top Sort, put it: “The value comes from doing it in a way that enhances the user experience and delivers genuinely incremental outcomes for the brands that fund it.”

That matters because the advertiser opportunity is significant. Commerce media promises better targeting through first party data, stronger signals of purchase intent and more advanced measurement around return on ad spend, incrementality and lifetime value. But advertisers are also becoming more discerning. They want to know not only whether something converted, but if it drove new behaviour – a new customer, a brand switch, or greater long term value.

Ben Peterson, Global Strategic Retail Media Manager at Just Eat Takeaway, said. “ROAS (Return on ad spend) is really the key reason why retail media has grown so much… but I don’t think that on its own is enough anymore.”

Diane Young, Co-founder of The Drum, said incrementality had become the defining issue in recent commerce media discussions. “Would this sale have happened without the ad?” she asked, noting that many advertisers still do not feel the industry has fully solved that question. At the same time, advertisers are contending with an increasingly crowded media market and growing uncertainty over which new options genuinely drive results.

The panel agreed that performance alone is no longer enough. Advertisers want partners that can influence consideration earlier in the journey, shape brand preference and still deliver accountable outcomes. This is where trusted editorial brands and magazine media stand apart.

Publishers with strong editorial integrity have something many commerce platforms are still working to build: audience trust. 

For brands, it is this trust that matters. 

When recommendations appear within expert, well-crafted editorial environments, they benefit from greater credibility, stronger engagement and a more natural route to conversion than in potentially cluttered or purely transactional settings.

Trusted editorial brands engage audiences when they are actively seeking information, inspiration and expertise. That creates a powerful combination for advertisers: consumers who are more receptive, more engaged and more likely to act on recommendations delivered in context.

Poppy Nash, Managing Editor of Who What Wear, argued that editorial integrity is central to that value: “We do not create content to push product. We are creating content to build trust, to earn trust, and to continue that relationship, and that is what converts,” she said.

For advertisers, this makes magazine media a particularly compelling commerce partner. It can operate higher up the funnel by inspiring discovery, shaping trends and creating desire, while also supporting measurable action further down the path to purchase. Rather than forcing a choice between brand building and performance, editorial media can connect the two.

The strongest partnerships, then, are likely to be those that combine trusted environments, data intelligence, creative credibility and commercial accountability. As commerce media continues to evolve, advertisers will need partners that can deliver measurable outcomes without undermining the audience relationship that makes those outcomes possible in the first place.

That is precisely why magazine media remains an important part of the media mix. 

In a market full of new advertising options, trusted editorial brands continue to offer a rare combination of attention, influence and accountability. They don’t simply capture demand, they help create it, turning trusted audience relationships into meaningful commercial outcomes.

The session was hosted by Victoria Rennie, CEO of Global Data Media, the panel brought together experts from Just Eat Takeaway, The Drum, Future and Top Sort. For more on the PPA Festival sessions click here. Delegates can watch sessions on demand here.