How retail media’s identity crisis is fueling a talent crunch

Retail media networks are continuing to scale up. According to Parbinder Dhariwal, vp and general manager at CVS Media Exchange, or CMX, CVS’s retail media network, the company is aiming to increase their workforce by 25% to 30%, especially around product roles, after going into the business five years ago. Agencies are also on the hunt for retail media talent.

All the while, hiring managers are chasing mythical all-in-one talent who understand in-store retail, cross-channel digital marketing, media planning and buying, strategy, audience segmentation, commerce, data and insights, ad tech — the list goes on.

“We’re in that weird gap where the talent just hasn’t caught up to what the need is for the technology,” said David Song, founder of strategic advisory services firm Song and Dance Partners.

Call it an identity crisis. Retail media networks are a three-headed beast, built to be part commerce, part retailer and part media company. With that said, expectations are high for talent in the space, with tightly-written job postings and hiring teams leaving AI-powered algorithms to sort through keywords and determine the best matches among candidates. Three ad executives currently hiring for retail media roles told Digiday it has been difficult to find a candidate that checks all the boxes.

Across the broader digital marketing ecosystem, job seekers say they’re frustrated with seemingly unrealistic job expectations, low salaries and slow-moving interview processes. All the while, economic uncertainty looms in the background, threatening to upend marketing budgets and teams alike.

“When I see job descriptions that are asking for 15 to 20 years of experience in retail media, I’m like, but what do you mean,” said Larisa Dumitru, head of commerce for Europe at GroupM. “Because you can’t be asking for 20 years of retail media experience because that just doesn’t exist.”

To Dumitru’s point, retail media in its current iteration has only existed for maybe the last six or seven years. Amazon’s ad offering dates back to 2012, with retailers like Kroger, Target, Home Depot and Walmart playing catch up in 2017 and 2018. The retail media roster has expanded to more than 250 networks at this point, with an increasing number of players throwing their hats in the ring. The pandemic added fuel to the fire as lockdown pushed retailers to hunt for alternative revenue streams. Meanwhile, uncertainty around Google’s crumbling third-party cookie has had marketers prioritizing first-party data.

With retail media reaching a stage of maturation, retail media networks and agencies are still trying to determine who oversees what. For example, both Nordstrom and Sam’s Club, which launched RMNs in 2021 and 2022, respectively, have restructured their businesses to bring retail media capabilities under execs who oversee other connected parts of the business, as Modern Retail reported.

In other words, retail media buyers are expected to be well-versed in multiple partner offerings and platforms, many of which are still working through product developments and changes themselves.

Keywords and precise job descriptions

One retail media specialist job posting from Crayola requires that candidates execute and optimize retail media campaigns across Amazon Ads, Walmart Connect, Target Roundel and other key platforms, manage paid search, work across internal teams like sales, brand and e-commerce, activate media, and more. At least three years of digital marketing experience is required according to the listing, in addition to executing paid media across said platforms. The company expects candidates to have at least one year of experience directly setting up campaigns in Amazon Ads. The salary range is not listed. Crayola did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Another, now closed, posting from an agency for an associate director retail media strategist outlines requirements of media planning and execution, client strategy, commerce strategy, budget management and optimization, and the ability to stay on top of industry trends. For the associate director role, at least seven years of experience in social media, display ads and e-commerce is required, in addition to a strong background in retail media.

Meanwhile, commerce platform Pricespider has kept its recent job description for a retail media manager vague on purpose, according to Florencia Schiavon, PriceSpider’s chief revenue officer.

“By leaving the job description more open ended, we can attract talent with diverse backgrounds and experiences,” Schiavon said in an emailed statement to Digiday, adding that hiring managers and employers need to think more broadly about what makes a good retail media hire, or risk shutting out potential qualified applicants. “Ultimately, the issue isn’t that talent isn’t out there; it’s about how we as employers frame our needs.”

Unclear career trajectory

Given retail media is still in its early days, there’s no clear-cut career path in the space, experts say. It’s only within the last six months that Koddi, a commerce tech company, has hired college grads with retail media program training. “Up until this year, those things didn’t exist,” said Eric Brackmann, Koddi’s vp of commerce media.

But retail media hiring managers aren’t calling the current situation a talent shortage. Instead, they’re dubbing it a training shortage, in which companies can simply train up a retail media expert.

“In my mind, anyone foundationally that understands media buying and understands the digital shelf can do this with training,” said Brandy Alexander, founder and managing director of Tandemtide, a performance marketing and omnichannel commerce firm.

Kiri Masters, retail media analyst and host of the podcast “Retail Media Breakfast Club,” said “that it took only about three months of training and hand-holding for someone with a baseline of media buying skills from other channels to be a passable junior media buyer in a single retailer like Amazon.”

CVS’ Dhariwal himself has a background in data and insights in digital ads, but said he “didn’t understand retail when I got into retail media back in Walmart [Connect],” nodding to the point that retail media skills can be taught via training programs, certifications and the like.

“Yes, of course we want all of the unicorns to work here. The reality is that there has to be some level of compromise,” he said. “If we can get somebody from the digital ad ecosystem who understands retail but doesn’t understand the data and insights capacity, we can teach that as well.”

Job seekers’ lament

The labor market overall has been a complicated one for the past few years, as the U.S. has navigated inflation, presidential administration changes and other complicated factors. Job seekers across the digital marketing landscape say they’re frustrated with employers’ unrealistic expectations and salary ranges across verticals.

Jennifer B, who spoke on the condition that her last name not be used, said she’s been looking for remote or hybrid marketing manager jobs in Indianapolis. Since January, Jennifer said she’s applied to more than 200 jobs with most applications “getting ghosted.” For the interviews she did get to have, it was often unclear who the supervisor would be and some recruiters didn’t honor meeting times. One position for an account manager at a marketing agency, she said, offered a salary of $55,000 per year, around 30% less than what she made in a job she previously held.

Tash Guimond, a California-based creative marketer who’s been on the job hunt since August 2023, has had a similar experience, saying the experience with job applications has been like “throwing bottles into the ocean.” The jobs that pay a reasonable salary for the amount of experience Guimond has are few and far between, per Guimond.

Barbie Koelker, a B2B tech marketing leader, has been on the job hunt for the last six months, applying to more than 1,000 jobs at this point, she said. To her, it’s a keyword race where employers want exact keyword matches, which could potentially hinder applicants who are actually well-qualified.

Seemingly, the retail media talent shortage (or training shortage, depending on who you ask) is a broader reflection on how the metaphors the industry uses to describe work — wars, battles, hunts — reveal more about its identity than they do about the labor market.

“Let’s be honest, it’s just media and it’s just sales. It’s not rocket science. They can learn,” said GroupM’s Dumitru.