by John Still on 11th Feb 2026 in Video Interviews

In this episode of A Coffee With... Marie-Clare Puffett, industry development & insights director at IAB Europe, joins ExchangeWire's head of content, John Still, over a coconut milk latte.

Marie-Clare has been at IAB Europe for over 13 years, with her current role focused on industry development in retail and commerce media and connected TV. Tune in as she and John chat metrics, transparency, and IAB Europe's commerce measurement standards.

"Businesses are retailers before they are media companies"

Retail media is a fast-growing sector, presenting significant opportunities for brands and advertisers. However, a lack of standardisation has led to a proliferation of fragmentation, particularly in the area of metrics and measurement. Most retail media networks (RMNs) have established themselves and grown in variable ways. As a result, their approaches to measurement and reporting have grown just as unevenly.

"Trust comes from transparency. And if we can peel back the layers on this thing and uncover all of that transparency, there's no bad practice—or intentional bad practice—going on. It's just everyone's operating in a very different manner right now and that's how the ecosystem is grown up."

To address this, IAB Europe worked collaboratively with RMNs, agencies, and the buy side to develop a set of measurement standards for retail and commerce media. An updated version 2 was released in January this year. The aim is to ensure different retailers report metrics similarly, improving confidence in what can feel like a messy ecosystem.

"Transparency, consistency, comparability"

ROAS and incrementality are often cited as key measures of retail media effectiveness. While each play an important role, the way in which things are done in the industry ultimately matters more than any single metric. Agencies and brands are not just looking for strong performance figures—they want transparency, consistency, and comparability.

The IAB standards address reporting on metrics in three key areas. The first covers basic metrics like viewability and ad impressions, which tend to be highly inconsistent in retail media. The second is sales metrics, including ROAS, lookbacks, and clickthroughs. The third, insight-led metrics, touches on ideas largely unique to retail and commerce media networks such as new-to-brand and new-to-customer.

"As we see retail media integrate more into the media mix"

Marie-Clare predicts continued strong growth for retail media, but with more strategic consideration of spend from the buy side as retail media integrates more into the media mix. As agencies start to spend within RMNs, retailers will need to start thinking more like media companies in order to compete with the large platforms and CTV channels.

Alongside the measurement standards, there is a need to educate both retailers and the broader industry about how the different ecosystems operate and complement each other. Such knowledge exchange will be essential to driving sustainable growth in the sector.

Commerce MediaMeasurementRetail MediaTransparency