Retail media has become one of advertising’s fastest-growing channels globally, but many retailers still operate with a fundamental disconnect: advertising teams and merchandising teams often work on separate systems, with different objectives and data sets. Retail Media’s Growth Problem Is No Longer Technology To address the issues of retail media, Pentaleap and Zitcha have announced a partnership designed to unify retail media execution with retail operations. The integration aims to help retailers align advertising inventory, product availability, promotions and merchandising decisions within a single workflow. The move reflects an industry shift from building retail media networks to improving how they operate at scale.
What The Partnership Solves Retail Challenge. Intended Outcome Separate ad and merchant teams. Shared decision-making Disconnected campaign planning. Unified workflows Inventory-advertising mismatches. Better campaign relevance Manual coordination. Greater operational efficiency Fragmented retail data. Improved performance visibility
The Strategic Read
For India's retail and commerce ecosystem, this development points to the next phase of retail media maturity. Marketplaces, quick-commerce platforms and large retail chains have invested heavily in advertising products, but organisational silos remain common.
As retail media becomes a larger revenue contributor, success will depend less on selling ad inventory and more on connecting advertising with actual business outcomes such as stock movement, category growth and shopper conversion.
For agencies, this could also change how retail media is planned. Campaign effectiveness may increasingly be measured against retail performance metrics rather than media metrics alone.
Our insight
The future of retail media may not be determined by better ad targeting, but by how closely advertising systems are integrated with the realities of retail operations.