Why Retail Media Networks Hide Their Tech Stacks From The Very Brands They Want To Attract

Forbes

2 days ago

In an industry where 89% of brands say a retailer's technology stack influences their advertising spending decisions, retail media networks are inexplicably playing hide-and-seek with their infrastructure choices. Retailers are treating their tech partnerships like state secrets—even after contracts are signed and decisions are final. This opacity creates unnecessary friction that limits growth these retailers seek in the rapidly expanding retail media market.
A Secret Not Worth Keeping
A sales executive at a large grocery retailer in the APAC region recently found herself in an absurd position. Her company had already selected and signed with a retail media technology vendor. When a competing vendor inquired about the RFP status, she wanted to transparently share that the decision had been made. Instead, her product team forbade her from revealing this information, leaving her to either lie or be evasive about a deal that was already complete.
"I still don't understand why," she later confided, expressing frustration that seemes to echo across the industry. "The vendors don't know what problems to solve when retailers keep their challenges private."88% Of Brands Say RMN Tech Transparency Affects Spend
A poll that I ran on LinkedIn shows a clear gap between retailer assumptions and advertiser priorities. When I asked verified brands and brand-side consultants whether knowing a retailer's ad-tech stack would influence their spending decisions, the numbers tell the story: 54% said it would strongly influence their decisions, 34% said somewhat, with only 6% saying not at all.
This represents real money at stake. These respondents manage billions in retail media spend collectively, yet many retailers continue operating as if their technology choices don't matter to advertisers.4 Reasons Why Opacity Still Exists
After speaking with dozens of retail media executives, four patterns explain this behavior:
The Shame Factor: Many retailers know their tech stacks are suboptimal but lack the ability to change due to internal politics or funding constraints. They are often locked into vendor contracts with prohibitive exit fees.
Financial Narrative Control: In one case that stood out, a retailer's communications team, reporting to the CFO, delayed announcing a new technology partnership for a year to better align with the company's financial narrative.
The Knowledge Gap: As one retail media executive explained, most retailers lack experience selling media directly. They don't understand what's important to media buyers or that buyers would find value in technology transparency.
The Margin Protection Play: Some retailers believe opacity enables them to capture higher margins than transparent, standardized systems would allow—particularly compared to real-time bidding models.
Advertisers have the budget. But they need a clear way in. My June Forbes column, 'DSPs Promise To Unlock Retail Media Demand. What's Holding Retailers Back?', shared new research showing that brands will move spend when they can transact programmatically. The catch: tech-stack opacity slows DSP integrations and identity alignment. That means retailers aren't tapping into advertiser demand – the very thing that would allow them to scale.Treating Tech as a Cost Center
A basic disconnect explains this secrecy. As one executive explained to me: "In tech companies, our product is a revenue generator," which drives investment in technology and interoperability. "Retailers view technology as a means to facilitate sales of physical products," focusing primarily on how technology enables product sales rather than directly generating revenue.
This perspective leads to what Jordan Witmer, Managing Director at Nectar First, sees as a major problem. "When we're staring down the barrel of 250 retail media networks, there's probably only five or six backend technologies powering them," he notes. His team has learned to identify which technology a retailer uses through careful questioning and reporting patterns, making the secrecy ultimately futile.Transparency Is The Real Competitive Advantage
Home Depot takes a different approach. Melanie Babcock, VP of Orange Apron Media, has been refreshingly transparent about their technology decisions and partnerships. "When you think about the experience a supplier has with a retailer, often the retailer thinks all about the customer and customer experience," she told me. "But the supplier experience isn't necessarily top of mind. Yet they're the ones engaging with the retailer as well."
Babcock has been refreshingly open about the company's technology partnerships. "I'm going to put it in the top five things that we did for our retail media network," Babcock says of their technology retooling, explaining how it allows them to build on a strong foundation while maintaining control of their roadmap. (Read more in my previous post for Forbes: Home Depot's Retail Media Chief Puts Suppliers At The Center.)The Hidden Costs of Hide-and-Seek
These problems add up fast:The Path Forward
Retailers clinging to tech stack secrecy are missing the point. The most sophisticated media buyers have already learned to identify underlying technologies through reporting patterns and targeting capabilities. Meanwhile, retailers who embrace transparency—like Home Depot—are positioning themselves as trusted partners rather than black boxes.
Here's what matters: In an ecosystem where brands have choices and technology directly impacts performance, transparency isn't just good practice—it's a competitive necessity. Retailers who continue playing hide-and-seek with their tech stacks risk losing advertiser interest, as advertisers take their budgets to partners willing to have honest conversations about how their platforms actually work.
As the retail media landscape matures from experimental add-on to core profit center, success depends on understanding that you can't build trust while hiding the foundation you're building on.