The Retail Media Civil War Is Ending: How “Fluid” Sponsored Products Are Reshaping Search

In today’s episode, I dig into one of the biggest internal conflicts inside retail organizations—the clash between merchant teams and retail media teams. One side is incentivized to fill every available ad slot, the other is responsible for driving product sales, and shoppers are the ones caught in the crossfire. As Charlie Munger said, “Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome,” and retail media is no exception.

I share highlights from a recent LinkedIn Live with Andreas Reiffen, CEO and co-founder of Pentaleap, whose 2025 Sponsored Products Benchmark Report exposes cracks in the old model of separating organic search from sponsored placements. We unpack why retailers are finally beginning to merge these two systems into a single, relevance-driven engine, and how this “fluid” approach could end the long-running merchant vs. media standoff once and for all.

This episode is sponsored by Mirakl Ads

Timeline

02:15 — The incentive problem: why merchant and media teams often work against each other
03:30 — Andreas explains why onsite search tech already solved relevance years ago
05:12 — The consequences of running two ranking engines that don’t communicate
05:56 — The Fifth Avenue analogy: how fixed ad slots waste precious digital real estate
07:00 — How dynamic, margin-based ranking blends organic + sponsored into one algorithm
09:13 — Macy’s and Home Depot shift from fixed to fluid sponsored product distribution
10:45 — A key question brands should ask every retailer about their algorithm setup

Links & Resources

• Watch the full replay of my LinkedIn Live with Andreas Reiffen
• Get Pentaleap's H2 2025 Sponsored Products Benchmarks Report
• Follow Andreas Reiffen on LinkedIn
• Read my articles:
  • 3 New Developments In RTB (Real Time Bidding) For Retail Media
  • Have Retailers Lost Discovery to AI for Good?
• Subscribe to Retail Media Breakfast Club's daily newsletter
• Follow Kiri on LinkedIn