Retail media has become one of the biggest ad channels in the world, and one of the least independently checked. When a brand buys sponsored listings on a marketplace, the retailer usually sells the placement, serves it, counts it and reports on it. For teams that verify ads, that raises a simple question: how do you know where your sponsored listing actually appeared, and for whom?
This guide covers how big the channel is, what the measurement standards say, what is actually audited on the main networks, and how to check placements yourself across markets.
A big channel, measured from the inside
In the US, commerce media grew 18.0% in 2025 to $63.4 billion, according to the IAB and PwC’s annual revenue report. Globally, WPP Media projected commerce ad revenue of $178.2 billion for 2025, larger than total TV ad revenue for the first time.
Spending has grown faster than the means of checking it. In an ANA survey published in July 2024, 55% of marketers named the lack of standardisation across platforms as the greatest challenge in retail media, followed by attribution to sales at 48%. Most retail media sits inside the retailer’s own site and app, so the usual tools of display verification, such as third-party tags, often do not reach it.
What the standards say
The IAB and the Media Rating Council (MRC) published Retail Media Measurement Guidelines in January 2024. Three points matter most for sponsored listings.
An impression is not a view. An impression is an ad that has been delivered and “has begun to render”. The guidelines add that this “does not necessarily mean that the ad was seen”.
Onsite tagging is limited. In the guidelines’ words: “Due to site restrictions by retailers, providing onsite viewability tagging for each advertising partner is generally not possible.” Retailers are encouraged to measure viewability themselves and be clear about what they measure.
Outcomes need viewable impressions. “The MRC requires viewable impressions for attribution of outcomes to ad exposures.” Retailers are encouraged to have outcome metrics used for pricing audited by a third party.
IAB Europe’s standards, published in April 2024, went further on one point and less far on another. They deferred viewability for sponsored product ads, because these are “typically sold on a CPC basis”, and recorded that retailers were open to considering third-party verification for onsite ads “in the future”.
What is actually audited
MRC accreditation audits a network’s own counting against industry standards. It is valuable, but it covers different metrics on each network, and it is not a check of individual placements.
| Network | What the MRC has accredited for sponsored listings |
|---|---|
| Amazon Sponsored Products | Clicks, gross and net of sophisticated invalid traffic, at total level only (letter of July 2026) |
| Walmart Connect Sponsored Search | First-party clicks and impressions across desktop, mobile web and app, with general invalid traffic filtering (October 2025) |
| Instacart Sponsored Product | Impressions, clicks, click-through rate and viewable impressions (MRC update, late 2025) |
So on one network you can rely on audited impressions and viewability, and on another only on audited clicks. None of these tells you whether your ad appeared on a given search, in a given city, next to a given competitor. The guidelines describe how to count. Checking what shoppers see is still up to you.
Why placements vary
Sponsored listings are not a fixed slot that you buy and keep. Several things decide whether yours appears.
- Stock and the featured offer. Amazon’s own guidance says “Sponsored Products only appear when your advertised items are in stock”, and items need to be the featured offer to be eligible. A stock-out in one region can quietly switch your ads off. Our guide to monitoring product availability covers tracking that side.
- Store and delivery location. Instacart’s ads API asks for a store location code and returns no ads when none are available for that store. Grocery and delivery marketplaces choose ads for a place, not just a query.
- Marketplace. Each country marketplace runs its own auction, catalogue and sellers. A campaign that wins in Germany may not run in France at all.
- Organic rank. Sponsored results do not just repeat the top organic results. A 2024 academic study of 4,800 searches across four Amazon marketplaces found that items with organic ranks beyond 100th position appeared as sponsored results.
That is why reports and reality can drift apart. A dashboard shows totals; a shopper in one postcode, on one marketplace, sees one page.
The rules on labels
Regulators care about one part of this: whether shoppers can tell an ad from a result.
In the EU, Article 26 of the Digital Services Act requires platforms to identify ads, “including through prominent markings”, and to say on whose behalf an ad is shown and who paid for it. Article 39 requires very large online platforms to run a public, searchable ad repository with an API. Amazon Store, AliExpress and Zalando were designated as very large platforms in April 2023, and Shein and Temu followed in 2024. In June 2025 the European Commission made binding AliExpress’s commitments to clearly mark all ads, including for shoppers who are not signed in, and to keep its ad repository up to date.
In the US, FTC staff guidance from 2013 says paid results in specialised search, including shopping, are “a form of advertising and should be identified as such”, with the label placed immediately in front of the ad or at the top left of an ad block.
For brands, this gives two useful tools: the label is something you can check, and in the EU the repository is a public record you can compare with your own reports.
What to check yourself
- Presence. For your key search terms, does your sponsored listing appear, and in which position?
- Share of the page. How many sponsored and organic slots do you hold against each competitor?
- Who bids on your brand. Which sellers and rivals appear on searches for your own brand name? Our guide to brand bidding and rogue ads covers how to handle them.
- The offer shown. Is the price, seller and stock in the listing what you expect? A sponsored slot can promote a reseller’s offer, which matters for winning the featured offer.
- The label. Is the ad clearly marked as sponsored on every device and market you buy?
- The repository. In the EU, does the platform’s ad repository list your ads, with the right advertiser and payer?
How to collect it
Placement checks only work if they reflect what a real shopper sees.
- Fix the search. Use a fixed list of search terms per marketplace, and check at several times of day, because auctions and stock change.
- Set the location. Use the marketplace’s own country site and a delivery location or store that matches your campaign. Residential proxies let you load public search pages as a local visitor would see them, market by market.
- Keep evidence. Save a screenshot and the page HTML for each check, with time and location, so you can raise a disagreement with the network.
- Use official sources first. Network reports, accredited metrics and the EU repositories cover a lot. Sample the rest instead of crawling everything.
Keep collection light. Check public pages, stay within each marketplace’s terms and rate limits, and avoid personal data. The goal is a sample of what shoppers see, not a copy of the marketplace. Our guide to cloaked and geo-targeted ads covers why the vantage point matters.
The bottom line
Retail media has grown into a channel worth tens of billions a year, but its numbers still come mostly from the retailers that sell it. Accreditation covers part of the counting, and the coverage differs by network. Labels are regulated, and in the EU there is a public repository to check against. The rest, whether your listing appeared, where and next to whom, is something brands have to sample themselves, with fixed searches, the right locations and evidence for every check.
Sources and references
- IAB and PwC, Internet Advertising Revenue Report, full year 2025 (16 April 2026): iab.com
- WPP Media, This Year Next Year (10 December 2025): wppmedia.com
- ANA, retail media networks survey (23 July 2024): ana.net
- IAB and MRC, Retail Media Measurement Guidelines (January 2024): iab.com
- IAB Europe, Retail Media Measurement Standards V1 (April 2024): iabeurope.eu
- MRC, Amazon Sponsored Products accreditation letter (8 July 2026): mediaratingcouncil.org
- Walmart Connect, Sponsored Search earns MRC accreditation (16 October 2025): walmartconnect.com
- Amazon Ads, Sponsored Products best practices: advertising.amazon.com
- Instacart Ads API, sponsored products: docs.instacart.com
- Dash et al., sponsored results on Amazon marketplaces (July 2024): arxiv.org
- Digital Services Act, Regulation (EU) 2022/2065: eur-lex.europa.eu
- European Commission, AliExpress commitments made binding (18 June 2025): digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu
- FTC staff letter on distinguishing ads in search results (24 June 2013): ftc.gov