How PepsiCo Evaluates Retail Media Networks

PepsiCo expects content commerce to impact several of its categories.

While the rapid ascent of retail media may be exciting, the retailers that want PepsiCo’s spend need to bring their receipts. 

“Retail media networks are great, but it’s not a free value transfer from us to the retailers,” said Ram Krishnan, PepsiCo CEO of North America beverages, at Groceryshop in Las Vegas this week. “They need to meet a certain threshold at other media bought, like the media that we do with Meta or Google, and I think that’s the conversation that we want to have.” 

Building off the benefits of “precision loyalty,” he said there’s little question that RMNs drive value in the middle and lower funnels, and the CPG is very willing to invest within them. 

“Having said that, I would also submit that not all retailers should be media companies,” he said, noting that the CPG spends an inordinate amount of time looking at all levers. While scale may be a consideration, it’s not the whole story.  

Among these levers: 

• How much can the retail media networks target?  
• Are measurements clear across every touchpoint? 
• What is the creative flexibility with search and video? 
• Is there an API? 

“They need to meet all of the same criteria as far as how we could evaluate a media investment,” he stressed. “The good news is we have decades and decades of measuring those things, and we’re bringing the same rigor to retail media networks.”