Global expansion and hyperlocal focus redefine the next chapter of retail media networks by DoorDash

Retail media networks are projected to be worth $179.5 billion by 2025, but capturing share and achieving long-term success won’t hinge solely on growing their customer base. With over 200 retail media networks now competing for advertiser attention, the landscape has become increasingly complex and crowded. The RMNs that stand out will be those taking a differentiated approach to meeting the evolving needs of advertisers.

The industry’s concentration creates interesting dynamics. While some platforms have achieved significant scale, nearly 70% of RMN buyers cite “complexity in the buying process” as their biggest obstacle. That tension, between explosive growth and operational complexity, is forcing the industry to evolve beyond traditional approaches.

As the landscape matures, which strategies will define the next wave of growth: global expansion, hyperlocal targeting, or both?

The evolution of retail media platforms

To understand where the industry is heading, it’s worth examining how successful platforms are addressing advertisers’ core challenges. Lack of measurement standards across platforms continues to frustrate advertisers who want to compare performance across networks. Manual processes dominate smaller networks, making campaign management inefficient and time-consuming.

At the same time, most retailers lack the digital footprint necessary for standalone success. This has created opportunities for platforms that can solve multiple problems simultaneously: standardization, automation, and scale.

DoorDash represents an interesting case study in this evolution. The platform has built its advertising capabilities around reaching consumers at their moment of local need across multiple categories. With more than 42 million monthly active consumers as of December 2024, DoorDash provides scale and access to high-intent shoppers across various categories spanning restaurants, groceries and retail.

The company’s approach demonstrates how platforms can address advertiser pain points through technology. DoorDash’s recent platform announcement showcases this evolution: the company now serves advertisers with new AI-powered tools and expanded capabilities. Through its acquisition of ad tech platform Symbiosys, a next-generation retail media platform, brands can expand their reach into digital channels, such as search, social, and display, and retailers can extend the breadth of their retail media networks.

Global expansion meets local precision

International expansion presents both opportunities and challenges for retail media networks. Europe’s retail media industry is projected to surpass €31 billion by 2028,. This creates opportunities for networks that can solve the technology puzzle of operating across multiple geographies.

The challenge lies in building platforms that work seamlessly across countries while maintaining local relevance. International expansion requires handling different currencies, regulations, and cultural contexts—capabilities that many networks struggle to develop.

DoorDash’s acquisition of Wolt illustrates how platforms can achieve global scale while maintaining local connections. The integration enables brands to manage campaigns across Europe and the U.S. through a single interface—exactly the kind of operational efficiency that overwhelmed advertisers seek.

The combined entity now operates across more than 30 countries, with DoorDash and Wolt Ads crossing an annualized advertising revenue run rate of more than $1 billion in 2024. What makes this expansion compelling isn’t just the scale—it’s how the integration maintains neighborhood-level precision across diverse geographies.

Wolt has transformed from a food delivery platform into what it describes as a multi-category “shopping mall in people’s pockets.”

The hyperlocal advantage: context beats demographics

Here’s what’s really changing the game: the shift from demographic targeting to contextual precision. Privacy regulations favor contextual targeting over behavioral tracking, but that’s not the only reason smart networks are going hyperlocal.

Location-based intent signals provide dramatically higher conversion probability than traditional demographics. Real-time contextual data—weather patterns, local events, proximity to fulfillment—influences purchase decisions in immediate, actionable ways that broad demographic targeting simply can’t match.

DoorDash built its entire advertising model around this insight, reaching consumers at the exact moment of local need across multiple categories. The platform provides scale and access to high-intent shoppers with contextual precision. A recent innovation that exemplifies this approach is Dayparting for CPG brands, which enables advertisers to target users in their local time zones—a level of time-based precision that distinguishes hyperlocal platforms from broader retail media networks.

In one example, Unilever applied Dayparting to focus on late-night and weekend windows for its ice cream campaigns, aligning ad delivery with peak demand periods. Over a two-week period, 77% of attributed sales were new-to-brand, demonstrating the power of contextual timing in driving incremental reach.

Major brands, including Unilever, Coca-Cola, and Heineken, utilize both DoorDash and Wolt platforms for hyperlocal targeting, proving the model is effective for both endemic and non-endemic advertisers seeking neighborhood-level precision.

Technology evolution: measurement and automation

The technical requirements for next-generation retail media networks extend far beyond basic advertising capabilities. Self-serve functionality has become standard for international geographies—not because it’s trendy, but because manual campaign management doesn’t scale across dozens of countries with different currencies, regulations, and cultural contexts.

Cross-country campaign management requires unified dashboards that manage complexity while maintaining simplicity for advertisers. Automation isn’t optional anymore; it’s necessary to compete with established players who’ve built machine learning into their core operations.

But here’s what’s really transforming measurement: new attribution methodologies that go beyond traditional ROAS. When platforms can integrate fulfillment data with advertising exposure, they enable real-time performance tracking that connects ad spend to actual business outcomes rather than just clicks and impressions.

Progress on standardization continues through IAB guidelines addressing measurement consistency, alongside industry pushes for technical integration standards. The challenge lies in balancing standardization with differentiation—networks need to offer easy integration and consistent measurement while maintaining unique value propositions.

In a move toward addressing advertisers’ need for measurement consistency, DoorDash recognized that restaurant brands valued both click and impression-based attribution for their sponsored listing ads, and recently introduced impression-based attribution and reporting in Ads Manager. This has enabled restaurant brands to gain a deeper understanding of performance and results driven on DoorDash.

Global technology challenges add another layer of complexity: multi-currency transactions, local payment methods, regulatory compliance across countries, and cultural adaptation while maintaining platform consistency. These aren’t afterthoughts for international platforms, they’re core competencies that determine success or failure.

Industry outlook: consolidation and opportunity

Retail media is heading toward consolidation, but not in the way most people expect. Hyperlocal networks are positioned to capture share from undifferentiated RMNs that compete solely on inventory volume. Geographic specialization is becoming a viable alternative to traditional scale-focused approaches.

Simultaneously, community impact measurement is gaining importance for brand strategy. Marketers are discovering that advertising dollars spent on local commerce platforms create multiplier effects—supporting neighborhood businesses and strengthening local economies in ways that traditional e-commerce advertising doesn’t achieve.

The networks that understand this dynamic, that can offer global platform capabilities with genuine local industry expertise, are the ones positioned to define retail media’s next chapter. Success requires technology integration that enables contextual and location-based targeting, plus measurement solutions that prove incrementality beyond traditional metrics.

The path forward

As retail media networks mature, success lies not in choosing between global scale and local relevance, but in achieving both simultaneously. The DoorDash-Wolt combination provides a compelling blueprint, demonstrating how technology platforms can enable international expansion while deepening neighborhood-level connections.

For marketers navigating this evolution, the fundamental question shifts from “where should we advertise?” to “how can we reach consumers at their moment of need?” Networks that answer this effectively—through global reach, hyperlocal precision, or ideally both, will write retail media’s next chapter.Interested to learn more about DoorDash Ads? Get started today.

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