Search for a specific product on any e-commerce or quick-commerce app today and the first thing you see is increasingly not the product you went looking for. It could be a sponsored rival, a promoted substitute or several paid listings occupying the most valuable real estate on the screen. This exchange4media feature explores the growing tension at the heart of retail media’s rapid growth, asking whether sponsored discovery is genuinely helping shoppers find relevant products or systematically crowding out organic results and eroding consumer trust. Featuring Mihir Mehta, Managing Partner at 0101.Today, who makes a sharp and important distinction: the closer advertising moves to the point of purchase, the easier it becomes to attribute a sale to media, but attribution and incrementality are not the same thing. A shopper already searching for detergent, breakfast cereal or skincare has demonstrated category intent before ever encountering the sponsored listing, and retail media has to be judged on whether it drove an additional sale, not just whether it was present when a sale occurred. As retail media’s share of India’s advertising market continues to rise, this piece asks the question every brand marketer spending on sponsored listings should be asking: who pays, and who actually wins?
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