Should You Attend A Retail Media Summit?

A crowd of brightly dressed cosmopolitan clowns cavorting around a shopping cart, much like one might see at a retail media summit

You may have just gotten into the field of retail media, or you may have been in it for years, but you find yourself at the edge of a dizzying precipice and don't know whether or not you should take the plunge into the world of retail media summits.

First, let's review the standard offerings.

Retail Media Summits of Note

Path to Purchase Institute Retailer Media Summit | Chicago | June 24-26, 2024 | $595-$1595 with some CPG brand representatives being eligible for free attendance

AdWeek Retail Media Summit | Bloomington, MN | November 2, 2023 | $129.35 before September 25th, $199 thereafter

These are actually the only two we're aware of, but please let us know if we've missed any!

Honestly, Treat Yourself

As far as conference admission prices do, these are quite modest. Travel and lodging costs will vary depending on whnere you're coming from, but Chicago is a major travel hub and Bloomington, MN is reasonable accessible from the middle 48 states.

For that reason, if you work for a large organization with a large travel & expense budget...or sorry, I mean Personal Development and Education Budget...than this is probably worth it just for the personal networking opportunities.

If You're Really Trying To Maximize ROI and Your Time...

These aren't worth attending into you're really in a position to take action on the "second tier" and "third tier" of things you can learn about retail media.

This is to say that you should 100% master your own domain before traveling far afield to find more complicated, higher order problems to solve.

Do you know exactly what ROAS you should expect from retail media campaigns and are all your campaigns properly dialed in to this?

Are you confident in your retail media campaign incrementality?

Have you combined the above two layers of information and other key factors into a total analysis of your retail media ROI?

Unless than answer to all of the above is an emphatic "YES!" than you may want to sit these summits out for a year and focus on your fundamentals.

This may not sound like much fun versus just splurging on the ticket anyway, but you'll enjoy and learn from the event all the more next year after you've taken time to really get your home in order first.