Retail Media Networks Revive Multi-Touch Attribution
Within a week in September 2026, two major retailers announced new multi-touch attribution (MTA) capabilities for their retail media networks. Albertsons Media Collective launched an incrementality-based MTA built with LiveRamp and piloted by PepsiCo, while Best Buy Ads released its own in-house MTA within My Ads. The author, Kiri Masters, questions the revival given MTA's fall from favor, but analyzes retailer incentives: MTA may serve as a tool to unlock brand budgets, which are larger than performance budgets, by justifying higher CPMs and measuring full-funnel impact. Retailers see demand from shopper marketing teams, but brands and consultants express skepticism about MTA's accuracy, data access, and black-box nature. The article contrasts retailer-owned systems with independent tools like Clerdata, Incremental, Keen Decision Systems, and Circana, and discusses limitations of the Albertsons-LiveRamp partnership, which is grocery-exclusive and excludes Google Search and Amazon.
- •Albertsons Media Collective announced Retail Media Incrementality-Based Multi-Touch Attribution on September 17, 2026, built with LiveRamp and piloted by PepsiCo.
- •Best Buy Ads confirmed its own multi-touch attribution, built in-house, going live on September 30, 2026, within My Ads.
- •Albertsons' MTA connects impression-level exposure across its channels, offsite media, and participating platforms (including Google DV360, Google Ad Manager, Perion) against transaction data.
