Retail Media's AI Reset — Beth Smith, VP Customer Success, Particular Audience, keynote at the IAB UK Retail Media Growth Summit 2026. Search is being rewritten — and with it, the rules of performance, targeting and visibility.

89% of retailers lack advanced targeting capability (IAB Europe retail media buyer study). Keyword retrieval loses ~75% of intent; reasoning (transformer) search understands it.

Five distinct AI layers: causal measurement, predictive ML, decisioning, generative and agentic orchestration. Monetisation lives in decisioning — an LLM cannot natively enforce inventory, margin or sponsored-bid constraints.

Cases: a leading pet retailer reached 4× search monetisation coverage after switching to AI relevance (sequential before/after). An electronics retailer grew share of voice 30%→66%, share of clicks 20%→40% (+121%) and share of sales 50%→70%, with average click position 11.4→9.6. A beauty retailer's bid-only switch-off scaled ad reach 9× while retail media CTR fell 87.3% and sitewide sales 55.6%.

RMN action map: transformer search foundations now, decisioning next, agentic surface (MCP, ChatGPT Apps and Ads) emerging — you can't skip ahead.

Own the ranking layer — or become inventory inside someone else's.

Retailers anonymised; results are before/after comparisons shared on stage, directional.

Adaptive Transformer Search · Agentic Commerce & MCP · From Segments to Signals