The Osmos Blog
Analytics & Attribution
The A-Z of all product enhancements happening at OSMOS
Process Automation
Company Highlights
Ad Revenue Growth
Retail Media Concepts
Product Updates
Fundamentals
Closed-loop attribution in retail media is a measurement architecture that connects ad exposure (impression or click) to a verified purchase event using the retailer's own first-party transaction data — eliminating the modeled assumptions that plague open web attribution. In a 2026 market projected to reach $69.33B in the US alone, closed-loop is the only attribution methodology that produces deterministic, audit-grade ROI evidence — yet only 15% of advertisers strongly trust their retail media measurement today.
Walmart Connect, Amazon Ads, and Instacart Ads all advertise closed-loop attribution but solve the problem differently. Walmart runs MTA across onsite, offsite, and in-club with Luminate (rebranding to Scintilla); Amazon combines AMC's SQL clean room (lookback expanded from 13 to 25 months at unBoxed 2025) with Amazon Attribution for offsite; Instacart has used linear MTA since 2022 and launched Data Hub at CES 2026.
According to Skai’s Q1 2025 Retail Media Trends Report, retail media maintained a 6.1x ROAS for the fifth consecutive quarter, making it the most reliable cross-platform benchmark available for sponsored product campaigns in 2026. However, ROAS varies dramatically by platform, ad format, and product category.
