Axonet says its First-Party Media Network connects about 20,000 retailers with brands and agencies seeking access to roughly 100 million shoppers across physical retail and mobile touchpoints. The company also previewed Sophia, an AI-powered self-service intelligence layer for campaign and shopper analysis.

The proposition addresses retail media fragmentation. Instead of managing every retailer separately, advertisers could buy across a network and apply their own attribution windows and benchmarks. The scale figures and expected benefits are company-reported and need independent validation in each campaign.

Source: Axonet announcement coverage, 25 September 2026.

The real test is data quality

Aggregating inventory can simplify buying, but it can also hide differences between retailers, locations and shopper contexts. Advertisers need placement-level reporting, clear audience construction, transparent attribution windows, controls for data use and a method for separating incremental purchases from sales that would have happened anyway.

Karim's strategic takeaway

Retail media should be judged as a commercial measurement system, not only as another reach channel. Test one product category, define an incremental sales or qualified-customer outcome, and compare network results with retailer-level data where available. AI analysis is valuable only when the underlying transaction and exposure data are trustworthy.