Retail media growth strategy: Lessons from Tractor Supply

While much of retail media has evolved over the last ten years, the challenge remains largely unchanged: grow advertising revenue, expand inventory, and capture a greater share of advertiser budgets, all while protecting the customer experience that makes that media valuable in the first place.

As the industry matures, the obvious answer seems to be for retail media networks to monetize every available touchpoint. But more advertising opportunities don’t automatically translate to more value for advertisers or shoppers. Maximizing short-term revenue can also come at the expense of the relationships that sustain long-term growth.

Tractor Supply Company is taking a different approach. Through its retail media network, the retailer is prioritizing advertiser trust, customer relevance, and measurable value as the foundation of its growth strategy.

At Advertising Week New York, Tori Haynie, Director of Retail Media and Digital Initiatives at Tractor Supply Company, joined Nicholas Ward, President and Co-Founder of Koddi, to discuss how the retailer is building a media business around those principles.

The big question: What if the strongest retail media growth strategy starts with making every advertiser dollar more valuable, rather than finding more ways to spend it? Here’s how Tractor Supply is approaching that challenge today.

Advertiser trust starts with creating value

Across retail media, advertisers can find themselves paying to defend their own branded search terms against competitors, including paying for placements they might otherwise win organically. While this creates another opportunity for networks to monetize high-intent traffic, the incremental value of that investment can be harder for advertisers to establish.

Tractor Supply takes a different approach, making a deliberate decision not to allow competing brands to bid against an advertiser’s branded searches on its site.

“I don’t allow any other brand to buy your brand search on our site,” Haynie explained. “I think your money should go towards driving something new, and I’m not in the business of taking credit for what would have already happened. […] I’d rather an advertiser’s funds go towards growing with a customer that’s not already loyal to them, and to create a brand experience that is top of the line and exciting.”

That philosophy extends beyond branded search to how the network supports advertisers at different stages of growth. Emerging brands may need highly measurable campaigns that help prove their potential with Tractor Supply customers, while established brands may benefit from larger sponsorships, category experiences, and seasonal activations that deepen their relationships with shoppers.

In both cases, the goal is to direct advertising investment toward opportunities that help brands reach new customers, introduce products, and generate demand that may not have existed otherwise.

Rather than treating incrementality solely as something to measure after a campaign, Tractor Supply is making it a consideration in how advertising opportunities are created and sold.

Customer experience should determine what gets monetized

Building advertiser trust is important, however, retail media networks still have to protect the customer relationships that make their audiences valuable and their core businesses strong.

For Tractor Supply, that relationship is particularly important. Its customers span everyone from first-time pet owners to families raising livestock and maintaining their land. Their needs evolve over time, creating opportunities for the retailer to understand and support different stages of their lives.

When developing its retail media network, the team faced concerns that the website could become overwhelmed with advertising, a challenge facing retailers of every size. Though advertising can introduce customers to relevant products, simplify discovery, and improve the shopping experience, excessive or poorly placed advertising can create friction, overwhelm shoppers, and undermine trust.

Haynie’s guiding principle is straightforward: “Do no harm.”

She shares, “Some of my sales team may get frustrated with me [but] if you can’t prove to me that it would be better without that sponsorship or that ad placement, then I don’t want to do it. It has to enhance the experience in some way, and then it has to feel true and respectful to both Tractor Supply and the brand at that moment. It’s not always about just taking any opportunity that comes to your door, but making sure that it’s relevant and aligned to kind of the overall experience that we’re trying to build. The goal of retail media is to enhance and allow the company to continue that path forward, and never to create a negative customer experience in that.”

This approach shapes which advertising opportunities Tractor Supply brings to market and how those placements fit into the shopping journey.

The retailer’s sponsored brand format, for example, allows advertisers to combine imagery or video with a carousel of up to 16 products within search results. Rather than promoting a single product in isolation, brands can introduce shoppers to a broader assortment or bring together products associated with a seasonal promotion.

The result is a more prominent brand experience that also helps customers discover relevant products. It’s an example of how customer experience and monetization can reinforce one another, creating value for shoppers, advertisers, and the retailer.

Technology makes a relationship-first strategy scalable

Building a media business around advertiser and consumer trust is a strong philosophy, but getting it right in practice requires the operational infrastructure to deliver on that promise consistently.

As networks expand across formats, channels, and advertisers, technology can help them scale that approach in a few key ways:

• Unified reporting: Bringing performance data across ad products and channels into one place gives teams and advertisers a clearer understanding of what’s working, without having to piece together reporting from different systems.
• AI-powered insights: Rather than manually reviewing thousands of campaigns, teams can quickly identify performance issues, prioritize opportunities, and recommend optimizations before problems escalate.
• Self-service capabilities: Giving advertisers direct access to campaign performance and reporting creates greater transparency throughout the relationship, while freeing up network teams to focus on more strategic conversations.
• Automation: Reducing the manual work involved in campaign management gives teams more time to understand advertiser objectives, develop new opportunities, and deliver against them.

As Haynie explained, technology shouldn’t replace the human conversations that build advertiser relationships. The opportunity is to use it to make those interactions more valuable.

She notes, “We’re running thousands of campaigns. I can’t personally understand and be in the know with every single line item and how every single campaign is performing, but that doesn’t mean I’m not held accountable to that merchant leader or that customer when they call. Being able to utilize a tool to say, ‘Hey, I have five minutes this morning to talk to my team before I catch my flight to New York. Where does my attention need to be?’ […] helps us create really personal moments to reach out to a client before something has gone wrong.”

For lean teams in particular, this is an important distinction. Technology can help networks manage growing operational complexity while giving their teams more time to focus on advertiser needs, identify new opportunities, and build the relationships that support continued investment.

What retail media networks can learn from Tractor Supply

Tractor Supply’s approach offers a few important lessons for retail media networks looking to build sustainable growth:

1. Make incremental value a priority. Focus on creating advertising opportunities that help brands reach new customers and generate demand, rather than simply monetizing existing purchase intent.
2. Let customer experience guide monetization. Evaluate new ad placements based on their relevance and value to shoppers, not just their potential to generate revenue.
3. Build the infrastructure to scale advertiser relationships. Invest in reporting, automation, and AI capabilities that reduce operational complexity and give teams more time to focus on advertiser outcomes.
4. Measure success beyond initial advertiser investment. Prioritize transparency, collaboration, and consistent performance to build relationships that bring advertisers back year after year.

For Haynie, one of the most important indicators of success is whether advertisers continue investing year after year. That starts with understanding their objectives, maintaining consistent communication, and finding new opportunities to grow together. Tractor Supply even encourages advertisers to engage eight to twelve months ahead of their planned activations, giving the team more opportunities to connect brands with upcoming retail initiatives, seasonal moments, and customer experiences.

As advertisers scrutinize their media investments, networks will need to demonstrate meaningful value while protecting the customer experiences that make their inventory worth buying. Tractor Supply’s approach shows how those priorities can work together, making advertiser trust and customer experience a foundation for long-term growth.