Winning the cart: why smart measurement is key to UK retail success

“It’s a [metaphorical] jungle out there,” was how Sophie Neary, managing director, retail and FMCG at Google described the retail landscape in her opening keynote at Google Think Retail 2025. “Over two billion people search on Google every single day. And people shop with Google over one billion times every single day. So when the winds shift in retail, we feel them early. If I had to sum up what we’re seeing right now, my analogy is this: It’s not always the tiger in the jungle that kills you – sometimes, it’s the mosquitos.”

Darragh Daunt, retail head of measurement at Google, explains: “It’s not just the big competitors that matter, it’s also the small, fast-moving ones that catch you off guard. Retailers aren’t just competing with each other, they’re up against global marketplaces, international low-value players, and smaller digital natives (200,000 Shopify stores in the UK alone!) who can move quickly to meet demand. These disruptors are finding your customers before you do – and they’re doing it with AI.”

You have to be findable to be winnable

But the opportunity is there for those who take it, said Neary: “You have to be findable to be winnable. If you’re not showing up in search, someone else will. AI agility beats size in today’s retail jungle.”

So, what does winning with AI look like in practice? It means mastering the natural ebb and flow of customer queries online. “For too long, brands have been shackled to rigid budgets, inadvertently closing their shop doors just as customers are starting to search for them,” says Daunt. “You risk missing out on a sale not because the demand isn’t there, but because you weren’t flexible enough to capture it.”

The solution is a more fluid, intelligent philosophy – an approach that Google calls ‘demand-led budgeting’. In essence, using AI to listen and respond to the market in real time to capture every single sale at your chosen ROI. “It empowers the AI to scale, pull back and maximize your presence to win throughout the customer journey from discovery to decision,” explains Daunt.

This allows brands to “move from managing media to engineering momentum,” adds Dan Roberts, global vice-president of search at Assembly. “You don’t just react to demand; you use AI to anticipate, influence and capture it.” For advertisers, it’s not just optimizing campaigns, but building a responsive system for sustained performance – crucial for survival as search becomes more predictive and conversational.

Measurement as a growth lever – ‘the flywheel effect’

It’s not enough simply to have media measurement insights, those insights need to be credible to leadership and finance teams. They need to underpin big investment decisions. “It’s not ‘test and learn’, it’s ‘test, learn and *scale*’,” says Daunt. “That generates the ‘flywheel effect’: measurement, AI and demand-led budgeting working together to drive business impact.”

According to BCG, brands with advanced measurement maturity are nearly three times more likely to report strong profit growth. UK supermarket Waitrose spent seven years building a best-in-class measurement program. The journey started with the insight that customers who clicked on digital ads were 8x more likely to visit a store than convert online. The result now? A clearer view of what’s working, where to optimize and how to invest for long-term growth.

While there are many contributing factors to growth-oriented media measurement, Daunt draws on his engagements with UK retailers to share three learnings with continuous proven impact:

1. Progress over perfection: Getting the most value out of a learning agenda means focusing on the big questions that impact on the bottom line. Avoid getting bogged down in tactical tests that won’t make a difference. No media measurement system is going to deliver absolute truth. The bar needs to be robust enough to hold weight with the C-Suite for decision-making, but agile enough to quickly drive growth from the results.
2. Complementary, not conflicting: “The question I get asked the most is how to reconcile many media measurement sources saying different things about the same campaign,” says Daunt. Ultimately, they should be complementary with the right strategies in place. The most popular approach, he says, is calibrating attribution and media mix models against the ‘gold standard’ of incrementality testing.
3. Capture full value: From omnichannel impact to app engagements that go untracked, too many retailers miss significant business impact that can be attributed to their marketing spend. “Omnichannel retailers further along the measurement maturity journey often not only report on the offline impact of their online spend but adjust their media buying strategies to focus on total return on ad spend,” says Daunt.

Peak planning starts yesterday

With peak season planning underway, Daunt says now is the time to get serious about measurement – and fast. “Retailers should be building their learning agendas with peak in mind,” he advises. “A typical full year plan involves prioritizing a set of strategic questions in Q1, running tests in Q2, so you’re ready to take action by Q3.

“As you read this, however, there’s still time to run tests that answer critical questions, like how to use demand-led budgeting to maximize revenue opportunity within a given profit margin or what online strategies best influence offline purchases after the December delivery cut off date.”

In the high-stakes battle for the cart, the winners won’t just be those with the biggest budgets but those who can deploy them effectively. That starts with AI-powered solutions to connect and convert, a demand-led approach to funding, and measurement to prove value and guide growth.