Retail media networks (RMNs) have quickly established themselves as one of the most powerful channels in digital advertising. With access to high-intent shopper data, the promise of closed-loop measurement, and direct relationships with consumers, RMNs offer advertisers the kind of performance marketing once only found on search and social platforms.
As retailers look to unlock this value, many start by investing in a customer data platform (CDP). And that makes sense: CDPs are purpose-built to unify first-party data and make it available for targeting, personalization, and analytics. But here’s the catch:
CDPs are designed to organize owned data. Retail media networks run on shared data.
This difference is subtle, but foundational. The RMNs that succeed over the next five years will be the ones that can collaborate—fluidly, securely, and at scale—with brand partners, data providers, and measurement platforms. To do that, they need more than just a CDP. They need Composable Identity.
What CDPs Do Well (and Where They Fall Short)
CDPs excel at creating unified profiles within a single enterprise. They help you:
- Stitch together on-site and transactional behaviors.
- Resolve known and anonymous identities within your own ecosystem.
- Create audience segments for activation in ad platforms or email tools.
But CDPs weren’t built to handle:
- Identity resolution across multiple, external identity spaces.
- Governed collaboration with third-party data owners.
- Dynamic permissioning and usage controls on externally sourced data.
In short, CDPs were not designed to manage identity in a multi-party environment—which is exactly the environment RMNs operate in.
Composable Identity: The Missing Layer for Collaboration
Composable Identity is an architectural approach to identity resolution that emphasizes interoperability, modularity, and control. Instead of locking identity inside a single system, it treats identity as an extensible, flexible layer—one that can be configured and adapted to work across internal and external datasets.
At Narrative, we’ve built Composable Identity around Rosetta Stone—our flexible, customizable translation layer that allows any party to bring their own identifiers to the table and still match, resolve, and enrich data across environments.
This approach is ideal for RMNs because it solves several core challenges CDPs alone can’t address:
1. Multi-party Identity Resolution
Retailers need to resolve identities not just within their own data, but across:
- Brand partners with different identifier strategies (loyalty IDs, hashed emails, etc.)
- Measurement partners operating in separate ID spaces.
- Enrichment providers offering demographic, behavioral, or purchase graph data.
Composable Identity allows for all of these to be mapped, flexibly and securely.
2. Permissioned Usage and Governance
Unlike traditional CDPs, Composable Identity isn’t a black box. Every identity translation or enrichment is governed by configurable permission rules. This means brands can safely contribute data without fear of leakage or misuse—and retailers can remain compliant and transparent.
3. Data Enrichment Without Losing Control
With Composable Identity, you can bring in third-party data (such as offline purchase signals or advanced demographics) and use it to enrich existing audiences—without having to move all your data into a central warehouse or CDP. The data stays where it is. Identity resolution happens in a governed, modular way.
CDPs and Composable Identity: Better Together
This isn’t an either/or proposition. In fact, many RMNs already have CDPs—or are actively considering implementing one. That’s a great step.
But if your CDP is the only tool managing identity in your tech stack, you're missing out on the broader opportunity that retail media presents: the ability to collaborate at scale.
Composable Identity doesn't replace your CDP—it complements it.
Think of it like this:
- CDP = System of record for your owned customer data.
- Composable Identity = Infrastructure for resolving identity across entities.
When used together, these systems allow RMNs to:
- Onboard and collaborate with brand partners faster.
- Enrich customer understanding with external data sources.
- Provide more accurate measurement and reporting.
- Unlock new monetization models based on enriched and resolvable audiences.
A Practical Example: What Happens Without Composable Identity
Imagine you’re a large retailer launching a new retail media offering. You’ve got a CDP in place, and you’ve built some strong onsite audiences based on customer behavior.
Now, a CPG brand wants to run a campaign—but they want to:
- Use their own first-party CRM data to target.
- Match against the retailer’s audiences.
- Measure performance using a third-party attribution vendor.
Your CDP wasn’t built to resolve identities across those three stakeholders. Without Composable Identity:
- You have to resort to slow, manual ID matching workflows.
- Your brand partner can’t target accurately.
- Your measurement lacks precision or breaks altogether.
With Composable Identity:
- The CPG can bring in their data, mapped securely.
- You resolve audience matches in real-time or near-real-time.
- You deliver accurate, multi-party measurement—without compromising governance.
The Future of Retail Media Is Collaborative—And Identity Must Be, Too
As retail media matures, it’s clear that the next generation of RMNs won’t win by locking down data. They’ll win by enabling more partners to collaborate more easily, with more precision, and less risk.
That requires an identity layer that goes beyond the boundaries of a single enterprise. It requires something modular. Flexible. Transparent. Composable.
Ready to build and scale your retail media network? Book a demo today.