In this episode of , Kevel CEO James Avery talks with Gareth Menton about launching retail media networks in food delivery and automotive marketplaces, and why making ads relevant is the key to protecting user experience.
Retail media networks face a persistent challenge: balancing advertiser revenue with a high-quality user experience. Too often, RMNs struggle to prove that sponsored placements can enhance—rather than disrupt—the shopping journey, raising questions about whether ads drive value or quietly push customers away.
In this episode of Unlocking Retail Media, James sat down with Gareth Menton, who leads retail media product at Carwow, a global automotive marketplace operating across the UK, Germany, Spain, and Portugal. Carwow supports both new and used vehicle purchases and serves a uniquely complex advertiser ecosystem—from global automotive brands seeking upper-funnel visibility to thousands of dealerships promoting specific vehicles within long, highly considered buying journeys.
Menton brings hands-on experience to the role, having previously launched and scaled the retail media business at Just Eat across multiple international markets. Now at Carwow, he is applying that expertise to an industry still early in its retail media evolution—one where sponsored ads, display, and offsite media must work together without compromising consumer trust.
His approach offers a compelling blueprint for how automotive retail media can grow responsibly. Let’s explore what that looks like in practice.
“Many other industries have ridden the wave of retail media, commerce media growth…I feel like automotive is at the start of that journey.”
— Gareth Menton, Carwow
While food delivery and traditional e-commerce have spent years building sophisticated retail media operations, automotive is still catching up. High transaction values, infrequent purchases, and extended research cycles have slowed adoption of advertising models that work well in faster-moving categories.
“Advertisers along this journey have to try and gather people’s interest, gather people’s thoughts,” Menton explained. “Get the brand recognized, and later on, follow them through that journey to purchase at the end.”
Unlike impulse-driven commerce, car buying unfolds over weeks or months, requiring sustained visibility across multiple touchpoints rather than a single moment of conversion. This creates a fundamentally different retail media opportunity.
Auto marketplaces must also serve two advertiser groups with distinct—and often competing—goals. OEMs prioritize brand awareness and market share, while dealerships focus on lead generation and inventory turnover. Supporting both within the same platform demands flexible infrastructure that can power brand-building and performance-driven campaigns side by side.
Menton also predicted that sponsored ads are just the beginning—at least for Carwow. “Now, we’re working on our display media. We're working on offsite media. It's an exciting space to be, but it's very different marketplaces and very different user journeys."
And while auto purchases typically start online but finish offline, complicating measurement and attribution, there is still significant untapped potential for platforms that can bridge the gap between digital engagement and real-world transactions.
The average person changes cars every four years, making automotive purchases far less frequent than most retail categories. That infrequency, however, is offset by significantly higher transaction values and deeper research intensity.
“It’s very much a methodical way of buying a car. It’s a much bigger purchase and it’s done over a longer time period,” Menton said. “So the retail media network has to be different for that type of user.”
Unlike impulse-driven categories such as food delivery, automotive shoppers spend weeks or months researching before making a decision. That extended journey creates multiple opportunities for influence: brands aim to maintain visibility throughout the research phase, while dealerships prioritize converting high-intent shoppers at the bottom of the funnel.
Menton also shared that Carwow does not remove users from its datasets after a purchase because the journey rarely ends. Shoppers may return to research vehicles for family members or reenter the market when their four-year cycle completes. This ongoing engagement supports continued investment in first-party data activation and audience segmentation.
Historically, automotive brands measured success through share of voice and market share, prioritizing impressions over outcomes. Dealerships, by contrast, focused almost exclusively on leads and conversions.
"We've found that with the way the world is moving, brands also want to be able to measure sales to what they are doing," Menton explained. "And that's the change within retail media recently…performance goals are across the board."
Carwow now runs connected TV campaigns through a clean room partnership with ITV. Using hashed emails and tracking technology from Surface Three, the platform can follow a user from seeing a Volkswagen ad on connected TV through to browsing Carwow and completing a purchase.
"We can actually track a user who's looked at the ad online through their connected TV,” Menton explained. “And if that user comes back and is on our site, we can track them back to our site all the way through to a sale."
This level of end-to-end attribution marks a meaningful shift. Brands that once relied on brand lift studies now expect proof that media spend drives sales, not just awareness. For dealerships, success is still measured in leads. One nationwide dealership group increased leads by over 35% through sponsored ads simply by appearing higher in search results.
Internal skepticism is common when launching retail media. Product teams worry about user experience, while engineering teams question whether sponsored placements will hurt conversion rates.
"Not everybody is a fan of ads. Not everyone is a fan of retail media," Menton acknowledged. "Luckily, our C-level are big fans of retail media and of ads on the system because I'm making all those ads as relevant as possible."
Carwow enforces strict relevance standards for sponsored placements. A shopper searching for blue SUVs with four doors will only see sponsored ads that match those exact criteria. Irrelevant inventory is never promoted solely because an advertiser paid for placement.
Menton tested this approach extensively. The results were clear: organic click-through rate and sponsored ad click-through rate are identical. “It’s not worse to have a sponsored ad,” Menton shared. “People will not not click on it because it is an ad.”
Click-through rates improved significantly as Carwow refined its relevance engine. Initial rates started below 1% and climbed closer to 2% as filters became more sophisticated. This performance data became a key tool for securing internal buy-in.
Carwow’s acquisition of Auto Via unlocked a major advantage: insight into the earliest stages of the research journey. Its publications, Auto Express and Evo, capture top-of-funnel discovery when shoppers first explore vehicle types and features.
"That's really valuable information and first-party data for us to say, okay, you've started at the top of the funnel and you're looking at these vehicles," Menton explained. "We can use that data, track them through their journey to serve them the right ads at the right time, at the right place."
This visibility allows Carwow to understand intent before users ever reach the marketplace. If someone researches electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids on Auto Express, Carwow can activate that signal when the shopper returns to the platform or browses elsewhere online.
"So when somebody is online and they are on our platform looking at electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids, for example, and a certain make and model—if they are searching on a news site somewhere, we can actually serve them an ad for that exact make and model," Menton said.
The result is first-party data that functions as an activation layer, not just a static asset. Publishing captures the research moment. Marketplace behavior captures the purchase moment. Together, they form a complete view of automotive intent that single-purpose platforms can’t replicate.
Carwow’s approach offers clear lessons for any marketplace building retail media. Start with rigorous measurement to prove value internally and externally. Maintain strict relevance standards so sponsored placements perform as well as organic results. Invest in first-party data that reflects the full customer journey, not just the point of transaction.
Automotive shows that retail media can succeed across long purchase cycles and high transaction values. The fundamentals remain the same: high-intent users, differentiated first-party data, and advertising that feels helpful rather than disruptive.
Menton’s advice for earning organizational buy-in applies well beyond automotive: "I think you need a few advocates in the business, and I think you need to just show the possibility of what can be done and use your data to do that," he said.
In Carwow’s case, click-through rate parity between organic and sponsored listings became undeniable proof that relevant ads don’t harm user experience.
For retailers questioning whether their category can support retail media, Carwow’s trajectory suggests the answer is yes—if you focus on measurement, relevance, and first-party data that actually matters to advertisers.
For more insights like these, tune in to the full episode of Unlocking Retail Media, the podcast where Kevel CEO James Avery sits down with industry leaders and innovators shaping the future of retail advertising.
Listen to this episode with Gareth Menton here.
