Retail media is no longer a retailers' thing: any platform with recurring traffic and its own data can sell that space to brands.
- Banks: they know where you spent, in what category, in what country.
- Telcos: location, apps you use, top-ups, millions logged in.
- Super apps: recurring sessions, location, loyalty with balance.
- Marketplaces: first-party transactional data within their ecosystem.
In LatAm, banks, telcos and super apps, among others, hold customer intent data that's more insightful than even retail. That's why the best commerce media business in the region isn't always in a store.
What makes a retailer's data valuable
To understand why, you have to think about what makes a retailer's data valuable. A retailer knows what you bought in their store, when, for how much and in which category. It's first-class transactional data. But it's limited to what happens inside their own ecosystem: they don't know what you bought elsewhere, or what you're thinking of buying, or what stage of financial life you're in.
- Retailer: knows what you bought in its store — coverage limited to one ecosystem.
- Bank: knows where you spent, in what category and in what country — covers the customer's entire financial life.
- Telco: knows location, apps you use, top-ups and plan — with millions of logged-in users.
- Super app: recurring sessions, location and loyalty with balance — multiple purchase intents per week.
A bank knows all of that. It knows where you spent this month, in which categories, at which merchants, in which country. It knows whether you're paying a mortgage, whether you travel, whether you have school-age children, whether you bought a car. That transactional data covers the customer's entire life, not just one store. And most banks in the region aren't monetizing it.
Telcos: logged-in audience at scale
The same goes for telcos. A mobile operator knows where you are physically, which apps you use, how much time you spend in each one, when you top up, what plan you have. It has millions of identified and logged-in users — something many retailers only dream of. And it has user-permissioned messaging channels that are pure advertising inventory: SMS, push, notifications inside the self-service app.
Super apps are the clearest case of all. The user opens the app several times a week, each time with a different purchase intent. That intent is exactly what a brand wants to reach.
A marketplace knows what you bought in its marketplace. A bank knows what you buy everywhere. That transactional data is the most valuable audience in the region and it's unmonetized today.
The obstacle isn't technical, it's mental
The technology to activate that inventory exists and it's the same that runs in retail: ad serving, decisioning models, incrementality measurement. The obstacle is mental: these players don't see themselves as a media company. They see their app as a customer service, not as inventory that can be sold. Changing that mindset is the first step, and once it changes, the business appears fast.
More and more brands are allocating budget to retail media because it's where they see measurable return. If the bank or the telco doesn't offer that space, the budget goes to the retailer that does — who is often a direct competitor. Not monetizing your own inventory isn't neutral: it's letting the competitor keep that budget.
The same engine runs today in retail, pharmacy, fuel and marketplaces. It's not a promise: it's the architecture it's built on. And that architecture doesn't distinguish between a retailer and a bank: what it needs is recurring traffic, first-party data and brands that want to reach that audience.
The data each vertical has and doesn't use
Each vertical has a type of data that is unique and that no external platform can replicate. The bank has the customer's transactional spend across all merchants. The telco has location and app usage. The super app has recurring purchase intent. The retailer has transactional data within its ecosystem. That first-party data is what brands can't buy anywhere else, and it's exactly what makes each vertical's inventory valuable.
The value of data isn't in how much you have, but in how close it is to purchase intent. A bank knows you spent in a category, but a super app knows you're looking to buy right now. That temporal proximity is what defines the inventory's value.
The cultural shift that's missing
The biggest obstacle isn't technology or data: it's culture. Banks, telcos and super apps were built as service companies, not as media companies. Their teams measure success in customer retention, NPS and app usage — not in advertising revenue. For the commerce media business to appear, someone inside the organization has to start looking at the audience as inventory and not just as a customer. That shift in perspective is the first step, and it usually comes from the top: without executive sponsorship, the project stays as a pilot that never scales.
- Shift the view: the audience isn't just a customer, it's also inventory.
- Assign a dedicated team, not a side marketing project.
- Define media KPIs distinct from retention or NPS ones.
- Secure executive sponsorship from day one.
The commerce media opportunity in LatAm isn't only in retail: it's in every platform with its own audience and first-party data. Whoever shifts the view first captures a market that's empty today.
