Retail media is booming, but not all ad tech is keeping up. As retailers push for higher margins and brands demand better performance, ad servers built for a different era are starting to show cracks.  

If you’re seeing declining click-through rates, fighting for inventory, or fielding complaints about irrelevant ads, you’re not alone. Many retailers are realizing their current setup just isn’t cutting it anymore—but making a change can feel daunting.

Here’s the thing: performance decline isn’t sudden. It creeps in as growth stalls, ad relevancy falters, and transparency gaps widen. With retail media networks (RMNs) under pressure to scale and prove incrementality, now’s the time to ask—does your ad server still support your ambitions? If any of these warning signs sound familiar, it might be time to rethink your approach.

‍

Key Warning Signs Your Ad Server is Holding You Back

1. Click-Through Rates Are Way Lower than Organic
   If your paid ads are getting far fewer clicks than organic results, that’s a red flag. It signals that your ad placements aren’t resonating with shoppers, due to low relevancy.

2. Advertisers Complaining About Performance
   Nothing kills an ad program faster than underperforming ad placements. If your advertisers don’t see strong engagement and conversions, they’ll take their budgets elsewhere.

3. Your Ad Inventory is Limited
   Are you constantly battling internal teams for more ad space? If your e-commerce team is fielding shopper complaints about poor recommendations, that’s another indicator that your ad server isn’t optimizing well enough. E-commerce teams often resist expanding inventory due to concerns about…you guessed it, irrelevant sponsored products leading to poor user experience.  

4. Your Revenue Is Overly Concentrated
   If 80% of your ad revenue comes from just 20% of your brands, you may need to consider broadening demand sources. A healthy ad program should attract a broad mix of advertisers, not just a handful of top spenders.  

A higher performing ad server can help you expand demand by improving relevance  and increasing revenue for advertisers. In fact we’ve seen that in the 4 months after launching Pentaleap, improved sponsored products performance led to a 50% increase in brand investment (Anonymized Pentaleap client data: February 2025).

‍

What’s Next? Switch or Optimize?

Once you recognize these issues, you have two options:

1. Rip and Replace – You could swap out your entire retail media tech stack, but that comes with major risks. Beyond the technical migration, it can disrupt ad operations, affect existing sales partnerships, and doesn’t necessarily guarantee better performance.

2. Augment and Optimize – A more strategic approach is to add a specialist optimization layer into your current ad server, while retaining your existing stack. Instead of starting over, this approach enhances your current setup, unlocking better performance without the upheaval of a full system overhaul.

‍

The Smarter Alternative: Augment Your Ad Server

Instead of going through a painful overhaul, we recommend layering a better ad server on top of your current tech stack—one that actually solves these performance and growth problems without forcing you to start from scratch.

Most retailers don’t even realize this is an option. But it is. And it works.

With this approach, you can:

• Solve relevancy and growth challenges.
• Keep your existing vendor relationships intact.
• Unlock new demand sources.
• Maintain control over your ad operations.

Instead of being limited by rigid, all-in-one legacy systems, this approach redefines how ad tech stacks are built—using a modular design with best-in-class components (like our Fluid Ad Server) to focus on the KPIs that matter most to your strategy

‍

“That Sounds Great, But…”

At this point, you might have some questions.

‍

1. “How do you actually provide better results?”

It’s all about smarter, more unified decisioning. Our Fluid Ad Server works alongside your organic decisioning to match ads with real time context and intent. The result? Higher click-through rates, more revenue, and fewer irrelevant ads frustrating your shoppers.

‍

2. “Doesn’t my current vendor do this?”

No, and here’s why: They can’t. Not in the same way. Most incumbent systems weren’t designed to ingest organic site data into their ad decisioning to boost sponsored products’ rankings in real-time. That’s a technical challenge they haven’t yet solved… but we have.

‍

3. “Is this a massive tech lift?”

Nope. If you’ve been through a nine-month ad tech migration nightmare, this is nothing like that. Our approach is designed for fast deployment with minimal disruption to your existing operations. Think days to weeks, not months.

‍

P.S. What’s the Catch?

We get it—you’ve heard big promises before. Here’s why this actually works:

⚡ It’s not a rip-and-replace – You don’t have to blow up your current stack. You layer smarter decisioning on top.

🔍 It’s not magic, just better logic – We use what your site is already planning to show and make sure ads align with it. That’s why it performs better.

🛠 It’s not a nightmare to implement – If you’re picturing another months-long integration slog, don’t. This is measured in weeks, not quarters.

‍

So, switching everything out is one option. But a smarter layer on top might be the move you didn’t know existed. Let’s talk. 🚀