

Retail media network guide
Retail media isn’t new, but it’s evolving — fast. The next wave? Retailers launching their media businesses. That means building or buying ad products offering both onsite and offsite targeting, full-funnel attribution, and scalable campaign execution. This guide is for retailers who are ready to level up. You’ve got the audience. You’ve got the data. Now it’s time to ask the right questions and build the right foundations. In this guide, we’ll help you with both.
Over 200 customer data platform (CDP) vendors now compete for enterprise budgets. Mediarithmics has built a strong position in European media and retail, particularly in France where it is headquartered. Buyers shortlisting mediarithmics alternatives in 2026 are evaluating a platform that has changed meaningfully since most existing comparisons were written, with its October 2023 Easyence acquisition being the most significant factor.
This article evaluates eight customer data platform competitors across four architecture types:
- holistic CDP: a single platform combining data collection, profile unification, audience management, and activation with DMP and sometimes DSP capabilities bundled into one stack
- pure-play CDP: a dedicated customer data platform focused on profile unification and activation, without bundled ad-serving or content tools
- composable/warehouse-native CDP: a modular approach built on top of an existing data warehouse, where the buyer assembles capabilities from multiple vendors
- collaborative CDP: a platform where the primary use case is cross-party data collaboration between organizations, with CDP and DMP capabilities built around that core rather than added on top
The goal is to give buyers a structured basis for shortlisting as opposed to a ranked list. Each platform is assessed on the same four criteria applied to every entry:
- Primary use case
- Geographic focus
- Best for
Comparison table
The table below gives an at-a-glance view before the full platform-by-platform breakdown:
Platform-by-platform analysis
The entries below evaluate each platform on three criteria: deployment model, European readiness and GDPR compliance, and cross-party collaboration capability. The list is not ranked by market share or review rating, and does not represent an exhaustive audit of product features.
Permutive: best for publishers and broadcasters on programmatic audience activation
Permutive originated as a privacy-safe DMP focused on helping publishers maximize first-party audience value as third-party identifiers declined. Its architecture processes audience data on-device or at the edge, updating cohorts in milliseconds and enabling in-session targeting without relying on third-party cookies. The platform also offers a publisher network and data clean room capability, allowing advertisers to access curated publisher cohorts through streamlined deal structures.
Standout features: Real-time audience segmentation at the point of content consumption; native integrations with major SSPs; streamlined one-to-many advertiser access via streamlined programmatic activation across publisher inventory ; audience modeling built for editorial environments where user journeys are session-based rather than transactional.
Limitations: Permutive is optimized for publisher-owned data and publisher-side monetization workflows. Its clean room capability is designed primarily to help publishers package and deliver cohorts to advertisers efficiently, rather than to support complex multi-party data enrichment or cross-company measurement. Brands and advertisers looking for a platform that handles both supply and demand-side audience data will find the scope limited.
Best fit: Publishers and broadcasters that want to build addressable first-party audiences, maximize programmatic yield, and offer advertisers direct access to curated segments. Compare Permutive and Decentriq in detail →
Zeotap: best for European enterprises needing AI-driven customer data unification and activation
Zeotap is a Berlin-based pure-play CDP that has sharpened its focus on core CDP capabilities following the 2025 divestiture of its Zeotap Data division. The platform covers data ingestion, profile unification, AI-driven segmentation, and activation, with a strong emphasis on privacy compliance and European regulatory requirements.
Standout features: AI-driven automation across deployment, segmentation, and activation decisions; flexible packaged and composable deployment options; pre-built integrations across major martech and adtech activation endpoints; audience expansion via an exclusive partnership with Roqad.
Limitations: The divestiture of Zeotap Data means identity graph capabilities are now dependent on a third-party partnership rather than native infrastructure. User reviews also flag limited real-time activation and fewer native integrations compared to some enterprise CDP alternatives.
Best fit: European enterprise marketing teams that want a privacy-compliant, AI-assisted CDP for first-party data unification and cross-channel activation, without the overhead of a full enterprise suite.
Commanders Act: best for European organizations on server-side data collection and GDPR-first architecture
Commanders Act is a French-origin platform built around server-side data collection and consent management. Its modular suite covers tag management, consent, data unification, and activation with GDPR compliance treated as a structural requirement rather than a configuration layer. The platform has over 450 customers across Europe and positions itself as a cookieless-ready CDP for digital marketing teams.
Standout features: Server-side event collection and tag management via TagCommander; native consent management via TrustCommander; real-time CDP capabilities including identity resolution, profile unification, and cross-channel activation; no-code implementation reducing reliance on engineering teams.
Limitations: The platform's modular architecture spans TagCommander, TrustCommander, DataCommander, MixCommander, and FuseCommander, meaning buyers need to assess which components are relevant to their use case and how they integrate with existing infrastructure. Organizations looking for a single unified interface rather than a suite of connected modules should evaluate the current product structure carefully.
Best fit: European organizations, particularly in France and the DACH region, that are rebuilding data collection infrastructure around server-side architecture and need consent management tightly integrated with their activation stack.
Adobe Real-Time CDP: best for enterprise brands in the Adobe ecosystem needing real-time unified profiles and cross-channel personalization
Adobe Real-Time CDP (RTCDP) is built on Adobe Experience Platform and functions as the profile and activation engine at the center of Adobe Experience Cloud. It unifies known and pseudonymous customer data into real-time profiles, supports AI-assisted segmentation and lookalike modeling, and connects directly to Adobe's broader suite for journey orchestration and cross-channel personalization. Adobe also offers RTCDP Collaboration, a feature set designed to support joint audience analysis and activation with brands and publishers within the Adobe ecosystem.
Standout features: Real-time profile unification across online and offline data sources; AI-assisted audience building and lookalike modeling; data federation from major warehouses including BigQuery, Snowflake, and Databricks; direct integration across Adobe Experience Cloud including Journey Optimizer, Analytics, and Campaign.
Limitations: Adobe RTCDP's deepest value is closely tied to existing investment in Adobe Experience Cloud. Organizations running mixed or non-Adobe stacks will face significant integration work with limited payoff relative to platforms built for ecosystem-agnostic deployment. RTCDP Collaboration operates within the Adobe ecosystem pattern, which constrains its usefulness for organizations whose partner collaboration requirements extend beyond Adobe's network.
Best fit: Large enterprise brands already invested in Adobe Experience Cloud that need real-time unified profiles to power personalization and journey orchestration across marketing channels. See how Adobe Real-Time CDP compares to Decentriq →
Salesforce Data Cloud: best for Salesforce-invested enterprises needing unified customer profiles across CRM, marketing, and service
Salesforce Data 360 (formerly Data Cloud) is the data foundation layer of the Salesforce platform, unifying customer data across Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, and Commerce Cloud into a single real-time profile. Rebranded in late 2025, Data 360 now serves as the grounding layer for Agentforce, Salesforce's autonomous AI agent platform, and has been further strengthened by its acquisition of Informatica, which adds data integration, governance, quality, and master data management capabilities to the stack.
Standout features: Real-time customer profile unification across Salesforce clouds; Agentforce integration for autonomous AI-driven workflows across sales, service, and marketing; data federation from major warehouses including Snowflake, BigQuery, and Databricks; enhanced data governance and MDM via the Informatica acquisition.
Limitations: Data 360 delivers maximum value within an all-Salesforce environment. Organizations running non-Salesforce CRM infrastructure or heterogeneous stacks will face significant integration overhead with limited payoff relative to ecosystem-agnostic alternatives. Pricing scales with data volume and Salesforce licensing, which can create unpredictable cost growth at enterprise scale. Buyers should also note that the product has carried six different names since its 2020 launch: a rebranding cadence that warrants scrutiny when evaluating long-term roadmap stability. Agentforce remains in early enterprise adoption as of mid-2026.
Best fit: Salesforce-invested enterprises that want to unify data across their existing Salesforce infrastructure, activate AI-driven workflows via Agentforce, and build a single customer view without adding a separate CDP vendor.
BlueConic: best for marketing teams needing a self-service first-party CDP without engineering dependency
BlueConic is a pure-play CDP built around marketer accessibility. With a customer base located largely in North America, the platform enables marketing teams to collect first-party data, build unified individual profiles, and activate across channels without requiring SQL knowledge or dedicated data engineering resources.
Standout features: No-code profile unification and segmentation via a marketer-friendly visual interface; AI Workbench for predictive modeling including customer lifetime value, RFM scoring, and churn prediction; GenAI assistants for natural language dialogue creation and audience segmentation launched in 2025; Agent Studio for AI agent-driven campaign setup launched in 2026; public MCP server enabling external AI agents to operate on live customer data.
Limitations: BlueConic is positioned for mid-market organizations and may not meet the scale requirements of the largest enterprises processing high event volumes across multiple brands and geographies. Identity resolution is deterministic rather than machine learning-powered probabilistic matching, which limits depth for organizations where cross-device identity resolution is a primary requirement. Cross-party data collaboration is not a core capability.
Best fit: Mid-market to enterprise marketing teams in retail, media, and financial services that want a self-service CDP they can operate without engineering support, with fast time-to-value and a growing AI capability layer.
Tealium: best for organizations with complex multi-vendor data stacks
Tealium originated as a tag management platform and has evolved into a full customer data hub spanning data collection, real-time profile building, predictive analytics, and audience activation. Its architecture is vendor-agnostic by design, with over 1,300 pre-built connectors routing data across CRM, analytics, and activation platforms without locking buyers into a single vendor ecosystem.
Standout features: A unified data collection layer covering client-side and server-side tag management, high-volume event streaming, and direct integration with major data warehouses; real-time profile building and audience segmentation; ML-based propensity scoring for engagement, purchase probability, and churn risk; CloudStream, launched June 2025, for zero-copy activation directly from warehouse infrastructure without duplicating data.
Limitations: Every activation routes customer data to downstream tools, and each sync creates a copy of that data in the destination platform's infrastructure. As the number of activated channels grows, so does the governance surface area and the number of systems handling customer data: a meaningful consideration for organizations in regulated sectors. Tealium’s CloudStream is designed to address this through zero-copy activation but was new as of mid-2025 and its effectiveness at scale is still being validated. Full platform functionality requires licensing multiple modules, which affects total cost of ownership. Engineering resources are required to configure and maintain the stack.
Best fit: Mid-to-enterprise organizations with diverse technology stacks that need a flexible, independent data collection and routing layer connecting multiple data sources and activation endpoints, with predictive analytics built in.
Decentriq: best for publishers and retailers monetizing first-party audiences through secure data partnerships
Decentriq sits in the same Adtech CDP category as Mediarithmics: built for the privacy-first advertising ecosystem rather than internal marketing orchestration. Where Martech CDPs focus on unifying and activating a single organization's data across owned channels, Adtech CDPs are designed for the collaboration layer: matching first-party data across organizations, building joint audiences, and activating them across publisher inventory and programmatic channels.
Decentriq's implementation of this model is the Collaborative Audience Platform, a purpose-built environment for secure audience building, enrichment, and activation across organizational boundaries.
The platform's confidential computing infrastructure underpins a growing network of publishers, retailers, and data owners across Europe. For retailers, Decentriq provides the infrastructure to monetize first-party purchase data through advertiser partnerships without exposing customer records. For brands and agencies, it enables lookalike prospecting and cross-publisher measurement on partner data without requiring data transfers. For publishers, Decentriq provides the infrastructure to package and monetize first-party audience data for brand and agency partners, without transferring raw audience records outside their own environment.
Standout features: Confidential computing infrastructure providing cryptographic guarantees against data exposure during collaboration; lookalike audience creation for AI-driven audience prospecting on first-party signals; a growing ecosystem of publishers, data owners, and activation partners across Europe; direct activation to DSPs and paid social channels.
Limitations: Decentriq addresses the collaboration layer of the data stack. Organizations looking for a single platform covering CRM data management, customer journey orchestration, and cross-party collaboration will need to consider how Decentriq fits alongside their existing CDP rather than as a replacement for one.
Best fit: Publishers wanting to monetize first-party audience data through brand and agency partnerships; retailers building advertiser programs on first-party purchase signals; and brands and agencies running overlap insights, lookalike prospecting, or cross-publisher measurement on partner first-party data. Request a demo →
How to choose a mediarithmics alternative
With CDP competitors spanning four distinct architecture types, the right alternative depends less on feature comparison and more on where data collaboration sits in your architecture, your regulatory context, and whether you need cross-party capabilities at all.
Holistic CDP plus DMP (Permutive): The right choice for publishers and broadcasters that need to manage first-party audience data, monetize it through direct advertiser relationships, and reduce dependence on open-web programmatic. This architecture treats the publisher as the primary stakeholder as opposed to an integration partner.
Pure-play and enterprise CDP (Zeotap, Commanders Act, Adobe Real-Time CDP, Salesforce Data 360, BlueConic): The right category for organizations that need to unify customer data from their own channels and activate it across marketing touchpoints. Selection within this category comes down to ecosystem fit (Adobe, Salesforce), geographic focus (Commanders Act, Zeotap for European regulatory requirements), and deployment complexity tolerance. Tealium sits closest to this last category from a composable architecture standpoint, with its heritage in data collection and routing giving it particular strength in multi-vendor stack integration.
Collaborative (Decentriq): The right choice when the use case regularly requires multiple organizations to work with data jointly (audience prospecting, cross-publisher measurement, retail media network, etc.) without either party exposing their underlying data. Organizations running a Martech CDP for internal data orchestration will find Decentriq addresses the collaboration and external activation layer that Martech CDPs are not architected to handle.
Three-step decision framework:
- Scope: Does your primary requirement sit within your own data infrastructure, or does it involve data from external partners such as publishers, retailers, or data owners? If the answer is internal only, the Martech CDP category is the right starting point. If external collaboration, audience monetization, or cross-party activation are on your roadmap, evaluate whether an Adtech CDP (like Decentriq) addresses your use case alongside or instead of a Martech CDP.
- European and GDPR requirements: If finding the best CDP for Europe is a requirement, weight platforms with server-side architecture, strong consent management, and a track record of operating under GDPR. Commanders Act, Zeotap, and Decentriq are all built with European regulatory context as a default, not an add-on.
- Collaboration use cases: If audience monetization, cross-publisher reach analysis, or lookalike prospecting across partner data are on your roadmap, evaluate whether your CDP selection can support these workflows or whether a dedicated collaboration layer is needed.
Frequently asked questions
What is Mediarithmics?
Mediarithmics is a European Adtech CDP which combines CDP, DMP, and data collaboration capabilities in a single platform it labels a “holistic CDP”. In October 2023, Mediarithmics acquired and absorbed Easyence, repositioning the combined platform around audience intelligence and monetization for retail and media organizations. Its strongest market has historically been France and the broader European media sector. Buyers researching the Mediarithmics CDP today should note that product naming and positioning have shifted since the acquisition; any Mediarithmics review based on pre-2024 documentation may not reflect the current offering.
What are the main limitations of Mediarithmics for organizations outside its core verticals?
Mediarithmics is designed for European media and retail, and buyers outside those verticals or outside its core European markets may find vertical depth and local support harder to access. Organizations with a warehouse-native data architecture, or those looking for a composable deployment model, may also find the platform's holistic stack approach a poor fit for their existing infrastructure.
Is there an alternative to Mediarithmics for first-party audience monetization and data collaboration?
Decentriq sits in the same Adtech CDP category as Mediarithmics, built for audience monetization, cross-party data collaboration, and activation across publisher inventory and programmatic channels. For publishers and retailers looking to monetize first-party data through advertiser partnerships, and for brands and agencies running lookalike prospecting or cross-publisher measurement, Decentriq addresses the same layer of the stack as Mediarithmics while taking a different architectural approach. See CDP alternatives for data collaboration →
Where to go from here
The eight platforms in this article represent four distinct approaches to customer data infrastructure. None of them is a direct like-for-like replacement for mediarithmics across every use case, because mediarithmics itself occupies a specific position: a holistic European CDP with DMP and DSP modules, built for media and retail.
Buyers evaluating alternatives should start with architecture type, not feature lists. Holistic CDPs, pure-play CDPs, composable platforms, and collaborative platforms solve different problems. For organizations whose requirements include cross-party audience collaboration — running campaigns on partner data, monetising first-party audiences, or measuring reach across publisher networks — Decentriq addresses a layer of the stack that traditional CDPs do not.
References
Retail media network guide
Retail media isn’t new, but it’s evolving — fast. The next wave? Retailers launching their media businesses. That means building or buying ad products offering both onsite and offsite targeting, full-funnel attribution, and scalable campaign execution. This guide is for retailers who are ready to level up. You’ve got the audience. You’ve got the data. Now it’s time to ask the right questions and build the right foundations. In this guide, we’ll help you with both.
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