Ecommerce platform Rakuten France, a subsidiary of Japanese technology conglomerate Rakuten, started out on its retail media journey way back in 2013 – just a year after Amazon launched the first online retail media network.
Back then, Rakuten didn’t call it retail media and the focus was only on sponsored ads.
“We developed our own in-house solution. It was pretty simple, pretty efficient. It was only sponsored ads, no banners, no CPM formats,” said Kristina Raptovaia, Head of Partnerships & Advertising at Rakuten France, speaking at the Mirakl Cabana at Cannes Lions 2025. “We didn’t really have a big focus for merchants. They were just able to create their campaigns by choosing keywords to push the products they wanted to push.”
