One of the nation’s largest home improvement retailers operates at significant scale, with hundreds of thousands of associates, millions of customer transactions weekly, and revenues in the tens of billions. In 2021, the company entered the advertising business by launching its Retailer Media Network (RMN), tapping into an audience of tens of millions of home improvement shoppers and an expanding roster of brands eager to reach them.

‍
As RMN scaled, the opportunity was clear. The infrastructure to fully capture it was not. To move faster, operate cleaner, and grow ad revenue with confidence, the Retailer partnered with Placements AI in 2023, deploying AdSalesOS as the operational backbone of their retail media business.

‍

127% advertiser spend growth | 75% revenue growth projected

50% reduction in billing issues | 9% fewer manual reconciliations

‍

Challenge

Rapid growth exposed the limits of RMN’s existing processes. As advertiser demand increased and the network expanded across more channels and platforms, operational friction began to accumulate, creating risk for revenue that was already on the books.

Disconnected teams - Sales, planning, and billing teams were primarily using email for coordination, causing gaps and delays in the quote-to-cash lifecycle.

Data silos across systems - Campaign and financial data was scattered across systems with no authoritative source of truth, making reconciliation slow and error-prone.

Swivel-chair operations - Integration complexity across ad servers and DSPs (including Google Ads, Meta, Pinterest, Criteo, and Yahoo) required teams to operate across multiple disconnected tools

Lost revenue - Billing discrepancies and invoice errors consumed significant team bandwidth and created friction with advertisers.

‍

"The front and back of the house were primarily communicating through spreadsheets and manual handoffs, which left opportunity for things to slip through the cracks."

Head of Business Operations, Retail Media Network

‍

‍Solution

Placements AI and the Retailer began with a foundational data alignment effort, mapping data elements across systems and establishing a centralized, trusted source of truth for all sales, campaign, and billing activity. From there, AdSalesOS became the connective tissue across RMN’s entire ad revenue operation.

Cross-functional alignment - Integrated ticketing and notifications replaced ad hoc email chains, keeping sales, operations, and finance teams aligned throughout the campaign lifecycle.

Automated billing workflows - Automation reduced manual touchpoints and billing discrepancies, freeing operations teams to focus on growth rather than firefighting.

Unified ecosystem - Bidirectional integrations created a single operational hub, eliminating swivel-chair work and giving teams a real-time view of every campaign.

‍

‍

‍

Results

The results since deploying AdSalesOS reflect what happens when the operational infrastructure matches the ambition of the revenue team.

Growth:

• Increase in ad spend growth by 127%
• Forecasted revenue growth for 2026 of 75%

Productivity:

• Reduction in billing issues by over 50%
• Time saved on manual reconciliations of 9%

“With Placements, the team can keep records as the media plan is started, all the way through FIC, and launch. Placements helps eliminate the swivel chair between ad platforms and retailer systems.”

Head of Business Operations, Retail Media Network

‍