How Rakuten France unlocked 20% more retail media revenue and won the Best Retail Media Campaign at the Adtech Awards 2025
Mirakl Ads, Rakuten France and activation partner Symbiosys have been recognized at the Adtech Awards 2025 for their unified on-site/off-site solution.
The partnership won the prestigious Best Retail Media Campaign (Dispositif Retail Media de l’année) award. Presented by Minted, these awards celebrate the most impactful technological advancements in the French advertising market, highlighting Mirakl Ads’ commitment to pushing the boundaries of retail media performance and operational efficiency.
In the fast-paced world of eCommerce, inventory saturation is a common bottleneck for growth. For leading marketplaces like Rakuten France, the challenge is not a lack of advertiser demand, but finding efficient ways to scale it without adding operational complexity.
By creating a unified campaign setup that bridges the gap between on-site and off-site channels, Rakuten France has rewritten the retail media playbook — a feat that drove a 20% increase in retail media revenue in just one month.
The challenge: Managing saturation without complexity
Rakuten France’s objective was to optimize the profitability of its retail media strategy. However, the marketplace faced a recurring hurdle: inventory saturation in high-demand categories and during seasonal peaks.
While advertiser appetite was strong, the operational burden of managing separate campaigns for on-site sponsored products and off-site external web activation was a deterrent.
Rakuten needed a solution that relied on the automation of Mirakl Ads while preserving the high performance advertisers expect. The goals were to maximize budget utilization without increasing manual work, maintain a high return on ad spend (ROAS) for advertisers and drive qualified, incremental traffic back to the marketplace.
The solution: The "left-over" mechanism
To break down the silos between on-site and off-site advertising, Mirakl Ads and Symbiosys co-built a delivery continuity mechanism. This innovation treats the two environments as a continuum rather than separate worlds.
One budget, one setup: Advertisers create a single campaign with a single budget.
Automated orchestration: The system prioritizes on-site sponsored products, which is the most profitable channel for both Rakuten and its sellers.
Seamless reallocation: When on-site inventory is saturated, an automated rule kicks in. The "left-over" budget is instantly and automatically redeployed to Google Shopping.
This ensures that every advertising dollar is working hard, regardless of inventory constraints on the marketplace itself.
Using Google Shopping to capture high-intent traffic off-site
Most off-site retail media extensions rely on standard display retargeting. While effective for brand awareness, display does not always match the high conversion intent of on-site sponsored products.
Rakuten and Symbiosys selected Google Shopping as the off-site lever to maintain performance. This approach uses sponsored Google Shopping based on contextual targeting.
By tapping into Google’s high-intent search traffic, they ensured that the "overflow" budget was directed toward users actively looking to buy, preserving the high ROAS advertisers search on-site.
The results: A win-win-win
The impact of this hybrid approach was immediate and significant. By removing the friction between on-site and off-site, Rakuten unlocked new value for everyone in the ecosystem.
In just one month of operation:
Revenue increased by 20%: Rakuten’s jump in revenue was driven by the ability to capture budget that would have otherwise gone unspent.
Hybrid adoption reached 15%: Nearly 15% of all campaigns successfully transitioned to this hybrid model.
Growth was incremental: The campaigns drove a tangible increase in visitors and gross merchandise value (GMV), bringing new qualified traffic to the platform.
Performance remained consistent: Crucially, this scale did not come at the cost of efficiency. Advertisers maintained a strong ROAS while targeting a broader audience.
Defining the future of retail media
This recognition and case study represents a shift in the evolution of retail media networks. The 2025 Adtech Awards confirm the industry is moving toward a holistic liquidity model where budget flows to where the opportunity is.
For Rakuten France, the success lies in the operational excellence delivered by the Mirakl Ads platform: one budget, one setup and one invoice. It turns the complexity of the open web into a seamless extension of on-site retail media, proving that with the right technology, you can max out your inventory without capping your growth.
To learn more about how this partnership is transforming the landscape, read our deep dive inside Rakuten’s retail media evolution with Symbiosys and Mirakl Ads.
