Retailers Went All-In on Advertising. Now They Need to Prove That It’s Working.

The Ultimate Guide to Retail Media is sponsored by Walmart Connect. For the past few years, retailers have tinkered with selling advertising as a way to offset low retail margins. Now, they’re looking to scale their ad businesses—or risk losing momentum if they’re not able to differentiate themselves. So-called retail media will be the fastest-growing ad channel through 2027 and is forecasted to bring in $140 billion in global ad spend this year, according to Emarketer. And while Amazon dominates advertisers’ budgets, big retailers like Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and Kroger are also vying for a piece of retail ad budgets. What can retail media do? Retail media are ads powered by a retailer's shopper data to help companies that don't have a direct relationship with customers—like consumer packaged goods—promote their products with retailers. Those basic capabilities have expanded in recent years. Retailers are rapidly inking deals with adtech companies and platforms that use shopping data to better target and measure digital ads across the web. These offsite deals help retailers sell more ads beyond their own ecommerce websites and aim to prove to advertisers that their data is more valuable than competitors. Retailers are also pushing in-store digital ads and technology aimed at capturing the bulk of retail sales that still happen in stores. The big brand challenges for retail media While the opportunities are large for advertisers, so are the pitfalls. Unlike every other type of digital advertising, retail media lacks standards for how ads are sold and measured, which is increasingly becoming a larger problem for advertisers as they shift money from budgets like social media and programmatic into retail media. Advertisers also say that it’s getting increasingly difficult to vet the advertising offerings from dozens of retailers. Trade groups like the Interactive Advertising Bureau have been working on standards that would help advertisers measure the effectiveness of each retailer’s ecommerce ads—notably, the metric of incrementally—for years, but experts say retailers are reluctant to give up too much data that could water down the value of their shopper data. “How do we make sure that there are real standards that everybody can rally around right now?” Bobby Watts, senior vice president and lead of grocery giant Ahold Delhaize’s ad business, recently told ADWEEK. “There are so many different ways people are spinning numbers, and it creates a ton of confusion in the marketplace.” How to measure retail media Because it's hard to come to a consensus about measurement, some experts are pushing for the industry to back any type of an incrementality metric. And the rise of in-store ads means brands are also looking for better ways to measure ads placed in high-traffic areas of stores—like the checkout area. Retail media X social media Retail media networks like Walmart Connect and others have grown their integrations with offsite publishers and major social media networks. It's a forward-thinking move, as younger consumers increasingly embrace social shopping. Meet the execs leading the smaller retail media networks Amazon, Walmart, and Target are giant players in retail media but they aren't the only players in town. Over the past couple of years, retailers of all sizes have stood up ad businesses to get a chunk of retail media budgets. Companies like JPMorgan Chase, PayPal, and United are also building ad networks that pitch advertisers on their first-party data.

Retail Media Networks

The Ultimate Guide to Retail Media in 2025

Retail media is a big opportunity, but brands need to know how to capitalize

What can retail media do?

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