The 14th edition of the industry’s most informative cross-network assessment guide evaluates 89 capabilities at 27 leading platforms.
To download the report, fill out the form below.
It’s official: Retail media is no longer the shiny new penny in commerce marketing. But its future is still bright: EMARKETER projects U.S. ad spending to grow another 18% and reach nearly $72.0 billion this year.
While onsite advertising continues to command up to 80% of that total, offsite media allocations are growing twice as fast, as networks seek to expand audiences (and please advertisers) by branching out to other digital platforms as well as the physical store — although that latter channel still accounts for less than 1% of all outlays. And, apparently, this shift is coming at a fortuitous time.
That shiny new penny is, of course, agentic search, which already is having a measurable impact on product research and discovery through consumer adoption of third-party platforms such as Gemini (Google), ChatGPT (OpenAI), Claude (Anthropic), Microsoft (Copilot) and Perplexity. According to some industry pundits, it ultimately also could substantially reduce traffic to retailer websites and thereby make onsite advertising largely irrelevant.
Retailers have been moving into this arena as well. They’re introducing proprietary engines, led by Amazon’s newly repositioned Alexa for Shopping (formerly Rufus) and Walmart’s Sparky, and also launching apps embedded into these third-party platforms. Experimentation with advertising models that don’t contradict an agent’s main selling point for consumers — personalized and objective recommendations — has just begun. But agentic ads could become a standard retail media offering before long.
It’s not clear if third-party agents will ever significantly bite into retailer traffic: for now, their recommendations are sending users in that direction. But they’ll soon represent a fresh contingent of competitors for digital ad dollars in a market already saturated with yet-more retail media networks, as well as “commerce media” players from travel, financial services, hospitality, and other service industries.
The escalating competition, however, is driving ingenuity and innovation, as old-school retail networks strive to build unique platforms and processes that make it easier — as in directly, via self-service tools — for brand partners to achieve their specific business goals by providing access to identified audiences across the entire path to purchase through those aforementioned offsite opportunities.
This ever-intensifying competition makes it even more critical for brand advertisers to scrutinize their retail media options carefully. Brands are tasked with developing a strategic understanding of how best to leverage retail media to drive incremental growth, deciding which retailers provide the greatest opportunities for success, and determining what specific media tactics are most effective at achieving the desired impact.
They also must align their retail media activity with the rest of the commerce marketing plan, which can improve success not only through more seamless shopper engagement but by fostering greater internal efficiency across functions. This step is critical to future growth for brands and the retail media networks themselves.
New Features This Quarter
We update each quarterly Report Card to reflect the ongoing enhancements made by these platforms, to evaluate additional platforms, and to modify our analysis as needed to continue reflecting best practices in the industry. For that reason, we have updated our Platform Profiles to more clearly and explicitly present each network’s key capabilities and ways of working. See page 27 for a rundown of all the new elements.
We also welcome Costco Retail Media to our coverage for the first time this edition, and welcome back Wakefern Media Exchange.
In terms of capability updates, 18 of the 26 retail media networks covered in our previous Report Card added a collective 37 tools and opportunities to their existing capabilities, working either to keep pace or gain an advantage (as the case may be) in this highly competitive marketplace.
Gopuff Ads and Wakefern Media Exchange led the pack with four updates each, followed by Kroger Precision Marketing, Petco Spot Media, Sam’s Club MAP, and Shipt Media with three apiece.
The totals were significantly lower than the ones recorded in our first-quarter Report Card, but somewhat expected given that networks often time their innovation introductions to the start of the calendar year.
Nearly half (17) of the updates were related to new offsite Media Opportunities, either on external digital platforms or in physical stores, as networks seek to provide brand partners with comprehensive audience coverage and full-funnel activation opportunities (as well as give themselves more ad inventory to sell).
Updates to Measurement & Reporting capabilities were also common, and were primarily related to the ongoing shift away from managed service toward self-service insights and performance analysis.
We hope you enjoy the 14th edition of our Retail Media Report Card.
