The digital retail landscape is undergoing a seismic transformation. As consumers increasingly shift their shopping habits online, a powerful new advertising model has emerged that is reshaping how brands connect with customers at the most critical moment—the point of purchase. This model is known as retail media networks (RMNs), and it represents nothing less than a revolution in the advertising industry.
Retail media networks are advertising platforms operated by retailers that enable brands to purchase ad space directly on the retailer’s digital properties—websites, apps, and increasingly, in-store digital displays. Unlike traditional advertising channels, RMNs leverage retailers’ first-party data and shopper insights to deliver highly targeted advertisements to consumers who are already in a buying mindset. This creates a uniquely powerful advertising opportunity with measurable, closed-loop attribution from ad impression to actual purchase.
Market Size and Growth of Retail Media Networks
The market size tells a compelling story. The global retail media networks market was valued at approximately $22.4 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow to over $34 billion by 2029, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.5%. Some analysts project even more aggressive growth, with the market potentially reaching $78 billion by 2033.
This explosive growth is being driven by the intersection of three powerful forces: the continued expansion of e-commerce, the deprecation of third-party cookies, and retailers’ recognition that advertising represents a high-margin revenue stream that can significantly boost profitability.
E-Commerce as the Catalyst
The growth of internet commerce has fundamentally altered consumer behavior and, with it, the advertising landscape. E-commerce sales have grown from representing less than 5% of total retail sales in 2010 to over 21% by 2025. This shift has created an unprecedented opportunity for retailers to monetize their digital real estate through advertising.
More than 70% of consumer buying journeys now begin on retail websites and apps rather than search engines. This represents a fundamental shift in how consumers discover and evaluate products. When a shopper visits an e-commerce platform, they are demonstrating clear purchase intent—they are not just browsing for information, they are actively looking to buy. This high-intent environment makes retail media advertising extraordinarily effective compared to traditional digital advertising channels.
The Role of Mobile Commerce
The proliferation of smartphones has accelerated this transformation. Mobile commerce now accounts for a substantial portion of online retail sales, and mobile devices enable retailers to reach consumers with targeted advertising at virtually any moment. The number of smartphone users globally has grown from 2.79 billion in 2018 to well over 4 billion today, creating an ever-expanding canvas for retail media advertising.
Major Players in Retail Media Networks
Amazon Advertising: The Industry Pioneer
No discussion of retail media networks can begin without acknowledging Amazon’s pioneering role and dominant market position. Amazon’s advertising business reached an astonishing $56.2 billion in global revenue in 2024, growing 19.8% year-over-year on an already enormous base. To put this in perspective, Amazon’s advertising revenue alone is twice the size of the entire global music industry, exceeds YouTube’s advertising revenue by $20 billion, and rivals the combined revenues of major advertising holding companies like Publicis, Omnicom, and Havas.
Working with an Amazon advertising agency has become essential for brands seeking to maximize their presence on the world’s largest e-commerce platform. Amazon offers a sophisticated suite of advertising products including Sponsored Products (keyword-targeted product ads appearing in search results), Sponsored Brands (banner-style ads featuring brand logos and multiple products), Sponsored Display (retargeting and audience-based display ads), and Amazon DSP (demand-side platform for programmatic display and video advertising). The platform’s closed-loop measurement capabilities allow advertisers to track the direct relationship between ad spend and sales, providing unparalleled attribution clarity.
Walmart Connect: The Fast-Rising Challenger
While Amazon maintains its dominant position, Walmart Connect has emerged as the most formidable challenger in the retail media space. Walmart’s advertising revenue reached $4.4 billion in 2024, representing 27% year-over-year growth—the fastest growth rate among major retail media networks.
For brands seeking a Walmart advertising agency partner, the opportunity is significant and growing rapidly. Walmart Connect’s value proposition is unique. While Amazon’s strength lies in its pure e-commerce scale, Walmart combines the largest physical retail footprint in the United States with a rapidly growing digital presence. Walmart’s e-commerce sales grew by 65% in 2020 alone, and the company has continued to invest heavily in digital capabilities.
This omnichannel strength allows Walmart to offer advertisers something Amazon cannot: the ability to influence both online and in-store purchases through a unified advertising platform. Walmart has invested significantly in improving its advertising platform, shifting to a second-price auction model that provides greater transparency for advertisers, expanding self-serve capabilities, and developing sophisticated attribution that can link digital ad exposure to in-store purchases.
Strategic partnerships with The Trade Desk, Roku, TikTok, and Snap have extended Walmart’s advertising reach beyond its owned properties, allowing brands to target Walmart shoppers across connected TV, social media, and the broader programmatic ecosystem.
Instacart Advertising: Dominating Grocery Delivery
In the grocery delivery space, Instacart has established itself as the leading advertising platform for consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands. With $33 billion in gross transaction value (GTV) in 2024 and coverage of over 85% of U.S. households, Instacart represents a critical channel for brands seeking to reach grocery shoppers.
An Instacart advertising agency can help brands navigate this specialized platform effectively. Instacart’s advertising business generated over $1.18 billion in 2024, with advertising revenue representing a high-margin revenue stream that helps subsidize the company’s delivery operations.
The platform’s advertising products include Featured Product ads (cost-per-click placements in search results), display ads, and increasingly sophisticated targeting capabilities leveraging first-party purchase data. What makes Instacart particularly valuable for CPG brands is its position at the intersection of digital advertising and grocery retail.
Unlike traditional grocery advertising, which relies on trade promotions, in-store displays, and circular ads, Instacart advertising allows brands to target shoppers with precision based on their purchase history, search behavior, and shopping patterns. The platform’s partnership with Roku enables connected TV advertising, extending brand reach beyond the point of purchase.
Staples Connect: B2B Retail Media Innovation
While much of the retail media conversation focuses on consumer markets, business-to-business retail presents its own compelling opportunities. Staples, as the leading office supplies retailer, has developed advertising capabilities that allow brands to reach business buyers at the point of purchase.
For brands targeting small businesses, remote workers, and enterprise procurement departments, working with a Staples advertising agency can provide access to a valuable and often overlooked audience.
ROAS: Measuring Advertising Effectiveness
At the heart of retail media’s value proposition is the ability to measure advertising effectiveness with unprecedented precision. ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) has become the critical metric by which brands evaluate their retail media investments.
ROAS measures the revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising—a $5 ROAS means that for every $1 invested in advertising, the brand generates $5 in sales. The closed-loop attribution available through retail media networks enables this precise measurement.
Because retailers control both the advertising platform and the point of sale, they can directly connect ad impressions and clicks to actual purchases. This stands in stark contrast to traditional digital advertising, where measuring the impact of ads on sales often requires complex, imprecise attribution models.
Leading brands are achieving impressive ROAS results through retail media. Case studies show brands achieving 3x to 5x ROAS when their campaigns are properly optimized. However, achieving these results requires sophisticated campaign management, continuous optimization, and deep understanding of each platform’s unique dynamics.
This complexity has fueled the growth of specialized retail media agencies and technology platforms designed to help brands maximize their advertising effectiveness.
The Fragmentation Challenge
While the opportunities in retail media are substantial, the landscape presents significant challenges for advertisers. More than 80% of the top 100 U.S. retailers now operate their own retail media networks, creating a fragmented ecosystem that can be difficult for brands to navigate effectively.
Each retail media network operates as a distinct platform with its own advertising products, targeting capabilities, bidding mechanisms, and reporting formats. Managing campaigns across multiple retail media networks requires brands to maintain expertise across numerous platforms, integrate data from disparate sources, and develop platform-specific strategies.
This complexity creates several challenges including data fragmentation across separate reporting systems, inconsistent metrics and attribution methodologies, manual and time-consuming campaign management, and difficulty in holistically optimizing advertising spend across retailers.
The fragmentation challenge has given rise to a new category of technology solutions: retail media aggregation and optimization platforms. These platforms aim to unify campaign management across multiple retail media networks, providing centralized reporting, AI-powered optimization, and streamlined workflows that reduce the operational burden on advertising teams.
AI-Powered Optimization: The Next Frontier
Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming how brands manage their retail media investments. The sheer volume of data generated by retail media campaigns—billions of data points across products, keywords, placements, and audiences—exceeds human capacity for analysis and optimization.
AI-powered platforms can process this data in real-time, identifying patterns and optimization opportunities that would be impossible for human analysts to detect. Modern AI-driven retail media platforms employ multi-agent architectures where specialized AI agents handle different aspects of campaign management.
Network optimizer agents continuously adjust spend allocation based on real-time performance data. Bidding agents analyze auction dynamics and adjust bids to maximize efficiency. Budget allocation agents dynamically redistribute spend across campaigns and platforms to achieve optimal returns. A/B testing agents orchestrate experiments to continuously improve campaign performance.
The results of AI-powered optimization can be dramatic. Brands implementing AI-driven campaign management report 3x higher ROAS, 50% reduction in wasted ad spend, and insights delivered 100 times faster than manual analysis.
Perhaps most importantly, AI enables brands to scale their retail media operations without proportionally scaling their teams, making sophisticated advertising strategies accessible to businesses of all sizes.
The Future of Retail Media Networks
The retail media landscape continues to evolve rapidly, with several trends shaping its future trajectory. In-store retail media is emerging as the next growth frontier.
While online advertising currently accounts for 78% of retail media spend, in-store placements are projected to grow at 11.9% CAGR as retailers deploy digital displays, interactive end-caps, and audio advertising in physical stores.
This creates opportunities for true omnichannel advertising that influences shoppers across both digital and physical touchpoints.
Off-site advertising represents another area of rapid expansion. Retail media networks are increasingly extending their reach beyond owned properties, allowing advertisers to target shoppers on third-party websites, connected TV, and social media platforms using retailers’ first-party data.
In the U.S., more than 20% of retail media spend in 2025 is projected to go to off-site channels.
The deprecation of third-party cookies is accelerating advertiser interest in retail media. As traditional digital advertising targeting becomes less effective, the first-party data available through retail media networks becomes increasingly valuable.
Brands are investing in retail media even for products not sold on retailer platforms, seeking to mine the high-quality audience insights these networks provide.
RMIQ: Addressing Retail Media Fragmentation
Among many new players RMIQ (Retail Media IQ) exemplifies the new generation of platforms addressing the retail media fragmentation challenge.
By connecting brands and agencies to premium ad space across more than 60 retail media networks—including Walmart Connect, Instacart, Target, Kroger, CVS, Staples, Home Depot, and many others—RMIQ provides a unified interface for managing retail media at scale.
The platform’s AI-driven approach addresses the core challenges facing retail media advertisers. For agencies managing multiple client accounts, RMIQ’s platform provides the scalability and efficiency needed to deliver results across diverse brand portfolios.
For brands, it offers the sophisticated optimization capabilities previously available only to large enterprises with dedicated retail media teams.
Conclusion
The growth of internet commerce has transformed advertising from an interruption-based model to one integrated into the shopping experience.
Retail media networks place brand messages at the “moment of truth”—when consumers are actively making purchase decisions. This proximity to conversion, combined with first-party data targeting and closed-loop measurement, creates advertising opportunities with unparalleled effectiveness.
For retailers, advertising has become a high-margin revenue stream that can significantly boost profitability. For brands, retail media offers a direct path to reaching shoppers with measurable return on investment. For consumers, well-targeted retail media can enhance the shopping experience by surfacing relevant products at the right moment.
As the market matures, success in retail media will require sophisticated strategies, advanced technology, and deep platform expertise.
Whether working with specialized agencies—an Instacart advertising agency, Walmart advertising agency, Amazon advertising agency, or Staples advertising agency—or leveraging unified platforms, like RMIQ, brands must approach retail media as a core competency rather than an experimental channel.
