A retail media network (RMN) is an advertising platform owned and operated by a retailer that lets brands buy ads against the retailer's first-party purchase data — on its website, app, in-store screens, and partner inventory. Because the retailer can match an ad impression to an actual transaction, RMNs offer closed-loop attribution that search and social cannot.
Retail media is now the third great digital ad channel — after search and social — and it is the fastest-growing of the three.
This is a cluster report under the Digital Marketing pillar.
Why Retail Media Exists
Retail media solved two problems at once. For retailers, thin-margin businesses like grocery and general merchandise discovered that selling ads against their own shopper data is dramatically more profitable than selling products. For brands, the deprecation of third-party cookies destroyed much of the targeting and measurement that paid social once delivered — and a retailer's logged-in, purchase-verified shopper data became the most reliable signal left.
The result is a channel built on a structural advantage no other media owns: the retailer knows what the shopper actually bought. That closes the loop between an ad and a sale in a way Google and Meta, for all their scale, cannot match on their own platforms.
The Numbers
U.S. retail media ad spend will reach roughly $69 billion in 2026, up about 18% year over year — growing faster than the broader digital ad market. Global retail media is forecast to exceed $163 billion by 2027, and on current trajectory it will represent roughly a quarter of all digital ad spending worldwide by 2028.
This is no longer an emerging channel. It is a core line in every consumer brand's media plan, and increasingly in categories — financial services, travel, telecom — that did not have retail media at all three years ago.
The Player Landscape
The U.S. retail media market has a clear hierarchy:
| Network | Owner | Position |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon Ads | Amazon | The largest RMN by a wide margin |
| Walmart Connect | Walmart | #2; strongest omnichannel reach, in-store plus online |
| Target Roundel | Target | Known for brand-partnership depth |
| Instacart Ads | Instacart | Grocery delivery, high purchase intent |
| Kroger Precision Marketing | Kroger | Deep grocery loyalty data |
Beyond the leaders, a long tail is forming — Home Depot, Best Buy, CVS Media Exchange, and a wave of newcomers in financial services and travel building networks on their own transaction data.
The Amazon–Walmart Duopoly
The defining dynamic of 2026 is concentration. Amazon and Walmart are capturing close to 90% of the incremental growth in U.S. retail media. The gap between the two leaders and everyone else is widening, not closing.
For advertisers, this creates a hard allocation question. The leaders offer scale, mature tooling, and the deepest data — but also pricing power and a growing "retail media tax." The long-tail networks offer differentiated audiences and lower competition, but inconsistent measurement and thinner inventory. The disciplined approach treats Amazon and Walmart as non-negotiable base spend and the long tail as a tested, incremental layer — not an even spread.
Beyond the Website: In-Store and Connected TV
Retail media is no longer just sponsored product listings. Two expansions matter.
In-store has become digital. Retailer apps in "store mode" turn a shopper's phone into the most valuable inventory in the building — serving offers, navigation, and scan-and-go checkout at the point of decision. Digital screens and signage are a fast-growing ad surface.
Connected TV is converging with retail media. Retailers increasingly use purchase data to target and measure streaming ads — combining high-intent shopper signals with the reach of the living-room screen. It is one of the fastest-growing slices of the channel.
Commerce Media Networks
A parallel category is emerging: commerce media networks run by intermediaries that sit between shoppers and merchants. DoorDash Ads and Instacart each already generate close to $1 billion in annual U.S. ad revenue, and they offer something traditional RMNs cannot — visibility into cross-merchant purchase behavior. They are still proving they deliver genuinely incremental audiences, but they are competing directly for budgets that once flowed only to retailer-owned networks.
What It Means for Advertisers
The appeal of retail media is real: closed-loop attribution, purchase-verified targeting, and proximity to the moment of decision. But the channel carries its own problems.
It is fragmented — running retail media well means operating across a dozen networks, each with its own platform, data definitions, and reporting. Measurement is not standardized, which makes cross-network comparison difficult. And there is a live question of incrementality — whether a retail media ad genuinely created a sale or simply took credit for a purchase that would have happened anyway. The brands getting real value treat retail media with the same rigor as any other channel: incrementality testing, not platform-reported ROAS taken at face value.
The Outlook
Retail media's hyper-growth phase is maturing into something more permanent — a structural pillar of digital advertising rather than a novelty. The center of gravity will stay with Amazon and Walmart. The growth edges are in-store, connected TV, and commerce media. For consumer brands, the question is no longer whether to invest in retail media. It is how to operate across a fragmented landscape without overpaying the leaders or spreading too thin across the rest.
Related reading
In this cluster (Performance Marketing): The CAC Crisis · Meta Ads in 2026 · Google Ads Changes · Attribution Collapse · MMM Explained
Parent pillar: Digital Marketing in 2026
Related: Commerce Inside TikTok · Amazon Influencer Programs
Methodology and Updates
This is an evergreen explainer, reviewed and updated quarterly. Market data is drawn from primary industry sources including eMarketer, GroupM, and company filings. Where forecasts differ across sources, the page reflects the consensus range rather than the outlier.
Everything-PR covers digital marketing, communications, AI visibility, reputation systems, and the evolving infrastructure of modern discovery.
