What Is Retail Media And Why Should Marketers Care?
Explore what Retail Media is, why it’s important for marketers, and how it works.
Alec Haase
December 6, 2022
5 minutes
Amazon is by far the largest player in the Retail Media space dominating 77.7% of US digital Retail Media spend in 2021. The online giant's Retail Media network, Amazon Advertising, offers several different ad placements across its online marketplace, ranging from Sponsored products to Homepage brand sponsorship and Display advertising on partner sites and platforms like Twitch.
Walmart's Retail Media network, Walmart Connect (formerly Walmart Media Group), is second to only Amazon Advertising from a revenue standpoint. The retailer connects with 90% of US households and, over the course of the last two years, has actively invested in building additional digital capabilities that helped lead it to an impressive +30% YoY growth.
Instacart launched a self-service retail ad platform called Instacart Ads in 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic fueled massive amounts of growth for the grocery delivery application. With 9.6 million active users and a wealth of demographic and behavioral information from each user (thanks to its model as a gated application), Instacart has a highly qualified data set that allows it to rival others in the space, like Target Roundel and Kroger Precision Marketing.
What's Next for Retail Media?
Retail media's recent boom is not going to slow down anytime soon. As privacy regulations tighten and the cookieless world becomes a reality, more and more marketing teams will shift digital advertising dollars and marketing efforts to platforms and marketing channels that center on first-party customer data.
Amazon Advertising will continue to dominate Retail Media. However, many existing players, as well as new challengers, will force rapid innovation in the space. One innovation worth keeping an eye on is how Retail Media will adopt the rapid rise in data clean rooms - enabling parties to cleanly and effectively share customer data to enable enhanced audiencing and deeper insights.
Want to learn how your organization can prepare for this cookieless world? Book a conversation with our team here.
