11 retail media networks compete for advertising budgets
Retailers, financial companies and ecommerce platforms are differentiating their media businesses through data, reach, audience contexts, content and cross-channel measurement capabilities.
What are the key facts?
- 1The event featured 15 presentations from retail and business media businesses
- 2The industry broadly emphasizes measurement and specific outcomes
- 3Walgreens announced a digital screen network in 1,200 stores
- 4H-E-B serves 8 million households weekly
- 5PayPal Ads covers its own platform and partner channels
What happened?
As more retail media networks emerge, retailers, financial companies and ecommerce platforms are competing for advertiser budgets. A business media showcase hosted by Ascendant Network brought together media businesses from companies including The Home Depot, Albertsons and PayPal. Platforms are differentiating themselves in different ways: traditional retailers and banks emphasize years of proprietary data, ecommerce and fintech companies highlight cross-merchant reach, and specialty retailers emphasize specific audience segments. Multiple companies identified measurement, outcomes, cross-channel interoperability and incremental impact as priorities. Some platforms are expanding into upper-funnel marketing, including video advertising, in-store screens and content distribution. Walgreens also announced that it would launch a digital screen network in 1,200 stores, while H-E-B emphasized its regional reach across nearly 500 stores and its weekly service to 8 million households. Overall, competition in retail media is expanding beyond product and price advertising into the consumer journey, content, audience insights and performance measurement.
What does this mean for cross-border sellers?
As retail media networks multiply, sellers have more advertising contexts and audience data sources to choose from, but budget competition is also intensifying. Do not compare placements only by impressions; ask platforms for conversion, incremental impact and cross-channel performance data, and test different audiences and content contexts with small budgets.
What should sellers do now?
- 1List the advertising platforms currently in use or under consideration this week, and compare them by audience reach, placement context, attribution methodology and available performance data.Marketplace fee compare
- 2Set consistent budget, click, conversion and return-on-investment targets for each platform, then use small budgets to test onsite search, content and upper-funnel advertising.ACoS / ROAS calculator
- 3Compare orders, gross margin and new-customer performance across advertising platforms and channels, and pause campaigns that cannot provide clear results or remain below target.Profit calculator