shopper

Brands Strain to Meet Audiences as Retail Media Networks Catch Fire

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Leora Kelman discusses Retail Media Networks

FOR CPG MARKETERS, the rise of Retail Media Networks (RMNs) continues to create opportunities to drive brand awareness and sales lift in stores by advertising to shoppers much nearer to the point of decision.

The lion’s share of this ad spending in North America has been concentrated on a handful of the very largest digital RMNs. Now many more retailers are angling to capture a fair share of this growing pie, installing digital screens, promising better measurement and even bringing merchants to the table.

At January’s National Retail Federation (NRF) pre-Expo conference day in New York, “What’s In-Store for Retail Media Networks,” sponsored by STRATACACHE, an all-star cast of industry experts and practitioners offered bullish forecasts and strategic advice for advertisers.

Originallly published in CPGmatters.com, Feb. 2026. Reproduced here by permission.

“The retail media market is exceptionally concentrated between Amazon and Walmart,” said Leora Kelman, Managing Director and Partner for Boston Consulting Group, noting that Amazon will control more than 75% of all retail media spending “through at least 2027.”

In-store is a more level playing field than ecommerce. A handful of digital giants command more than half of all online retail sales, led by Amazon with 40 percent, Walmart with 7 percent, Apple and eBay with 3 percent each, as reported by eMarketer in its May 2025 Forecast.

By comparison, total retail sales are far less concentrated, with Walmart garnering 11 percent and Amazon capturing just 5 percent in the NRF 2025 Top 100 Retailers ranking.

“How do we capture that attention of all of the people that we are not reaching through Amazon and Walmart?” Kelman asked. “They are shopping local retailers and a much, much wider range of players. How do we make sure we’re telling stories across those touchpoints? This is a huge opportunity.”

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As Retail Media Evolves, Brands Face Tough Challenges

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Shopper media experience

AMONG THE MANY CHALLENGES facing CPGs in their efforts to make sense of retail media networks has been a pervasive storytelling bias.

On daily basis, we encounter widespread published commentary and reports celebrating retail media’s headlong growth, along with advice on tech, measurement, and monetization for retailers. Much of it comes from solution providers, consultancies and ad agencies vying to cash in on the burgeoning media sales opportunity. Wall Street analysts have been a megaphone for this side of the story too.

This article is part of a series. Republished here by permission from CPGmatters.

The bandwagon effect has been so powerful, the lure of “new” digital revenue so enticing, that critical thinking is too often abandoned by analysts and bloggers. Spending forecasts are frequently represented with “hockey stick” charts. With each new quarterly release, it seems as if proponents keep expanding the definition of “commerce media” to help drive the forecasts to new heights.

Meanwhile, for brand marketers (the lion’s share of all that juicy ad spending) pragmatic guidance about RMN strategy and practices seems relatively hard to come by.

Balancing the retail media story

As we have been documenting here in recent months, retail media is just now emerging from its nascent state. The digital network side has been dominated by early adopters who pioneered search and sponsored product advertising – Amazon Ads, Google Ads, Walmart Connect, Albertsons Media Collective, Kroger Precision Marketing, Instacart Carrot Ads, and a few others.

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Retail Media Scale: CPG Brands’ Conundrum

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Execs Negotiating Media w Screen

HOW DO BRANDS UNDERSTAND retail media scale as they plan spending?

In previous articles in this series, we addressed the challenges CPG brands face in dealing with retail media networks. It summarized brand marketer spending trends and described why brand teams are challenged when it comes to making decisions about retail media investments across their entire distribution networks.

We discussed the struggle brands face as they endeavor to support their retail distribution networks with proportional retail media investments across all their distribution channels. With hundreds of small retailers seeking a fair share of the pie, CPGs simply don’t have the bandwidth for empirical decision-making.

Regional and independent retailers are not the only ones concerned about the concentration at the top of the Retail Media Network hierarchy.

CPGs are also wrestling with this, and the conversation is beginning to bring trading partners together in search of workable solutions which enable a fair share of retail media spending to find its way to numerous retailers who are not on the top-ten RMN list.

“The network is the piece that’s missing.”

– Adam Zimmerman, Ideal by Design House

At the handful of larger retailers where retail media is a must, joint business planning discussions have become more complicated, as CPGs work to establish new practices that incorporate traditional trade marketing along with the type of targeted messaging that retail media enables. Negotiations must now address how outcomes can be measured and what merchandising support will be required in the stores and fulfillment centers.

Needed: “Connective Tissue”

At February’s 2025 NGA Show in Las Vegas, two panel sessions were devoted to the existential challenge faced by independent grocers as they seek sufficient retail media scale (i.e., audience size) to be relevant to national brands. Wholesalers and retailer networks represented at the conference discussed their efforts to deliver targetable shopper audiences with sufficient scale and measurability to justify CPG investment.

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Retail Media Network Gaps Hold Peril for Brands

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Retail Media Networks Mind the Gaps

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT the retail media conversation couldn’t get any hotter, we hear high-profile executives from the largest Retail Media Networks (RMNs) and their technology suppliers on podiums and podcasts talking up a glorious future for brand advertisers.

RMNs were a recurring theme at last September’s Groceryshop event in Las Vegas and this month’s NRF ’24 Big Show in New York promises no fewer than 24 sessions on “Retail Media” topics. No wonder – the take from retail media sales this year is projected to reach $52 billion in the U.S. market alone, according to Coresight Research.

RMNs are retailer-owned digital and in-store channels which convey messages and offers to shoppers from CPGs and other third-party businesses. They have exploded in popularity over the past few years, due to the added revenue they can attract for retailers and the personalized audiences they can deliver to advertisers.

Right now, big RMNs wield heavy clout when it comes to scooping up those alternative revenues. The most prominent – Kroger Precision Media, Walmart Connect, Albertsons Media Collective, Target Roundel, Dollar General, Instacart – can deliver audiences in the tens of millions or more. These certainly boast wide geographic coverage that is important for brands.

It’s easy to be dazzled by the scale of those audiences and the purported advertising efficiencies and targeting capabilities of their networks. Savvy advertisers must also recognize that sheer, provable reach is only the first piece of the puzzle.

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