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MARCH 23, 2026 |
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Physical stores represent retail media's largest untapped growth opportunity, but the industry's ecommerce-first infrastructure is preventing that potential from being realized. |
"Retail media in the US was never built for physical stores," said our analyst Sarah Marzano at EMARKETER's Commerce Media Trends Summit. "The system we built was designed around ecommerce native signals, ecommerce native formats, and ecommerce native measurement." |
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While we forecast US retail media ad spending will reach nearly $100 billion by 2029, that growth masks a fundamental structural problem: The channel was architected for digital transactions, and physical retail operates differently. |
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Amazon's dominance reveals the ecommerce bias |
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Retail media's concentration around Amazon illustrates how the current system advantages digital environments over physical ones. Marzano said Amazon captures roughly 80% of all retail media ad spending, a share that significantly outweighs its portion of overall retail activity. |
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"When one player offers access to the majority of US households and directly controls such a large share of digital transactions, ad spend, consolidation becomes rational," she said. "And that tendency is reinforced by the friction advertisers experience when scaling across multiple retail media networks, which often means managing separate platforms, inconsistent reporting and measurement approaches that are not directly comparable." |
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Advertisers using retail adtech firm Pacvue will be able to purchase and monitor Reddit ads through the platform starting this spring, the companies announced this week. |
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Pacvue connects to over 100 retail media networks and manages campaign buying and measurement across platforms like Walmart and Amazon. |
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The integration comes as more online shoppers are turning to platforms like Reddit to discover products, and amid Reddit’s increased impact on AI commerce and retail media. |
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Consumers often turn to Reddit for authentic, community-driven feedback on products they discover elsewhere. That important role in purchase decisions makes Reddit more integral to the path to purchase.
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This growing influence is driving increased advertiser interest. We forecast Reddit’s US ad revenues will grow 41.1% YoY in 2026 after skyrocketing 68.6% in 2025. |
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