Retail media—or is it commerce media?—continues to dominate the news cycle as we enter 2025.
Consider the past week alone: T-Mobile expanded its physical retail media network with the acquisition of DOOH leader Vistar Media. At CES, Amazon announced plans to offer an adtech stack to help other retailers build media networks (but will retailers ever trust a competitor like Amazon to stand up their RMNs?). Then, today, Business Insider reported that casino and resort company Mohegan is partnering with LiveRamp to launch the first-ever casino commerce media network. Yeah, that’s a busy week.
And we’re not done, as the NRF conference kicked off this week and retail media is dominating that show, too.
Why This Matters:
The global commerce media market is projected to reach nearly $180 billion this year, growing over 15% year-over-year—outpacing every other channel, including CTV. Physical retail and commerce media networks are particularly thriving, as shown by the T-Mobile and Vistar deal.
Even Samsung is entering the space, partnering with real estate giant RE/MAX to build a physical commerce media network across RE/MAX offices. According to the press release, Samsung’s screens will “programmatically deliver carefully curated advertisements from top national and local organizations, enabling RE/MAX Metro to leverage the displays as an ancillary revenue generator.” (Shout out to RE/MAX, who I didn’t expect to see on my 2025 commerce media bingo card.)
Experts React:
Drew Cashmore, Head of Strategy at retail media orchestration company Vantage — they serve as retail media tech backbone for companies like Home Depot — and an original architect of Walmart Connect in North America, predicts that “the explosive growth of retail media networks” will continue “unabated.” However, he notes that the focus will likely shift “from rapid expansion to thoughtful optimization” as spending continues to soar.
Our Take:
One thought — will we begin to see more consolidation in retail and commerce media adtech in 2025? There are a growing number of media networks out there (Western Union!) across any category of business with first-party data and media inventory. That is attracting more adtech companies to help in areas like measurement and optimization.
But is that sustainable?
Too many point solutions never work. Feels like we’re headed for a massive amount of M&A, with players like Criteo, Kevel, The Trade Desk, and others taking advantage. This basically tracks with LUMA’s Terry Kawaja prediction that 2025 will be the year of “thrive” and deal-making.
