Retail Media explained: ad types, benefits and strategies

Retail media is now a major part of digital marketing. Its growth is slowing, but it is still faster than that of most other ad types. This article gives an overview, with current figures for the world, Europe and Germany.

What is retail media?

Retail media is advertising that retailers and marketplaces sell on their own platforms, using their own customer data. Brands use it to promote their products right where people buy. Well-known examples are Amazon, eBay and Zalando, and in Germany also retailers such as OTTO, MediaMarktSaturn or REWE (more on this below). TikTok Shop also combines advertising and buying on one platform.

Retail media is often divided into these groups:

On-site advertising: digital ads on the retailer’s website or app
Off-site advertising: digital ads outside the retailer, for example on social media, on other websites or on streaming TV, steered with the retailer’s data
In-store advertising: ads inside a physical store, for example on screens

Here we mainly look at the on-site part.

This form of performance marketing uses the reach and the first-party data of retailers and platforms to target ads and reach shoppers while they are deciding what to buy.

Retail media connects advertising and e-commerce: ad placements in retailers’ online shops and apps let brands present their products where the buying decision is made. This closeness to the point of sale raises the likelihood of a conversion, and the retailer can link ads and purchases in its own data.

How big is retail media? Market figures for 2025 and 2026

How big the market is depends on who is counting. Some studies count only advertising on the retailers’ own sites, others also include off-site advertising based on retailer data. The following figures therefore come from different sources and cannot be added up.

Worldwide: Retail media ad spend was USD 175.7 billion in 2025. For 2026, WPP Media expects USD 194.7 billion, an increase of 10.8% (WPP Media: This Year Next Year, Midyear Forecast, June 2026). Growth is slowing: in 2025 it was still 12.5%.

Europe: IAB Europe puts retail media spend in Europe at EUR 16.9 billion for 2025. For 2026, the association expects an increase of 18.5%, and EUR 32.7 billion by 2030 (IAB Europe, September 2026). So Europe is growing faster than the global market, but from a smaller base.

Germany: There is no single study with a total figure for Germany. We calculated one ourselves from the estimate by the German media agency association (see the next section): about EUR 3.3 billion in 2025.

Retail media in Germany

The association Die Mediaagenturen estimates net ad spend in Germany in 2025 at EUR 2.62 billion for Amazon (retail), an increase of 12%. All other retailers together account for EUR 0.66 billion, an increase of 20% (Die Mediaagenturen: Werbemarkt 2025, estimate from December 2025, in German).

By our own calculation, that adds up to about EUR 3.3 billion. Amazon’s share of it is about 80%. These figures are an industry estimate, not revenue reported by the retailers. The source does not say whether Amazon’s figure includes DSP. Our analysis of Amazon’s public ad archive in the Amazon Ads Report EU 2026 shows the scale in ads: on October 26, 2026, 91.5 million ads ran across the nine EU stores on a single day.

The other retailers are growing faster than Amazon, though from a much smaller base. In its overview of retail media networks, the German digital industry association BVDW lists these providers, among others (BVDW: Retail Media Provider Overview, August 2025):

OTTO Advertising (OTTO)
MediaMarktSaturn Retail Media
Zalando Marketing Services
REWE Group Retail Media Connect
Douglas Marketing Solutions
Schwarz Media (Kaufland, Lidl)

For a brand, this means: in Germany, Amazon is by far the largest place to advertise. If you sell a lot through other retailers, though, you’ll find their own networks there, with their own data.

Amazon as a retail media network

Amazon’s worldwide advertising revenue in the third quarter of 2026 was USD 19.6 billion, 11% more than in the same quarter of the previous year (Amazon: Q3 2026 Earnings Release, October 29, 2026). In the US, Amazon had a 79.7% share of all retail media spend in 2025 (EMARKETER).

Amazon’s offer ranges from an ad in search to a spot on streaming TV:

Sponsored Products: single products in search and on detail pages, paid per click
Sponsored Brands: logo, headline and several products, or a video
Display ads (formerly Sponsored Display): on and off Amazon, paid per click or by vCPM
Streaming TV ads (formerly Sponsored TV): spots on Prime Video, Fire TV and Twitch
Amazon DSP: programmatic buying of display, video and audio; the new campaign type DVA+ is in beta in the US
Amazon Marketing Cloud: analysis across all ad types, in self-service also in Germany

Since September 29, 2026, Sponsored Ads and DSP have run on one shared platform, Amazon Ads Agent. For a comparison of all ad types and the other levers such as promotions and the Brand Store, see the overview of Amazon marketing.

Benefits of retail media

Close to the point of purchase

Retail media is close to the point of purchase (PoP). Other ad types often reach shoppers long before they buy. Retail media reaches them while they search and compare. Sponsored Products or display ads appear exactly when potential buyers are actively looking for solutions and are ready to buy.

With keyword targeting and category targeting, the ads match the search or the product category. This contextual relevance raises the likelihood of a purchase, and well-made ads are more likely to be seen as help than as a disruption.

Built-in measurement

The retailer sees both: who saw or clicked an ad and who bought afterwards. This so-called “closed-loop” measurement shows advertisers which ads came before a purchase. From that, they calculate return on advertising spend (RoAS).

But coming before is not the same as causing. Some of the attributed purchases would have happened without the ad too (see “Cannibalization” below). In addition, each retailer decides for itself how it attributes purchases, and it changes that too. On January 1, 2026, Amazon changed view-based attribution for vCPM campaigns of Sponsored Brands and display ads and for DSP campaigns with ads in the Amazon store (Amazon Ads: View attribution updates). Figures from before and after this date are therefore not directly comparable. Amazon Attribution measures purchases driven from outside Amazon.

Retail media ad types

Advertisers can promote their products directly on e-commerce platforms in various formats. The most common are:

Display ads

Display ads appear on product detail pages, in search results or on the online shop’s home page, for example as banners, sliders or video ads. They are especially good for raising brand awareness and presenting new products or special offers.

Display ads can achieve high reach within the audience. With the retailer’s first-party data, they can be targeted at users’ interests and buying behavior. Many retailers also offer retargeting: users who viewed a product and didn’t buy it see it again.

Amazon’s own format is also called display ads (formerly Sponsored Display). They are billed per click or per 1,000 viewable impressions (vCPM). Advertisers buy display and video ads at scale, including outside Amazon, through Amazon DSP.

Which KPIs matter depends on the billing model: with CPC, the focus is on clicks and cost per click; with vCPM or CPM, on viewable impressions and their price. Besides direct sales, also look at the ads’ effect on brand awareness across the whole marketing funnel.

Special placements / display sponsoring

With classic display sponsoring, advertisers book prominent placements on retailers’ websites or in their apps. Banners, billboards or skyscrapers can catch potential customers’ attention and drive traffic to product detail pages or brand shops.

Advertisers benefit from the high reach and the trust customers place in the retailers. If the creatives match the retailer’s look and feel, they feel less intrusive and blend into the shopping experience.

Off-site and in-store

Many retailers now also sell reach outside their shop. Amazon serves ads on Prime Video, Twitch and Fire TV and, through DSP in Germany, also offers inventory from Netflix and Disney+. For spots on streaming TV, there are streaming TV ads.

In-store advertising runs on screens and displays in the store. On its German product page, Amazon lists out-of-home ads, for example on packaging, in-store displays and pickup locations (Amazon Ads Germany: products and ad formats, in German). Whether these formats can be booked in Germany is not confirmed.

Audiences and suitable industries

Retail media suits every industry whose products are sold through retailers and marketplaces: consumer goods, electronics, fashion, cosmetics or food. Established brands use it to defend their position, new brands to become known. Thanks to precise targeting options, even niche products with low search volume can be advertised.

In our experience, it pays off especially for products with higher prices, because shoppers compare more before they buy.

Targeting options and personalization

First-party data comes directly from users and buyers and makes it possible to address audiences precisely. Retail platforms have data such as purchase history, search behavior, interests and shopping habits.

The most important types of targeting:

Keyword targeting: ads appear for search terms that users enter on the platform. This way you reach shoppers who are actively looking for a product.
Category targeting: ads appear in matching product categories or on detail pages of similar products, often at an early stage of the buying process.
Retargeting: users who viewed a product but didn’t buy it, or who bought similar products, see a matching ad again.

If you combine these targeting options, you can reach shoppers along the entire customer journey. These steps matter:

Identify relevant keywords and categories
Develop suitable ad formats and content
Set suitable retargeting windows and frequencies
Monitor campaigns continuously and adjust them based on performance data

Relevant metrics / key performance indicators (KPIs)

The following key performance indicators (KPIs) help you measure the success of retail media campaigns and optimize them.

Return on advertising spend

Return on advertising spend (RoAS) shows how much revenue each euro spent on advertising generated. The formula is: RoAS = revenue / ad spend. A RoAS of 5

, for example, means each advertising euro generated 5 euros in revenue. On Amazon, the inverse is often used instead of RoAS: ACoS. The ROAS and ACoS calculator converts one into the other.

RoAS alone is not enough to judge the success of retail media campaigns, though. Also include metrics such as new-to-brand purchases, and always look at RoAS in the context of the campaign goals. For some campaigns, the highest possible RoAS is the priority. For others, brand awareness or winning new customers may matter more.

New-to-brand purchases

New-to-brand purchases measure purchases by customers who had not bought any of the brand’s products during a defined period before. On Amazon, that period is 365 days. The higher the share of new-to-brand purchases, the better the campaign is at attracting new customers.

While KPIs such as RoAS or CPC measure a campaign’s efficiency and profitability, new-to-brand purchases show its contribution to winning new customers. That is especially important for brands that want to grow and increase their market share.

Cost per click (CPC)

CPC shows how much an advertiser pays on average for each click on their ad. It is directly linked to ad costs and so affects RoAS. A low CPC means more clicks for the same budget.

Click-through rate (CTR)

The click-through rate shows what percentage of users who saw an ad clicked on it. A high CTR suggests the ad is relevant and appealing to the audience. Amazon does not publish a “Quality Score” like Google does. But ad relevance does count in the auction, so a high CTR is a good sign there too.

Detail page views

Detail page views (DPV) measure how often the product detail page was opened after an ad. A high DPV figure suggests the ad draws users’ attention to the advertised product. With this metric, advertisers can:

Assess the quality and relevance of their ads
Optimize the placement and targeting of their campaigns
Identify products that attract particular interest from users

Challenges and risks

Retail media also carries risks that advertisers should keep in mind.

Too much focus on RoAS and brand targeting

If you focus too heavily on return on advertising spend (RoAS) and brand targeting in retail media campaigns, you can lose sight of other goals.

RoAS shows how much revenue the ad budget generated, but it takes neither customer loyalty nor customer lifetime value into account. A campaign with a high RoAS can be successful in the short term. But if it mainly reaches existing customers and wins no new ones, long-term growth can suffer.

The same applies to brand targeting. Advertisers should also consider campaigns aimed at winning new customers and at customers in different phases of the customer journey. A balanced mix of brand targeting and performance marketing helps reach both short- and long-term goals.

Cannibalization of organic sales

One of the biggest challenges in retail media: advertisers may not generate incremental sales. In other words, the purchases would have happened without the ads too. Brands then pay for purchases that would have been made anyway.

One reason: retail media often relies on keyword targeting, where ads appear for products shoppers are already actively searching for. If a shopper searches for “NOVALTA headphones” and clicks a sponsored ad, chances are high they would have bought the product without the ad. In that case, the ad brings the brand no additional revenue.

To measure the incrementality of your campaigns, run tests in which part of the audience sees no ads. Compare the sales of the test group and the control group. This shows which share of revenue is really due to the advertising.

If you drop ads on your own brand entirely, you risk competitors running ads on your brand. A classic prisoner’s dilemma.

Continuous monitoring and optimization

Retail media campaigns need regular checks. Only by tracking KPIs such as RoAS, CTR and CPC over a longer period do you spot trends and react in time, for example when a competitor raises its bids or launches a new product. To do this, advertisers should:

Define clear goals and KPIs for their campaigns
Create and analyze reports regularly (daily, weekly, monthly)
Adjust targeting, bids and ads promptly based on the insights

Conclusion

Retail media has become a fixed part of the media mix. Being close to the point of purchase and having the retailers’ data gives advertisers options that other ad types don’t offer. Growth is slowing, and that makes it more important whether an ad really brings additional revenue rather than just getting purchases attributed to it.

If you’re starting on Amazon, you’ll find all ad types and the detail articles above in the section “Amazon as a retail media network”.

Retail Media explained: ad types, benefits and strategies

What is retail media?

How big is retail media? Market figures for 2025 and 2026

Retail media in Germany

Amazon as a retail media network