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2025 will bring significant change to the retail industry: Several of the main trends dominating retail—genAI, RMNs, and China’s ecommerce disrupters—will look very different this time next year.

The pandemic gave advertisers in Germany a taste for digital. Digital advertising will see record levels of growth for the next three years—with retail media as the main driver—far ahead of spending on traditional media.

Amazon’s new Retail Ad Service, announced last week, is certainly the biggest retail media news of the year so far. In offering its ad-tech to power other retailers' media networks (RMNs), Amazon could disrupt how retail media operates for retailers, advertisers, vendors, and consumers alike.

Between September 2023 and August 2024, Sensor Tower ranked Temu and Shein as the second- and third-largest digital retail advertisers in the US, behind only Amazon. Replacing that substantial ad spend amid an uncertain economic backdrop won’t be easy.

Retailers looking to capitalize on retail media’s growth opportunities need to understand the market developments, formats, and challenges shaping ad spending in Latin America.

That will still only account for 10.5% of total US retail media sales, but it’s a significant increase from 6.6% in 2024.

Worldwide Retail Ecommerce Forecast 2025 (Ä¢¹½AV subscription required).

Our analysts are currently preparing an updated US Retail & Ecommerce forecast, slated for release in May, with revised global retail forecasts coming by late June. Our take: The tariff escalation is more than a headline—it’s a structural shock that could reshape global consumer demand and ad spending for the remainder of 2025 and for years to come.

Physical stores are the new frontier for retail media. But undeveloped tech capabilities, competing priorities, and unproven new formats are hurdles retailers need to address.

Retail Economics. SAS. TikTok. Toluna. YouGov.

Halfway through the current decade, retail media has bled into the wider concept of commerce media, which will be a $68.69 billion industry in the US this year, per our December 2024 forecast.

Google and Meta landed slightly below expectations in Q3, allowing a collection of hungry competitors to inch ahead. But overall, the ad industry remains healthy. Sports events drove streaming and CTV to record gains, and retail media continues to be the sector’s fastest-growing ad channel.

CPG digital ad spending growth in 2024 will beat the average across industries.