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Our take: While several major retailers, including Amazon Go, Walmart, and 7-Eleven, have tried and to some extent failed to scale the contactless store, interest in the space accelerated in 2024, with a myriad of new players moving to capture their share of the retail tech market.

Black Friday in October: Amazon鈥檚 sale has driven retailers such as Best Buy, Costco, Target, Walmart to launch their own October events that, in some cases, coincide with Prime Big Deal Days. Consumers have taken note: 33% of Numerator respondents shopped or planned to shop Walmart Holiday Deals, and 31% shopped or planned to shop Target Circle Week.

That backtracking has allowed third-party affiliates鈥攊ncluding Amazon, MagicLinks, LTK, and Walmart鈥攖o flourish on social platforms. YouTube鈥檚 new Affiliate Hub could siphon some affiliate energies away from third-party services, as TikTok Shop Affiliate has done. But competition is fierce, especially as platforms like LTK venture into the social sphere with new TikTok-like features.

That won鈥檛 be easy given that it is competing against retailers such as Walmart and Kroger that operate thousands of stores.

But they still have much work to do to steal share from Amazon Ads and Walmart Connect, the latter of which is No. 2 in buyer awareness and activity. Download our survey data in full here. Our complete estimates for retail media ad spending in Canada can be accessed via our website鈥檚 interactive forecast module. Retail media is now a major digital advertising channel.

We're talking about Walmart trying a new approach to combat retail theft. This is an article written by our senior retail analyst, Zak Stambor. In it, he notes that Walmart is testing technology in its stores that lets workers use their cell phones to open locked cases housing items like deodorants and baby formula. This is a note from Bloomberg.

Nobody ever talks about Sam's Club as much as they talk about Walmart, but they really are doing some cool things when it comes to making the shopping experience more frictionless, and trying to really use AI in this instance to make something that was annoying for everybody, and probably costly for Sam's Club, go faster, which is that Scan & Go.

Only 15.8% of US retail media ad spend goes to players that aren鈥檛 Amazon or Walmart, per our forecast. US retail media ad spend is growing, hitting $67.82 billion next year, but the number of players is also increasing, Marzano noted. Advertisers are facing a lack of standardization, which makes it hard to buy ads and compare campaigns across platforms.

It's like, one turn about Walmart. Suzy Davidkhanian (11:34):. Of a giant Walmart. Well, I think, yes, it does that, but I also think this idea of the pet grooming or many of the other examples we had, are also a way to make the life of the customer easier. Instead of you going to three places-. Sara Lebow (11:49):. Like oil changes.

Search engines came in second, followed by Walmart.com, YouTube, and Target.com. This was originally featured in the Retail Daily newsletter. For more retail insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.

Not to be outdone, Walmart Connect inked a deal with NBCUniversal to support retail media-powered ads within live sports. This came after several successful connected TV and digital partnerships, including with Roku and TikTok, as well as data integration with its Walmart+ partner Paramount+.

To compound Dollar General鈥檚 problems, while its core lower-income customer is under considerable financial pressure, middle- and higher-income customers are not feeling stretched enough to trade down to dollar stores, preferring instead to stick with Walmart or else go straight to Temu.

Walmart pharmacy recently rolled out a similar type of a service. I just dealt with a situation where CVS couldn't have the medication that the doctor prescribed for me. They said, "Maybe a week, maybe two weeks, check back." You call them and no one picks up. And it's just like people are not happy with this experience, and if you can use online channels to improve that experience, why the heck not?

Asia-Pacific remained a global hotspot in 2023, with six of the top 10 fastest-growing retail ecommerce markets worldwide. In particular, China's online shopping market showed signs of resiliency, with growth rates in the double digits.

The retail media frenzy has continued through 2024, with retailers like Costco, Wawa, and Saks launching networks, while others, like The Home Depot, Instacart, and Walmart, bolstered their networks to grow their share of ad dollars. With more options, advertisers are becoming more cautious about the networks they work with, focusing on those that can prove campaign success.

Ecommerce growth accelerated during the 2023 holiday season as US consumers shifted more of their shopping to mobile devices.

Walmart battle for holiday season leadership will intensify. Amazon and Walmart have been subtly attacking each other鈥檚 turf in recent holiday seasons. Last year, Walmart unveiled a major holiday ad campaign entitled 鈥淐ase of the Mondays鈥濃�攁 parody reboot of the cult classic movie "Office Space." The campaign was aimed at making a bigger play for Cyber Monday, a day traditionally dominated by Amazon.

Walmart filed similar complaints. Despite such high-profile fiascos, social media platforms are weakening their oversight capabilities. X and Meta have reduced their content moderation teams over the past 12 months. And both companies plus YouTube parent Alphabet have gutted or weakened their AI ethics oversight and content moderation teams in the past four years.

Walmart will look to ink a deal with the social platforms. There鈥檚 precedent: Walmart Connect launched a pilot with Snap and TikTok in 2022. The Meta-Amazon deal could pave the way for Walmart鈥攐r other smaller retailers鈥攖o enter a similar partnership. TikTok and Meta will dive headfirst into search.

Meanwhile, the retail sector is projected to increase B2B ad spending by 15.2%, crossing $2 billion as big players like Amazon and Walmart expand their B2B offerings. Who鈥檚 winning: LinkedIn and Meta are set to dominate B2B social ad spending, which will account for 46.3% of digital B2B ad spending. LinkedIn continues to be the main platform for digital B2B ads; 90% of its ads are B2B-focused.

And in 2024, Walmart Connect gave its advertisers the ability to use its custom audiences to target TikTok users with video and display ads. Click here to view our full forecast for US social network ad spending by industry. Social video ad spending will be huge again in 2024.

Retail media advertising is digital advertising that appears on websites or apps that are primarily engaged in retail ecommerce or is bought through a retailer's media network or DSP; examples of websites or apps primarily engaged in retail ecommerce include Amazon, Walmart, and eBay; examples of retail media networks include Amazon's DSP and Etsy's Offsite Ads; includes ads purchased through retail media

This could make consumers more comfortable with using these payments, increasing adoption, especially as big names like Walmart start to offer the payment method. Increases digital wallet competition. Given it鈥檚 now easier to switch between different providers, digital wallets will now have to work harder to keep their users.