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It will rake in nearly $24.54 billion in search ad revenues this year, making its search ad business more than 12 times bigger than that of Walmart, the next largest player in retail media search. Walmart is still one to watch.

Walmart introduced The Nuevolution Project, a collection of clothing and home products from Hispanic creators. In the beverage industry, Tequila Cazadores and Caf茅 Bustelo collaborated on specialty coffee cocktails, while Modelo created a "One-in-Six Pack" to celebrate Hispanic creativity and perseverance.

Though Amazon and search engines like Google are the No. 1 and No. 2 places consumers start their search for products online, per Jungle Scout鈥檚 Q2 2024 Consumer Trends report, they face competition from other retailers like Walmart and Target, as well as social platforms like TikTok and Pinterest. The catch: Visual search hasn鈥檛 hit mainstream adoption.

Walmart will reportedly roll out a retail pay-by-bank offering in 2025 through a tie-up with Fiserv. And Hilton launched hotel loyalty debit cards in the UK that let cardholders make A2A payments through the cards. Globally, total A2A payment transaction volume will reach $186 billion in 2029, up from $60 billion in 2024, per ACI Worldwide.

Our take: While there鈥檚 a lot of interest in retail media, most dollars are flowing to the biggest players in the space鈥擜mazon, Walmart, Target鈥攎aking it vital for smaller players like Just Eat Takeaway and DoorDash to find ways to differentiate themselves and prove the value of their audiences.

Amazon, Target, and Walmart are launching holiday promotions in early October. Even so, Cyber Monday and Black Friday will still be the two biggest online shopping days of the year. We expect Cyber Monday ecommerce sales will grow 7.8% YoY to $13.93 billion, and Black Friday ecommerce sales will increase 5.5% to $10.76 billion.

Retailers have been quick to fill the gap: Walmart is using its premium bettergoods label鈥攚hich features products like pineapple fried rice-flavored crackers鈥攖o hone its appeal among wealthier shoppers, while Kroger has launched nearly 600 private label products so far this year.

Retail media networks, led by platforms like Walmart Connect, are also incorporating non-endemic advertisers. This strategy uses first-party data to offer targeted ads beyond traditional product catalogs, enhancing revenue opportunities and future-proofing advertising strategies.

Now, retail clinic operators such as CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart are reducing their physical footprints, scaling back their primary care endeavors, or closing altogether. On the grocery side, increased store traffic at locations with clinics compared with sites lacking them could be attributed to those regional chains having small overall footprints, per Placer.ai.

Consumers are holding up: The Commerce Department data underscores the resilience of the US consumer, even as shoppers are more careful鈥攐r, in the words of Walmart CFO John David Rainey, more 鈥渃hoiceful, discerning, [and] value-seeking鈥� with their expenditures.

Carvana, Amazon, and Walmart will see the most growth over the next two years. Carvana and Walmart are the only two companies that will see above average growth in both 2023 and 2024. But pet retailer Chewy will also have a decent showing this year. In 2023, Chewy will be the second fastest growing ecommerce company after Carvana.

For example, Walmart has formed ad partnerships with social platforms like TikTok and Snap, and Amazon recently inked a deal with Pinterest to put shoppable ads on the popular lifestyle platform. Generative AI will transform marketplace shopping.

And as I was going on to say in retail media as well, the Walmarts and the Amazons of this world, they're incorporating AI into their search experiences because they want to improve it because time and again, consumer surveys tell us that a bad search experience wherever it is, is not going to be good for your product or platform.

The acquisition also highlights the importance of retail media, where brands invest in advertising within retailer environments like Amazon, Walmart, and Target to gain better visibility. Publicis also sees this acquisition as an opportunity to further expand its presence in retail media networks (RMNs), a rapidly growing sector projected to reach$140 billion in ad spending this year.

Walmart has made its store more accessible, offering low-sensory shopping times during the 2023 holiday season for customers sensitive to music and light in-store, said our analyst Sarah Marzano. The No. 1 reason respondents to a CivicScience survey said they鈥檇 shop online this holiday season was to avoid crowds. 2. Offering excessive discounting.

And then also big box folks like Walmart, Walmart pharmacy customers, you also noting in an article that they can now add prescription medication to same-day delivery orders. (11:27):. And so folks, as well as the discount retailers, Dollar General, folks like that where people can buy some of the groceries they would've bought inside of these pharmacies, they will get them there.

Most crucially, Amazon Prime Video reported it will introduce ads in 2024, Walmart and NBCU announced a partnership, Roku inked a deal with Best Buy, and Kroger linked up with Disney. CTV ad spending will be nearly twice what we expected for 2025.

While the lion鈥檚 share of that money will go to Amazon鈥攚ith Walmart as a distant second鈥攔etailers that can offer brands the ability to reach new or incremental audiences, access their first-party data, and deliver strong return on ad spend have a better chance of standing out in a crowded field.

As each country鈥檚 largest retail ecommerce player by total sales volume, Mercado Libre鈥檚 foray into programmatic, display, and video advertising helped solidify its lead over Amazon and other local players like Walmart de M茅xico y Centroam茅rica (Walmex), Magazine Luiza, and Americanas S.A. The competition will be much fiercer in Mexico.

I mean, Walmart has the money to take these kinds of risks. Every time we put this list together, Arielle, Becky, and I are like, "We don't want to put Amazon and Walmart at the top. They're always at the top. They're always on the list."

For a small number of retailers like Walmart and Amazon, that value will be scale. But for most other retailers, factors like regional loyalty, demographic specificity, and the ability to offer unique insights via first-party data, will be differentiators. 鈥淚t鈥檚 important to make sure that you鈥檙e ready to present that in a clearly articulated way,鈥� Marzano said.

The share will drop about a percentage point a year, but runner-up Walmart will hold only a 7.5% share of the retail media market in 2024. The search/display mix will continue to stay remarkably stable. In 2024, we expect 56.2% of digital ad spending will go to display, while 41.7% will go to search.

鈥淭his usually pushes Walmart, Target, and others to launch sales around the same time,鈥� Canaves said. Newer ecommerce players such as Temu and TikTok Shop are fueling tougher competition for sales of low-cost items. Waning consumer confidence will drive category growth for smaller-ticket items.