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Marketplaces are fighting for the crown in US ecommerce. Though Amazon remains solidly atop ecommerce sales, Walmart and Shopify are attempting to carve into Amazon鈥檚 revenues. Here are the latest updates in ecommerce, advertising, and partnerships from these major players.

A quarter of US shoppers are influenced to buy products via ads on retailers鈥� websites, according to new research from Intellias, as reported by Search Engine Land. This is compared with just 13% of consumers who are influenced by ads on third-party marketplaces and 14% who buy after seeing social media ads.

Those who bridge this gap by building trust, strengthening data, and using genAI to solve practical problems will gain a competitive edge and drive lasting loyalty in an AI-driven marketplace. This was originally featured in the Retail Daily newsletter. For more retail insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.

As with Amazon, Walmart鈥檚 investments in faster, more efficient delivery and its growing marketplace are encouraging more customers to purchase a wider array of items from the retailer. Target falls behind: Target is struggling amid the uncertainty, partly due to weak discretionary spending that it relies on.

The company鈥檚 management noted that, as a third-party marketplace, it is unable to offer Chinese consumers the government subsidies that have been critical to driving the country鈥檚 retail sales growth in recent quarters.

Ticketing marketplace StubHub also delayed its IPO due to Trump鈥檚 tariffs. Additionally, the expected economic slowdown from these tariffs likely influenced Klarna鈥檚 decision. Higher prices and stretched budgets from the tariffs could lead more consumers to turn to BNPL as a financing option: 13% of US adults said tariffs would lead them to utilize BNPL plans, per a January survey from First Insight.

The company has expanded access to its commerce API, which links Meta ad impressions to third-party marketplace sales. This tool was previously only available to networks with 20,000 or more sellers. Meta is giving some retail media partners direct access to impression logs and product-level performance data, eliminating reliance on third-party measurement providers.

So far, the retail media space has been slower to materialize in physical stores than on digital marketplaces. Cannes could reveal a move offline for networks. 鈥淚鈥檓 ready for the conversation around in-store retail media to move beyond potential and into execution,鈥� said Marzano. 鈥淚鈥檒l be keeping an eye out for compelling on-premise initiatives and activations.鈥�. 4. Talk of tariffs.

Mercado Libre, for example, combines marketplace data with insights from its fintech arm, Mercado Pago. The result: Richer audience profiles and more precise ad targeting across its ecosystem鈥�. Rappi and DiDi also have travel businesses, creating a multidimensional view of consumer behavior, Ceurvels wrote in his Latin America Commerce Media Trends 2025 report. Commerce media moves into finance.

The ability to sell to consumers directly via TikTok Shop and Amazon is contributing to healthy sales growth: US K-beauty sales on Amazon shot up by 122% YoY in Q3 2024, more than four times the growth rate for total skincare sales on the marketplace, per a Samsung Securities report.

More brands will take up Shein鈥檚 on-demand technology and marketplace to compete with larger fast-fashion players. Temu will challenge the 鈥渆verything鈥� store. The next front in Temu鈥檚 campaign against Amazon will revolve around low-cost grocery.

The stakes are high: 29% of US consumers say they would immediately stop buying鈥攐r buy less鈥攊f prices rise on Chinese marketplaces like Temu, according to an Omnisend survey. That said, companies could attempt to soften the impact by rerouting supply chains through countries where de minimis exemptions still apply or finding other workarounds to minimize tariff exposure.

Ecommerce now accounts for 18% of Walmart鈥檚 global sales; the channel grew 20% YoY in the US alone in Q4, helped by its expanded marketplace assortment and investments in faster, more efficient delivery.

As publisher-run ecommerce and marketplaces spread, genAI can match and update inventory. GenAI can improve conversions on the storefronts and marketplaces many publishers have introduced as new revenue streams. And publishers are banking on the brand equity of their publications as they build out their ecommerce efforts.

TikTok Shop joins Amazon in holding a July sale: The marketplace hopes exclusive discounts on brands like L鈥橭r茅al and live-shopping events will boost GMV.

While NTB metrics have become a go-to for measuring incrementality鈥攊t鈥檚 only measuring the first time a customer shopped that brand within that marketplace. It鈥檚 not reflective of a true NTB customer. But, if a brand can incorporate their own customer data and compare it to the customer who purchased within a RMN; then they can get a truer sense of which customers are actually new to the brand.

Amazon to launch budget marketplace to compete with Temu, Shein: The retailer is copying their playbook鈥攃omplete with cheap products and longer delivery times鈥攖o stay ahead in the ecommerce race.

Recently, Walmart rolled out a suite of new features at its first-ever seller summit, including enhanced fulfillment and logistics services for merchants. As Walmart attempts to challenge Amazon鈥檚 marketplace dominance, integrating fulfillment allows it to take advantage of its physical footprint for a more comprehensive marketplace offering.

Amazon accounted for 80% of marketplace sales, 40% of ecommerce sales, and 4% of retail sales in the US in 2023, per Marketplace Pulse.

Retail media ads are an important way to boost marketplace spend, but how brands go about advertising requires strategy. When setting up your retail media approach this holiday season, consider which products sell when, what kinds of ads drive conversions, and the importance of discovery in retail media.

Michaels and Shutterstock are navigating growth through a blend of creative initiatives and hard metrics. Michaels is focused on enhancing its customer experience and its new online marketplace. Shutterstock is leaning into SEO, automated dashboards, social listening, and collaboration.

Prior to TikTok Shop鈥檚 launch last September, live shopping platform Whatnot earned nearly 100% of social shopping gross merchandise value in 2023, according to a recent Earnest Analytics report. What鈥檚 Whatnot? Whatnot is a livestream marketplace platform, specializing in the sale of collectibles including sports cards, sneakers, comics, and vintage clothing.

Many brands are entering the year with flat鈥攐r declining鈥攂udgets. You can鈥檛 assume what you did last year will work this year, and your average order value and conversion rates could decline from 2022 as consumers continue to be more money-conscious, said Ken Magner, strategist, marketplace search at Tinuiti, in a recent webinar.