蘑菇AV

AI shopping assistants are reshaping product discovery and threatening retail media鈥檚 search-driven model. RMNs and advertisers need to adjust strategies to protect their market position and seize the opportunity to turn disruption into growth.

Digital ad spending growth in Canada is being driven in large part by a host of industries. Our rankings show that retail and consumer packaged goods continue to have the most ad spending share.

Meta is still the top dog in social media, but smaller platforms like Snap and Pinterest are focusing on augmented reality and ecommerce, respectively, to stand out in a crowded field. Meta鈥檚 ad revenues surged as AI investment intensified. Meta delivered a standout Q4, with revenues climbing 21% YoY to $48.38 billion.

Tariffs are slowing retail sales growth: A Reuters analysis found the Trump administration鈥檚 trade policies have cost companies more than $34 billion in lost sales and higher costs, and that toll keeps rising.

Search will account for 64.0% of retail media next year, as it is heavily tied to product discovery on ecommerce sites. Display will make up 25.0% of retail media ad spending, 11.0% of which will be video. In-store advertising makes up a small but growing share of dollars spent.

Ad spending on retail media will increase by more than $75 billion by 2028. To take advantage of this opportunity, retailers must understand advertisers' top priorities and be prepared to address their challenges.

US retail media spend will reach $60.81 billion in 2025鈥攁dding roughly $29.2 billion in new ad dollars, more growth than Meta and Alphabet will see combined, according to 蘑菇AV鈥檚 forecasts. At the same time, 71% of advertisers now rank incrementality as the most important KPI for their retail media investments, an Association of National Advertisers (ANA) survey found.

This report compares our 2024 US ad spending and time spent with media forecasts. It identifies incongruities between how marketers are spending ad dollars and where consumers are spending their time.

Germany is seeing the fastest growth in CPG ad spending. Its close neighbors, France and the UK, are seeing CPG investments in digital advertising rising rapidly. But Germany is outpacing them by several percentage points. This may be partly due to the industry鈥檚 so far limited investments, leaving more room for growth.

As marketers combat signal loss, they鈥檙e turning to channels less reliant on cross-site or cross-app tracking, according to 蘑菇AV鈥檚 鈥淎d Measurement Trends H2 2024鈥� report. 76% of brand and agency marketers worldwide plan to increase their digital ad spend on social media/influencer marketing in 2025, while 64% will increase retail media spend and 47% will increase spend on connected TV (CTV), according

Investments in genAI for ad creation and performance optimization a la Meta will help reduce friction for advertisers and drive new ad spending. Expect Amazon to leverage its extensive first-party shopper data to anticipate customer needs and serve hyper-relevant ads while scaling genAI for ad creative. Heightened focus on streaming monetization through Prime Video ads.

Chinese ecommerce brands like Temu and Shein are already slashing US spend. Meanwhile, Reddit and Pinterest are gaining ground, fueled by AI tools, international growth, and ecommerce integrations. Streaming platforms are proving resilient as linear TV continues its decline.

But they only capture a small slice of consumer purchase behavior and are typically focused on discretionary ecommerce transactions. Conversely, traditional financial institutions (e.g., banks and credit card issuers) have deeper customer relationships and broader data visibility but face greater restrictions on how and where their data can be used for marketing.

This allows it to pair SmartCast viewing behavior with Walmart鈥檚 first-party shopping data. Dallaire added that Walmart is pushing the Vizio team to expand the SmartCast OS to more TV brands beyond Vizio, further extending its presence in American households. Why it matters:. It creates an end-to-end closed loop.

If social media is a digital shopping mall, genAI assistants are personal shoppers. As AI gains ground, it could disrupt established social shopping behaviors.