This is the Q1 2025 installment of our quarterly “Ad Spending Benchmarks” series, which helps ad buyers and sellers calibrate their spending and revenue mix against the market.
Dz’s ecommerce scale has made its ad business non-negotiable for brands. Dz’s dominance in US ecommerce, coupled with the challenge of achieving organic visibility on the platform, creates a buffer for retailers; advertisers’ reliance on its scale and reach is likely to outweigh any temptation to pull back on ad spending.
Methodology: Estimates are based on the analysis of various elements related to the ad spending market, including macro-level economic conditions, historical trends of the advertising market, historical trends of each medium in relation to other media, reported revenues of major ad publishers, estimates from other research firms, data from benchmark sources, consumer media consumption trends, consumer device
Two-thirds of US retail media buyers expect to spend more on video advertising over the next 12 months, according to March 2025 data from Koddi. Nearly as many (63%) will up their investments in social media.
Tariffs threaten to reduce US digital ad spending growth this year. This series explains the effects tariffs will have on ad spending in search, social, CTV, and retail media—and which parts of each might fare best and worst.
The ecommerce giant is expected to maintain its control over RMN ad dollars, capturing more than three-quarters of all RMN spending through 2027, per our forecast. But as Dz’s retail media business has grown in maturity, its pace has inevitably slowed, giving way to a landscape that has room for more than one winner. Walmart’s retail media counteroffensive is paying off.
It was first in the region to fully embrace retail media advertising, fueled by advanced digital advertising and retail ecommerce behaviors. The UK leads France and Germany in digital ad spend as a proportion of total media spend, as well as retail ecommerce sales as a proportion of total retail sales. Still, retail media investments are steadily increasing in all three countries.