The Shifting Ad Landscape: Key Forecasts
WPP’s This Year, Next Year report projects commerce media will reach about $178.2 billion in global spend by 2025, surpassing TV at $167.4 billion. WPP uses an expanded definition of commerce media that includes retail media, travel media, and financial services media. For retail media professionals this signals a structural reallocation of ad dollars toward platforms that connect shoppers and transactions directly.
Drivers of Growth and Emerging Players
Three dynamics accelerate commerce media: first-party data that ties ads to purchase intent, ad placements embedded in purchase journeys, and the rise of commerce-enabled platforms across verticals. Travel and financial services networks are monetising transactional moments, while retail networks scale proprietary shopper signals. AI is beginning to alter how consumers buy: examples include AI-assisted product discovery and integrations like Etsy with ChatGPT that let users move from inspiration to checkout faster. Streaming advertising growth also feeds commerce media by shifting viewing contexts closer to transactional endpoints.
Retail Media’s Evolving Challenges
As spend shifts, networks face pressure to consolidate for scale and to simplify buying for brands. Advertisers demand rigorous measurement: transparent attribution, reliable incrementality testing, and closed-loop proofs of return on ad spend. Fragmented tech stacks and inconsistent metrics weaken trust. First-party data advantage creates winners, but raises compliance and interoperability issues.
Strategic Imperatives for Retail Media Insiders
- Prioritise measurement products that demonstrate incrementality and ROI with repeatable methodologies.
- Invest in first-party data governance and clean-room capabilities to enable safe, interoperable targeting.
- Pursue AI partnerships that shorten the path from discovery to purchase, including instant checkout and conversational commerce tests.
- Prepare for consolidation by clarifying your network’s differentiated value: exclusive shopper signals, unique inventory, or superior attribution.
- Offer transparent pricing and cross-channel reporting to win more brand budgets shifting from TV to commerce media.
For Retail Media Insiders the headline is simple: the money is moving toward commerce-centric channels. Networks that can prove effectiveness, leverage first-party data responsibly, and adopt AI-enabled commerce experiences will capture the next wave of ad spend.
