The $252 Billion Retail Media Feeding Frenzy
How Every Business is About to Become a Media Company
The Transformation is Accelerating
Retail media is projected to reach $169.6 billion globally in 2025 and grow to $252.1 billion by 2030, making up 18% of all ad revenue by decade's end. But these numbers miss the real story: we're witnessing the largest wealth transfer in advertising history, from traditional media companies to anyone with customer touchpoints.
Beyond Amazon: The Great Expansion
The Convenience Store Play: Wawa launched Goose Media Network, targeting customers with banner ads on its website and app, with videos at gas pumps coming soon. When a convenience store chain becomes a media company, you know the paradigm has shifted.
In-Store Goes Digital: Hy-Vee is partnering with Grocery TV to power 10,000 screens at entrances, checkouts, and aisles across 570 stores. The physical world is becoming the ultimate programmatic inventory.
The 200+ Network Reality: Platform intelligence estimates there are more than 200 retail media networks at this point, and most are struggling to maintain growth. The consolidation phase is coming fast.
The Programmatic Acceleration
Programmatic retail media display ad spending grew by 41.7% in 2024 and is projected to leap another 29.3% in 2025. This isn't just growth—it's the standardization of retail media as a programmatic channel, making it accessible to advertisers who previously couldn't navigate direct partnerships.
Who Wins and Who Dies
Winners: Retailers with authentic customer relationships and unique data sets. Think Sephora's beauty insights or Home Depot's project data.
Strugglers: Me-too players offering commodity inventory without unique value. Not all retailers are seeing the same rapid growth, and companies don't always disclose advertising figures.
The Dark Horse: B2B companies sitting on rich customer journey data but haven't monetized it yet. Your CRM is your next media network.
The Strategic Imperative
Every business with customer touchpoints needs to ask: "Are we a company that does advertising, or are we a media company that happens to sell products?" The answer determines your next five years of revenue growth.
Building Your Media Network
Start with Your Best Data: Don't try to monetize everything. Find your unique customer insight and build advertising products around that.
Invest in Attribution: Closed-loop attribution is the key differentiator that brings retail media to the open internet with first-party data.
Think Beyond Display: In-store retail media ad spending will grow about 47% in 2025. The real opportunity is in the physical-digital bridge.
Prediction: By 2028, retail media networks will be the primary revenue driver for 30% of consumer-facing businesses, fundamentally changing how we think about business models.