The budget meeting that used to end with a simple pie chart — so much for television, so much for search, the remainder for display — has been replaced by something considerably more complicated. Senior marketing leaders at consumer goods companies now sit across from retail media specialists, category managers, and e-commerce strategists, negotiating allocations across Amazon, Walmart, Kroger, Target, and Instacart simultaneously, with each network promising its own version of closed-loop attribution and purchase-intent targeting that no other digital channel can match. The result of those meetings, aggregated across hundreds of major brands, is a retail media category growing at 17.9 per cent annually — a rate that consistently outpaces the broader digital advertising market and shows no structural signs of slowing.
Understanding why retail media grows faster than the market it sits within requires understanding what it is actually displacing and what it is creating. The 17.9 per cent growth figure is not coming entirely from the same budget pool as search advertising or programmatic display. It is drawing from multiple sources simultaneously: trade marketing budgets that were never classified as digital advertising, search engine marketing allocations migrating toward retail-specific intent environments, and genuinely new expenditure from brands that have identified retail media as their highest-return channel.
The 17.9% Number in Context
When analysts report that retail media is growing at 17.9 per cent annually, they are describing a rate that sits meaningfully above the 13 per cent growth of the total US digital advertising market in 2025. The gap — nearly five percentage points — reflects the structural advantage that retail media holds over other digital channels during the current period of advertiser evolution.
The broader digital advertising market grows at 13 per cent because it includes mature categories that are growing more slowly: traditional display advertising, email marketing, and certain categories of search advertising have reached a scale at which they grow roughly in line with overall marketing budgets. Retail media grows faster because it is still expanding its total addressable market, capturing budget from adjacent categories and unlocking entirely new spend that was previously inaccessible to digital measurement systems.
| Advertising Category | 2025 Growth Rate | 2025 US Revenue | Growth Driver |
|---|---|---|---|
| Retail Media (total) | +17.9% | ~$69 billion | Trade budget migration + new spend |
| Connected Television | +50% | ~$33 billion | Linear TV migration |
| Social Media | +15% | ~$94 billion | Reels monetisation; TikTok Shop |
| Search (all platforms) | +12% | ~$118 billion | AI-enhanced search; Amazon growth |
| Programmatic Display | +14% | ~$82 billion | Contextual targeting maturity |
| Total US Digital Advertising | +13% | $361.9 billion | Broad structural expansion |
Note that connected television’s 50 per cent growth rate, while higher than retail media’s 17.9 per cent, operates from a substantially smaller base. At $33 billion, CTV has significant room to run, but it is not yet displacing established budget categories at the scale that retail media is. Retail media’s combination of scale ($69 billion) and above-market growth rate makes it the most commercially significant structural development in US digital advertising.
Where the Growth Is Actually Coming From
The 17.9 per cent growth rate combines two distinct dynamics that deserve separate examination. The first is genuine market expansion: retail media is unlocking budget that was not previously categorised as digital advertising at all. The second is displacement: retail media is capturing share from adjacent digital channels, particularly search engine marketing and open web programmatic.
On the market expansion side, the most important source is trade promotion spending. Consumer packaged goods brands have historically allocated 15 to 20 per cent of their revenue to trade spending — cooperative advertising allowances, promotional funding, slotting fees, and in-store marketing investments that flow to retail partners in exchange for commercial support. These budgets were managed through entirely separate systems from digital marketing, with different approval processes, different metrics, and different teams responsible for them.
Retail media networks have systematically positioned their sponsored product placements and display offerings as a measurable, digital-first alternative to traditional trade spending. The value proposition is compelling: instead of paying a retailer a flat cooperative advertising allowance with uncertain ROI, a brand can direct that same budget into sponsored search placements within the retailer’s e-commerce platform and receive granular data on every impression, click, and resulting sale. The measurability gap between traditional trade spending and retail media advertising is so large that brands converting even a portion of their trade budgets into retail media campaigns see immediate improvements in their ability to demonstrate marketing ROI.
Non-Amazon Networks Are Driving the Rate Higher
The aggregate 17.9 per cent growth rate for retail media conceals an important compositional shift: non-Amazon retail media networks are growing considerably faster than Amazon’s advertising business, which itself grew at approximately 19 per cent in 2025. The non-Amazon segment — encompassing Walmart Connect, Kroger Precision Marketing, Target Roundel, Instacart Ads, and dozens of smaller retailer networks — grew at over 30 per cent in 2025, pulling the category average upward and establishing a competitive landscape that did not meaningfully exist three years ago.
The strategic logic driving brands toward non-Amazon retail media is straightforward. Amazon’s advertising inventory reaches Amazon shoppers — people who are actively on the platform. Walmart Connect reaches shoppers who are on Walmart’s e-commerce platform or visiting Walmart stores. Kroger Precision Marketing reaches grocery shoppers through Kroger’s loyalty programme data. These audiences overlap with Amazon’s but are not identical, and for brands selling through multiple retail channels, reaching purchase-intent audiences across all of them is more valuable than concentrating investment in a single network.
As explored in TechBullion’s analysis of retail media technology, the infrastructure enabling non-Amazon retail media networks to offer programmatic buying, audience targeting, and closed-loop attribution has matured substantially in the past three years, removing the operational barriers that previously kept brands concentrated on Amazon.
| Retail Media Network | 2025 Growth Rate (est.) | Key Audience Advantage | Primary Advertiser Category |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Advertising | ~19% | Scale + purchase intent breadth | All categories |
| Walmart Connect | ~32% | Value-conscious grocery + general | FMCG, household, apparel |
| Kroger Precision Marketing | ~28% | Loyalty data depth; grocery | Food, beverage, personal care |
| Target Roundel | ~31% | Younger demographic; lifestyle | Beauty, apparel, home |
| Instacart Ads | ~35% | High-intent immediate-purchase | Grocery, beverage, fresh food |
The Structural Case for Continued Outperformance
The 17.9 per cent growth rate is not a temporary artefact of an early-stage category; it reflects structural dynamics that are likely to persist through the remainder of the decade. Three forces in particular are likely to sustain retail media’s growth premium over the broader digital advertising market.
The first is measurement advantage. As third-party cookies continue their long decline and privacy-preserving audience targeting replaces cookie-based systems across the open web, the relative advantage of retail media’s first-party transaction data grows larger. Brands that have invested in building retail media measurement capability are increasingly aware that the closed-loop attribution they receive from Amazon or Walmart is definitively more accurate than probabilistic modelling available through other channels. This measurement clarity justifies continued budget concentration.
The second is the ongoing expansion of trade budget conversion. The shift of trade promotion spending into retail media advertising is not a one-time reallocation but a multi-year process. Major FMCG brands are still early in the process of restructuring their trade marketing organisations around retail media capabilities, and the portion of trade budgets that has been converted to digital retail media spend represents a fraction of the total available pool. Each year, more of that pool becomes accessible.
The third is geographic and category expansion. The retail media model is extending beyond grocery and general merchandise into verticals — financial services, automotive, travel, entertainment — that have recognised the value of retailer first-party data for targeting audiences at purchase moments in adjacent categories. As explored in TechBullion’s analysis of the US digital advertising forecast for 2026, this category expansion represents an incremental growth vector that extends retail media’s addressable market well beyond its current FMCG concentration.
For AdTech practitioners, the 17.9 per cent growth rate is less interesting as a single data point than as evidence of retail media’s structural positioning. A category that draws simultaneously from trade budgets, search budgets, and entirely new digital spend is not competing for share within a fixed pool. It is expanding the pool while taking disproportionate share of the growth.
Related reading: Retail Media Technology | US Retail Media: The $69 Billion Market | US Digital Ad Forecast 2026 | AdTech Investment Outlook
