Most industry forecasters are too conservative on retail media. The consensus view pegs growth at roughly 8% through 2026. The structural forces in play suggest it will be closer to double that. Here are nine reasons why.
1. E-Commerce Growth Provides the Foundation. Retail media is structurally linked to e-commerce GMV. As e-commerce penetration continues to expand — particularly in Europe and emerging markets — the pool of retail inventory and purchase data grows with it.
2. Retail Media as a Share of E-Commerce GMV Has Room to Grow. In the most mature market, Amazon US, advertising revenue as a percentage of GMV has reached 6.4%. The global average is significantly lower. As other retailers build out their ad businesses, this ratio will rise on top of e-commerce volume growth.
3. Retail Media as a Share of Digital Advertising Points to Upside. IAB data expects retail media to outgrow total digital advertising by a factor of 3x over the next three years — implying significant share gains from search, social, and display.
4. Brand and Retailer Surveys Confirm Investment Intentions. Bottom-up data from brands already active in retail media shows high single-digit to double-digit planned spend increases year-over-year. Including new entrants, the aggregate growth picture points firmly to double digits.
5. Trade Pockets Are Deep and Still Moving. Brands traditionally spent heavily on in-store trade promotion. These budgets are transitioning online, growing the total advertising market rather than cannibalising existing digital budgets.
6. Retail Media Is Still Nascent Outside of Amazon. Strip out Amazon and China and the CAGR jumps to 21.2%. The rest of the market is still in early innings.
7. Non-CPG Categories Have Barely Started. Financial services, insurance, travel, and automotive have barely scratched the surface of retail media. As non-endemic advertising grows, it expands the addressable market significantly.
8. Measurement Improvements Will Unlock New Budgets. A meaningful cohort of brands has held back investment because they can’t reliably evaluate ROI today. As standardisation improves, those budgets will move.
9. The Privacy Tailwind Is Just Getting Started. As signal quality degrades across the rest of digital advertising, the clean, consented, purchase-linked data that retail media offers becomes progressively more scarce — and more valuable. The question isn’t whether retail media will grow. It’s whether your organisation is moving fast enough to benefit.