In a report by Barclays, which covered over 20 retailers, e-commerce companies, agencies, advertisers and industry experts, a retail media forecast was put forward. Barclays project the category will reach US$155bn this year and close to US$200bn by 2026E. This means that retail media will likely be bigger than TV advertising (connected + linear) by as early as 2025. Over the next three years, Barclays forecast a CAGR of 13.1% vs GroupM’s projection of 8.1%. This is a big development as the entire first party data from ecommerce and retail environments is set to be activated.
With this scale and growth, the complete advertising ecosystem is set to see a windfall return on investments.
Excluding China and Amazon, we expect a CAGR of 21.2%. Importantly, this outlook is more bullish than the most widely used public estimates, to which we see a substantial upside of 20-30%. We explain this difference in the section The retail media opportunity is very significant (c. US$200bn in 2026E).
Retail Media Global Forecast (2020–2026)
As per GroupM, Retail media is expected to grow almost 8% every year and with the onset of more players in the market, the competition will lead to more capital being invested in retail media.