Need something to queue up for your holiday travel? Try these four “Reimagining Retail” episodes.
There’s a common thread across the brands that thrived in 2025: Retailers with a well-defined identity delivered strong growth.
While we were right that retailers would offer richer in-store experiences to attract shoppers, we were wrong about how Amazon, discount retailers, and dollar stores would evolve their physical and digital strategies. From AI tools that stayed online to unfulfilled marketplace ambitions, here’s how we did with our 2025 predictions.
Private labels surge in 2025: Store brands grew 3.7% while national brands lagged at 1.1%, widening the value gap for inflation-hit shoppers.
On today’s podcast episode, we discuss our “very specific but highly unlikely” predictions for 2026: what Amazon will do with the price of Prime; between OpenAI and Apple, who’s most likely to buy whom; and why a potential WBD acquisition by Netflix might not go through in 2026—if at all. Join Senior Director of Podcasts and host Marcus Johnson, Principal Analyst Nate Elliott, and Vice Presidents of Content Suzy Davidkhanian and Paul Verna. Listen everywhere, and watch on YouTube and Spotify.
As retailers prepare for next year, they acknowledge that convenience has evolved from a value proposition to a structural shift in how all of retail operates. We asked leaders across retail media, digital identity, payments, mobility, and connected commerce, and they agreed that convenience will continue to change throughout the next year as expectations shift and AI eliminates friction.
Agencies are increasingly acting as commerce media guides, helping brands move past outdated structures, sort through measurement standards, and bring AI into their planning. While commerce media networks (CMNs) have expanded to capture more than just retail media dollars, the silos between brand, retail, and sales teams make integration a challenge.
"The retail media landscape is only becoming more crowded, but Target's guest insights are often cited as a key differentiator," said our analyst Sarah Marzano during EMARKETER's recent Commerce Media Summit.
2025 challenged many of retail’s long-held assumptions. What looked like familiar patterns often turned out to be something different entirely, and in the process, a few key trends were either missed or misread by brands trying to make sense of shifting shopper behavior. Here are three trends from 2025 that were either overlooked or misunderstood, and why they will matter in the year ahead.
Albertsons Media Collective has rolled out a new off-site feature that lets consumers add products, recipes, coupons, or offers directly to their Albertsons cart from media placements across the open web.
While commerce media networks expand, retailers can take advantage of the efficiencies and measurement capabilities that they can provide.Retail media networks alone are expected to claim one-fifth of US digital ad spending by 2029, according to EMARKETER’s September forecast.
US inflation eased more than expected in November, with headline CPI rising 2.7% and core inflation slowing to 2.6%, but many highly visible essentials—including electricity, insurance, beef, and coffee—continue to climb much faster than the overall index. These increases are weighing on sentiment as wage gains cool and more households struggle to cover rising costs, leading to softer financial confidence and growing paycheck-to-paycheck pressures. With forecasts pointing to weaker real spending and looming jumps in healthcare premiums, easing inflation does little to offset the reality that household budgets remain under significant strain.
Mastercard and LoanPro launched Loan on Card, a personal loan service for consumers and small businesses delivered through virtual and physical cards, per a press release. Loan on Card provides a patch for issuers trying to retain customers that otherwise would have fled to BNPL platforms for larger loans to avoid revolving debt on credit card transactions they couldn’t pay off within a month. BNPL platforms can still boast direct connections at the point-of-sale and the fact that even longer-term BNPL loans don’t appear on customers’ credit scores. Banks need to make sure their loans are just as accessible when consumers are shopping for bigger purchases—with real-time underwriting.
SoFi launched the SoFiUSD stablecoin on the Ethereum blockchain. The bank will also provide infrastructure that lets other banks and fintechs issue white-label stablecoins that are interoperable with SoFiUSD. “Stablecoins as a service” like SoFi’s offering—and Fiservs’—may democratize stablecoins to a broader base of financial institutions. Up until now, banks that wanted to issue stablecoins needed to develop their own decentralized finance (DeFi) infrastructure and internal compliance guardrails. A widespread entry into stablecoins would be a massive pivot for a banking sector used to dealing in fiat currency, normalizing stablecoins as a payment mechanism across the US—further blending traditional finance and DeFi.
Foot traffic trends softened retail in Q3, a potentially troubling sign for holiday spending, according to our Industry KPI data from Placer.ai. The four categories tracked—discount and dollar stores, grocers, department stores, and home improvement stores—had slower growth from July to September, providing more evidence that consumers are feeling the strain of higher living costs. The data points to a rocky year-end for department stores and home improvement retailers, which have struggled this year to overcome sluggish consumer sentiment and uneven spending. At the same time, retailers that offer necessities and can deliver clear value are positioned to win.
As rising food-away-from-home costs push diners to prioritize value, Darden Restaurants is gaining ground with compelling offers like Olive Garden’s $13.99 Never Ending Pasta Bowl and LongHorn’s budget-friendly lunch plates, which helped drive strong Q2 sales and foot traffic gains. Net sales rose to $3.10 billion and same-restaurant sales exceeded expectations, though higher beef costs pressured margins. With both Olive Garden and LongHorn outperforming and fine dining posting modest growth, Darden has raised its full-year sales outlook, reflecting confidence that its value-forward approach will keep resonating with cost-conscious consumers.
Nike is in the "middle innings" of a multiyear turnaround, making tangible progress in rebuilding its wholesale business and reigniting growth in North America, even as deeper challenges persist. Revenues and earnings topped expectations, with wholesale gains helping offset continued declines in Nike Direct and a sharp pullback in Greater China. That progress has come at a cost, however, as promotions and tariff headwinds weighed heavily on margins. With direct-to-consumer sales and China unlikely to rebound quickly, Nike’s recovery will depend on steady execution and patience as it works through lingering structural and demand-related pressures.
Omnichannel strategies are crucial to capture multigenerational shoppers in their product discovery and research journeys. Nearly three-quarters (73%) of US Gen Zers say social media is their main source for learning about new products, per Salsify, and about two-thirds (61%) of Gen Xers discover products while browsing in physical retail stores. To earn the attention and trust of multigenerational shoppers, build channel-specific messaging and invest in measurement tools that track cross-channel behavior to see how different audiences are finding, researching, and buying products across platforms.