Temu and Shein face a highly uncertain future, with both at the mercy of global trade policies amid growing tensions over ultra-cheap Chinese exports.
"Creativity is not just a nice-to-do activity, but in fact, it's something that is a critical life skill for kids and an incredible kind of a joyful moment of expression for adults," said Victoria Lozano, CMO at Crayola, on a recent “Behind the Numbers” podcast. For more than 120 years, Crayola has been woven into childhoods. Now in the second year of its "Campaign For Creativity," the iconic brand is expanding its mission beyond art supplies to position creativity as an essential skill for today's digital-native children.
In 2025, retail media found itself at a turning point as networks, advertisers, and platforms pushed into new territory and redefined what the channel could be. Here are five of our top stories from the year, from the challenges of tracking CTV campaigns to the evolving competitive landscape shaped by Amazon, Walmart, and a wave of innovative smaller networks.
Consumers traded down or tapped out throughout 2025, making value deals essential for restaurant survival.
Here are four “Reimagining Retail” episodes to queue up for your holiday travel.
Retailers with a well-defined identity delivered strong growth in 2025.
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.
Platforms like ChatGPT are influencing more purchases, with sales forecast to hit $144 billion by 2029.
Gift cards remain a resilient holiday staple, valued for convenience and budget control, even as rising fraud concerns prompt retailers to bolster security measures and consumer warnings.
Chase Sapphire Reserve will offer an exclusive FIFA World Cup ticket sale for cardholders in February 2026, per Chase. Offers connected to major events with deep fanbases can create valuable sign-up opportunities and positive brand associations for issuers. To maintain these new cardholders’ loyalty, issuers should consider integrating experiential rewards during the games—lounge opportunities, fast-pass check-in lanes, interactive pop-ups—to funnel users through multiple value-driven experiences over the duration of the tournament.
Walmart’s OnePay adopted Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) to drive agentic commerce as a credentialled provider, per a press release. With Chrome remaining consumer’s most popular browser, Gemini is narrowing the gap with ChatGPT as the most used chatbot: We forecast that by 2029, Gemini will hold 53% of genAI market share. That in turn could give Google’s AP2 a large share of agent-driven consumer spend in the long term, as consumers develop loyalty and use patterns around AI platforms.
Artificial intelligence is working its way into every facet of the US economy, and the payments industry is no exception. While the changes to consumers’ payment behavior will be gradual, providers need to act now, according to our 2026 AI in the Payments Customer Life Cycle report. Providers need to overcome critical issues like data fragmentation, but a well executed AI strategy can help providers maintain control over product discovery and streamline checkout.
Store brands grew 3.7% while national brands lagged at 1.1%, widening the value gap for inflation-hit shoppers.
The FTC's recent settlement penalties remain too small to shift corporate behavior.
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.
Even as the majority of podcasters (71%) use video, per Sounds Profitable, video podcast ads are falling short of driving purchases compared with audio ads. YouTube’s video podcast ads are 18% to 25% less effective than audio downloads at driving users to purchase, according to an Oxford Road and Podscribe study. Video podcast consumption is growing, and YouTube remains the largest media platform globally, but advertisers looking to target podcast consumers specifically must make audio a core part of their campaign planning.
Amazon is recalibrating its relationship with the agencies and adtech firms that helped build its retail-media dominance. While Amazon insists agencies remain central, many intermediaries say rising data costs and tool duplication echo earlier platform playbooks from Google and Meta—centralize strengths, limit external dependencies, and scale in-house automation. The result is a more controlled, AI-driven ecosystem that may reduce tooling diversity while boosting Amazon’s own ad stack. For marketers, the challenge will be balancing Amazon’s convenience and scale with the flexibility, transparency, and customization offered by independent partners.
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.