The trend: Retail media networks (RMNs) are rushing to enhance their offerings amid stiffer competition for ad dollars and rising demand from advertisers for transparency and accountability.

• Best Buy Ads’ new Social+ feature allows advertisers to target the retailer’s customers on social platforms, starting with Facebook and Instagram. The tool uses Best Buy’s first-party data and supports Meta’s Advantage+ shopping campaigns.
• Instacart is giving all brands access to in-store advertising via its Caper Carts. Starting next month, marketers’ shoppable display campaigns will be automatically extended across Instacart’s marketplace and Caper Cart’s digital screens.
• DoorDash is rolling out post-purchase banner ads in select categories to encourage customers to supplement existing orders by adding items from other stores. It also partnered with retail tech platform Topsort to let advertisers purchase sponsored product placements on the delivery platform and other retailers’ websites in the same media buy.

Why it matters: The honeymoon period for RMNs is over. While overall spend is still growing, brands are beginning to demand more from their investments—and are willing to seek out new partners if it means access to fast-growing channels like social commerce, CTV, and in-store.

• Brands expect to nearly double the average number of RMNs they work with by 2025 to 11, up from 6 at the end of 2024, per Skai’s 2025 State of Retail Media report.
• At the same time, many are pushing back against retailers’ efforts to extract higher spending commitments due to difficulties in demonstrating incremental ROI and the lack of standardized measurement, according to Digiday.
• That reluctance extends even to big players like Walmart and Amazon. Some advertisers are walking away from joint business planning (JBP) negotiations with the former, feeling “shook down” as brands increasingly sense retailers are using their market power to demand more spending, regardless of performance.

The opportunity: The lion’s share of retail media spending will go to Amazon and Walmart for some time, precisely because they have the scale and technological capabilities that so many other retailers lack. But there are still opportunities for smaller RMNs to break through, if they can solve some of advertisers’ most pressing pain points.

• Automated tools. Ad buying on most RMNs remains manual, creating an opportunity for companies like Instacart to win advertisers with features like its Universal Campaign tool, which uses AI to help brands quickly set up and optimize campaigns.
• Off-site partnerships. More RMNs are looking to off-site partnerships to increase inventory and burnish their appeal. We expect $1 in every $4 spent on retail media to be off-site by 2027, up from $1 in $5 this year.

Our take: Advertisers will spend $62.35 billion on retail media this year, over $10 billion more than last year. However, as more money flows into RMNs, so do questions about whether the channel is worth the increased investment.

For the time being, those questions are being set aside in favor of access to RMNs’ first-party data and ability to drive sales. But as retailers push for a larger share of brands’ media budgets, they must prove their worth with better measurement, more sophisticated—and easy-to-use—campaign management tools, and most importantly, the ability to deliver results.

Go further: Read our Retail Media Forecast Report Update and Retail Media’s Off-Site Imperative.