Many retailers in Latin America like Mercado Libre, Rappi, and even Walmart function not only as commerce players, but as financial institutions as well. As a result, commerce media in Latin America is charting a different course than it has in the US, one that could result in unique opportunities for companies with access not only to shopper habits, but to financial data as well.

Retail and finance combine powers

Unlike in the US, where retailers and banks operate separately, many Latin American retailers are also licensed financial institutions. “It's not just a store card—these are full on banks,” our analyst Matteo Ceurvels said. Users can receive direct deposits, set up digital wallets, and pay bills using the same institutions where they make retail purchases. That means ad targeting can be extremely granular.

Mercado Libre, for example, combines marketplace data with insights from its fintech arm, Mercado Pago. The result: Richer audience profiles and more precise ad targeting across its ecosystem​.

Rappi and DiDi also have travel businesses, creating a multidimensional view of consumer behavior, Ceurvels wrote in his Latin America Commerce Media Trends 2025 report.

Commerce media moves into finance

Retailers may be the backbone of Latin America’s commerce media ecosystem, but financial services are emerging as the next big growth area.

• While 72.1% of Latin American internet users visit retailer websites in Latin America, a comparable 63.8% visit financial services sites, per January 2025 data from Comscore Inc. and EMARKETER. That presents an ad opportunity for financial services.

Retailer websites tend to keep users more engaged than finserv ones, meaning financial media networks will need to be creative about how they leverage advertising.

“Checking a bank is different from going on Amazon in terms of frequency,” said Ceurvels. “But nonetheless, the customer base is still there.”

Looking to China

Chinese ecommerce provides a model of where Latin America’s commerce media may be headed. Latin America’s hybrid retail and banking institutions follow the lead of Chinese superapps like WeChat and AliPay, which blend multiple industries into one platform, and Latin America may soon see similar superapps.

“Whether or not they would tout it as a superapp is to be determined,” Ceurvels said. “But nonetheless, it's this fully integrated app ecosystem that these companies are creating and consumers are responding.”

A superapp model would create even more ad inventory for Latin American businesses that already have a holistic view of their consumers. If consumers are banking, shopping, and booking travel in the same ecosystem, they’d likely be spending more time in that app than they might in an individual banking app. That means the commerce media ads featured there could be even more powerful.

Lessons for the US

While US companies like Walmart and Amazon are experimenting with financial products in Latin America, they haven’t yet embraced the fully integrated retail-finance model. Instead, US financial institutions and retailers may partner to combine banks’ first-party data with retailers’ ad real estate.

Finserv companies may also work to get more users shopping within their apps and websites via cash-back incentives or exclusive deals, as a way to increase onsite engagement and make ads more valuable.

This was originally featured in the Retail Media Weekly newsletter. For more marketing insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.