The news: Retail media ad spend showed strong growth across industries in 2025, with health and beauty/personal care categories showing the most momentum, according to our industry KPI data provided by Skai.

• The health sector saw the highest growth rate, peaking at 55.1% YoY in Q4.
• Beauty and personal care also saw substantial growth of 53.2% YoY in Q4.
• While growth was smaller, ad spending for computers and consumer electronics and food and groceries also grew by 26.7% and 26.9% YoY in Q4, respectively.

Zooming out: Ad spending growth aligns with a trend noted by CPG company Unilever in its Q4 earnings release: Personal care and beauty portfolios are showing strong performance, and marketing reinvestment is shifting to premium brands.

Unilever’s focus on digital activations and precision DTC targeting aligns with Skai’s reported acceleration in health and beauty retail media, suggesting increased premiumization of and marketing investment in personal care.

Why it matters: Retail media growth proves that brands are increasingly allocating spending to platforms where consumers are closer to purchase. But while growth remains relatively strong, it is also uneven across categories.

Retail media performance is diverging meaningfully between essential and discretionary categories, notable in slower growth in computer and consumer electronics; while this category grew in Q4, it saw declines in Q1 2025 (-20.2%) and Q2 (-3.8%) before recovering in Q3. Other categories saw consistent, durable growth.

This suggests that retail media is a core channel for high-frequency CPG categories, but that discretionary categories are more sensitive to macro and promotional cycles, showing sharper pullbacks and recoveries depending on the season.

Takeaways for marketers: Retail media ad spending remains robust but differentiated. Skai’s data indicates both structural strength in essential categories and cyclical sensitivity in discretionary sectors within retail media investment.

Growth in health, personal care, and grocery indicates that retail media favors categories that provide repeat purchases and margin strength. This gives marketers a clearer signal on where retail media can drive the most efficient returns and where spend may need to be timed more carefully around demand cycles.