Here’s how ad buyers ranked the retail media networks of 11 major retailers—Amazon, Best Buy, Costco Wholesale, eBay, The Home Depot, Instacart, Kroger, Macy’s, Target, Walmart, and Wayfair—according to the attributes they value most.

In 2021, Amazon’s US average revenue per user (ARPU) for its retail media network was nearly 4 times that of Instacart and close to 9 times that of Walmart.

Grocers fine-tune their retail media networks to attract CPG dollars: Kroger and Walmart’s new features aim to improve advertisers’ experiences and results, but they may fall short of expectations.

On this episode of our new Behind the Numbers show, Reimagining Retail, our analyst Andrew Lipsman hosts Russ Dieringer, founder of Stratably, to discuss intrigue in the executive ranks at key retail media platforms Amazon, Walmart, and Instacart. They also rank their top four retail media trends for 2022.

Amazon Ads (formerly Amazon Media Group) has been selling targeted search and display ad products in Canada for years. Other retail media players—including Walmart Connect and Loblaw Media—are also attracting more ad investments. The latter is the national grocery chain’s primary platform for reaching its PC Optimum loyalty base, which is more than 18 million members strong.

Retail media advertising sits at the intersection of two major digital disruptions unfolding in Latin America: the meteoric rise of ecommerce and reallocation of ad dollars toward digital formats. While still nascent, retail media will play a larger part of brands’ marketing strategies in 2022.

On today's episode, we discuss how much "Top Gun: Maverick" is helping movie theaters recover, why the number of American video game players is shrinking, the headwinds threatening air travel's recovery, how much money Spotify made from podcast ads, when Amazon may overtake Walmart as the largest retailer in the US, an unpopular opinion about the movie-viewing experience, how Bluetooth got its name, and more. Tune in to the discussion with our analysts Dave Frankland and Paul Verna and director of forecasting Oscar Orozco.

Following a banner year, US ad spending in 2022 will be shaped by three key trends: Linear TV crossing the Rubicon, a billionaires’ club emerging in connected TV (CTV), and ecommerce ad spending enriching Google, Amazon, and a crop of newcomers in search and retail media.

Walmart Inc. will remain a distant second. Walmart’s share of ecommerce sales will grow but at the expense of smaller players, and not Amazon. What’s new for 2022:. Apple will replace eBay as No. 3 in the ranking of US retail ecommerce sales by company. In 2017, eBay’s ecommerce sales were nearly twice that of Walmart, placing it firmly in second place.

In 2022, 40.7% of China’s digital ad spending will go toward the ecommerce channel, for ads offered by retailers like Alibaba and JD.com. This eclipses the share in the US, where 14.5% of digital ad spending will flow to ecommerce channel ads sold by the likes of Amazon, Walmart, and eBay.

The real prize for retailers is in brand budgets, and recent advancements by Amazon, Walmart, and others into display, video, and connected TV (CTV) suggest retail media is ready to move up the funnel. CTV advertising will be the killer use case for retail media that finally unlocks brand dollars.

Instacart ranks higher than any grocer on our 2022 “Retail Media Networks Perception Benchmark,” thanks in part to the traffic its platform sees. But with Walmart, Kroger, and others building out their advertising platforms, Instacart will have to develop more sophisticated capabilities to attract advertisers’ attention.

Amazon’s freewheeling approach to brick-and-mortar is at an end: The retail giant closes stores as it focuses on boosting profitability and winning grocery market share from Walmart and Target.

Walmart Inc.’s earnings show the benefit of prioritizing value over profits: The company’s decision to keep prices low helped it maintain growth and gain market share.

Retail media advertising is the next big trend in digital advertising, driven by the surge in ecommerce spending and brands’ desire to target consumers close to the point of purchase.

They also fill out the Amazon digital media player product line, so they are important—if relatively unheralded—cogs in the company’s digital media strategy. The 5-Year Outlook. The overall tablet market has plateaued. We expect the number of tablet users in the US to increase by just under a million between 2021 and 2025.