US programmatic advertising is consolidating around video, CTV, walled gardens, retail media, and agentic AI. Marketers need to balance signal, scale, transparency, and control as automated buying enters its next phase.

Netflix revenues mask engagement strain: Q2 sales rose 13%, but slow viewing gains raise doubts about keeping audiences—and advertisers—engaged.

Shoppers don't just tolerate screens in the grocery store. In the right spot, they prefer them. That's the core finding from Grocery TV's In-Store Shopper Perception Report, which surveyed 1,018 US grocery shoppers in March 2026 on their attitudes toward in-store retail media. The results draw a clear line between formats that fit naturally into a shopping trip and formats that fight it. That line determines whether a screen earns goodwill or generates friction, and it's the difference retailers need to understand before they build out their networks.

Amazon Prime Day 2026 generated record-breaking sales, but the real story lies beneath the headlines: behaviors that signal what retailers should expect heading into the holiday season.

Nearly all (92%) commerce media leaders in the US, UK, and Germany are likely to invest in agent-specific measurement and diagnostics in the next two to three years, the leading agentic AI use case among those surveyed, according to April 2026 data from Koddi.

On today’s Cannes Miniseries Podcast, we discuss Incremental ROAS, or iROAS, and unpack the problem it was designed to solve and what advertisers should be doing to evaluate performance. Recorded from the EMARKETER studio at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, EMARKETER Vice President and Principal Analyst, Sarah Marzano, welcomes Liz Roche, Vice President, Measurement and Media, from Albertsons Media Collective to the discussion.

This summer, Banana Boat rolled out a creator-led campaign to shine some light on consumer attitudes and to promote its “Sheer Sensitive” sunscreen line with social media, retail media networks, and Major League Baseball media channels.

Financial media networks are growing fast, but they face a fundamental weakness: Consumers bank everywhere and shop elsewhere. Closing that gap will determine whether they become major media players or niche data providers.

On this episode of the EMARKETER Cannes Podcast Miniseries, we explore brand partnerships, retail data, and what it takes for retailers and brands to build more accountable, sustainable long-term growth together. Sarah Marzano, Vice President and Principal Analyst at EMARKETER, sits down with Christine Foster, Group Vice President, Commercial Strategy and Operations at Kroger Precision Marketing, for a conversation recorded at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Partnerships with TikTok and DirecTV aim to expand reach while challenging Amazon’s and Walmart’s hold on retail media dollars.

Google and Walmart link YouTube ads to sales: DV360 taps Walmart data to tie video spend to checkout results, tightening commerce attribution.

Retail media tightens its grip: 73% of advertisers plan to spend more as RMNs pair scale with closed-loop proof.

Most shoppers are fine with screens in grocery stores and a growing number are actively buying because of it. What they won't tolerate is a screen that gets in their way.

In today’s podcast episode, we discuss UK supermarket giant Tesco: its true superpower, its next big bet, and what it should cut—and keep—to maintain its position as the UK’s #1 retailer. Listen to the discussion featuring Vice President of Content and host Suzy Davidkhanian, Principal Analyst Bill Fisher, and Senior Analyst Carina Lamb.

AI is having a significant impact on Europe’s digital landscape. But tight regulatory constraints in some markets and a broader fragmentation across the region is resulting in uneven development. Brands, retailers, agencies, and ad platforms need to adapt to best ride the AI wave.​

Commerce media is pushing brands to break down internal silos and rethink how they organize teams, allocate budgets, and measure success across an increasingly fragmented ecosystem.

US CPG advertisers are expected to spend nearly $59 billion on ads in 2026, according to an EMARKETER forecast. How that budget gets activated across retail media networks matters more than ever as brands navigate fragmentation, demand better measurement, and push for industry standardization.