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.

Financial media networks’ transaction data across tens of millions of merchants and retailers gives advertisers a fresh angle when planning and measuring campaigns. This is a crucial value proposition made by PayPal Ads to advertisers looking to convert customers and compare allocations between various retail media networks.

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.

This spring, Pacers Sports & Entertainment launched Fieldhouse Media Network: It's the first media network of its kind to be managed by a professional sports team with the goal of connecting advertisers with its fanbase. Fieldhouse Media Network partnered with Deloitte and Yieldmo to make it possible for brands to reach Pacers and Fever fans beyond when they visit Indiana’s Gainbridge Fieldhouse to see a game.

Pinterest turns TV into checkout: Pairing with tvScientific links CTV impressions to conversions, giving brands measurable results beyond reach.

On this episode, we examine the challenges and best practices for measuring impact of commerce media advertising. We discuss discuss moving beyond platform-reported metrics, incrementality testing frameworks, clean room strategies, cross-network measurement and building internal capabilities. Arielle Feger, EMARKETER’s Senior Analyst, Media Content hosts Jack Kneuper, Senior Digital Performance Marketing Manager at Perdue Farms and Matt Barresi, President of Digital Commerce and Capabilities at Kimberly-Clark.

On this episode, we explore how leading brands are implementing successful offsite strategies. Focuses include data partnerships and clean rooms, audience targeting off-platform, measuring offsite incrementality, and balancing scale with signal quality. EMARKETER Senior Analyst, Minda Smiley hosts Jason O’Toole, Head of Connected Commerce & Media at Gildan and Ryan Verklin, Paid Media & Retail Media Senior Lead at Bayer.

Performance TV drives growth, but weak transparency undermines trust--meaning marketers should be selective about partners and prioritize contextual targeting.

As budgets consolidate and scrutiny intensifies, retail media networks are being asked to prove their value in the same way that the rest of digital media does. That shift was on full display at CES, where platform updates from Albertsons, DoorDash, Instacart, and Walmart Connect signaled a deeper evolution underway. Rather than chasing more inventory or novel formats, retail media players are investing in the foundational capabilities that underpin long-term credibility: measurement, data access, and intelligence.

Key stat: 72% of US buy-side retail media advertisers say they are buying video ads offsite, second only to social media, according to a March RetailX survey commissioned by Koddi.

As healthcare and pharma ad spend shifts to digital, discover the CTV, social, and search trends redefining media strategy in our latest forecast.

Spectrum Reach and Waymark are scaling their AI-powered creative partnership, which has already supported over 15,000 ad campaigns for small and midsize businesses. The collaboration blends Spectrum Reach’s data-driven media targeting with Waymark’s AI video creation tools, enabling broadcast-quality commercials in minutes. The expansion comes as 55% of US small businesses now use AI, up from 39% last year. Together, Spectrum Reach and Waymark are redefining local advertising, proving AI can make creative faster, smarter, and fairer.

By the end of 2025, CTV will overtake linear TV in key metrics like viewing share, viewing households, time spent, and content spending. CTV ad spend with then be set to surpass traditional TV spend in 2028.

Travel media networks like Marriott, Expedia, and Uber are tapping loyalty data to compete in commerce media. To drive growth, TMNs are turning to off-site activations, cross-industry partnerships, and non-endemic advertising.

Amazon Ads has unveiled an agentic AI tool inside Creative Studio, designed to serve as a real-time creative partner for advertisers. Through a conversational interface, brands can brainstorm, storyboard, and generate professional-quality video and display ads in hours instead of weeks—at no extra cost. Powered by AWS models like Amazon Nova and Anthropic Claude, the system combines retail insights with automation to democratize high-quality ad creation once limited to big-budget brands. Early testers, including Nestlé Health Science, praised its ability to surface new insights and scale campaigns, underscoring how platforms like Amazon, Meta, and Google are redefining advertising.

Acxiom, IPG Mediabrands, and IRIS.TV have partnered to launch Acxiom Contextual CTV, a privacy-safe targeting tool powered by IRIS_ID. The solution analyzes content context—genre, subject, tone—without using personal identifiers, addressing rising privacy concerns as cookies disappear. Already present in 17–40% of US bidstream inventory, IRIS.TV enables more accurate targeting, while early pilots show higher video completion rates and stronger brand lift. Publishers benefit too, with CPMs rising as much as 25%. With CTV ad sales projected to hit $46.9 billion by 2028, this approach could set a new industry standard for performance, compliance, and contextual relevance.

The news: Advertisers are broadening how they use AI tools for marketing campaigns beyond data analysis, per a report from DoubleVerify. Nearly half (46%) of advertisers plan to use AI for creating media strategies in 2025, up slightly from 2024. An equal percentage of marketers are using AI for bidding optimization and mid-flight plan optimization. Our take: Widespread AI adoption in marketing is inevitable as AI tools proliferate across industries. Success hinges on how, not if, marketers implement the technology. Consumers are more likely to trust brands that are transparent about how they use AI in their ad materials.

The news: The UK’s Online Safety Act triggered an immediate surge in virtual private network (VPN) downloads, reflecting public resistance to mandatory age checks, per Wired. Proton VPN reported a 1,400% spike in UK sign-ups after the law took effect, per PCMag, and NordVPN saw purchases jump 1,000%. Our take: Age-check laws, though designed to protect minors, are reshaping how all users interact with content—and how marketers can access these users. VPN adoption is both a privacy signal and a marketing blind spot. Brands that respect digital autonomy while adapting strategy will be best positioned to reach—and keep—their audience.