Our analysts (or “bakers”) will compete in a Great British Bake Off–style episode, discussing how new standards will unlock agentic ad buying and selling, and how (and why) YouTube will benefit most from the surge in video podcasts. Join Senior Director of Podcasts and host Marcus Johnson, along with Senior Analyst Ross Benes and Principal Analyst Yory Wurmser. Listen everywhere, and watch on YouTube and Spotify.

Consumers typically buy consumer packaged goods (CPG) more frequently and often in-store, making those purchases different from general merchandise. Nonetheless, ad-buying on retail media networks (RMNs) is somewhat more established with more sophisticated options for CPG than for general merchandise because retail media has been a staple of CPG ad-buying for longer. That means CPG ad-buying habits could be a model for future trends in retail media.

On today's podcast episode, in our "Retail Me This, Retail Me That" segment, we discuss how buying alcohol online is different, what Uber’s shutdown of Drizly means for its retail media business, and how consumption habits are changing. Then for "Red-Hot Retail," our analysts give us four spicy predictions about the future of alcohol. Join our analyst Sara Lebow as she hosts analyst Blake Droesch and director of Briefings Jeremy Goldman.

On today's podcast episode, we discuss whether X (formerly Twitter) can recover from its latest debacle, if folks will start buying cars on Amazon, whether ad-free social networks are inevitable, companies potentially ruining "buy one, get one free" deals, United Airlines weighing using passenger data to target ads on planes, how people feel about tipping in the US, and more. Tune in to the discussion with our vice president of Briefings Stephanie Taglianetti and analysts Ross Benes and Bill Fisher.

Connected TV (CTV) ad spend will exceed $30 billion in the US next year, according to our forecast. At a growth rate of 22.4% YoY, that makes CTV one of the fastest-growing ad formats we track. But where those ad dollars are coming from isn’t so simple.

Retail media networks may be working on standardization, but a universal measurement system is still a dream. Aside from a sluggish move toward standardization, here are four predictions about the future of retail media networks our analysts gave on our “Behind the Numbers: Reimagining Retail” podcast.

Nearly 96% of advertisers worldwide will include attention-based metrics in at least some of their media buys this year, according to May data from DoubleVerify.

The average US social buyer will spend $518 via this channel in 2022, up 26.9% from last year. Annual spend will increase by $419 per buyer over the next three years, reaching $937 in 2025.

The majority of US social buyers still order from retailer websites, rather than directly on social platforms. In December, 61.5% said they made their most recent social commerce purchase on the retailer’s site, while 38.5% reported doing so through the social network’s checkout feature.

US advertisers are spending about a third of their nonsocial programmatic display ad dollars on fees this year—aka the “ad tech tax.” Read on to learn more about our inaugural estimates of spending on programmatic fees.

Millennials have long been omnichannel shoppers, but their preference for digital channels is growing alongside the rise of D2C brands and mcommerce.