Pinterest shifts to yield; its leadership change reinforces focus on performance, commerce, and higher ARPU.

Brazil’s digital ad market continues to transform as new formats, channels, and players emerge. Understanding the local market forces, challenges, and opportunities driving these shifts is vital to staying competitive in the country’s fast-evolving landscape.

China’s Q4 spending reinforced platform consolidation, as advertisers concentrated budgets on large platforms with data, scale, and commerce integration.

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.

This FAQ addresses how retail media works, who the major players are, and what marketers should consider when allocating budgets.

28% of retail commerce media decision-makers in North America and Europe say they review and approve creatives manually but lack automation or dynamic capabilities, according to November 2025 data from Koddi and Forrester Consulting.

To simplify shopping for customers in 2026, retailers will provide curated product selections online and in-store, experts told EMARKETER. This will also strengthen loyalty and improve the shopping experience, attracting new customers and encouraging them to return regularly in the year ahead.

PayPal rolled out Transaction Graph Insights & Measurement at CES to gives advertisers and merchants a clearer, cross-merchant view of how people actually shop and purchase—and early results suggest meaningful impact.

OpenAI seeks real consumer intent, and a potential Pinterest acquisition would give OpenAI first-party shopping signals and native ad infrastructure to rival Google and Meta.

Marketers across categories are calling for simpler, more intuitive advertising systems after years of growing fragmentation and technical overload. In interviews with EMARKETER, leaders from Criteo, LiveRamp, Reddit, Vistar Media, StackAdapt, and DoorDash all described a shift toward platforms that reduce effort, unify workflows, and provide clearer decision making. Buyers want fewer interfaces, standardized KPIs, easier activation, and more transparent insight into where ads run. The message is consistent: performance pressure amplifies the value of operational clarity. As the industry moves into 2026, platforms that eliminate friction—rather than add features—will gain share, while marketers who choose simplicity will gain speed and efficiency.

Sell-side platform PubMatic and connected TV (CTV) ad company BrightLine announced a partnership that will bring addressable and interactive CTV ad formats to PubMatic’s programmatic platform. As interactivity becomes a critical differentiator in a crowded CTV ad landscape, marketers can use PubMatic and BrightLine’s partnership to more easily deploy interactive CTV ad formats across major publishers.

The commerce media landscape is bracing for a defining year. Pressure is building across retailers and platforms to rethink how shoppers discover, evaluate, and buy products.

US ad spend growth will grow a total of 11% in 2025, excluding political spending, per an updated Madison & Wall forecast cited by Mediapost. The figure is well above Madison & Wall’s previous estimate of 3.6% growth and follows 13% YoY growth in Q3. Even as total media ad spending continues to grow, growth doesn’t entirely negate the overall climate of uncertainty that will undoubtedly affect the ad industry in the year ahead. Slowing growth expected from Madison & Wall in 2026 and ongoing economic headwinds indicate that advertisers are still operating in an era of caution.

As commerce media buyers face more choices, Dollar General is pitching its large store footprint as an opportunity to reach shoppers in rural and underserved markets, particularly with its retail media offering, DG Media Network.

Latin America’s digital ad market is transforming as new formats, channels, and players emerge. Understanding the market forces, challenges, and opportunities driving these shifts is key to staying competitive in this fast-evolving landscape.

LiveRamp CEO Scott Howe says marketers are now fighting a “war for signals”—a race to collect, clean, and connect data fast enough to prove every dollar’s impact. Speaking alongside Q2 earnings of $200 million (up 8%), Howe described marketing’s new reality as “precision and proof.” LiveRamp’s clean room tech now lets brands merge data across partners like Netflix, Uber, and PayPal to tie spend directly to transactions. With AI acceleration and data collaboration redefining performance, Howe says growth depends less on scale and more on signal speed: “Access to better data gets the flywheel going—and determines who wins.”

Pinterest reported Q3 2025 revenue of $1.1 billion, up 17% YoY and slightly ahead of forecasts, as global user growth and AI-driven ad features continue to lift engagement. Monthly active users climbed 12% to 600 million, with international markets up 16% and driving most of the gains. Yet softer Q4 guidance spooked investors, sending shares down 20%. CFO Julia Donnelly cited “moderating ad spend” among US retailers facing tariff pressures. Globally, Pinterest’s AI tools—visual search, generative creative, and shoppable feeds—are strengthening its position as the web’s most frictionless bridge between inspiration and purchase. Consistency remains Pinterest’s quiet advantage.

The NBA is experiencing one of its biggest advertising booms in decades following a record $76 billion media rights deal with Disney, NBC, and Amazon. Ad spend on NBA programming jumped 15% last season to $1.52 billion, with NBCUniversal selling out its first-year inventory after returning to coverage for the first time in 23 years. ESPN, ABC, and Prime Video are also thriving—drawing hundreds of advertisers across broadcast and streaming. Amazon is fusing ecommerce and live sports with shoppable ad formats, while NBC and Disney leverage cross-platform studio content. The result: the NBA is redefining what live sports monetization looks like.

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.