This year, the payments industry will face its first major test following pandemic-driven digitization as economic uncertainty pressures customer habits. This is the data you need to understand the major changes facing the payments ecosystem in 2023—and how to navigate them.

The retail space is changing rapidly as marketers experiment with things like retail media, generative AI, and social commerce. In this discussion, Zia Daniell Wigder, Chief Content Officer, Insider Intelligence, talks about the trends on her radar and what she learned at Shoptalk.

Beauty is proving resilient to the cost-of-living crisis as shoppers splurge on premium products to boost their mood and skin health. But it won’t escape unscathed, with consumers already streamlining their beauty regimes and searching for bargains online.

Which networks should brands be paying attention to as they refine their retail media strategy? From the king of them all to the ones that are just catching up, here are five retail media networks to keep an eye on this year.

By 2026, US spending on ecommerce channel ads—a large subset of retail media—will be more than triple its 2020 level, per our forecast. Within the ecommerce channel, both search and display advertising are growing rapidly.

US ecommerce growth will come from large retail categories with historically low online sales share. And growth will stay healthy even as traditional drivers of online sales take a backseat to emerging categories.

“We’re showing 20.5% growth for retail media ad spending this year, and 22.9% actually accelerating into next year,” said senior forecaster Ethan Cramer-Flood at our recent “Attention! Seizing the Retail Media Opportunity” summit. That stat assumes inflation will cool some in the second half of this year, which our forecasters currently predict it will.

At least 10% of US ecommerce orders were returned each week from last November through mid-January, according to Salesforce. The return rate was as high as 16% in some weeks, a significant increase over the previous holiday season.

Worldwide, retail sales growth has rebounded after taking a dive in 2020, per our forecast. Though growth rates won’t return to their pre-pandemic levels, they will stay steady through 2026. Meanwhile, ecommerce sales growth has decelerated after a few banner years, falling to single digits from 2022 through the end of our forecast period.

Retail media will be a $45 billion market this year and will continue to grow by about $10 billion in 2024, according to our forecast. Currently, the majority of retail media ad spend is driven by search. But the next phase will be driven by upper-funnel formats and in-store ad opportunities.

Brands were abuzz at eTail West 2023 in Palm Springs this week, talking about tech, loyalty, and integration. Here are our top five takeaways from brands like GNC, Poshmark, and Spanx.

Deal-seeking by consumers, heavy discounting from retailers, and a longer holiday shopping season drove an uptick in returns during the 2022 holiday season. Retailers will need to plan their promotional calendars carefully to manage returns in 2023.

This year, we forecast retail sales of cosmetic and beauty products will reach $86.42 billion, a 7.6% increase from 2022. This increase will be driven in large part by in-store sales and luxury beauty categories. But going forward, technology may play a large role in driving online sales.

Consumer device and behavior trends are affecting payment providers’ strategies across retail, P2P, B2B, disbursement, and cross-border channels. Here’s what that means for the payments ecosystem.

Temu, the recent entrant to the US ecommerce market, has taken the ecommerce world by storm since its September 2022 launch. The China-based etailer went from zero to 44.5 million unique visitors by December 2022, according to Comscore—a virtually unprecedented growth in traffic in just four months.

The 2022 holiday season’s solid retail sales gains were mostly attributable to inflation, but they nevertheless paint a cautiously optimistic picture for the 2023 holiday season.

Click and collect has matured as an ecommerce channel, but growth will slow as pandemic concerns alleviate.

The up-and-coming shopping app Temu made waves with its Super Bowl ad debut this year, airing its 30-second spot with a cheery “Shop Like a Billionaire” tagline several times on Fox during and after the broadcast of the big game. Here’s what you need to know.

The nonalcoholic beverage market has burst open, and many nonalcoholic spirits companies are pushing marketing beyond sobriety to overall health. “We’re not trying to stop anyone from drinking,” said Hebe Mills, marketing manager at Pentire Drinks. Instead, Mills says the alcohol-free brand is “making sure [our customers have] a really good-tasting alternative.”

Online purchases will account for a growing share of total US retail returns.