57% of ad buyers will prioritize creator ads in 2026—but success will be driven by repeat partnerships with genuine brand advocates.

The next wave of commerce media growth will come from verticals in which first-party data, digital touchpoints, and consumer engagement converge—even as executional risks threaten to slow progress.

For the past several years, commerce media has been defined by proliferation: New networks, new formats, new acronyms. As the category heads into 2026, industry leaders agree that growth alone is no longer the story. What matters now is connection: Across channels, across data, and across the full customer journey.

This FAQ explains how data clean rooms have become essential infrastructure for retail media, enabling privacy-safe data collaboration, closed-loop measurement, and proof of performance as ad spend grows and marketers demand greater accountability.

Creator marketing will scale in 2026 as brands chase measurable outcomes. At the same time, pressures from AI, shifting platform incentives, and rising automation will reshape how creators earn and grow.

Social networks will claim close to 32% of US digital ad spending in 2026, as powerful AI systems and improved video monetization help push social past a plateau in time spent among US consumers.

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.

The IAB’s 2025 Creator Economy report shows creator marketing has become a full-fledged media channel—one projected to reach $37.1 billion in spend next year, growing 26% YoY and outpacing the broader ad market by a factor of four. Nearly half of advertisers now call creators a must-buy, yet workflows remain fragmented across budgets, discovery tools, and measurement systems. With AI accelerating both production and complexity, the report lays out the emerging mandate: treat creator marketing as its own discipline with centralized budgets, standardized vetting, unified measurement, and formal AI governance. For marketers, real performance now requires real structure.

In-store retail media is Europe’s next big ad opportunity. But as retailers digitize stores, standardization and measurement challenges are dragging advertiser adoption.

Privacy regulations are mounting. Signal loss is accelerating. Omnichannel advertising has become impossibly complex. These forces are driving marketers back to MMM for holistic, privacy-safe measurement.

The commerce media space is growing fast, and as it gets more crowded, it’s becoming harder to keep up with the retail media giants. But by teaming up, smaller players can more easily scale their networks to achieve the reach to stay competitive.

A new framework for gaming ads from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) might finally help marketers take full advantage of the highly engaged gamer audience.

Retail and commerce media were huge topics at last year’s Cannes Lions festival, and this year, the festival is doubling down on the channel by introducing a new retail media sub-category in the Media Lions and Creative Commerce Lions awards. However, “the tone is definitely shifting” as the industry matures—and faces the threat of tariff-related impacts, according to our analyst, Sarah Marzano.

The news: The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) gave a glimpse of the TV (CTV) advertising’s future at its IAB Tech Lab event—and proved that pause ads are leading the way. Advertising leaders said they offer the best user experience, were most likely to scale with standardization, and provided the greatest increase in ad spend. Our take: The future of CTV advertising will rely on whether advertisers can implement non-intrusive formats that capture attention. Pause ads are positioned to drive action—but advertisers must reimagine their creative strategy to capitalize on this potential.

There are now more than 80 retail media networks (RMNs) in the US. The volume of RMNs, combined with the dominance of Amazon and other established competitors, makes it challenging for new and niche RMNs to capture share.

Retail media will reach $60.81 billion in 2025—adding more new dollars than Meta and Alphabet combined—and brands now rank incrementality as a top KPI. In this interview, Tinuiti’s Elizabeth Marsten lays out how to prove incremental sales, pick smarter tools, and keep measurement future-ready.

MNTN debuts as a public company with a $1.6 billion valuation: Its performance-focused CTV adtech aims to bring small businesses into streaming.

Attention measurement is maturing: The hotly sought-after metric is getting industry standards thanks to the IAB and MRC.