US in-store retail media ad spend will total $370 million this year. But as the channel expands, oversaturating stores with ads can cause tension between retail media teams, which focus on maximizing ad dollars, and merchants, which focus on the store as a whole. Online advertising and in-store advertising are not two distinct channels, but instead work together.

The vast majority (96%) of Pinterest searches are unbranded, said Brittan Bushman, Pinterst’s director of strategy, during a session at Advertising Week New York 2023. This means that consumers turn to Pinterest to learn what kinds of products are out there, unlike traditional search engines like Google, where they go to refine their search for something they already know exists.