The outlook for 2026 I'm watching 2026 with equal parts optimism and urgency. Optimism because consumer demand is still there. Retail sales have remained resilient in recent data. Urgency because the operating environment is only getting tighter. Coming out of FY2025, large retailers demonstrated resilience amid inflation pressure, shifting consumer behavior, and global supply-chain complexity. Walmart raised its outlook and leaned further into a model that blends physical stores, e-commerce scale, and execution discipline.
LONDON-(BUSINESS WIRE)-THG PLC, today announces a strategic partnership with global advertising technology leader, The Trade Desk. For the first time, media buyers (advertisers and agencies) can access THG's segments from Cult Beauty and LOOKFANTASTIC via self-serve across the entire digital ecosystem on The Trade Desk's media-buying Kokai platform.
People who enter phrases such as best flowers for Valentine's Day, might see ads from an Albertsons banner in their area. Albertsons' participation in the pilot program follows other steps the company has taken to integrate agentic and generative AI tools into its operations. Albertsons said its retail media unit, Albertsons Media Collective, will be looking to help brands reach shoppers through ChatGPT as the pilot program progresses.
Retail media networks shouldn't sell 'awareness' or 'impressions' or 'conversion,' Gray wrote on the social media platform in October. 'They should sell reach, context, salience and physical availability because these are the things that deliver brand growth.'
Kevel, the leading retail media technology provider, today (28th January, 2026) announced its steadfast commitment to the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region with its expansion into Australia and the appointment of Chris Woodworth as regional director, APAC. The expansion marks a strategic step in Kevel's global growth as retail and commerce media enter a more execution-driven phase. Across Australia and APAC, retailers and commerce partners are moving beyond experimentation and reassessing the infrastructure required to scale media programs with consistency, transparency, and long-term control.
Procter & Gamble is emphasizing its strengths in data and artificial intelligence as the packaged goods giant contends with a fragmented "new media reality," executives said on a call discussing earnings earlier this week. The owner of brands like Tide and Downy is working to redefine its brand-building framework to deliver more relevant marketing and better capitalize on emergent channels like retail media that are rewriting the CPG advertising playbook.
Amazon last January launched a Retail Ad Service that allows outside retailers to tap into the e-commerce giant's ad tech to run and manage campaigns while helping advertisers to discover new media networks via Amazon Ads.
Criteo is betting that ChatGPT-style agents will become a major source of product discovery. Through experiments with LLMs, it wants to use its commerce data infrastructure to power recommendations that sit behind them. The company, historically associated with ad retargeting, is attempting to reposition itself for an AI-driven commerce era, and its latest demos suggest the company now sees large language models - not just retailers or demand-side platforms - as the next major distribution channel for advertising.
Black Friday has been one of the UK's biggest yearly shopping events for well over a decade now, long-cemented into advertisers' calendars. This year, UK shoppers are expected to spend £9.52bn over the four-day Black Friday weekend, over half of which is projected to be spent online. Challenges continue to rear their heads, as the ad landscape becomes more complex, fragmented, and AI-powered.
For one, TJX has a few fortuitous tailwinds. Manufacturers over-acquired raw goods earlier this year to stock up for tariff-related price increases. That's ideal for TJX, which buys products cheaply when other companies overproduce. But, also, TJX is not a retail media player whatsoever and cares way more about in-store sales than it does about ecommerce. In-person is simply a more exciting shopping experience, CEO Ernie Herrman told investors during the company's quarterly earnings call last week.
If we look at the way consumer purchase behavior was back in the day, it was: You see an ad, you go to the store, you make a purchase," said Bryant. "Now, it's not as linear, and marketers really need to think about things more fluidly. Consumers also aren't waking up in the morning and thinking, 'today I'm [exclusively] a digital shopper.'
Walmart makes money from ads through its Walmart Connect platform through: Online ads: Brands pay for sponsored products, search placements, and display ads on Walmart.com and the app. In-store ads: Brands pay for shelf space, endcaps, and digital signage inside stores. Targeted advertising: Walmart uses shopper data to help brands reach specific customers, allowing it to charge a premium. Revenue model: Mostly pay-per-click (CPC) or pay-per-impression (CPM), similar to Amazon's retail media network.
Skai, the leading omnichannel advertising platform for commerce media, and Kevel, creator of The Retail Media Cloud®, today (6th November, 2025) announced a strategic partnership to give advertisers expanded access to high-growth retail media networks. With Skai and Kevel's strong API-based approach, this partnership will enable retailers to seamlessly scale their monetisation strategies with transparent control over demand sources and performance. This partnership ensures advertisers can continue reaching valuable audiences across the retail landscape through a single, integrated platform.
The holiday season has always been retail's make-or-break time to shine, but the stakes are particularly high in 2025. It's shaping up to be one of the most unpredictable yet a s economic uncertainty lingers due to persistent inflation and the potential ripple effect of tariffs. For brands, this creates a perfect storm of pressure; it's no longer enough to capture attention with festive creative or gain ground by flooding channels with holiday messaging.
If you still think retail media begins and ends with sponsored search, Walmart would like a word. On stage at ANA Masters of Marketing 2025, Walmart Connect's Ryan Mayward lined up Omnicom Media Group's Megan Pagliuca and Vizio's Adam Townsend to make the case that commerce media has gone properly full-funnel - stretching from the Walmart app and store screens to CTV, the open web and even influencer programs.
But retail media ads are effective they appear in such long lists of products, Shields argues. If purchase suggestions become tailored by AI chatbots, doesn't that mean fewer opportunities for consumers to see ads for alternatives? Besides, Shields says, the idea of an impartial AI shopping assistant feels incompatible with the Walmart deal. Will Walmart be ChatGPT's preferred retailer, for example, even if its prices are higher?
American Express announced the launch of Amex Ads. The platform will allow brands to tap into its extensive trove of first-party customer data, with the opportunity of targeting audiences of up to 34 million US cardholders. Duolingo also joined the party, with the launch of a direct ad sales platform which allows advertisers to buy premium in-app inventory and custom ad formats.
What we've learned about retail signals is that they tell us so much more about a consumer around their interests and their lifestyle than any other signal can," says Molly Ryan, agency partnership director, Kroger Precision Marketing. Retail data has become a key ingredient in building precise, performant audiences - but for many brands, the complexity of programmatic activation has been a barrier. KPM's new managed-service offering is designed to make programmatic channels like CTV and streaming audio more accessible, particularly for mid-tier advertisers.
With the TikTok integration, Instacart aims to establish itself as the most advertiser-friendly media network, providing its data to help brands reach new and motivated audiences with minimal friction. While other retail media networks have worked with TikTok on specific campaigns, Instacart is " the first to work with Tiktok [on] what we're calling an end-to-end integration," Ali Miller, Instacart's general manager of advertising, told Adweek.
Love's Media Group offering creates a unified advertising platform that encompasses its loyalty and mobile presence, in-store media and pump screens in the forecourt across its 664 locations in 42 states. The platform's focus on professional drivers, which are "a high-frequency audience that traditional digital advertising struggles to access," gives it a point of differentiation in the increasingly crowded retail media space, Love's said.
The payment giant unveiled PayPal Ads Manager, a zero-cost tool that enables millions of small merchants to monetize their existing store traffic by displaying relevant advertisements on their websites. This strategic move positions PayPal to capture a portion of the lucrative retail media advertising market while providing its merchant partners with an entirely new revenue stream, generating immediate enthusiasm among investors and pushing the stock from its previous close of $71.29 to over $74 during intraday trading.
