Glossary
What is retail media?
Updated
Definition
Retail media is advertising sold by a retailer on its own digital properties and increasingly across the open web, targeted with the retailer's first-party purchase data and measured against actual sales.
The model inverts classic advertising economics. A retailer like Amazon, Walmart, or Target already owns the shelf, the shopper relationship, and the transaction record, so it sells ad placements (sponsored products, onsite display, in-store screens, and offsite extensions) that close the loop advertising has always struggled to close: this ad, this person, this purchase. That closed loop is why budgets moved faster into retail media than into any channel since paid social.
A retail media network (RMN) is the productized version: the retailer's ad platform, with its own auction, formats, and measurement. Amazon Ads established the template; Walmart Connect, Target's Roundel, Instacart Ads, and dozens of grocery and specialty networks followed, and the pattern has spread to marketplaces well beyond retail. The strategic consequence for brands is fragmentation: every major shelf now has its own ad platform, its own reporting, and its own definition of an incremental sale.
The open questions are the ones conversation in the category keeps circling: standardization of measurement across networks, how much RMN spend is genuinely incremental versus captured trade budget, and where the margin settles once every retailer has an ad business. In Waldo's tracked ad-tech conversation, retail media carried meaningful theme demand over the last 30 days with no single vendor owning the narrative (measured August 12, 2026), which is rare for a theme this commercially important.
How this shows up in Waldo
Waldo reads the retail media space from the outside in: which brands and networks carry the conversation, what campaigns competitors run across the public ad libraries, and how audiences describe shopping and shelf experiences, refreshed daily with sources attached. For teams deciding between networks, the conversation and creative record is the diligence layer the networks' own dashboards will never provide.
Questions teams ask
What is a retail media network?
A retailer's own advertising platform: the auction, ad formats, targeting built on its first-party purchase data, and measurement tied to sales on its properties. Amazon Ads is the template; most large retailers now operate one.
Why is retail media growing so fast?
Three forces: first-party purchase data got more valuable as third-party cookies and device identifiers eroded, retailers found a high-margin business sitting on their existing traffic, and brands found a channel where spend can be measured against actual transactions rather than proxies.
What is the difference between retail media and commerce media?
Commerce media is the broader umbrella: any company with transaction data selling advertising against it, including marketplaces, delivery apps, travel platforms, and banks. Retail media is the retailer-specific core of that trend.
Related terms and reading
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