Retail media is rising as Amazon, Walmart, and Target spend their top dollar

MediaRadar recently published a report that sheds light on top brands' overall expenditure on retail media, such as Amazon, Target, and Walmart.

Retail media has always been the area of interest for the consumer packaging goods industry. The plethora of brands worldwide does not shy away from spending big money on the platforms like Google and Facebook. According to MediaRadar's report, retail sales in the US have touched $4.5 Mn in 2021 alone. And this figure stands to be lucrative for the retail media networks. Moreover, this report states retail media has gained $3Bn+ through more than 35 thousand brands since May 2021.

The report by MediaRadar explains the causes behind this phenomenal spending in retail media. The acquired addressable audiences provide hundreds of millions of data points to the companies like Amazon. This massive amount of data points includes the purchase level data of millions of people. (e.g., hundreds of millions of Prime subscribers)

The retail industry does not depend on third-party data. Third-party cookies are seeing a downfall as companies like Apple and Chrome implement ways to eliminate them together. Instead, the retailers use first-party, shopper-level data to deliver timely and relevant ads. Moreover, the regulations and data privacy concerns through GDPR and CCPA have made collecting and using consumer data more complex than ever. However, retailers get precious consumer data from the consumers themselves.

Consumer electronics companies, telecom service providers, software tracking technology companies and security technology companies have made the tech sector a top spender in retail media, which is followed by the food and retail categories, respectively.

Within MediaRadar's tracking period (May 2021-Jan 2022), Amazon spent more than $1.36 Bn on ads, of which 45% was spent on retail media. Collectively Amazon, Walmart and Target have spent $2.3Bn on the advertisement. Since May, CPG brands have bought over $500 million on ads, accounting for around 17% of all buys (across 22 sites).

Big CPG players like Mondelez, Hormel, Unilever and Kellogg took advantage, spending over $20 million and as much as $46 million to promote their brands.

The CPG giants Mondelez, Hormel, Unilever and Kellogg are top players in the race of ad expenditure, pointing towards their improvised approach in media strategies due to the constantly rising e-commerce market.

Although, given this trend, retail media may appear crowded; however, the brand interest in this media category remains prominent and sustaining.