Advertisers boost retail media spending as TV dwindles

The next frontier for the ad market isn’t on TV — it’s at screens near points of sale.

Television had long been the key target for advertisers, until tech companies such as Alphabet and Meta-owned platforms like Facebook began to gobble up market share. While ad dollars are rapidly shifting from traditional TV to streaming, retail and consumer product companies are now taking up a significant part of the mix.

The so-called retail media networks — the advertising publishing platforms — of e-commerce, retail and consumer companies like Amazon, Walmart and Kroger are attracting billions of dollars in advertising, according to data from eMarketer and GroupM, the media investment arm of WPP, the world’s biggest advertising group.

Global retail media ad spending is expected to more than double from $114.18 billion in 2023 to $233.89 billion in 2027, according to eMarketer. Retail media is expected to represent a larger percentage of digital advertising spending, which has begun to eclipse traditional media spending, growing from 18.9% of that segment in 2023 to 25.7% in 2027, according to eMarketer.

“What we hear from brands most directly is they no longer wake up with a recipe to buy X amount of TV, X amount of social, X amount of digital. They wake up every day trying to buy growth, trying to buy outcomes for their business,” said Sean McCaffrey, president and CEO of GSTV, an on-the-go media network with over 29,000 screens at refueling points tied to convenience retail stores.

GSTV screens reach 115 million viewers per month across 49 states.

Brands are “more open-minded as to where they can find those audiences,” McCaffrey said.

“It’s the new TV for mass reach advertising,” said Mark Boidman, head of media and entertainment investment banking at Solomon Partners. “If you want to reach someone fast, it’s best to get them in a store or on your app. … It’s a 360-degree approach.”

The kind of advertising purchased through retail media networks is often found on in-store displays and screens, websites, mobile apps, streaming services, smart TVs and social media. Not only is it fertile ground for an advertiser to get their offerings in front of consumers looking to spend, it comes with a lot of first-party data.

The amount of data that retailers have on customers — from one-time buyers to loyalists — is extremely valuable to advertisers who want to optimize their exposure.

“If [brands] advertise with a digital ad, for example, and a customer transacts a week later in a store or club, we can connect that up for them and let them know that the ad really worked,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon told CNBC earlier this year. “That’s the…