Amazon dominates the fast-emerging retail media ad market

Amazon’s quiet ascendance to the digital advertising elite has spawned the now fast-emerging trend of retail media advertising.

“Amazon and all of these retailers follow the same script—they start with the gateway drug of retail media with sponsored product ads, which are bottom-funnel, high-intent, high-ROAS ads,” said Adam Epstein, vice president of growth at Perpetua, an ecommerce ad tech provider. “The way these retailers scale their advertising businesses is by slowly moving up the funnel to provide full-funnel strategies for advertisers.”

US digital retail media advertising is surging. Per our inaugural forecast for this channel, we expect spending to jump 53.4% this year to $31.49 billion, representing 14.9% of the digital ad market. US retail media growth will outpace the 38.3% growth of the total digital ad market, as brand dollars chase the dramatic shift to ecommerce.

Amazon dominates retail media ad spend. The company will drive an incredible 77.7% of US retail media digital ad spend this year.

With 41.0% of the country’s ecommerce sales, the highest traffic, and the most mature capabilities among retail media ad platforms, Amazon rules the retail media roost, and that should come as no surprise.