Amazon is the biggest beneficiary of this spending, and also has a significant business using its data and targeting capabilities to place ads across the web—another key retail media offering in addition to on-property placements. We estimate Walmart is in second place in the US, and exceeded $1 billion in ecommerce channel ad revenues last year. Walmart recently partnered with The Trade Desk for retail media placements elsewhere on the internet.
To date, retail media has been a largely lower-funnel affair, with search ads accounting for the majority of revenues, both overall and at Amazon specifically. The success of Amazon’s sponsored search results, and their effectiveness in reaching shoppers who have shown a strong intent to convert, has helped the ecommerce giant take a bite out of Google’s share of the US search ad market. We estimate Amazon will net almost one in five search ad dollars in the US this year—more than three times Microsoft’s share.