While retail media networks (RMNs) sell brand safety and predictability to marketers, influencer marketing boasts direct access to loyal audiences. Pairing these two channels together, experts stress, can drive significant growth for brands.
“We’ve been saying that creators are the new media networks, and they should be utilized as such,” said David MacDonald, executive vice president and head of retail and commerce experience at Razorfish. “Adding in trusted creators or influencers with loyal followings will only increase that credibility and capture attention across all formats.”
Here's how RMNs and creators are working together in 2025.
Creator influence on commerce makes them a natural extension to the growing retail media space.
US social commerce sales will surpass $100 billion in 2026, EMARKETER forecasts, and 49.5% of US social shoppers say creator and influencer content has influenced their social purchases, according to an EMARKETER survey.
“When [a creator] you trust recommends a product, it’s a game changer,” said Luiz Felipe Barros, global CMO at Channel Factory. “It’s about making sure when that person is influenced by a recommendation from a creator and goes online to buy something, you have your retail media ad there and capture that demand.”
Some 94% of marketers are using influencer content outside of influencers’ organic posts, according to Linqia’s “2025 State of Influencer Marketing” report. Beyond brand organic and paid social, this content is now more regularly leveraged on brand websites, email display, connected TV (CTV), and digital out-of-home advertising (OOH), according to the report.
As brands look to expand creator marketing strategies into new channels this year, retail media will be no exception, said our analyst Jasmine Enberg at EMARKETER’S Creator Economy Trends summit.
“I imagine that we'll see a lot of new innovations in the space this year, especially as more brands incorporate creators or their content into paid media campaigns outside of social media, whether that's CTV or retail,” said Enberg.
Brands want to align their retail dollars with more creative messaging opposed to strictly product search ads, and marketers on the influencer side have a chance to break out of their siloes and scale their programs, said Enberg. This convergence would be a “win-win for influencer marketing and retail media,” she said.
“As retailers are really looking to drive that incremental growth, creators really are emerging as an important source of creative and a connection to new shoppers that are discovering and buying products in different ways,” said Enberg.
The combination also allows marketers to combine “the art and the science” by pairing the data from retail media with the creative from influencer marketing and social strategies, according to our analyst Sarah Marzano.
“Retail media networks are moving out of their comfort zones, and they're needing to find ways to partner with social platforms who aren't exactly known for openly sharing their data,” she said. “In order for retail media networks to deliver on the promise of better measurement, formal integrations and solutions like data clean rooms are going to be a crucial component.”
This was originally featured in the Retail Media Weekly newsletter. For more marketing insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.