COMMENTARY

Why Retail Media Could Overtake Search

• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, Yesterday

LiveIntent reports that more than 80% of marketers plan to increase investment in retail media. This may be because 96% of marketers now realize that first-party data is vital to successful advertising strategies, as Google continues to roll out changes to third-party cookies on Chrome.

That’s according to a study from email-based marketing and advertising-technology company LiveIntent.

The data is in the company’s third set of findings from its four-part research project on retail media network (RMN) adoption in digital advertising.

The report -- The 2023 Retail Media Playbook: Unlocking Adoption, Mastering Best Practices, Overcoming Challenges & Driving Performance -- surveyed more than 200 U.S. marketers to examine their experiences and views on the expanding retail media landscape.

The overwhelming catalyst for interest in retail media from advertisers is the anxiety around the loss of cookies and other forms of personalized ad targeting on the open web and mobile.

Given Google’s announcement several months ago, 73% of advertisers said that the coming deprecation of third-party cookies was the biggest driver of interest in retail media networks.

Insider Intelligence analysts believe retail media like Walmart and Amazon are boosting search ad spend.

As performance-driven advertisers push closer to the point of sale, companies like Amazon benefit,” the analyst firm wrote in a blog post.

Behind retail media’s search success resides a forecast that U.S. retail media search ad revenues will grow at a rate of 18.7% this year, nearly four times faster than the rest of search advertising, 5.0%, according to the forecast.

Amazon is estimated to account for $23.95 billion of the total $29.69 billion U.S. retail media search ad spend market this year, per our forecast.

Retail media will make up 26.9% of U.S. search ad spend this year, but Amazon will account for 21.7% of that spend.

Walmart and Instacart also contribute to retail media’s share of search ad spend, though their share is smaller.

Trust in retail media is key. In fact, U.S. advertisers will spend nearly $30 billion on retail media search ads this year, and by 2027, that figure will be more than double.