Keeping the complexities of marketing channels in mind, Modern Retail+ Research has analyzed strategies and challenges across leading marketing channels — like creator marketing, CTV and social media — to identify key trends and best practices in our CMO Strategies series.
In this installment, Modern Retail+ Research focuses on an analysis of retail media, its role in marketers’ playbooks and how the industry has evolved.
As the retail media landscape continues to evolve, marketers are rethinking where they invest, how they measure success and which retail media networks deserve a larger share of budget. Although they once viewed retail media primarily as a lower-funnel performance channel, marketers are expanding their ad businesses beyond sponsored product listings into off-site media, streaming and full-funnel marketing.
“We’re seeing demand grow across the funnel, and retail media networks are continuing to advance,” said Mandy Hunsicker Adams, senior director of The Home Depot’s retail media network Orange Apron Media. “The power of retail, customer, audience signal and point-of-sale data, and being that close to the purchase and having the ability to close the loop, is all too powerful when every marketer is trying to be as productive and efficient with their marketing budget as possible.”
In this report, we look at how marketers are increasing their investments across a wider range of RMNs, tailoring success metrics to each platform’s role in the customer journey and seeking better ways to measure performance as the channel continues to mature.
To map out marketers’ current digital playbook, Modern Retail+ Research sent out three surveys asking 125 respondents about past and upcoming investments, marketing channel tactics and preferences and business challenges.
Modern Retail+ Research also conducted interviews with the marketing executives from the following companies:
- The Home Depot
- Milani Cosmetics
- Tinuiti
Amazon and Walmart’s Walmart Connect remain marketers’ most-used retail media networks for the fourth year in a row, according to Modern Retail+ Research survey results. Eighty-nine percent of marketer respondents said they currently advertise on Amazon, while nearly half of respondents (47%) said they advertise on Walmart Connect. Nearly one-third of respondents (32%) said they place ads on Target’s Roundel, making it marketers’ third-most used RMN.
Marketers have steadily increased their use of Amazon each year since 2023. However, their use of both Walmart Connect and Target’s Roundel dipped slightly in 2025 before rebounding in 2026 to surpass 2024 usage rates. Marketers’ use of Kroger’s Kroger Precision Marketing RMN dropped in 2025 as well, before returning to almost identical 2024 usage rates this year. These swings in adoption rates may signal marketers’ interest in testing and diversifying their use of various RMNs, rather than a large-scale divestment from retail media as a marketing channel.
Jeremy Lowenstein, Chief Marketing Officer at Milani Cosmetics, said that while Amazon remains its priority, the brand is increasingly investing across other RMNs. “Amazon is the must-play and is usually a reflection of our growth and spend as a percent of sales. … We started on the Criteo side with Target and Ulta and have expanded to Walmart and our drugstore accounts. … We’re piloting on Costco, so we are playing across the spectrum.”
Lowenstein added that a brand’s retail media strategy should align with where consumers are shopping. “There’s still a consumer journey. It just happens at different places. … It’s about finding what’s the right way to work synergistically to ultimately get to the consumer. Are people on Amazon all the time? We’re not. We’re all multi-dimensional.”
Marketers are increasing their investments across a variety of RMNs in 2026 too. Amazon, Walmart Connect, Target’s Roundel, Nordstrom’s Nordstrom Media Network and Kroger’s Kroger Precision Marketing all benefited from increased advertiser budgets this year. Notably, on a weighted average basis, marketers have doubled the amount of marketing budget they devote to Target’s Roundel in 2026 versus 2025.
Although Target has faced consumer pullback because of its decision to reduce diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives as well as sluggish sales due to general economic conditions, its RMN has remained insulated from other parts of the business that depend on in-store and onsite traffic. The retailer’s ad network operates on a data-driven model, monetization of shopper intent, behavior signals and first-party insights.
“The audience data that Target can turn out is still highly effective and allows us to reach really key in-market shoppers,” said Anthony Costanzo, chief analytics officer at independent media agency Mile Marker, whose clients are not concerned over other areas of Target’s business. “If it’s working, they’re going to put more money in,” he told Modern Retail’s sibling publication Digiday in June 2025.
Elizabeth Marsten, vp of commerce media at performance marketing agency Tinuiti, said both Walmart Connect and Roundel have ramped up efforts to attract advertisers over the past year. “Walmart has increased its emphasis on participation in Walmart Connect across their book of brands, expanded ad types, measurement capabilities and added inventory online through their third-party marketplace and fulfillment services,” Marsten said.
“Target has a similar story in increasing participation in Roundel — adding offsite inventory and social partnerships, expanding their merchandising to place more emphasis on unique and challenger brands,” she added. “Both [retailers] also launched in-store modes in their mobile apps, which include unique interaction points with the shopper while in-store.”
For the third year in a row, Modern Retail’s survey found that by far marketers look to sales as the most important success metric for their retail media campaigns. The majority of marketers said that sales is the main measurement of success they consider on each of the RMNs included in Modern Retail’s 2026 survey. For example, 100% of respondents said this about Best Buy’s and Albertsons’ RMNs, while 89% of respondents said sales is their top success metric on Instacart’s RMN and 88% said the same for Target’s Roundel.
While sales has remained marketers’ main measurement of success since 2024, their focus on engagement has shifted over the past year. In 2025, three-quarters of marketers (75%) said engagement was their top success metric on Best Buy Ads, and half of marketers (50%) said the same for eBay Ads. Marketers also said they looked to engagement as a success metric on Amazon, Nordstrom Media Network, Target’s Roundel and Walmart Connect in 2025.
This year, however, marketers selected engagement as a top success metric on only one RMN — Amazon —- where 7% of respondents said engagement is their main measurement of success. Engagement remains important to marketers on Amazon in 2026 because consumers continue to use Amazon as a search engine in addition to a shopping platform. More than half of U.S. online adults (58%) use Amazon for product discovery, making Amazon the second-largest product discovery platform after Google (69%), according to Forrester’s October 2025 Consumer Pulse survey.
Over time, advertisers have recognized that not every RMN serves the same purpose. There were more than 200 RMNs globally as of June 2025, according to data from retail media intelligence platform Mimbi. And success can look different across platforms and depending on whether a campaign is intended to drive awareness, consideration or purchase, according to Milani Cosmetics’ Lowenstein.
“Not all retail channels and parts of the funnel are born equal. They all have different roles to play,” Lowenstein said. “If you’re looking for CPM efficiency, that’s not going to be about conversion. So, know what measurement looks like, and be honest with yourself if you’re hitting it or not. Then, lean in or pivot. … We’re all just testing and learning at this point and to see where we can scale.”
Orange Apron Media’s Hunsicker Adams said that retail media can support campaign objectives across the customer journey. “Retail media is a part of all parts of the funnel,” she said. “Our advertisers come to us because they want to grow share with a certain customer type, grow their basket or expand their brand into a new category. … We’re interacting across the journey from inspiration to consideration and considering different projects, executions, partners and styles.”
When asked about the biggest challenge they face when working with RMNs, the majority of survey respondents cited cost as their top challenge on the majority of platforms. The Home Depot’s Orange Apron Media was the only RMN on which marketers were equally divided about their top challenge — 33.33% of marketers selected cost of media, lack of resources and choice of vendors as the top challenge, respectively. On Nordstrom Media Network, marketers said lack of scale was their top challenge — 33% of marketers said this.
Cost concerns on retail media tend to stem from three interconnected issues: the rapid proliferation of retail media networks competing for limited budgets, pressure from retailers for brands to spend on their RMNs to secure and maintain premium in-store shelf space, and inconsistent measurement that makes ROI harder to prove.
“Measurement will always be the number one challenge, since consumers will continue to interact whenever and wherever they want, as often as they want or not,” Elizabeth Marsten, vp of commerce media at performance marketing agency Tinuiti, said in an email. “That makes measuring exposure and assigning attribution and credit more difficult, but at the same time easier as digital fingerprints continue to guide us on the consumer’s journey.”
“Additionally, content creation at scale for the sheer volume of unique environments that consumers interact in [is a challenge],” Marsten added. “Some platforms and content types will be scalable but finding and reviewing content that AI may take and categorize as ‘correct’ will be a continual battle. The last [challenge] is execution at scale across multiple RMNs at a strategic level.” (Agentic AI runs without human feedback, requiring that users trust that AI agents are running tasks correctly. If agentic AI hallucinates in one step of a process, subsequent steps will be affected.)
Orange Apron Media’s Hunsicker Adams said that while measurement standardization has value, it should ultimately reflect how shoppers use RMNs and advertisers’ campaign objectives.
“Having standardization in a way that makes sense for the different ways customers are shopping has opportunities,” Hunsicker Adams said. “There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. It really is, how do we make sure we’re educating and informing and putting as much of the data in the hands of the folks that need to analyze and assess it based on the needs of their specific business? We’re not gatekeeping information, but we’re putting the power in the hands of that advertiser.”
Streaming is becoming an important part of many RMNs’ growth and measurement strategies, as retailers believe that shopper data can help advertisers prove their TV ads lead to sales.
In August 2026, Walmart acquired self-service CTV ad platform Vibe.co and began combining Vibe’s service for small- to mid-sized businesses and brands with Walmart’s access to shoppers, closed-loop measurement and media ecosystem that includes Vizio. Walmart hopes smaller advertisers will launch CTV campaigns and measure their success on Walmart Connect using its commerce data.
Adam Solomon, vp of product solutions at LiveRamp — the marketing platform behind Kroger and Albertsons’ YouTube integrations — said retail media is shifting toward flexibility and interoperability with off-site environments like streaming and social media.
“It reflects the next stage of retail media’s evolution: from isolated retailer inventory to a broader commerce media model where first-party data can power media activation and measurable outcomes across more channels and touchpoints,” Solomon told Modern Retail’s sibling publication Digiday in June 2026.