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The retail media industry is allocating $70 billion based on metrics that have no proven connection to incremental sales.
That's the headline. But here's the real story: this isn't a measurement problem. It's a power problem. The question isn't "is my ROAS accurate?" The question is: who controls the economic decisioning layer of commerce—and why have most retailers already lost?
We spent January 2026 talking to 52 senior executives and surveying 100 more. Brand leaders, agency heads, RMN operators, technology builders. Most spoke on background because what they told us isn't what you hear on conference stages.
53% can't prove their retail media spend is incremental. 74% are increasing budgets anyway.
Most people don't trust the measurement. Most people are spending more. That's not strategy. That's a $70 billion shrug.
What We Found
We make three arguments in the report:
1. Most retail media networks are mispriced assets. Not overpriced—mispriced. The market can't distinguish between infrastructure platforms that create value and toll booths that merely extract it.
2. Measurement failure is a capital allocation problem, not a marketing problem. The brands gaining share figured out incrementality. The ones losing share are still optimizing dashboards that measure nothing.
3. Agentic commerce will expose everything. When AI agents control product discovery, the surface area for onsite advertising collapses. The RMNs that survive will be the ones that already built real infrastructure.
The People Who Helped Us See It
This report wouldn't exist without experts who went on record:
Kiri Masters (Founder, Retail Media Breakfast Club) identified and named The Doom Loop—the pattern destroying 200+ retail media networks. She explained why 70-80% of spend goes to Amazon and Walmart while everyone else fights over scraps, and why in-store retail media is the one surface AI can't disintermediate.
Drew Cashmore (Chief Strategy Officer, Vantage | Former Walmart Connect) helped build Walmart Connect from launch to $4+ billion. He told us exactly what the winning playbook requires—competitive people, tech, measurement, and GTM—and why literally nobody else has actually run it. His take on the two-year window is the most important strategic insight in the report.
Skye Frontier (EVP Strategy & Operations, Incremental) gave us the line that sums up the measurement crisis: ROAS is the high fructose corn syrup of measurement. Everyone knows it's bad, but it's everywhere and too much hassle to avoid. He also warned that AI won't fix measurement if the training data is still built on broken attribution.
Sarah Marzano (Principal Analyst, EMARKETER) explained why standard media mix models make retail media look worse than it performs—it's an apples-to-oranges comparison baked into the methodology. Her research on market sizing and competitive dynamics informs every serious conversation about where this industry is headed.
Sherry Smith (President of Retail Media, Criteo) built retail media at Walmart, Target, and Kroger. She made the case that retailers still own the fundamentals—trust, curation, fulfillment, loyalty—and that even AI-using shoppers continue using other channels 96% of the time.
Barry Frey (President & CEO, DPAA) has been building the case for in-store retail media while everyone else chased digital. With 80%+ of retail sales still in physical stores, his "Store as a Medium" thesis is finally getting the attention it deserves.
Jordan Weiers (Sr. Director, Adelaide) brought the attention measurement perspective—closed-loop attribution tells you what happened, not why. Without understanding impression quality, optimization defaults to capturing existing demand instead of creating new demand.
The Numbers That Matter
What We Found | The Number |
|---|---|
US retail media spend (2026) | ~$70B |
Amazon's market share (2025) | 79.7% |
Amazon + Walmart share of new dollars | 89% |
Executives who can't prove incrementality | 53% |
Who are increasing budgets anyway | 74% |
Concerned about AI disruption within 3 years | 69% |
In-store share of retail media | <1% |
What's In the Full Report
147 pages. Not a gated whitepaper with three pages of content and seven pages of vendor logos. Original research, frameworks, and playbooks built on 52 executive interviews and 100 survey responses.
Here's what you get:
The Doom Loop anatomy — The seven phases destroying 200+ RMNs, and the velocity variable that makes the gap unbridgeable
The Strategic Typology — Infrastructure Platforms, Strategic Ecosystems, Distribution Hedges, Ambient Future-Bets, and Toll Booths. Know which you're investing in.
The Measurement Stack OS — MMM + Matched Market Testing + Always-On Experiments + Simulation Layer. The operating system that actually works.
Channel-by-channel playbooks — Amazon, Walmart, Instacart, Target, Kroger, CVS, Home Depot, Best Buy, PayPal, DoorDash, and more. What to run, what to test, what to skip.
The Commercial Memory threat — Why agentic commerce isn't about losing impressions. It's about losing the preference layer entirely.
CFO pitch templates — Payback math, pilot playbooks, cost frameworks. What you actually need to get budget approved.
90-day, 12-month, and 24-month roadmaps — What to do Monday morning.
Get the Full Report
I see reports half this size from the big research firms selling for $5,000. Sometimes $10,000. Gated behind enterprise contracts.
This is 147 pages of original research—the most comprehensive retail media report ever published—and it's yours for the cost of an ADOTAT+ membership.
That's 52 executive interviews. 100 survey responses. 13 sections. Channel playbooks. Measurement frameworks. CFO templates. Roadmaps. Everything.
This is the report retail media didn't want written. Now it's written. The only question is whether you'll read it before your competitors do.
— Pesach
The Rabbi of ROAS
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