Retail media networks are projected to be value $179.5 billion by 2025, however capturing share and attaining long-term success gained’t hinge solely on rising their buyer base. With over 200 retail media networks now competing for advertiser consideration, the panorama has develop into more and more complicated and crowded. The RMNs that stand out will probably be these taking a differentiated strategy to assembly the evolving wants of advertisers.
The trade’s focus creates fascinating dynamics. Whereas some platforms have achieved important scale, almost 70% of RMN consumers cite “complexity within the shopping for course of” as their greatest impediment. That pressure, between explosive development and operational complexity, is forcing the trade to evolve past conventional approaches.
Because the panorama matures, which methods will outline the subsequent wave of development: world enlargement, hyperlocal focusing on, or each?
The evolution of retail media platforms
To know the place the trade is heading, it’s value analyzing how profitable platforms are addressing advertisers’ core challenges. Lack of measurement requirements throughout platforms continues to frustrate advertisers who need to examine efficiency throughout networks. Handbook processes dominate smaller networks, making marketing campaign administration inefficient and time-consuming.
On the similar time, most retailers lack the digital footprint essential for standalone success. This has created alternatives for platforms that may clear up a number of issues concurrently: standardization, automation, and scale.
DoorDash represents an fascinating case research on this evolution. The platform has constructed its promoting capabilities round reaching customers at their second of native want throughout a number of classes. With greater than 42 million month-to-month energetic customers as of December 2024, DoorDash gives scale and entry to high-intent customers throughout varied classes spanning eating places, groceries and retail.
The corporate’s strategy demonstrates how platforms can deal with advertiser ache factors via expertise. DoorDash’s latest platform announcement showcases this evolution: the corporate now serves advertisers with new AI-powered instruments and expanded capabilities. By its acquisition of advert tech platform Symbiosys, a next-generation retail media platform, manufacturers can develop their attain into digital channels, comparable to search, social, and show, and retailers can lengthen the breadth of their retail media networks.
International enlargement meets native precision
Worldwide enlargement presents each alternatives and challenges for retail media networks. Europe’s retail media trade is projected to surpass €31 billion by 2028,. This creates alternatives for networks that may clear up the expertise puzzle of working throughout a number of geographies.
The problem lies in constructing platforms that work seamlessly throughout nations whereas sustaining native relevance. Worldwide enlargement requires dealing with totally different currencies, laws, and cultural contexts—capabilities that many networks wrestle to develop.
DoorDash’s acquisition of Wolt illustrates how platforms can obtain world scale whereas sustaining native connections. The mixing permits manufacturers to handle campaigns throughout Europe and the U.S. via a single interface—precisely the type of operational effectivity that overwhelmed advertisers search.
The mixed entity now operates throughout greater than 30 nations, with DoorDash and Wolt Adverts crossing an annualized promoting income run price of greater than $1 billion in 2024. What makes this enlargement compelling isn’t simply the size—it’s how the combination maintains neighborhood-level precision throughout numerous geographies.
Wolt has remodeled from a meals supply platform into what it describes as a multi-category “shopping center in individuals’s pockets.”
The hyperlocal benefit: context beats demographics
Right here’s what’s actually altering the sport: the shift from demographic focusing on to contextual precision. Privateness laws favor contextual focusing on over behavioral monitoring, however that’s not the one purpose good networks are going hyperlocal.
Location-based intent alerts present dramatically increased conversion likelihood than conventional demographics. Actual-time contextual information—climate patterns, native occasions, proximity to success—influences buy selections in quick, actionable ways in which broad demographic focusing on merely can’t match.
DoorDash constructed its total promoting mannequin round this perception, reaching customers on the actual second of native want throughout a number of classes. The platform gives scale and entry to high-intent customers with contextual precision. A latest innovation that exemplifies this strategy is Dayparting for CPG manufacturers, which permits advertisers to focus on customers of their native time zones—a degree of time-based precision that distinguishes hyperlocal platforms from broader retail media networks.
In a single instance, Unilever utilized Dayparting to concentrate on late-night and weekend home windows for its ice cream campaigns, aligning advert supply with peak demand intervals. Over a two-week interval, 77% of attributed gross sales had been new-to-brand, demonstrating the ability of contextual timing in driving incremental attain.
Main manufacturers, together with Unilever, Coca-Cola, and Heineken, make the most of each DoorDash and Wolt platforms for hyperlocal focusing on, proving the mannequin is efficient for each endemic and non-endemic advertisers searching for neighborhood-level precision.
Know-how evolution: measurement and automation
The technical necessities for next-generation retail media networks lengthen far past primary promoting capabilities. Self-serve performance has develop into commonplace for worldwide geographies—not as a result of it’s fashionable, however as a result of handbook marketing campaign administration doesn’t scale throughout dozens of nations with totally different currencies, laws, and cultural contexts.
Cross-country marketing campaign administration requires unified dashboards that handle complexity whereas sustaining simplicity for advertisers. Automation isn’t non-compulsory anymore; it’s essential to compete with established gamers who’ve constructed machine studying into their core operations.
However right here’s what’s actually remodeling measurement: new attribution methodologies that transcend conventional ROAS. When platforms can combine success information with promoting publicity, they permit real-time efficiency monitoring that connects advert spend to precise enterprise outcomes fairly than simply clicks and impressions.
Progress on standardization continues via IAB tips addressing measurement consistency, alongside trade pushes for technical integration requirements. The problem lies in balancing standardization with differentiation—networks want to supply straightforward integration and constant measurement whereas sustaining distinctive worth propositions.
In a transfer towards addressing advertisers’ want for measurement consistency, DoorDash acknowledged that restaurant manufacturers valued each click on and impression-based attribution for his or her sponsored itemizing adverts, and not too long ago launched impression-based attribution and reporting in Adverts Supervisor. This has enabled restaurant manufacturers to achieve a deeper understanding of efficiency and outcomes pushed on DoorDash.
International expertise challenges add one other layer of complexity: multi-currency transactions, native fee strategies, regulatory compliance throughout nations, and cultural adaptation whereas sustaining platform consistency. These aren’t afterthoughts for worldwide platforms, they’re core competencies that decide success or failure.
Trade outlook: consolidation and alternative
Retail media is heading towards consolidation, however not in the way in which most individuals count on. Hyperlocal networks are positioned to seize share from undifferentiated RMNs that compete solely on stock quantity. Geographic specialization is turning into a viable various to conventional scale-focused approaches.
Concurrently, group influence measurement is gaining significance for model technique. Entrepreneurs are discovering that promoting {dollars} spent on native commerce platforms create multiplier results—supporting neighborhood companies and strengthening native economies in ways in which conventional e-commerce promoting doesn’t obtain.
The networks that perceive this dynamic, that may supply world platform capabilities with real native trade experience, are those positioned to outline retail media’s subsequent chapter. Success requires expertise integration that permits contextual and location-based focusing on, plus measurement options that show incrementality past conventional metrics.
The trail ahead
As retail media networks mature, success lies not in selecting between world scale and native relevance, however in attaining each concurrently. The DoorDash-Wolt mixture gives a compelling blueprint, demonstrating how expertise platforms can allow worldwide enlargement whereas deepening neighborhood-level connections.
For entrepreneurs navigating this evolution, the elemental query shifts from “the place ought to we promote?” to “how can we attain customers at their second of want?” Networks that reply this successfully—via world attain, hyperlocal precision, or ideally each, will write retail media’s subsequent chapter. to study extra about DoorDash Adverts? Get began at the moment.
