News – Week in focus
Retail media is one of the fastest-growing media channels in the UK, the latest AA/WARC Expenditure Report finds.
AA/WARC is now publicly presenting retail media as its own channel for the first time, providing a deeper understanding of the media marketplace after previously combining it with Search.
The report finds that retail media grew 17.5% year-on-year to reach £3.7bn in 2025, making it the third fastest-growing channel, behind addressable TV (37.0%) and social media, which includes YouTube (22.0%).
In Q4 2025, retail media saw the largest year-on-year growth among channels, up 30.5%, likely driven by key retail dates like Christmas and Black Friday.
The growth of retail media is expected to continue in the UK, with the report forecasting a year-on-year growth of 14.6% in 2026 to reach £4.2bn and 12.9% in 2027 to reach £4.8bn.
The channel’s growth has been attributed to budgets shifting away from less measurable channels. It finds that during times of economic uncertainty, there is a heightened focus on performance, which favours closed-loop, first-party ecosystems. As retail media can directly link ad spend to sales, it delivers strong ROI in an era when privacy regulations have made traditional digital tracking less effective.
AA/WARC defines retail media as advertising that occurs within a retailer’s or marketplace’s owned digital properties, such as its website, app, or marketplace platforms.
Global adoption
It’s not just in the UK where retail media is seeing growth. WPP Media’s This Year Next Year report, released in December, shows that global retail media spend in 2025 reached $174bn.
When looking at global ad spend, the report finds that commerce – which includes retail media networks like Amazon, travel platforms, and financial services media – had a 16% share. Meanwhile, content-driven advertising had 58%, intelligence – defined as searched ad revenue on platforms like Google – took 21%, and location, covering traditional and digital outdoor billboards and cinema, had 5%.
WPP Media describes retail as a ‘megatrend’ and suggests that marketing and sales have increasingly become one discipline, with media’s function expanding from content distribution to actively shaping the entire commerce experience.
However, recent data from emarketer indicates retail media is dominated by a few key players, with Amazon at the forefront.
It forecasts that by 2028, Amazon’s retail media revenues will exceed $75bn in the US, more than $65bn ahead of the next largest retail media network.
It’s a further indication of the developments that have continued since the release of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) Attitudes to Retail Media report from July 2025, where IAB Europe’s industry development and insights director, Marie-Clare Puffett, said: “Retail media is no longer an emerging trend, but a strategic priority.”
Brands increasingly diversifying retail media strategy
