Amazon this week announced the latest addition to its ad offerings, Brand+, which optimizes connected TV (CTV) and online video ads with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). The new solution brings together trillions of shopping, browsing and streaming signals to help brands reach potential customers across Amazon channels like Prime Video and Twitch as well as video publishers including Buzzfeed and Dotdash Meredith.
In a hypothetical use case for Brand+ offered by Amazon, a travel company would upload first-party data to Amazon DSP and the new capability would use machine learning to identify customers who've searched for travel gear, bought travel guides and streamed travel shows, delivering ads to these high-potential audiences.
Some beta testers of Brand+ saw more than a 10% increase in sales and over a 70% increase in website traffic, adding Brand+ to the list of AI-powered tools at advertisers' disposal, including Google's Performance Max and Meta’s Advantage+. But more so, Brand+ demonstrates how the convergence of retail media networks (RMN) and connected TV can satisfy marketer imperatives.
“As marketers increasingly focus on precision and ROI, retail media CTV is set to redefine the advertising landscape,” said Dave Peterson, general manager and global head of retail media at Epsilon, in emailed comments. “Prioritizing impactful, personalized campaigns over campaigns that have broad reach enables brands to forge deeper, more meaningful connections with consumers.”
By 2028, CTV ad spending is forecast to surpass traditional TV ad spend and omnichannel retail media will account for nearly a quarter of all U.S. media ad spend, per eMarketer data. The continued growth in and dominance of ad spend by two symbiotic, synergistic channels could finally deliver on digital’s promise of full-funnel, data-driven marketing.
“If you look at what brands and especially Fortune 500s are trying to achieve, it's speaking to specific people — based on first-party data from the retail media networks — in every touchpoint available for them,” said Oz Etzioni, CEO of advertising personalization platform Clinch. “Before CTV, it was pretty limited... CTV really opened up the full spectrum of how you communicate with people and how you start to take them down the funnel.”
Better data, better partnerships
The last few years have seen an increase in partnerships between retailers and media companies — NBCUniversal with Instacart and Walmart, Disney with Walmart and Kroger, Roku with Instacart, and so on — as both sides look to take advantage of the RMN-CTV convergence. For retailers, CTV opens their media offerings to off-site ad inventories.
“Authenticated data from CTV is hugely valuable, and comparatively, you’re actually able to do better identity matching with that authenticated data, whereas you're really not able to do so much with authenticated data from social,” Jeffrey Bustos, the former vice president of measurement addressability data at the IAB who recently joined Dentsu’s Merkle as senior vice president of retail media analytics. “We'll see that a lot more, especially as we continue to lose data signals.”
The authenticated data allows advertisers to reach audiences without the use of only their own deterministic data, expanding the reach from just the consumers who shop at a specific retailer to the millions of consumers who watch YouTube or Netflix, for example.
“As a retailer, I can use [CTV] data to create a lookalike audience, to then target a larger subset of people than just my [audience], and then I can see within that larger subset how many other people went to my store afterwards and bought something, whether it's online or in store. So that's the value,” Bustos said.
When it’s time to measure outcomes, the combination of CTV and RMN makes it easier and quicker for advertisers to see how their campaigns performed. The type of work that clean room provider Habu does with Kroger and Disney around audience activation is what advertisers should expect in the future, especially as players like Circana and Dunnhumby begin to offer cross-retail attribution, Bustos explained. But there’s still work to be done to connect the pipes and standardize data.
“We're pushing on that standardization with the IAB across all different retail media networks as they move up the funnel to be able to lean into conversion metrics and do it in a way that is comparable so that we can look at our media holistically, and determine the best places to spend and trust those results,” said Jill Cruz, executive vice president of commerce strategy at Publicis.
Personalized creative at scale
CTV has long been bandied about as a channel that can meet marketer needs around personalization at scale. As ad tech in the CTV space gets more sophisticated, especially alongside the rise of AI, advertisers can deliver on that promise with buys powered by retail media networks. A brand using Kroger Precision Marketing, for example, could buy the retailer’s audiences across Roku, Disney, YouTube and beyond — scaling the same way programmatic buys are.
“Within advertising, scale is everything and automation is everything. A retailer or brand using retail media data can now access multiple CTV partners using the same creative so they're able to scale a CTV buy,” said Bustos.
"Retail media creative has been a place where sometimes creatives go to die."
Jill Cruz
Executive vice president of commerce strategy, Publicis
Apart from versioning and personalization, CTV is likely to see even more creative experimentation as advertisers get more comfortable with the space. Instead of repurposing 15- and 30-second ads, there is an opportunity for agencies to make a splash, Cruz explained.
“Retail media creative has been a place where sometimes creatives go to die,” the executive said. “CTV can change that for retail media. Creative can be a little more custom and speak to that audience in a way that's more driving into the basket versus just equity building. That’s an area of opportunity in 2025.”
Along with opening the ad experience to creative that is more engaging and personalized, the combination of CTV and retail media gives advertisers more abilities to connect with consumers.
“You’re looking at different ad units, different ad experiences involving second screen, involving data that comes from the outside, like location, weather and sports,” said Clinch’s Etzioni. “I see a huge opportunity, especially for non-pure-performance players.”
The shoppable future
The growth of retail media and surge in shoppable formats could make the need for measurement standards more pronounced, according to Melanie Babcock, vice president of Orange Apron Media and monetization at The Home Depot.
“We were excited to see media partners elevate the importance of RMNs as one of their key customer segments,” Babcock wrote in emailed comments. “We will continue to see use cases on how RMNs can apply AI to operations, creative development and ad serving.”
"Just because the technology exists doesn’t mean we should do it."
Jeffrey Bustos
Senior vice president of retail media analytics, Merkle
Shoppable TV has been a media player and marketer talking points for years, to the point where “buying Jennifer Aniston’s sweater” has become a cliche in ad world circles. But the rise of AI and other machine learning is closer to making the dream of shoppable ads a reality. For example, video platform Kerv.ai uses AI-powered video analysis to identify and match objects in content with contextually relevant advertising experiences. The company has partnerships with NBCUniversal, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount and Disney.
“Leveraging the retail media world is a big partnership program for us,” said Gary Mittman, CEO of Kerv.ai. “Why would [RMNs] not want to provide a value of relevance and engagement to their presentation? That's where we fit like a glove into that universe.”
Still, the rise of better shoppable ad formats that utilize CTV and RMNs doesn’t mean that they are right for every marketer. Very few consumers are ready to buy a car via their remote, and many consumers have tired of the QR code renaissance.
“Just because the technology exists doesn't mean we should do it,” Bustos explained. “We have to really think about consumers being really lazy.”
The wild west
If consumers think they have it bad with the proliferation of CTV and streaming platforms, they have nothing on advertisers hoping to make sense of the retail media network space that, by some estimates, now has more than 200 players. While most RMN ad spend is with a few major players, the remainder will have to find a way to offer a competitive advantage to advertisers or find a new way forward.
“You're definitely likely to see aggregation,” said Kantar senior retail thought leader Barry Thomas. “You just can't get these dollars from big brands with a B-player media network, so there's lots of aggregation happening… for the majority, that's your future.”
While some RMNs have signed up with the likes of Instacart, CitrusAd, Epsilon or Criteo to address their market position, that strategy has often left these platforms in a “no man’s land,” unclaimed by either the brand or the agency, Cruz explained. As is often the case, not every business can be Amazon.
"You just can’t get these dollars from big brands with a B-player media network, so there’s lots of aggregation happening."
Barry Thomas
Senior retail thought leader, Kantar
“The innovation is going to come from identifying other B2B opportunities, such as selling supply chain capabilities, licensing proprietary tech or providing some other form of data-driven insights,” Cruz said.
The fragmentation of retail, retail media and CTV could help smaller players across the landscape find new revenue streams and partnerships, in a tide-raising-all-ships manner. Advertisers might be able to take advantage of the fragmentation in ways they couldn’t if the channels were completely separate.
“It could be a win for retailers saying, ‘We want to drive younger traffic into the store to purchase our product here,’ as well as CTV being able to utilize those audience to get bigger reach,” Cruz said.
