Not long ago, the phrase "retail media network" described a fairly specific business. A large retailer had millions of shoppers, knew what they were buying and realized that the combination of customer data, digital properties and transaction history could also be sold to advertisers. Amazon built an enormous advertising business around that model, and companies such as Walmart, Target and major grocery retailers followed.
Key takeaways
- Retail media is becoming commerce media: banks, airlines, delivery apps and restaurant chains are turning customer relationships into ad inventory.
- There are now more than 200 retail and commerce media networks worldwide, and global retail media spend is forecast to pass $320 billion by 2030.
- Each network defines audiences, attribution and sales differently, so a 5:1 ROAS on one is not the same as 5:1 on another.
- Supply is growing faster than the standards used to compare it. Buyers need to know what makes each opportunity different, not just its GEO, volume and CPM.
From retail media to commerce media
What started inside retail is now expanding well beyond it. Banks, airlines, travel companies, delivery apps, restaurants, marketplaces and other businesses with large customer bases are discovering that they possess many of the same ingredients that made retail media attractive in the first place: first-party customer data, frequent consumer interactions, owned digital surfaces and, crucially, information about what people actually buy.
The terminology is changing with the market. "Retail media" is increasingly becoming "commerce media," a broader category that reflects the fact that a company does not necessarily need to be a retailer to build an advertising business around its customers and transaction data. IAB UK, for example, describes retail media evolving into commerce media and points to finance, travel, gaming and telecoms companies that have launched media networks around their customer relationships.
The scale of that expansion is becoming difficult to ignore. A September 2026 analysis by Business Insider described retail media as an industry of roughly $200 billion, with more than 200 retail and commerce media networks operating globally and forecasts suggesting the market could exceed $320 billion by the end of the decade. The growth sounds impressive, but the proliferation of networks is also creating a problem for advertisers: practically every company with a sizeable customer relationship now has a reason to consider turning that relationship into advertising inventory.
Citi and McDonald's: a bank and a restaurant chain as media owners
Citi offers one of the clearest recent examples. On September 23, the bank launched Citi Commerce Media, an advertising platform designed to connect brands with its U.S. credit-card customers across Citi's digital ecosystem. The proposition is built around an asset few traditional media companies possess: transaction data. Citi says it serves more than 70 million U.S. customers and sees 6.5 billion transactions annually across more than 700 spending categories. For an advertiser, that creates the possibility of reaching audiences based not simply on what they browse or search for, but on signals derived from what they actually purchase.
McDonald's illustrates how far the same idea can extend into physical environments. The company is testing digital advertising displays at hundreds of U.S. drive-thrus as part of a broader media-network initiative. A restaurant chain that historically bought advertising from media owners can therefore begin operating as a media owner itself, using the physical and digital environments through which millions of customers already pass.
Almost any consumer business can be a media owner
Once the definition expands this far, the distinction between a media company and almost any large consumer business starts to become less obvious:
- A delivery app has an audience, purchase data and an app in which advertising can be displayed.
- An airline has loyalty data, booking behavior, a website, an app, airport touchpoints and millions of travelers.
- A bank has transaction data and digital banking environments.
- A restaurant chain has an app, loyalty program, ordering screens and physical locations.
- A marketplace has both buyers and sellers and can observe the transactions between them.
All of those businesses have something advertisers want: access to consumers close to a commercial decision.
Signals from where buying actually happens
That proximity is what makes commerce media different from much of traditional digital advertising. A social platform can infer that somebody is interested in travel. An airline may know that the same person regularly flies to New York. A publisher may know that someone reads automotive content. A bank may see that the customer recently made a large payment to a car dealership. A general advertising platform may place a user into a broad "frequent traveler" audience, while a hotel booking service can observe that the person is currently comparing hotels in Barcelona for specific dates.
These are different kinds of signals, but they share one characteristic: they are generated inside environments where commercial behavior actually occurs.
For advertisers, that is extremely attractive. Commerce media promises something digital advertising has spent years trying to improve: a shorter distance between advertising exposure and measurable business activity. A company that controls both the advertising environment and some part of the transaction can potentially tell an advertiser not only that an ad was viewed or clicked, but whether a purchase followed.
That closed-loop measurement has been one of the major reasons retail media grew so quickly. The difficulty is that the same advantage becomes considerably more complicated when hundreds of companies build their own version of it.
Same dashboard, different math
An advertiser may now buy media from Amazon, Walmart, a grocery chain, a delivery service, a travel platform, a bank and several other commerce networks. Each may define audiences differently, offer different advertising formats and use its own attribution windows and methodology for connecting advertising exposure with sales.
The advertiser is therefore left trying to compare results that may look similar on a dashboard but were calculated in different ways.
A reported return on ad spend of 5:1 on one network is not necessarily equivalent to a reported 5:1 somewhere else if the two platforms use different attribution windows, different definitions of a sale or different approaches to incrementality. One platform may count a transaction several days after an ad exposure, another may require a click, and a third may include customers who might have purchased anyway.
Standards are behind the market
The industry is well aware of the problem. IAB Tech Lab's Commerce Media Subgroup says retail media still lacks some of the fundamental standards that helped other parts of digital advertising scale, while IAB Europe reports that 53% of buyers see the lack of retail-media standards as a barrier. IAB and IAB Europe have been developing common definitions and measurement frameworks, including updated Commerce Media Measurement Standards and guidance on measuring incrementality, precisely because advertisers need a more consistent way to compare performance across networks.
The transition from retail media to commerce media makes that standardization problem harder because the industry is no longer trying to compare only retailers with other retailers. It is beginning to compare fundamentally different environments.
- What does an impression inside a banking app have in common with an advertisement on a supermarket website?
- How should an advertiser compare a sponsored product inside a marketplace with a digital screen at a drive-thru?
- How should purchase attribution work when one network owns the checkout while another can observe transaction data but does not control the merchant?
Those questions matter because the category is expanding faster than the infrastructure used to compare it. IAB Europe updated its Commerce Media Measurement Standards in January 2026 to reflect the widening market, but its framework itself demonstrates how much work remains. The current standards cover retailers and quick-commerce environments, while travel and finance media networks were still outside the covered categories in the published framework, with further expansion planned.
Traffic supply no longer means only visitors
For media buyers, this creates an unusual situation. The amount of valuable advertising supply is increasing, but discovering, evaluating and comparing that supply is becoming more difficult.
Ten years ago, a buyer looking for digital traffic might have divided the market into relatively familiar categories: search, social, display, native, email, affiliate and programmatic inventory. The modern supply landscape is considerably broader. A useful advertising opportunity may now sit inside a retailer's website, a bank's mobile app, a food-delivery platform, an airline loyalty program, a physical store, a connected screen or a marketplace with rich transaction data.
In other words, "traffic supply" no longer necessarily means website visitors or app installs. It can mean access to a specific audience at a specific commercial moment, combined with data that makes that audience more valuable.
What a marketplace needs to show
That change is important for marketplaces such as Traffberry because it expands what can reasonably be considered media supply. A publisher offering website traffic and a commerce platform offering access to authenticated purchasers may both be selling advertising opportunities, but the products are very different. Describing both only by GEO, volume and CPM would remove much of the information a buyer actually needs.
A useful traffic marketplace therefore has to make different forms of supply understandable without pretending they are identical. Buyers may need to know:
- where an opportunity appears;
- what first-party signals are available;
- whether the environment is digital or physical;
- what type of audience can be reached;
- how performance is measured and whether transaction or attribution data is available.
As commerce media expands, discovering inventory becomes only the first step; understanding what makes each piece of inventory different becomes increasingly important. The same theme runs through our notes on authenticated publisher audiences and lead provenance.
Companies that don't know they are publishers
There is an equally important implication for businesses that have never considered themselves publishers. A company with a large customer base may now possess media assets without thinking of them that way. Its app has attention. Its loyalty program has identity. Its transactions generate purchase signals. Its stores or physical locations have screens and footfall. Its website has high-intent users. Once those assets can be packaged for advertisers, the company has effectively created a new category of supply, and it can list that supply where buyers are looking.
That does not mean every company should build an ad network. In fact, the rush to do so is part of the industry's current problem. Operating a serious media business requires technology, sales, measurement, privacy infrastructure, advertiser demand and enough differentiated audience value to justify another buying platform. If hundreds of businesses create separate networks without interoperability or consistent measurement, advertisers inherit the operational burden.
The next phase of commerce media is therefore unlikely to be defined simply by how many new networks launch. The more important question is whether the industry can make all this new supply easier to discover, compare and buy.
Making sense of all of it
Retail media began with a powerful idea: companies that understand what their customers buy possess something valuable to advertisers. Commerce media is taking that idea much further by recognizing that retailers are not the only companies with customer relationships, first-party data and commercial touchpoints.
That expansion could create an enormous new class of advertising inventory. It could also leave media buyers navigating hundreds of disconnected networks, dashboards, definitions and measurement systems.
The advertising industry spent the last decade making digital inventory easier to buy at scale. Commerce media is now creating supply in places that were never previously thought of as media.
The challenge is no longer finding more places to put an ad. There are plenty of those. The challenge is making sense of all of them.
Sources
- Business Insider: The $200 billion retail media boom is causing headaches for CMOs (September 2026)
- Citi: Citi unveils Citi Commerce Media (September 23, 2026)
- People: McDonald's tests digital ads on drive-thru menus
- IAB Tech Lab: Commerce Media Subgroup
- IAB Europe: Updated Commerce (incl. Retail) Media Measurement Standards (January 2026)
- IAB Europe: Retail Media Hub
- IAB UK: Retail Media Growth Summit 2026: from retail media to commerce media