The retail media landscape might be young, but it’s moving at breakneck speed in terms of competition—and retailers are increasingly feeling less confident in their ability to increase retail media revenue.

In four short years, retail media has exploded from being an $18.8 billion business to one that’s worth $54.9 billion, according to a new Retail Media Industry report by media buying firm Dentsu. And as the pie has grown, more and more players have jumped in to grab a piece.

Intense competition is why 78% of retailers surveyed expect retail media revenue to increase in the next three years, down from 91% last year, Dentsu reported.

“It’s a drop, but it’s still a lot of retailers that are saying, ‘I’m going to see revenue increase next year,’” Megan Cameron, EVP of new stream media at Dentsu’s retail media practice, told Retail Brew. “Perhaps that level of increase is going to be smaller and the increases will be harder fought and harder earned for those retailers that do see an increase year over year.”

Retailers that run an ads business are citing their own direct retail media networks as competitors, but also called out first-party data providers like Meta and YouTube as top competitors, the report stated.

Keep reading here.—VC

JPMorgan Chase is teaming up with Walmart to offer an “embedded finance solution” for third-party sellers on Walmart Marketplace.

The solution allows sellers to “accept, manage, and send funds” through a single provider and without leaving the platform, Lia Cao, head of embedded finance and solutions at JPMorgan Payments, said in a statement.

In lieu of this kind of solution, customers are typically referred to a third-party service provider for each transaction, which essentially disentangles payments from other business functions such as managing cash flow and onboarding clients.

Keep reading here.—AV

Faced with tariffs and a potential pullback in consumer spending, major retailers popped the hood of their businesses this earnings season, giving investors a look at their burgeoning retail media networks.

Let’s dive into the numbers.

Amazon is still king, and in 2024, it brought in $56.2 billion in advertising revenue. The e-commerce juggernaut still sits comfortably behind Google and Meta as the No. 3 ad platform in the US.

Walmart, the “every day low prices” retailer, brought in $4.4 billion in advertising revenue in FY24, a 27% YoY increase. That could soon be bolstered through the company’s expansion into CTV now that it has finalized its $2.3 billion acquisition of Vizio.

Keep reading here on Marketing Brew.—RB