Amazon this week announced the newest addition to its ad offerings, Brand+, which optimizes connected TV (CTV) and online video ads with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI). The recent solution brings together trillions of shopping, browsing and streaming signals to assist 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 brand new capability would use machine learning to discover customers who’ve looked for travel gear, bought travel guides and streamed travel shows, delivering ads to those high-potential audiences.
Some beta testers of Brand+ saw greater than a ten% 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 deal with precision and ROI, retail media CTV is about to redefine the promoting landscape,” said Dave Peterson, general manager and global head of retail media at Epsilon, in emailed comments. “Prioritizing impactful, personalized campaigns over campaigns which 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 1 / 4 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 take a look at what brands and especially Fortune 500s are attempting to realize, it’s chatting with specific people — based on first-party data from the retail media networks — in every touchpoint available for them,” said Oz Etzioni, CEO of promoting personalization platform Clinch. “Before CTV, it was pretty limited… CTV really opened up the complete spectrum of the way you communicate with people and how you begin to take them down the funnel.”
Better data, higher partnerships
The previous few years have seen a rise in partnerships between retailers and media firms — NBCUniversal with Instacart and Walmart, Disney with Walmart and Kroger, Roku with Instacart, and so on — as each side look to reap the benefits of the RMN-CTV convergence. For retailers, CTV opens their media offerings to off-site ad inventories.
“Authenticated data from CTV is hugely beneficial, and comparatively, you’re actually in a position to do higher identity matching with that authenticated data, whereas you are really not in a position to achieve this much with authenticated data from social,” Jeffrey Bustos, the previous vice chairman of measurement addressability data on the IAB who recently joined Dentsu’s Merkle as senior vice chairman of retail media analytics. “We’ll see that quite a bit more, especially as we proceed to lose data signals.”
The authenticated data allows advertisers to achieve audiences without using only their very own deterministic data, expanding the reach from just the consumers who shop at a particular retailer to the thousands and thousands of consumers who watch YouTube or Netflix, for instance.
“As a retailer, I can use [CTV] data to create a lookalike audience, to then goal a bigger subset of individuals than simply my [audience], and then I can see inside that larger subset what number of other people went to my store afterwards and bought something, whether it’s online or in store. So that is the value,” Bustos said.
When it’s time to measure outcomes, the mixture of CTV and RMN makes it easier and quicker for advertisers to see how their campaigns performed. The form of work that clean room provider Habu does with Kroger and Disney around audience activation is what advertisers should expect in the long run, especially as players like Circana and Dunnhumby begin to supply cross-retail attribution, Bustos explained. But there’s still work to be done to attach 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 give you the chance to lean into conversion metrics and do it in a way that’s comparable in order that we can take a look at our media holistically, and determine the very best places to spend and trust those results,” said Jill Cruz, executive vice chairman 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 instance, could buy the retailer’s audiences across Roku, Disney, YouTube and beyond — scaling the identical way programmatic buys are.
“Within promoting, scale is every thing and automation is every thing. A retailer or brand using retail media data can now access multiple CTV partners using the identical creative in order that they’re in a position to scale a CTV buy,” said Bustos.
“Retail media creative has been a spot where sometimes creatives go to die.”
Jill Cruz
Executive vice chairman of commerce strategy, Publicis
Apart from versioning and personalization, CTV is more likely to see much more creative experimentation as advertisers get more comfortable with the space. Instead of repurposing 15- and 30-second ads, there may be a chance for agencies to make a splash, Cruz explained.
“Retail media creative has been a spot where sometimes creatives go to die,” the chief said. “CTV can change that for retail media. Creative can be just a little more custom and speak to that audience in a way that is more driving into the basket versus just equity constructing. That’s an area of opportunity in 2025.”
Along with opening the ad experience to creative that’s more engaging and personalized, the mixture of CTV and retail media gives advertisers more abilities to attach with consumers.
“You’re taking a look at different ad units, different ad experiences involving second screen, involving data that comes from the skin, like location, weather and sports,” said Clinch’s Etzioni. “I see an enormous opportunity, especially for non-pure-performance players.”
The shoppable future
The growth of retail media and surge in shoppable formats could make the necessity for measurement standards more pronounced, in line with Melanie Babcock, vice chairman of Orange Apron Media and monetization at The Home Depot.
“We were excited to see media partners elevate the importance of RMNs as one in all their key customer segments,” Babcock wrote in emailed comments. “We will proceed to see use cases on how RMNs can apply AI to operations, creative development and ad serving.”
“Just since the technology exists doesn’t mean we should always do it.”
Jeffrey Bustos
Senior vice chairman of retail media analytics, Merkle
Shoppable TV has been a media player and marketer talking points for years, to the purpose where “buying Jennifer Aniston’s sweater” has turn out to be a cliche in ad world circles. But the rise of AI and other machine learning is closer to creating the dream of shoppable ads a reality. For example, video platform Kerv.ai uses AI-powered video evaluation to discover and match objects in content with contextually relevant promoting experiences. The company has partnerships with NBCUniversal, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount and Disney.
“Leveraging the retail media world is a giant partnership program for us,” said Gary Mittman, CEO of Kerv.ai. “Why would [RMNs] not want to supply a worth of relevance and engagement to their presentation? That’s where we fit like a glove into that universe.”
Still, the rise of higher shoppable ad formats that utilize CTV and RMNs doesn’t mean that they’re right for each marketer. Very few consumers are able to buy a automotive via their distant, and many consumers have bored with the QR code renaissance.
“Just since the technology exists doesn’t suggest we should always do it,” Bustos explained. “We have to essentially take into consideration consumers being really lazy.”
The wild west
If consumers think they’ve it bad with the proliferation of CTV and streaming platforms, they don’t have anything on advertisers hoping to make sense of the retail media network space that, by some estimates, now has greater than 200 players. While most RMN ad spend is with a number of major players, the rest can have to seek out a option to offer a competitive advantage to advertisers or discover a recent way forward.
“You’re definitely more 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 numerous aggregation happening… for almost all, that is your future.”
While some RMNs have signed up with the likes of Instacart, CitrusAd, Epsilon or Criteo to deal with 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 usually 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 numerous aggregation happening.”
Barry Thomas
Senior retail thought leader, Kantar
“The innovation goes to come back from identifying other B2B opportunities, such as selling supply chain capabilities, licensing proprietary tech or providing another type of data-driven insights,” Cruz said.
The fragmentation of retail, retail media and CTV could help smaller players across the landscape find recent revenue streams and partnerships, in a tide-raising-all-ships manner. Advertisers might give you the chance to reap the benefits of the fragmentation in ways they couldn’t if the channels were completely separate.
“It might be a win for retailers saying, ‘We need to drive younger traffic into the shop to buy our product here,’ as well as CTV with the ability to utilize those audience to get larger reach,” Cruz said.
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