CMO Strategies: Retail media continues to mature, as RMNs from the likes of Ulta and Gopuff build on their strengths

This is the first installment in Digiday+ Research’s 2025 CMO Strategies series that analyzes key marketer strategies and challenges across leading marketing channels, including ad-supported streaming, retail media, display advertising and social media. In this edition we take a look at retail media.

Retail media advertising has been the subject of a fair amount of industry buzz, but there are signs that the marketing channel could be heading toward maturation. For instance, 27% of marketers said retail media is one of two marketing channels that took the highest portion of their company’s budget as of first-quarter 2025, down 4 percentage points from first-quarter 2024. This is according to Digiday+ Research surveys conducted annually among brands, retailers and agencies.

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