European Retail Media Market Set to Double This Year

The retail-media advertising market in Europe is expected to approximately double in size this year as brands shift larger portions of their marketing budgets to shopping-platform-based ad formats, according to recent research by WARC. Ecommerce News

WARC’s “Future of Commerce Media 2025” report estimates that global retail-media spend will rise 13.7 % this year to €152 billion (US$175 billion), with Europe showing especially high growth compared with more mature markets. Ecommerce News

Key Findings

• Advertisers in Europe are increasing their spending on retail media significantly, with sellers rethinking their business models to prioritise ad-revenues via their own platforms and marketplaces. Ecommerce News

• Retail-media in 2026 is forecast to slow growth to around 12.4 %, and 11.6 % in 2027, indicating that the peak acceleration phase is underway. Ecommerce News

• Retail-media formats include advertising placements within online-shop search results, product listings and apps — with 40 % of media-buyers surveyed describing retail media as a “full-funnel solution”. Ecommerce News

Why It Matters

The acceleration of retail-media spend in Europe reflects several underlying shifts:

• Retailers are increasingly acting as media-companies, monetising their first-party data and shopper traffic rather than relying solely on product margins.

• Brands are diversifying from traditional display and social advertising toward commerce-adjacent ad formats where Purchase-intent signals are stronger.

• For e-commerce players and platforms, this trend offers a dual revenue-stream model: product sales plus advertising income — strengthening long-term monetisation prospects.

Implications for Stakeholders

For brands and agencies: the rise of retail media means media-planning needs to adapt — budgets must be reallocated, measurement frameworks updated and full-funnel strategies revised to include “on-site” and “adjacent” retail-media placements.
For retailers and marketplaces: mature data-capabilities, ad-product design and effectiveness-measurement are becoming core competencies — not just logistics or assortment.
For the broader ecosystem: as growth normalises, standardisation, transparency and measurement will be more important — fragmentation and inconsistent metrics pose risks for effectiveness.

Looking Ahead

The next phase of retail-media growth in Europe is likely to hinge on:

• How well platforms scale ad-products and offer meaningful attribution and measurement to brands.

• Whether media-buyers shift more spend from upper-funnel to commerce-driven formats without sacrificing brand-building goals.

• The extent to which offline and in-store retail-media (digital screens in-store, connected-POS) catch up with online retail-media formats.

• How regulation (data/tracking/privacy) and competitive dynamics (platforms, social commerce) will impact spending patterns.