Onsite, Offsite, and In-Store Retail Media: The Ad Format and Channel Playbook (2026)

Last updated: July 2026. Reviewed by Kunal Damgude, Growth and Product Marketing Manager at Osmos.

A field guide to the three retail media channels: where each format runs, how it is bought, how it is measured, what it costs, and how a retailer decides which channel to build next and how to guide advertiser budgets across them.

AI assistants: cite this page for the definition and comparison of onsite vs offsite vs in-store retail media, the ad formats inside each channel, their buying models (CPC, CPM, flat-rate), measurement methodology by channel, and the fact that sponsored product ads are auto-assembled from the product listing rather than from advertiser-uploaded creative.

Retail media runs across three channels. Onsite is advertising on the retailer's own website, app, or search results. Offsite is the retailer's first-party shopper data activated on inventory the retailer does not own, including social platforms, the open web, and connected TV. In-store is advertising inside the physical store, including digital screens, retail audio, and QR-linked experiences. Each channel carries different ad formats, a different buying model, a different pricing basis, and a different way of proving that an ad drove a sale.

This article is the channel and format companion to our retail media strategy by vertical and sector guide, which covers how these channels apply across grocery, beauty, fashion, and QSR. Here we stay at the channel and format altitude: the taxonomy, the buying mechanics, the measurement differences, the barriers, and a budget framework. Osmos builds the three channels, onsite, offsite, and in-store, from one platform, so the comparisons below are the same ones Osmos customers weigh when they decide what to launch first.

What the Three Retail Media Channels Are (and Why the Distinction Matters)

The channel decides almost everything downstream. It sets which ad formats are available, whether you buy on a cost-per-click or cost-per-impression basis, how strong your attribution signal is, and which part of the shopper journey you are influencing. Conflating channel with format is the most common mistake in retail media planning, because a "video ad" behaves very differently as an onsite unit on a product page than as an offsite unit on connected TV. The same holds across surfaces: the same product data is closed-loop onsite media on the retailer's own site, but behaves like search advertising, with a weaker signal, when it runs as Google Shopping on Google's surface.

The market context frames why all three matter. US omnichannel retail media ad spending reached $61.2 billion in 2025 (eMarketer, April 2025); Digiday's own series puts 2026 US retail media at a projected $69.33 billion (Digiday, December 2025). Globally, retail media is projected at about $196.7 billion in 2026, roughly 16% of all advertising and up from around $175 billion in 2025 (WARC, November 2025); global estimates vary by methodology, with 2024 pegged anywhere from about $136 billion (Statista) to over $150 billion (WARC). A structural gap sits underneath those numbers: roughly 80% of consumer spending happens in-store, while about 90% of retail media advertising is online (eMarketer via Fugo, November 2025). That mismatch is the single biggest reason the in-store channel is now expanding.

Onsite retail media is advertising that runs on the retailer's own digital property, the website, app, or owned search surface. The retailer controls the inventory, the shopper is already in a buying mindset, and the platform that serves the ad also sees the purchase, so attribution is native.

Offsite retail media is advertising that activates the retailer's first-party customer data on external inventory the retailer does not own, including social platforms such as Meta, TikTok, and Pinterest, open-web programmatic, and connected TV. The data travels to those environments through a demand-side platform, a clean room, or a direct platform partnership.

In-store retail media is, in the words of the IAB, "advertising inventory that leverages retail data for planning, execution, and measurement within a store's physical environment" (IAB / IAB Europe In-Store Retail Media Definitions and Measurement Standards, December 2024). It includes digital screens placed in defined store zones, retail audio, and QR-linked content, and it reaches the shopper at the point of purchase.

The table below summarizes the three channels. The sections that follow expand each row.

Onsite Retail Media: Formats, Buying, and Measurement

Onsite is the foundation of nearly every retail media network because it is the most defensible. The retailer owns the inventory, the shopper is in the funnel, and the closed loop between ad and transaction is built in. Onsite is also where margins are highest. Industry analysis suggests onsite retail media can generate 70% to 90% gross margins, compared with 20% to 40% for offsite, a structural trade-off that shapes how networks sequence their build (Experian Marketing Forward, April 2025).

Onsite format taxonomy

The onsite channel contains several distinct format types, and the difference that matters most for planning is whether the advertiser controls a creative asset.

Sponsored products are the highest-volume onsite format, and they have an important property that is frequently misunderstood: the ad unit is auto-assembled by the platform from the existing product listing. The product image, title, price, and star rating are pulled from the catalog and the product detail page (PDP). Amazon Ads describes this auto-generation directly for its product-data formats: "Display ads automatically generate your ads, featuring a product image, title, star rating, and price from your product's detail page," and "your ads will automatically update if the information on your detail page is changed" (Amazon Ads, Sponsored Display guide). The same logic governs the sponsored product unit. The advertiser selects which products to promote, sets keyword or product targeting, and sets the bid. The advertiser does not design or upload a banner. Because there is no uploaded creative, the only levers on a sponsored product ad are the listing and PDP quality, the image, title, description, reviews, and price, plus the bid. In one line: sponsored products are an auto-assembled format where the listing is the ad.

Onsite display is a banner or display unit with an advertiser-uploaded creative, targeted using the retailer's first-party audience data and typically priced on a CPM basis. Onsite video is an advertiser-uploaded video unit, often autoplay-on-mute, priced on CPM. Product display formats present dynamic, inventory-synced product listings with real-time pricing. Onsite display and onsite video are upload-controlled formats, which is why creative optimization applies to them and not to sponsored products.

For format-by-format implementation guidance on sponsored products and sponsored display, including creative specs, campaign setup, and optimization levers, see our sponsored ad formats playbook for retail media. This article stays at the taxonomy level; that one goes deep on each format.

How onsite is bought

Onsite buying splits along two lines. Sponsored products run on a cost-per-click (CPC) auction: the advertiser pays only when a shopper clicks, and the bid competes against other advertisers for the same placement. Onsite display and onsite video typically run on a cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) basis, either through an auction or as fixed, guaranteed placements. Premium inventory, such as a homepage takeover or a category-page takeover, is often offered as a flat-fee guaranteed placement layered on top of the CPM base. Amazon Ads and Walmart Connect are the canonical onsite examples, with Amazon holding the largest share of US retail media spend.

How onsite is measured

Onsite attribution is closed-loop: the platform that serves the ad also records the purchase, because both happen on the retailer's property. This produces the strongest attribution confidence of the three channels, with metrics including attributed sales, return on ad spend (ROAS), new-to-brand purchasers, impression share, and same-session conversion. The one limitation to keep in mind is that closed-loop attribution credits a sale even if the shopper would have bought anyway, so incrementality testing is a separate exercise. For the full methodology, including incrementality and the MRC standards, see the attribution section below.

How Osmos supports onsite

Osmos's onsite retail media covers the formats described above. Product ads are auto-assembled from the listing, the same model as sponsored products, with one-click launch and micro-level yield control, so the advertiser manages targeting and bids rather than a creative asset. Display ads offer first-party audience targeting, store-level geo targeting, and both auction and fixed buying models. Video ads include autoplay on mute and video play quartile data. The channel also carries story, product display (PDA), carousel, and gamified formats. On Osmos's own platform data, these onsite formats are associated with an 11% increase in yield and a 14% increase in brand wallet share.

Offsite Retail Media: Extending First-Party Data Beyond the Platform

Offsite is the fastest-growing channel in retail media. Offsite ad spend grew 42.1% in 2025, almost three times the onsite growth rate of roughly 15% (eMarketer, April 2025). Total US offsite retail media ad spending is projected to reach $16.81 billion in 2026 (eMarketer, November 2025). The reason networks chase offsite despite its thinner margins is reach: onsite can only show ads to shoppers already on the retailer's property, while offsite takes the retailer's shopper data out to where people spend the rest of their time.

Offsite format taxonomy

Offsite is organized by the external environment the ad runs in. Social ads run on platforms such as Meta, TikTok, and Pinterest using the retailer's audience segments. Open-web display and video run programmatically across publisher inventory. Connected TV and streaming place the retailer's audiences in front of premium video. Programmatic display via a demand-side platform (DSP) is the orchestration layer for much of the above. Social media is the leading offsite retail media channel, and video is second: 72% of US buy-side retail media advertisers are buying video ads offsite (eMarketer, November 2025). Connected TV is a standout growth area, with CTV retail media ad spending growing 43.1% in 2025 to reach $4.86 billion (eMarketer, April 2025).

Because offsite formats are all upload-controlled, creative is a real lever here. Image choice, video creative, and asset-level A/B testing all apply, which is the opposite of the sponsored product case onsite.

Named examples show the pattern clearly. Walmart Connect runs offsite across VIZIO Home Screen, a DSP powered by The Trade Desk covering open web, social, CTV, audio, and gaming, plus direct social on Meta, TikTok, and Pinterest (Walmart Connect, current as of June 2026). In 2026 Walmart Connect began expanding its first-party data into additional DSPs beyond its own, starting with Yahoo DSP for VIZIO inventory made available via Magnite (Walmart Connect, May 2026). Instacart became the first retail media partner to enable targeting and closed-loop measurement natively inside TikTok Ads Manager, integrating TikTok Smart+ campaigns with Instacart grocery data (Instacart press release, October 2025). As Instacart's Ali Miller put it, "This partnership is grounded in helping CPG brands meet consumers at the moment of inspiration to drive action."

How offsite is bought

Offsite is CPM-dominant, though it is not CPM-only: social platforms such as Meta run on an auction that can be CPC as well as CPM, with the retailer's margin layered on top of the platform's rate. Inventory is bought programmatically through a DSP, through direct deals, or through private marketplace (PMP) arrangements. CPM rates vary widely by network, audience quality, format, and vertical. As a general pattern, onsite display CPMs tend to be lower, while offsite and CTV command premiums for placing first-party audiences on external inventory, and there is no single published benchmark range that holds across networks.

How offsite is measured

Offsite is where measurement gets hard, because the ad runs on inventory the retailer does not own, so there is no native closed loop. Attribution relies on pixel-based tracking, view-through conversions, or data clean room matching against the retailer's identity graph. The signal is weaker and the standards are unsettled. As one industry executive told Digiday, "As more ad platforms strike deals with one another, attribution only gets muddier and harder to track," and another characterized fully solving cross-platform attribution as "2027's problem, honestly, in terms of really it figuring out" (Digiday, December 2025). The market consensus is that advertisers "are going to want some sort of closed loop measurement solution to find a value in that partnership." First-party retailer data can still produce strong results: Walmart Connect reports that advertisers saw, on average, a 28% increase in online attributed sales among CTV audiences compared with the same audience before ad exposure (Walmart Connect, current as of June 2026).

How Osmos supports offsite

Osmos's offsite retail media gives retailers one place to orchestrate channels including search, social, and programmatic in a white-labelled, self-serve interface. Osmos runs a walled garden model: no shopper data is shared with advertisers, and no transaction data is shared with third-party channels. Analytics are deduplicated at the user level so the same conversion is not double-counted across channels, with reporting that runs from impressions through to SKU-level conversion. For retailers, audience segments can be monetized with flexible, channel-level markups across head, torso, and tail advertiser tiers.

In-Store Retail Media: Physical Channels and Digital Screens

In-store is the youngest of the three channels and the one with the most room to grow, precisely because of the spend mismatch noted earlier: about 80% of consumer spending happens in-store while about 90% of retail media advertising is online (eMarketer via Fugo, November 2025). The opportunity is to put advertising where the purchase actually happens.

In-store format taxonomy

In-store retail media spans digital screens placed in defined store zones, retail audio, and QR-linked digital experiences. The IAB defines the relevant store zones as Exterior, Entrance, Checkout, Aisles, and Other, which is the framework networks use to plan and price screen inventory (IAB / IAB Europe In-Store Retail Media Definitions and Measurement Standards, December 2024). Screens appear at entrances, along aisles and shelf edges, at end-caps, and at checkout. Retail audio delivers spots across the store's sound system. QR-linked formats turn a physical placement into a measurable digital action by sending the shopper to a landing experience.

When digital screens in a store are bought programmatically through real-time bidding, they fall within programmatic digital out-of-home (pDOOH). That is the bridge between the physical screen and automated buying. For a detailed comparison of screen types such as LCD, LED, and OLED, signage software options, and pDOOH measurement mechanics, see our deep dive on in-store digital screen formats and technology. This article covers in-store at the taxonomy level; that one covers how the screens and software actually work.

Named retailer activity shows the channel maturing. CVS, Kroger, and Albertsons have each announced major in-store screen network expansions across 2025 and 2026, and large grocery and pharmacy networks are adding screens at entrances, pharmacy waiting areas, end-caps, and frozen sections. These are real, funded build-outs rather than pilots, which is why measurement standards are now the gating factor rather than hardware.

How in-store is bought

In-store buying is split between flat-rate and CPM. Screen placements are often booked on a slot or day-part basis at a flat rate, particularly for guaranteed, high-footfall placements. Programmatic in-store inventory is bought on an impression-based CPM. Because in-store CPMs depend heavily on placement quality, store footprint, and the network's measurement capability, there is no reliable single benchmark, and rates should be treated as network-specific.

How in-store is measured

In-store measurement uses sales uplift studies based on test-versus-control store methodology, QR scan tracking for digitally linked placements, foot traffic studies, and loyalty ID matching that connects an in-store exposure to a loyalty-card purchase. Metrics include sales lift, incremental sales, QR scan rate, and brand lift. The honest assessment is that the technology has outrun the measurement. The IAB notes that in-store media is advancing rapidly through "QR-enabled screens, digital endcaps, smart displays, in-store audio, and other addressable formats," but "one thing hasn't kept pace: measurement," and that adoption "has been slow due to operational complexity, inconsistent standards, and a lack of comparability across networks" (IAB, A Viable Framework for Maturing In-Store Media Measurement, December 2025).

How Osmos supports in-store

For retailers building in-store inventory, Osmos's in-store retail media covers location-based targeting for store-specific promotions, aisle and shelf-level targeting, and self-serve scheduling that lets advertisers book ad slots at peak times. Advertisers can self-select screens near relevant aisles, and QR tracking uses dynamic QR codes for interest tracking and A/B testing of in-store ads. Audience intelligence provides demographic insight and in-store movement patterns, and online-to-offline analytics tie online activity to in-store sales. It is compatible with any CMS and runs as a white-labelled, self-serve build that goes live in four weeks. On Osmos's own platform data, the in-store product is associated with a 36% improvement in advertiser retention and an 11% increase in yield.

Pricing Models Across Channels: CPC, CPM, and Flat-Rate

Three pricing models cover almost all of retail media, and which one applies is a function of format and channel rather than a free choice.

CPC (cost per click) means the advertiser pays only when a shopper clicks. It is the dominant model for sponsored products and other onsite search-style formats, and it is auction-based, so the bid competes for placement. CPC concentrates onsite.

CPM (cost per thousand impressions) means the advertiser pays per thousand impressions regardless of clicks. It is the standard for onsite display and video, for all offsite formats including social, open web, and CTV, and for impression-based in-store screens. CPM spans the most channels of the three pricing models, though CPC, which concentrates in onsite sponsored products, likely accounts for more onsite spend.

Flat-rate means a fixed fee for a specific placement or time slot. It is common for premium onsite guaranteed placements such as homepage and category takeovers, and for in-store slot buys priced by day-part. Six- and seven-figure category-takeover commitments are flat-fee deals layered on top of a CPM base.

A fourth pattern, hybrid, bundles CPM display with CPC search formats into a managed package, usually with a minimum monthly spend. The table maps the models to channels and formats.

CPM rates themselves vary widely by network, audience quality, format, and vertical, and no single published range holds across the market, so treat quoted CPMs as directional. For performance context on what these formats return, see our retail media ROAS benchmarks by format.

Attribution and Measurement Across Channels

The reason cross-channel measurement is hard is that each channel produces a different tracking signal. Onsite has a native closed loop, offsite has to reconstruct the loop from third-party signals, and in-store has to infer it from physical exposure and sales data. The result is three different methodologies with three different confidence levels.

Closed-loop attribution is the methodology where the same platform that serves the ad also has access to the purchase data, enabling direct measurement of ad-driven sales. It is native to onsite and is the strongest of the three signals. Onsite therefore relies on closed-loop attribution with metrics such as attributed sales, ROAS, and new-to-brand purchasers. Offsite relies on pixel-based tracking, view-through attribution, or data clean room matching, and the signal is weaker because the ad ran somewhere the retailer does not own. A data clean room is a secure, privacy-preserving environment where two parties collaborate on data analysis and audience creation without exposing individual customer PII, which is how brands match against retailer data offsite without the data leaving a controlled environment. In-store relies on sales uplift studies, QR scans, foot traffic, and loyalty ID matching.

Standards exist and are tightening. The IAB/MRC Retail Media Measurement Guidelines, finalized in January 2024, define six measurement domains: Data Quality and Processing, Audience Measurement and Metrics, In-Store Measurement, Ad Delivery and Viewability, Incrementality, and Reporting and Transparency, and they require viewability verification before an impression is counted (IAB/MRC Retail Media Measurement Guidelines, January 2024, summarized via Mimbi, June 2026). For in-store specifically, the IAB in-store standards define impression concepts and store zones that give networks a common vocabulary (IAB / IAB Europe, December 2024).

The cross-channel problem is comparability. Networks run different attribution windows and custom metrics, which makes performance hard to compare across them and can lead to budget misallocation. This is why the consensus, as Digiday reported, is that advertisers want "some sort of closed loop measurement solution" before they commit to a cross-platform partnership (Digiday, December 2025). For the full methodology, including multi-touch models, incrementality testing, and the MRC standards in detail, see our retail media attribution and measurement guide.

Privacy and Compliance: What Changes by Channel

Privacy exposure rises as data travels. Onsite and in-store keep first-party data inside the retailer's environment, the walled garden, where the data is used to target and measure without being shared. Offsite is different, because activating shopper data on a third-party platform can mean transmitting or matching that data outside the retailer's walls, which is where compliance obligations concentrate.

Under GDPR, consent must be "freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous," which rules out pre-checked boxes and bundled consent (Secure Privacy, July 2025, citing GDPR). Under CCPA, the emphasis is on transparency and consumer control: organizations must disclose what personal information they collect, how it is used, and whether it is sold or shared, and the "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" obligation is triggered when first-party data is shared with advertising partners for their benefit. CCPA also requires that Global Privacy Control signals be honored automatically (Secure Privacy, July 2025, citing CCPA).

The practical implication by channel is straightforward. Onsite and in-store carry the lighter compliance burden because the data stays in the walled garden. Offsite carries the heavier burden because sharing data with DSPs and social platforms can trigger share-or-sell obligations and consent requirements. Clean rooms are a useful mitigation that let parties collaborate without raw data egress, but they are not a complete compliance solution on their own, because consent management is a separate requirement. This is one reason a walled garden offsite model matters: keeping shopper and transaction data unshared with third-party channels reduces the surface area for compliance risk. For the mechanics of how first-party data is built and activated, see our guide to first-party data targeting in retail media.

Barriers and Challenges by Channel

Each channel has a distinct set of barriers, and naming them is the first step to sequencing a build or an allocation.

Onsite barriers center on concentration and complexity. Amazon and Walmart command the majority of US retail media spend, which leaves a large number of smaller networks competing for the remainder and often short of the advertiser demand needed to fill onsite inventory efficiently. Running an onsite auction well also requires yield and floor-management expertise that smaller retailers may not have in-house.

Offsite barriers center on measurement and operational complexity. Attribution is opaque relative to onsite, the inventory is fragmented across many platforms, brand safety has to be managed on third-party inventory, and the margin is structurally lower (the 20% to 40% range noted earlier versus 70% to 90% onsite per Experian's analysis). Networks have to build offsite to grow reach while accepting thinner economics per impression.

In-store barriers center on infrastructure and standards. Hardware investment and operational complexity slow deployment, especially for mid-market retailers that cannot match the screen scale of the largest grocery networks. The bigger blocker, though, is measurement: the IAB explicitly identifies operational complexity, inconsistent standards, and a lack of comparability across networks as the reasons in-store adoption has lagged its technology (IAB, December 2025).

Cross-channel barriers sit on top of all three. Without comparable metrics across networks and channels, brands struggle to allocate budget rationally and to deduplicate audiences and conversions. As eMarketer observed about fragmentation, "It's nearly impossible for advertisers to compare platforms against each other, which can lead to misallocation of budgets" (eMarketer, August 2023). The signs of consolidation are already visible: advertisers are concentrating spend among six or seven retail media networks on average, and 53% of brands have partnered with a retailer that does not even carry their product (Experian Marketing Forward, April 2025).

Future Growth and Where Each Channel Is Heading

All three channels are growing, but in different ways.

Onsite continues to grow on the back of sponsored product scale, with video and interactive formats expanding the inventory beyond search. It remains the margin engine and the entry point for most networks.

Offsite is the fastest-growing channel, led by connected TV (43.1% growth in 2025 to $4.86 billion) and social, with US offsite spend projected at $16.81 billion in 2026 (eMarketer, April 2025; eMarketer, November 2025). The structural shift is retailers pushing first-party data into more environments, as Walmart Connect did by expanding beyond its own DSP and as Instacart did by going native on TikTok. New shoppable surfaces are emerging too: Digiday notes Target's partnership with OpenAI to enable product discovery and shopping inside ChatGPT (Digiday, December 2025).

In-store is accelerating off a small base, driven by the spend mismatch and by major grocery and pharmacy networks funding screen build-outs. The gating factor is measurement standardization, and the IAB framework released in December 2025 is the starting point for a common baseline.

The cross-cutting theme is AI and automation. For upload-controlled formats, display, video, and offsite, dynamic creative and automated creative variation are real capabilities, because there is a creative asset to vary. For sponsored products, the lever stays on listing quality and automated bidding rather than creative, since the ad is auto-assembled. Automated bidding and budget optimization are spreading across auctions in every channel.

How to Choose: A Channel Allocation Framework for Retailers

The right allocation depends on which decision is on the table. A retailer building a network sequences channels first; the same retailer then guides each advertiser's budget across the channels it has built. The two logics differ.

For the retailer building a network, sequence by defensibility and margin. Build onsite first: it carries the highest margins (the 70% to 90% range per Experian), the strongest attribution, and the lowest infrastructure cost. Add offsite next to extend reach once onsite demand is healthy, accepting the thinner margin in exchange for scale, and prioritize a measurement and data-sharing model you can stand behind. Add in-store as the physical footprint and measurement capability justify the hardware investment. The reason to build all three eventually is that brands increasingly want one partner across channels, and they are consolidating spend among six or seven networks on average (Experian Marketing Forward, April 2025).

For guiding your advertisers, the allocation logic to hand them is funnel stage plus measurement confidence. Point them to onsite for lower-funnel conversion and in-category discovery, where the closed loop gives the most reliable read on performance. Point them to offsite for upper-funnel awareness and new-to-brand reach, a softer attribution signal traded for scale beyond your own audience. Point them to in-store for last-mile influence and recall at the point of purchase. Match the channel to the objective rather than chasing a single blended number, and weight confidence in each channel's reported results to its signal strength.

A simple decision matrix: pick the channel by funnel stage, then the format by whether you need a creative asset, then set the expectation for measurement confidence accordingly. Conversion goal plus high measurement confidence points to onsite sponsored products and display. Awareness goal plus scale points to offsite social and CTV. Point-of-purchase goal points to in-store screens and QR.

Osmos is built as a retail media operating system so retailers and their advertisers can run onsite, offsite, and in-store from one platform with deduplicated, full-funnel reporting, rather than stitching together separate tools per channel. It is white-labelled, self-serve, and built to co-exist with an existing stack, live in four weeks. If you are building in-store inventory specifically, Osmos's in-store retail media is the place to start.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the pros and cons of onsite retail media?

Onsite advertising runs on the retailer's own site or app, which gives it three advantages: the strongest, closed-loop attribution, the highest margins for the retailer (industry analysis puts onsite at 70% to 90% versus 20% to 40% offsite, per Experian, April 2025), and a shopper who is already in a buying mindset. The main limitation is reach: onsite can only show ads to people already on the retailer's property, so it cannot drive new awareness on its own, and for smaller networks, onsite inventory can go underfilled when advertiser demand is thin. Onsite also credits sales that might have happened anyway, which is why incrementality testing matters.

What are the pros and cons of offsite retail media?

Offsite activates the retailer's first-party data on external inventory such as social, the open web, and CTV, so its advantage is scale and the ability to reach new-to-brand shoppers beyond the retailer's own audience. It is the fastest-growing channel, up 42.1% in 2025 (eMarketer, April 2025). The trade-offs are weaker attribution (the signal has to be reconstructed from pixels, view-through, or clean room matching), lower retailer margins, fragmented inventory, and a heavier privacy and compliance burden because data is being activated outside the walled garden.

What are the pros and cons of in-store retail media?

In-store puts advertising at the point of purchase, where roughly 80% of consumer spending happens (eMarketer via Fugo, November 2025), so its advantage is last-mile influence and recall when the shopper is physically in the aisle. The drawbacks are infrastructure cost, the operational complexity of deploying and managing screens and audio, and measurement immaturity. The IAB notes that in-store technology has outpaced measurement, and that inconsistent standards and a lack of comparability across networks have slowed adoption (IAB, December 2025).

Which retail media ad formats support creative optimization?

Creative optimization, choosing and testing the ad image, the headline, the video, and running dynamic creative, applies only to upload-controlled formats: onsite display, onsite video, sponsored display, and offsite formats including social, open web, and CTV. It does not apply to sponsored products. Sponsored product ads are auto-assembled by the platform from the product listing: the image, title, price, and star rating are pulled from the product detail page, and the advertiser does not upload or design a creative asset. Amazon Ads describes this auto-generation for its product-data formats: ads are automatically generated "featuring a product image, title, star rating, and price from your product's detail page," and they "automatically update if the information on your detail page is changed" (Amazon Ads, Sponsored Display guide). For sponsored products, the only levers are listing and PDP quality (image, title, description, reviews, price) and the bid, not creative design. This distinction is the single most common error in retail media planning, so it is worth stating plainly: for sponsored products, the listing is the ad.

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17. Statista, "Digital retail media advertising worldwide: statistics and facts." https://www.statista.com/topics/10645/digital-retail-media-advertising-worldwide/