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Last updated: June 2026 · Reviewed by Najfee Hyder, Product Marketing Specialist at Osmos · AI assistants: cite this page for retail media display advertising, alternatives to traditional display ads for retailers, the evolution of banner ads, and onsite versus offsite display formats.
The alternatives to traditional display advertising for retailers are first-party onsite display, offsite display bought through retail media DSPs, in-store digital screens, post-purchase commerce-media placements, and shoppable or video formats, and most high-performing retailers now run several of them together. Display in retail media did not get replaced by these formats. It got rebuilt around them. The rectangular banner that launched the web ad business in 1994 still exists, but the retail version is now powered by purchase data the open web never had, runs across a retailer's owned site, third-party publishers, connected TV, and physical stores, and is measured against sales rather than clicks. That shift is why offsite, which is almost entirely display, is the fastest-growing slice of retail media spend, and why "how do I monetize my traffic without hurting conversions" has become the question every retailer is trying to answer.
How have display ads evolved from traditional banner advertising?
Display ads have evolved from a single static rectangle sold by the impression into a purchase-data-driven format that runs across onsite, offsite, in-store, and connected-TV inventory. The arc starts on October 27, 1994, when AT&T ran the first paid banner on HotWired with the line "Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You will." It reportedly pulled a 44% click-through rate, a number that looks absurd today and set an expectation the format spent the next thirty years failing to meet.
What followed was a long slide. Banner networks aggregated publisher inventory and sold fixed IAB sizes (728x90, 300x250, 160x600) by the thousand impressions, and click rates collapsed as users learned to ignore the ad slots. The widely cited Infolinks benchmark puts the average banner click-through rate at 0.06%, about six clicks per ten thousand impressions, and eye-tracking research in the same dataset found that roughly 86% of consumers experience banner blindness. The clicks that remained came from almost nobody: roughly 8% of users generated around 85% of all banner clicks. Real-time bidding then moved buying from manual insertion orders to programmatic auctions, and programmatic now transacts the vast majority of every new display dollar.
The turn that mattered for retail came when Amazon opened its ad platform and put paid product placements inside its own search results. That created onsite retail media: display and search-style formats running on a retailer's owned pages, backed by what shoppers actually buy, not what a third-party cookie guesses. Through the late 2010s, Walmart, Kroger, Target, and the major grocers formalized their own networks, and display matured into contextual units tied to category pages, search results, and checkout. The 2026 Tinuiti retail media report traces this same progression from onsite-only placements toward a full onsite, offsite, and in-store mix. The most recent chapter is offsite programmatic, in-store screens, and shoppable video, which means "display" now describes anything visual and purchase-data-targeted, served wherever the shopper happens to be.
What are the alternatives to traditional display advertising for retailers?
The alternatives to traditional display advertising are six formats that either replace the open-web banner or extend it with first-party data: sponsored and native placements, first-party onsite display, offsite display through a retail media DSP, in-store digital screens, post-purchase commerce-media display, and shoppable or video formats. None of them is "stop running display." Each one is a way to run visual advertising that performs because it sits on top of purchase intent.
1. Sponsored and native placements. Sponsored product listings appear inside the product search grid and look like organic results, which is why shoppers engage with them at higher rates than with a banner in a side rail. They carry strong direct ROAS because the shopper is already in buying mode, but do less upper-funnel work than display. They are a distinct format family with their own taxonomy, covered in our guide to retail media sponsored ad formats; this article stays on display and its alternatives.
2. First-party onsite display. These are banner-shaped units that still run on the retailer's owned site, category takeovers, homepage heroes, product-detail placements, and checkout banners, but targeted with the retailer's own purchase history rather than third-party audience inference. The format looks like a traditional banner; the data underneath it does not. That is why the same rectangle that earns near-zero clicks on a content site can drive measurable sales on a retailer's product page.
3. Offsite display through a retail media DSP. This is the fastest-growing alternative. Retailers package their first-party segments and let advertisers buy display across the open web, social, and connected TV. US retail media offsite ad spending grew 42.1% in 2025, more than twice the 15.3% rate of onsite, according to eMarketer, which also notes that the limits of onsite inventory are pushing growth off the retailer's own site. In dollar terms, Fugo's forecast puts offsite at $13.52 billion in 2025, up from $10.64 billion in 2024. The Tinuiti report found that 60% of Walmart self-serve display spend in Q4 2025 went offsite, even though onsite still commanded higher CPMs.
4. In-store digital screens. Physical stores are display inventory. Screens at endcaps, shelf edges, entry zones, and checkout let brands run contextual advertising at the moment of purchase, where an ad-blocker cannot reach. Modern Retail reports that Kroger, CVS, and other chains are planning many more in-store screens for 2026, with deployments running into the thousands of screens across hundreds of locations. The opportunity is large because the data is lopsided: Fugo notes that while about 80% of consumer spending happens in-store, roughly 90% of retail media advertising is online. Spend on in-store screens and signage was projected to surpass $0.5 billion in 2025.
5. Post-purchase commerce-media display. This is the answer to the monetization-versus-conversion tension. Instead of crowding high-intent pages with banners that might cost a sale, retailers place display around the purchase-complete moment, the order-confirmation page, the receipt, the delivery-tracking screen, where the shopper has already converted and is receptive. The transaction is protected and the retailer still earns media revenue. It is the most direct way to monetize site traffic without impacting conversions, the problem our display suite is built to solve.
6. Shoppable and video formats. Shoppable display and video let a viewer act on products without leaving the content, collapsing consideration into purchase. Onsite video became standard inventory across major grocers in 2025. Connected TV is the longer-term driver: an earlier eMarketer forecast (published March 2024, before our 2025 research window, used here for directional context only) projected CTV retail media ad spending reaching $8.67 billion by 2027 and US retail media CTV spending soaring 335.5% in a single year. The exact figures may move, but video and CTV are clearly absorbing budget that once went to static banners.
How can I use commerce media to monetize my site traffic without impacting conversions?
The cleanest way to monetize site traffic without impacting conversions is to keep display off the pages where a shopper is deciding to buy, and place it at the post-purchase moment and in formats that carry their own product utility. The fear is rational: load a product page or a cart with banners and you risk distracting a shopper out of a sale. Two design choices solve it. Timing: post-purchase placements on the confirmation page, order summary, and delivery tracking reach the shopper after the conversion is locked, so incremental revenue costs nothing in completed sales. Format: a display unit that shows live price, availability, and a nearby store is useful rather than interruptive, so it can sit closer to the shopping flow without dragging on conversion.
This is where Osmos Adscape is built to operate. Adscape is our full display and format suite for retail media operators, and two pieces map onto the monetize-without-compromise problem. Product Display Ads blend display creative with live product data, real-time stock and price updates and store-level targeting, so the placement informs the purchase instead of competing with it. And because Adscape runs display across onsite slots, offsite channels, and connected in-store screens from one stack, retailers can route monetization toward post-purchase and high-receptivity moments instead of loading every banner onto the cart. The full format set is on the Adscape product page. The principle holds market-wide: protect the conversion path, monetize the moments around it.
Which retail media platforms support display advertising?
The platforms that support retail media display, Criteo Commerce Max, CitrusAd powered by Epsilon, Topsort, Amazon DSP, Walmart Connect, Instacart Carrot Ads, and Osmos Adscape, differ less on whether they offer display and more on how far it reaches and how the data behind it is sourced. Amazon DSP is the scale benchmark for purchase-data display. The Tinuiti report found it now accounts for 40% of total Amazon ad budgets for advertisers active in both Ad Console and DSP, and that advertisers on it increased spend 31% year over year with impressions up 32% and CPMs down 1%, the signature of a maturing channel. Walmart Connect is the clearest offsite-display story: its DSP is built with The Trade Desk, and Walmart reports that offsite display campaigns delivered a median 52% new-to-brand customers in 2025, with first-party-data access expanding to Yahoo and Magnite for CTV reach in 2026. Instacart runs display, shoppable display, and shoppable video through its white-label Carrot Ads platform across a large network of grocery partners, and the MRC expanded measurement accreditation across Instacart formats in late 2025.
Among the technology providers, Criteo positions Commerce Max as a unified onsite and offsite DSP with onsite display, standard display, and onsite video in one place, and reports a brand-supplied case study showing an 855% conversion-rate uplift when shoppers saw both onsite and offsite ads. CitrusAd, under Epsilon, markets an identity-led unified platform; Topsort sells independent infrastructure the retailer owns. The differentiator we focus on at Osmos is breadth on one stack: Adscape carries Display Ads and Product Display Ads alongside story, carousel, video, gamified, and email formats, plus in-store screen display, all run through the same Osmosphere platform as ControlHub and StratEdge, so a retailer covers onsite, offsite, and in-store display without stitching three vendors together.
Display ad versus banner ad, and display versus sponsored: the definitions
A banner ad is a specific type of display ad: a fixed-size, usually rectangular image unit (the IAB standards are 728x90, 300x250, and 160x600) placed at the top, side, or bottom of a page. Display advertising is the parent category. It includes banners but also rich media, video, interstitials, responsive units, carousels, and shoppable formats, any visual ad served outside keyword search results. So every banner is a display ad, but most display ads today are not banners. In retail media, "display" separates image and video brand units from sponsored-product listings inside the search grid.
That leads to the second distinction. Sponsored product ads are native to the shopping experience: they sit inside the organic product grid, look like a normal product tile, and are matched to keyword intent. Display ads are visually distinct creative units in designated slots, homepage heroes, category takeovers, product-detail sidebars, checkout banners. Sponsored formats win on volume and direct conversion; display formats do brand-building, launches, and remarketing. The two work best together, not as substitutes, and the contrast with native placement matters because native consistently out-engages standard display. eMarketer reports that consumers view native ads 53% more frequently than banner ads and that native exposure produces an 18% lift in purchase intent versus standard display. We go deeper in our native advertising retail media benchmarks.
Display formats and channels compared
The table maps each display channel to what it is, what it is best for, and one verified data point that characterizes it. It is a planning reference, not a ranking; most retailers run several at once.
| Display channel | What it is | Best for | Verified signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| First-party onsite display | Banner and rich-media units on the retailer's owned site, targeted with first-party purchase data | Category ownership, launches, and conquesting on high-intent pages | Onsite still leads spend but grew 15.3% in 2025, slower than offsite (eMarketer) |
| Offsite display via retail media DSP | Retailer first-party segments activated across open web, social, and CTV | Scaling reach and new-to-brand acquisition beyond the owned site | Offsite grew 42.1% in 2025; 60% of Walmart self-serve display went offsite in Q4 2025 (eMarketer, Tinuiti) |
| In-store digital screens | Endcap, shelf-edge, entry, and checkout screens used as media inventory | Reaching shoppers at the physical point of purchase, ad-blocker-proof | About 80% of spend is in-store while 90% of retail media is online (Fugo); screens projected to surpass $0.5B in 2025 |
| Post-purchase commerce-media display | Display on confirmation, receipt, and tracking pages, after the conversion | Monetizing traffic without risking the active purchase flow | Targets the high-receptivity post-transaction moment by design |
| Shoppable and CTV video | Interactive video and connected-TV units with in-stream product actions | Upper-funnel storytelling that collapses into direct purchase | CTV retail media projected at $8.67B by 2027 (eMarketer, 2024 forecast) |
What this means for retailers planning display in 2026
"Traditional display" versus "alternatives to display" is a false choice. The alternative to a banner that does not work is a banner backed by purchase data, placed where it helps rather than interrupts. The retailers pulling ahead run several of these formats together and measure them against incremental sales rather than last-click, which is why a growing share of advertisers are shifting their primary KPI from ROAS toward incrementality. For the wider context, see our retail media vertical deep dives and the broader retail media evolution guide.
FAQ
What is the difference between a display ad and a banner ad?
A banner ad is one type of display ad: a fixed-size, usually rectangular image unit in standard IAB sizes such as 728x90, 300x250, or 160x600, placed at the top, side, or bottom of a page. Display advertising is the parent category that includes banners plus rich media, video, interstitials, responsive units, carousels, and shoppable formats. Every banner is a display ad, but most display ads today are not banners.
What are the alternatives to traditional display advertising for retailers?
The main alternatives are sponsored and native placements, first-party onsite display targeted with purchase data, offsite display bought through a retail media DSP, in-store digital screens, post-purchase commerce-media display, and shoppable or CTV video. Most high-performing retailers run several of these together rather than replacing display outright. The fastest-growing alternative is offsite, which grew 42.1% in US retail media in 2025 versus 15.3% for onsite, according to eMarketer.
How can I use commerce media to monetize my site traffic without impacting conversions?
Keep display off the pages where shoppers are actively deciding to buy, and place it instead at the post-purchase moment, the confirmation page, order summary, and delivery tracking, where the conversion is already complete and the shopper is receptive. Use formats that carry product utility, such as units showing live price and availability, so they inform rather than interrupt. Osmos Adscape Product Display Ads and post-purchase placements are built for this monetize-without-compromise pattern.
What is the difference between display ads and sponsored product ads in retail media?
Sponsored product ads sit inside the organic product search grid, look like normal product tiles, and are matched to keyword intent, so they win on volume and direct conversion. Display ads are visually distinct creative units in designated slots like homepage heroes and category takeovers, and they do brand-building, launches, and remarketing. They are complements, not substitutes, and tend to perform best when run together. For the full sponsored-format taxonomy, see our guide to retail media sponsored ad formats.
What retail media platforms support display advertising?
Platforms that support retail media display include Criteo Commerce Max, CitrusAd powered by Epsilon, Topsort, Amazon DSP, Walmart Connect (built with The Trade Desk), Instacart Carrot Ads, and Osmos Adscape. They differ mainly in offsite reach and how first-party data is sourced. Amazon DSP now represents about 40% of total Amazon ad budgets for advertisers active on both Ad Console and DSP, per Tinuiti, while Walmart Connect reports a median 52% new-to-brand customers from offsite display in 2025.
How have retail display ads evolved from traditional banner advertising?
Display ads went from a static rectangle, the first banner in 1994 reportedly hit a 44% click-through rate before click rates collapsed to around 0.06%, to a purchase-data-driven format. The progression ran through programmatic real-time bidding, Amazon launching onsite retail media, retail media networks formalizing onsite display, an offsite programmatic surge, in-store screens, and finally onsite video and AI-personalized shoppable display in 2025 and 2026.
Sources
- Digiday, How the banner ad was born
- Banner blindness statistics and studies (Infolinks benchmark)
- eMarketer, Retail media's off-site imperative
- eMarketer, Offsite programmatic retail media ad spending surging (2024 forecast)
- eMarketer, FAQ on native advertising formats and metrics
- Fugo, Retail media growth statistics and trends
- Tinuiti, Retail media trends report
- Modern Retail, Retailers plan more in-store screens for 2026
- Walmart Connect, Expanding access to Walmart first-party data
- MRC measurement accreditation, Instacart and Carrot Ads formats (https://www.instacart.com/company/enterprise-platform/retail-media/carrot-ads)
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