Retail Media M&A: Consolidation in a $100B+ Digital Battleground
Retail media has emerged as one of the fastest-growing and most strategically vital sectors within digital advertising. What began as a niche channel pioneered by Amazon has evolved into a $100B+ global market, encompassing a complex ecosystem of retailers, brands, technology providers, and media platforms. As retail media matures, the deal landscape is heating up. Acquisitions are accelerating across infrastructure, measurement, creative, and data enablement. For CEOs, investors, and corporate development leaders, understanding where the market is heading and where value is being created is crucial.
The Rise of Retail Media Networks (RMNs)
Retailers have increasingly recognized the untapped value of their first-party shopper data, on-site traffic, and point-of-sale insights. By building RMNs, they monetize these assets by selling ad inventory to CPGs and other brands looking to target consumers at or near the point of purchase.
What makes RMNs uniquely attractive is their position at the bottom of the funnel, where intent is highest and attribution is clearest. As third-party cookies disappear and privacy regulations tighten, brands are shifting budgets away from open web channels toward closed-loop ecosystems with deterministic data and measurable outcomes. RMNs are ideally positioned to meet that demand.
Top-tier retailers like Walmart (Walmart Connect), Target (Roundel), Kroger (84.51), Instacart (Carrot Ads), Best Buy (Best Buy Ads), and CVS (CVS Media Exchange) now operate sophisticated advertising platforms that rival major DSPs in scale and capability. Retailers outside the top 10 are racing to catch up, but many lack the in-house tech or data infrastructure. This is creating fertile ground for partnerships and acquisitions.
Why Investors are Betting on Retail Media
From an M&A standpoint, retail media sits at the intersection of several macro themes that investors find compelling:
First-party data advantage amid signal loss: As third-party cookies phase out and signal loss reshapes digital advertising, retail media offers direct access to high-quality, purchase-based first-party data. Buyers are eager to own or enable this critical asset.
Rising demand for engagement infrastructure: Retailers expanding offsite and brands seeking high-conversion campaigns require scalable infrastructure—dynamic content delivery, modular creative tools, and embedded data capture—that guides consumers from discovery to purchase.
High-margin, asset-light revenue: Retail media provides retailers with a new income stream that is digital, scalable, and profitable. Mature RMNs can generate EBIT margins of 50% or more, making them an attractive financial engine.
Fragmentation creating need for consolidation: With more than 200 RMNs globally, the ecosystem is fragmented. There’s growing pressure to standardize measurement, creative formats, attribution models, and data interoperability—driving rollups and platform consolidation.
Strategic expansion for adjacent players: Adtech, martech, and commerce platforms increasingly view RMN capabilities as strategic extensions of their core offerings. Many are acquiring to complete their full-stack solutions.
Key Categories Driving Deal Activity
Retail media acquisitions have clustered around five major capability areas:
1. Retail Media Infrastructure
This includes white-label ad-serving platforms, onsite and offsite monetization tools, and retail DSPs. Notable deals include:
Criteo’s acquisition of IPONWEB, which expanded its retail media infrastructure footprint by adding deeper demand-side capabilities.
Expect ongoing M&A from enterprise platforms such as Salesforce and Adobe, retailers without proprietary stacks, and commerce platforms like Shopify or BigCommerce.
2. Data and Identity Resolution
First-party shopper data must be actionable across media channels. This is driving acquisitions in clean rooms, identity graphs, and customer data platforms. Zero-party data, declared directly by consumers, is gaining strategic importance as it fuels personalization, loyalty, and product innovation. Platforms capturing quizzes, preferences, and surveys in real time are uniquely positioned for future M&A.
Companies like LiveRamp, Acxiom, and TransUnion have been active in bolstering their data onboarding and identity resolution offerings for retail and commerce use cases.
Clean room partnerships, like Snowflake with Kroger or Amazon Marketing Cloud, reflect rising demand for privacy-safe data collaboration. Recent acquisitions, including LiveRamp buying Habu and WPP acquiring InfoSum, highlight the strategic value of clean room infrastructure in powering identity, measurement, and personalization. As RMNs scale, these capabilities will remain central to both partnerships and M&A.
3. Retail Attribution and Measurement
Measurement remains one of the biggest pain points in RMN campaigns. Advertisers are asking for more than return on ad spend. They want incrementality, multi-touch attribution, and consistent KPIs across retailers.
Incumbents like Nielsen and Circana (formerly IRI) are expected to continue acquiring platforms that offer self-service dashboards and closed-loop attribution.
4. Creative and Content Enablement
Retail media ads must be dynamically rendered, personalized, and shoppable. This makes creative automation platforms and rich media tools highly valuable.
Companies like Smartly.io, VidMob, and Clinch are seen as attractive targets for DSPs and retailers looking to scale high-performance creative.
The growing popularity of shoppable video and interactive media is likely to drive future acquisitions, especially from both tech platforms and creative agencies.
5. Omnichannel and Offsite Expansion
Retailers are no longer limited to their own digital properties. Offsite ad placements across social, open web, and connected TV are now integral to RMN strategies. Platforms offering both owned-and-operated and partner-based distribution channels across social, open web, and connected TV, along with performance attribution, are becoming essential pieces of the modern RMN stack.
M&A activity is ramping up in areas that bridge retail media with paid social and programmatic out-of-home media.
For example, the Walmart Connect and Vizio partnership and The Trade Desk’s alliances with retail data providers highlight how omnichannel reach is becoming a defining factor.
Who Is Buying and Why
One of the most notable recent deals is DoorDash’s $175 million acquisition of Symbiosys.AI, a move that significantly deepens its investment in advertising infrastructure. By acquiring this retail media and AI personalization platform, DoorDash aims to expand its off-platform ad capabilities across the open web and connected TV, positioning itself as a full-stack retail media player. This acquisition follows a broader trend where delivery platforms are evolving into commerce media hubs.
Several buyer profiles are driving deal activity in retail media:
Retailers: Especially mid-market players looking to fast-track their RMN capabilities through strategic acquisitions rather than slow internal development.
Adtech firms: Companies like Criteo, Perion, and The Trade Desk are acquiring to offer end-to-end commerce media stacks.
Private Equity: Growth-focused funds such as Vista Equity, Thoma Bravo, and Advent International are rolling up platforms across measurement, infrastructure, and creative tech.
Cloud and data platforms: Tech giants including Amazon, Microsoft, and Snowflake are embedding RMN features into their data and analytics ecosystems.
Agencies and holding companies: Media groups are buying RMN enablers to gain better access to commerce budgets and improve campaign efficiency for brand clients.
Recent deal highlights include:
Publicis Groupe’s acquisition of CitrusAd and Profitero to enhance its commerce media suite. This positions Publicis to compete more aggressively in retail data-driven marketing.
Perion Network’s acquisition of Vidazoo, a dynamic video monetization platform, signaling its push into creative and CTV retail formats.
Kroger Precision Marketing’s expanded partnership with The Trade Desk, which illustrates how alliances are becoming gateways to potential future M&A as tech stacks converge.
Challenges for Buyers and Sellers
Despite the strong tailwinds, M&A in retail media is not without complexity:
Tech integration risks: Many RMN platforms are deeply customized for individual retailers. Scaling or integrating post-acquisition can be challenging.
Lack of standardization: The absence of unified measurement standards across RMNs makes it harder for advertisers to compare performance and for acquirers to scale solutions.
Revenue concentration: Several vendors rely heavily on one or two major retailer clients, which can introduce customer concentration risk for acquirers.
Valuation sensitivity: Buyers are cautious about inflated valuations. While the strategic logic may be sound, acquirers are scrutinizing retention, scalability, and profitability with heightened discipline.
Strategic Outlook: What Comes Next
The next phase of retail media M&A will be defined by three themes:
Platform unification: As RMNs mature, buyers will seek to consolidate fragmented capabilities into unified, scalable platforms that appeal to both brands and retailers.
Global expansion: Europe and Asia are catching up to U.S. retail media trends. Cross-border deals and global rollouts are on the horizon.
AI-powered optimization: Creative automation, predictive targeting, and dynamic personalization are drawing investor interest. Expect M&A in AI-driven campaign tools to accelerate.
As Andrew Lipsman, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence, put it: “Retail media is not just another ad channel. It’s the future operating system for commerce and advertising.”
For CEOs and corp dev leaders, now is the time to define your retail media strategy. Are you acquiring capabilities, forming deep partnerships, or building from the ground up? For investors, this space continues to offer one of the most exciting growth frontiers in digital media.