What Is Commerce Media and How Is It Different from Retail Media?
Commerce media is advertising built on first-party transaction data from any business with a commerce relationship to customers, not just retailers. Retail media is the narrower case where that business is a retailer.
Worldwide retail media ad spend reached an estimated $174.9 billion in 2025 and is forecast to grow 12.4 percent to $196.7 billion in 2026, with US retail media alone reaching $69.33 billion, up from $58.79 billion in 2025. That number understates the real shift underway: a growing share of that spend, and the fastest-growing share of it, is now happening outside retailers entirely.
Commerce media is advertising built on first-party transaction data from any business with a commerce relationship to its customers, not just retailers. Retail media is the specific case where that business is a retailer selling ads on its own site, app, or in-store screens, while commerce media extends the same logic to travel, delivery, and financial platforms and follows that data off their owned properties into the open web, connected TV, and social.
Retail Media Is a Subset, Not a Synonym
The two terms get used interchangeably, but the relationship only runs one way: every retail media network is a commerce media network, but most commerce media networks are not retailers at all. A retailer's media network monetizes shopper data on its own storefront. A commerce media network monetizes transaction data wherever the advertiser's audience actually is, including inventory the operating business does not own.
The Fastest Growth Is Coming From Outside Retail
Non-retail operators are building ad businesses on the same first-party logic. Marriott, Expedia, Uber, Trainline, and Tripadvisor have all launched or expanded travel-side media networks using guest and rider data most brands have no other way to reach. On the delivery and payments side, Instacart generated more than $1 billion in US advertising revenue in 2025, and PayPal, Klarna, Chase, and Revolut now monetize cross-merchant transaction data for CPG, travel, and retail advertisers. None of these businesses are retailers, and none of this spend shows up in a retail media budget line.
Why the Distinction Changes How a Media Plan Gets Built
Treating commerce media as one channel is the most common planning mistake. Each network, retail or not, runs its own auction, its own targeting taxonomy, and its own measurement standard, and most do not share data with each other. A plan built for one retailer's network rarely transfers to a travel or fintech network, and reconciling performance across several of them raises the same cross-network measurement questions that any fragmented media environment does. Commerce media needs to be planned and measured network by network, not bought as a single line item.
How Criterion Global Approaches Commerce Media
Amazon is the clearest example of how large and specific a single commerce media network can get. When Criterion Global advised on the budget for Amazon's launch into luxury retail, the work started from Amazon's scale as both the world's largest advertiser and one of its largest commerce media operators, not from a generic retail media playbook. Buying within Amazon's own ecosystem has its own mechanics, covered in our note on the Amazon Advertising Partner Network. For a new commerce media network generally, we apply the same Criterion Global Budget Blueprint℠ logic used for any new market or channel: a bounded test allocation to read real performance before committing further spend. For brands starting with the more familiar layer first, see our retail media networks practice.