HBR Staff/Artur Debat/fotograzia/Getty Images
Summary.
Major retailers are today, most notably Amazon, are creating and operating their own advertising platforms — and they’re making millions doing it. McKinsey estimates that by 2026, retail media will add $1.3 trillion to enterprise values in the U.S. alone, with profit margins between 50% and 70%. In this article, the authors introduce readers to the main kinds of retail media, discuss three strategic challenges that they present, and provide guidance for effectively managing those challenges.A rapidly growing number of major retailers are today creating and operating their own advertising platforms — a phenomenon widely referred to as retail media. Nobody has had more success in the space than Amazon, which in 2023 earned $46.9 billion from advertising, comprised primarily of sponsored ads on its site. This figure exceeds the annual global revenue of Coca-Cola and makes Amazon the third-largest advertising platform in the United States, behind only Google and Facebook.