Over the last few years, many retailers have discovered the possibility of monetizing their e-commerce platforms as advertising media. Ad revenue generated in this manner helps companies soften the blow dealt to their financial results by inflation and lower consumer spending. While
is already an established sector of the digital ad industry, the European market is still in its infancy.
A market overshadowed by U.S. players
Retail media spending in Europe was estimated at 10.5 billion euros in 2023, which gives it a nine percent share in the digital ad market on the continent. Industry sources project that the spending will experience an explosion of popularity, growing nearly 28 percent annually until 2026, when its value is expected to reach 22 billion euros. So far, the market has been dominated by U.S. companies –
Amazon and
eBay – that can and do apply strategies and technologies they had developed for their U.S. platforms across all their markets. That gives them a head start on native European platforms that are only catching up to the trend now.
Top local player
With a market share of five percent,
Zalando – a German fashion and beauty online retailer present in 23 European countries – is the third-largest
digital retail media platform in Europe. In 2023,
advertising revenue generated by Zalando with its retail media business stood at 305 million U.S. dollars, reporting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24 percent between 2018 and 2023.
Zalando Marketing Services – responsible for selling retail media to advertisers – accounted for two percent of Zalando’s Fashion store gross merchandise value (GMV) in 2022. The online retailer’s long-term target is to double the percentage, as announced in a financial update for investors in March 2023.
A beginner with great aspirations
As a part of a digital expansion strategy,
The Carrefour Group has set out to become a leader in the European digital retail media segment. In 2021, the company launched its retail media platform Carrefour Links. A year later, it entered a joint venture with the Publicis Groupe. By combining Links and Publicis’s retail media ad tech CitrusAd into
Unlimitail, Carrefour hopes to create what the two call a “comprehensive media player.” Carrefour can count on 80 million customers and eight billion transactions, which helped attract 450 retail media ad buyers by the end of 2022. In 2021,
Carrefour’s retail media ad revenue stood at a modest 64 million U.S. dollars. However, industry sources project that the amount will skyrocket to 500 million by 2026.
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