Will retail media reshape media planning, measurement & commerce in 2026?

After years of experimentation, retail media emerged as the hottest marketing channel of 2025 by delivering what most digital formats struggled to achieve, a direct link between advertising, consumer intent and measurable sales outcomes. Across marketplaces, quick commerce and delivery platforms, it closed long-standing gaps between exposure and purchase, transforming performance marketing from a reporting exercise into a true commercial engine. In doing so, retail media firmly proved its relevance and indispensability in 2025.

Industry estimates peg retail media growth at around 22% in 2025, significantly ahead of paid search and paid social, which expanded only in the mid-to-high single digits. Its proximity to the point of purchase and stronger attribution capabilities made it particularly compelling in a year when accountability outweighed the pursuit of sheer scale.

Our recap of how retail media performed in 2025

With retail media now entering its next phase of growth, brands and platforms are also stepping into a new phase, one where efficiency, discipline and sophistication will matter as much as reach and scale.

Ali Zaidi, Senior VP, Media at Tonic Worldwide, believes the nature of retail media’s role will fundamentally evolve. In 2026, retail media will move from being a high-growth opportunity to a core operating capability. Brands are expected to place greater emphasis on incrementality, profitability and digital shelf readiness, especially as retail media scales quickly but carries the risk of over-attributing demand without disciplined measurement. 

Market estimates suggest India’s retail media ecosystem could cross ₹30,000 crore in 2026 and account for nearly 15% of total advertising revenue, elevating it from a tactical lever to a boardroom priority. As retail media matures, the conversation is already shifting away from headline growth numbers to deeper questions around value creation and long-term impact.

How retail media took over ad spends in 2025

“Retail media will continue to outperform traditional social and search channels in 2026,” Karthik Shankar, Head of Digital Investments at WPP Media India told e4m. “But this is largely because retail media is no longer operating in isolation. It has become deeply integrated into legacy digital spends, including social and search, enabling a seamless flow from discovery to transaction and delivering superior efficiency and measurable return on ad spend.” However, scale alone will no longer guarantee results. As inventory tightens and competition intensifies, brands will be forced to move beyond chasing ROAs at any cost.

The Next Phase Of Retail Media

If 2025 was about proving retail media’s power, experts agree that 2026 will be about managing it responsibly.

As spends increases and inventory becomes more competitive, retail media is beginning to face the same scrutiny that mature channels like search and social encountered years earlier. Brands are now demanding sharper answers on what is truly incremental versus what merely captures existing demand. Measurement frameworks, therefore, will need to move beyond last-click attribution and surface-level ROAs, towards a deeper understanding of profitability, category growth and lifetime value.

Why DPDP could threaten India's retail media boom

Manish Sharma, President, Arena India, part of Havas Media Network India, believes retail media will continue to expand in 2026, but the narrative around it will fundamentally shift. The next phase, he said, will be less about chasing scale and more about building sophistication. As inventory tightens and costs rise, Sharma noted that retail media impressions will no longer be efficient by default, making success dependent on smarter planning, stronger content and tighter integration with brand-led media efforts.

“Measurement will also evolve beyond pure ROAs to focus on incrementality, contribution to brand growth and lifetime value,” he said. Sharma added that retail media is unlikely to replace social or search. “Instead, it will increasingly anchor the media ecosystem, shaping how other channels are planned, measured and valued. In that sense, 2026 will be less about retail media outperforming other channels and more about it redefining how performance itself is understood.”

Why retail media runs on fulfillment

Zaidi, echoed this view, noting that while retail media can scale rapidly, it also carries the risk of over-attributing demand if measurement is not disciplined. According to him, this is precisely why brands are now treating retail media as a core operating capability rather than a high-growth experiment.

Rajat Jadhav, Co-Founder and CEO of Bold Care, said retail media will continue to grow in 2026, but it is unlikely to replace social or search, as each channel serves a distinct role. According to him, retail media is most effective when the objective is conversion and visibility at the moment of purchase, while social and search continue to play a critical role in discovery, education and brand building. “In 2026, the brands that perform best will be those that integrate retail media into a broader, well-defined media strategy, rather than treating it as a standalone silver bullet,” he said.

Key Trends That Will Define Retail Media In 2026

Several shifts are expected to shape retail media’s evolution in 2026, as brands and platforms move from aggressive expansion to sustainable scale. Experts agree that the next phase will be defined less by how fast retail media grows and more by how intelligently it is deployed.

At the heart of this transition are three clear expectations. First, accountability will deepen, with incrementality becoming a baseline requirement rather than a value-add. Second, retail media will expand beyond on-platform placements, following shoppers earlier in the journey while remaining commerce-linked. Third, performance will increasingly be shaped by retail readiness, from content and availability to format innovation, rather than media alone.

Zaidi said these shifts reflect retail media’s progression along the maturity curve. “Incrementality will become a default expectation, not a value-add,” he noted, adding that brands will push harder for clarity on what demand is genuinely created versus what is merely captured. He also expects offsite retail media to expand, enabling brands to activate retailer audiences earlier in the journey, while still retaining closed-loop measurement. “At the same time, digital shelf and media will fully converge, with content quality and availability directly influencing paid outcomes,” Zaidi said, pointing to broader format adoption, including video and richer placements beyond sponsored listings.

According to Madhav Kasturia, Founder and CEO of Zippee, three forces will decisively shape retail media in 2026. “The first is hyper localisation,” he said. “Brands will increasingly buy visibility at a pin-code or dark-store level rather than running city-wide campaigns. This is where quick commerce makes retail media especially powerful.”

The second shift, Kasturia noted, will see offline assets begin to function as measurable media inventory. “Delivery bags, riders, packaging and last-mile touchpoints will no longer be treated as logistics costs alone. They will become brand surfaces that can be planned, measured and optimised,” he said, signalling a broader redefinition of what retail media inventory looks like.

The third, and perhaps most critical, expectation will be around balance. “The winners will be platforms that balance monetisation with trust,” Kasturia said. “Overloading users with ads will kill conversion. The platforms that win will be the ones that integrate retail media into discovery without breaking the user experience.”

Together, these shifts point to a more disciplined and mature retail media ecosystem. While India’s retail media market is set to grow rapidly, experts caution that scale alone will not guarantee long-term success. 

What Retail Media’s Rise Means for Brands & E-Commerce Platforms

For e-commerce and quick-commerce platforms, retail media’s rapid rise is fundamentally altering business models. According to Kasturia, retail media is no longer just an additional revenue stream, it is becoming a core margin driver. “It turns traffic into margin and makes scale more defensible,” he said. Platforms that already control discovery, pricing and fulfilment now also control monetisation beyond commissions.

For brands, the implications are even sharper. Kasturia said, “You can no longer rely only on product quality to win visibility. Performance marketing shifts from open internet platforms to closed ecosystems where shelf placement, ranking and inventory matter more than creatives.”

This shift means brands will increasingly treat retail media like trade marketing rather than traditional digital advertising, buying visibility exactly where purchase decisions are being made. Experts noted, brands that understand this early will focus not just on media spends, but on mastering the digital shelf itself.

On the media mix front, experts say that retail media’s ascent is already reshaping how brands think about the role of every channel, not just digital.

According to Sharma,“Retail media didn’t just reallocate budgets away from Meta or Google. It catalysed a smarter rethinking of how performance is defined across channels.” 

Search became more brand-led, social rediscovered its strength in engagement and influence rather than last-click attribution, and upper-funnel channels were increasingly judged on how effectively they fed demand into retail ecosystems. Looking ahead to 2026, Sharma expects retail media to anchor the media ecosystem rather than compete with it. 

Anjana Ghosh, Managing Director, Scale Sherpas, said the rise of retail media has forced brands to reassess how they allocate spends across both digital and traditional channels, particularly at a time when margins are under sustained pressure. “Retail media’s sharp targeting and relatively lower costs make it attractive, especially when profitability is under strain,” she said.

However, Ghosh emphasised that the implications go well beyond media planning. According to her, rising operational costs are pushing brands to rethink how they run their businesses altogether. “Simply shifting budgets from one channel to another won’t solve the problem. Brands need deeper structural efficiency,” she said.

She added that this is the moment for brands to adopt operating models that other industries have long embraced, including aggregation, consolidation, shared resources and smarter utilisation of assets. “These approaches help cut fixed costs, improve productivity and create real profitability,” Ghosh noted. 

Retail media’s story in India is no longer about whether it will grow, that question has already been answered. The real test in 2026 will be how intelligently it scales. As budgets expand and expectations rise, retail media will push the industry toward clearer definitions of performance, stronger alignment between media and commerce, and a more disciplined approach to measuring true business impact.