In 2025, retail media in Germany grew to roughly 3.3 billion euros in revenue – considerably faster than the digital advertising market as a whole. While classic display advertising stagnated, retail media posted double-digit growth. So far, the lion's share of this money flows to a handful of large players: Amazon, online marketplaces, and the retail giants with their own media networks.
For mid-sized retailers, this quickly creates the impression that the topic is a size too big. In-house ad tech, a team of data analysts, millions of transactions – all of it sounds like the logic of corporations. Yet the underlying principle of retail media scales downward just as well. Whoever has customers has transaction data. And whoever has transaction data holds the most valuable currency in today's advertising market: the knowledge of what people actually buy.
What retail media means at its core
Retail media describes advertising that a retailer runs on its own channels – and steers and measures with its own data. In the online shop, that means sponsored product placements. In brick-and-mortar retail, the spectrum ranges from shelf-edge displays and the loyalty app to the digital receipt.
The decisive difference from classic advertising lies not in the ad space but in the data behind it. A brand advertising with a retailer is not just paying for visibility. It pays for access to real purchase data – and for the ability to trace advertising success all the way to the actual sale. Closing this gap between ad contact and purchase is exactly what makes the model so attractive to advertising brands.
Why the window is open right now
At the European level, the volume is set to grow from around 14.4 billion euros (2023) to a projected figure of roughly 31 billion euros by 2028. That growth no longer comes from online business alone. In-store retail media – advertising at the physical point of sale – is regarded as the next major field, but it is still at an early stage of maturity.
This is the real opportunity for mid-sized players. The digital ad spaces of the large marketplaces are crowded and expensive. The physical touchpoints in brick-and-mortar retail, by contrast, remain largely unused. Whoever sets up initial formats today with manageable effort claims a field before the competition does. For many retailers, this is not an additional marketing project but a new, high-margin revenue stream: the data and the spaces already exist, so the additional turnover falls almost entirely to the bottom line.
The building blocks of your own retail media offering
A functioning offering can be thought of in four layers – regardless of company size.
Reach: the touchpoints you already have
The first building block is reach to the customer. Mid-sized retailers regularly underestimate how many contact points they already own: the store, the checkout, the newsletter, the app, the digital receipt. Each of these is a potential ad space. A drugstore chain with 40 stores and an active loyalty-card base often reaches more relevant buyers through these channels than a broadly scattered poster campaign – only more precisely targeted.
Data: the actual value
The second building block is first-party data. Transaction data shows who buys what and when. From this, segments can be built without identifying individuals: buyers of a particular category, repeat buyers, occasional shoppers. A brand looking to promote its new skincare product is interested precisely in those who already buy comparable products. The retailer owns this knowledge – and no third party can take it away.
Inventory: from the receipt to the display
The third building block is the ad inventory itself. This is where the pragmatic entry point for mid-sized players lies. A digital receipt, for example, is not just a proof of purchase but a guaranteed ad space after every transaction – delivered to a customer whose purchase you have just precisely identified. Cross-selling prompts, coupons from supplier brands, or pointers to complementary products can all be placed there in context.
Measurement: the proof that it works
The fourth building block is measurability. It is the reason brands are willing to pay for retail media. Whoever can show an advertising brand that a campaign increased the sales of a category by a concrete percentage is no longer selling reach – they are selling results. This very accountability is what classic advertising formats lack.
The most common misconception
Many retailers believe retail media begins with selling ad space. In reality, it begins with the data foundation. Whoever does not have their transaction data available in a structured form can neither build meaningful segments nor measure advertising success – and therefore has nothing a brand would pay for.
The second misconception concerns size. It does not take millions of records to start. It takes relevant data and a clear use case. A regional grocery retailer who can prove to a beverage brand which of its customers buy regularly in the category has a sellable offering – even without national reach.
What retailers can do now
The pragmatic first step is to take stock of your own touchpoints and data. Which contact points to the customer exist? Which of them are digital and therefore controllable? Is transaction data available in a form from which segments can be built?
The second step is worth piloting with a single supplier or a single brand. A clearly defined use case – such as a coupon campaign on the digital receipt for a specific category – quickly delivers solid figures. These figures are the argument for scaling up, both internally and toward further advertising partners.
Outlook: The next advertising billions will be decided at the shelf
Retail media is not a passing trend but a structural shift in the advertising market. Ad budgets migrate to where impact can be demonstrated – and that is increasingly the retail sector itself. The large players have claimed the onsite space. The physical store, the moment at the shelf and at the checkout, remains largely open.
For mid-sized retailers, this is a rare constellation: a growing market in which their own, barely copyable advantage – closeness to the customer and knowledge of their purchasing behavior – counts for more than the largest ad budget. The window is open. It will not stay open indefinitely.
Turning transaction data into advertising value – with Purchase Intelligence
Purchase Intelligence connects to your point-of-sale system and turns transaction data into the foundation for your own retail media offering: structured segments, contextual delivery on the digital receipt, and the measurement of advertising success right down to the sale. Without an in-house ad-tech team, without months of implementation.
For more on the role of transaction data in retail, see the article “Making the most of POS data” and the piece on first-party data in retail.
