Instacart is also manning the anti-Amazon barricades. They just launched Connected Stores, an initiative that helps retailers compete with Amazon’s no-checkout technology. Clients also get an online component and lots of fresh customer data. Success isn’t guaranteed: Wegmans recently dropped a self-scanning program due to high shoplifting costs.
Lots of people want to help retailers compete with Amazon. Swiftly Systems offers tools for online and instore promotions plus retail media networks. They just announced their second $100 million funding round in six months.
How big are the ecommerce and retail media pies? GroupM estimates retail media at $101 billion for 2022, or 11% of global ad revenue, and ecommerce at 19% of all retail sales. Amazon actually ranks second to Alibaba in total ecommerce revenue, and only three of the top ten ecommerce companies are based in the US.
Martech keeps taking larger bites out of marketing budgets: 17.3% last year, 19.9% this year, 23.5% next year, and 30.9% five years from now, according to the latest CMO Survey. This despite barely more than half (56.4%) of current tools being used and nearly half (48.8%) of the survey respondents reporting worse-than-expected results. Oddly enough, marketers rate selecting marketing technologies as the thing they do best.