Retail media promises mouth-wateringly precise audience segments based on retailers’ transaction data, but retailers’ own ad inventory is often limited. Pairzon, a retail-oriented CDP, has unveiled a Retail Media Solution that avoids this problem by sharing its segments with Meta, Google, TikTok, and other major ad platforms. It’s all privacy-safe, of course, and includes closed-loop attribution, tying ad impressions to physical or digital transactions.
Another EU battlefront has opened for Amazon, with German regulators saying Amazon’s price controls on third-party sellers may break domestic and EU laws. Amazon uses algorithms to de-prioritize products perceived as over-priced in search results. Amazon is challenging these preliminary findings saying changes would be bad for customers.
Retail media is still growing but the industry spotlight is now moving on. “Contextual commerce” (or shoppable ads, if you prefer plain English) is a new rising star, now expanding beyond social media, display, and mobile to include Connected TV. In fact, 62% of respondents to a Digiday/Warner Bros. Discovery survey of 90 agencies, brands, retailers and marketers say they’re already leveraging shoppable ads on CTV, with 77% allocating more than 20% of their 2025 budget to CTV, up from 13% in 2024.
It barely feels like news when industry giants add AI features, since that’s what they’re expected to do. But lots of people use their products, so their announcements are probably of higher interest than most. With that in mind, let’s note that Adobe has just announced general availability of agents for audience creation, journey orchestration, experimentation, journey insights, website optimization and agent support.