In 2026, retail media will be at an inflection point. AI is moving from experimentation to execution. Consolidation pressures are mounting. Upper-funnel capabilities are maturing. And the gap between sophisticated platforms and fragmented smaller players continues to widen.

We asked industry leaders from agencies, brands, and technology providers to share their unique perspectives on what’s next. Their predictions reveal a landscape where the winners will be those who master full-funnel relevance, prove incrementality beyond ROAS, and leverage AI not just for efficiency but for strategic advantage.

Here’s what they told us.

Kelly Gerrard, Director of eCommerce Marketing @ Marshall

A major media prediction for 2026 is that the brands that win will be the ones using technology and innovation to reach shoppers in more advanced and personalized ways. Retail media is shifting toward AI-driven creative, predictive audiences, and self-service tools that give brands more control over how they show up along the shopper journey.

Amazon is already setting the pace. AI Creative Studio helps teams produce fresh, relevant creative quickly, while AMC reveals what drives both first-time and repeat shoppers. This combination enables highly tailored storytelling. A brand selling activity tables, for example, can target educators during back-to-school with classroom imagery, then quickly shift to playroom-focused creative for parents during Cyber Week. It’s the same product, but made relevant to each audience.

Walmart is moving in a similar direction with its new Display Self-Service platform. Brands can now reach predictive audiences and measure performance online and in stores, pushing omnichannel management forward. We can target shoppers who are close to purchasing in a category and focus impressions in ZIP codes where the product is actually on Walmart shelves.

As these tools continue to evolve, the barriers between data and creative are getting smaller. Marshall is here to help brands navigate these advances and turn them into a real competitive edge.

Sara Hartmann, Vice President of Digital @ Shaker Recruitment Marketing

2026 will be a reset for digital recruitment marketing.

Organic search will continue to decline as AI tools replace traditional engines; we’ll see behavior shifts to conversational queries, and platforms adapt to AI-generated content. Paid search will move more toward automation, while TikTok and Instagram dominate discovery. To stay competitive, employers must blend AI precision with authentic storytelling and adjust digital media strategies to attract top talent.

Sirena Rolfe, VP of Commerce @ Publicis Groupe

Omnichannel is here to stay. From a brand and advertiser’s perspective, it’s not a buzzword, but a way to say that our goals are in sync across multiple tactics. From an agency perspective, it may feel like a buzzword because we talk about it all the time. But it’s a reality to our clients. They’re looking for that omnichannel connection, and when we talk omni, it makes them feel like we are full-funnel top to bottom. So buzzword or not, I don’t think omnichannel is going to go away.

Who will Amazon team up with? I see them joining forces with what we would call an emerging retailer, like Instacart, DoorDash, or Uber Eats. Amazon started this when they acquired Whole Foods Market, so I could see them taking it to the next level by tapping into emerging retailers. The logistics are already in place, so I don’t feel like it would be a significant effort for Amazon. And I do think someone like DoorDash or Uber Eats could appreciate the logistics that Amazon would have to offer to help better support their business.

RMN consolidation: I do think consolidation is inevitable. Retailers are quickly realizing that not every retailer needs a full-blown retail media network. Some of the smaller ones are going to understand that the investment and the operational lift are just too great. And they’ll either partner with someone larger, license someone else’s tech, or just step back from trying to build everything in-house. Advertisers are also going to start pushing retailers to simplify because they can’t keep up with 30 different portals.

The evolution of clean rooms: I think clean rooms are absolutely necessary, but the way they exist right now is not sustainable. We’re going to start to see retailers make their clean rooms more accessible, more standardized, and easier for advertisers to use. Right now, they’re too complicated, too slow, and too disconnected from activation. In the next few years, clean rooms are going to evolve into something that marketers can actually use day-to-day without needing a data science team behind them.

Up with upper funnel: Upper-funnel is going to get a lot more attention. Retailers know they can’t just rely on bottom-of-funnel dollars if they want to grow. We’re going to see more CTV, more social partnerships, more integrated media packages where retailers can prove upper-funnel reach and brand impact. I also think advertisers are going to start asking retailers to prove how upper-funnel media actually drives lower-funnel behavior.

Mike Wolk, Senior Vice President, Growth & Partnerships @ Goodway Group

Walls and silos will continue breaking down between onsite and offsite, between retail and brand marketing, and even between historical walled gardens. Platforms and technology are reaching a point of sophistication where the buyers who succeed will need to evolve from navigators to strategists and analysts tapping into multiple touchpoints across a purchase journey that is continuing to change.

Stephanie Andrews, Media Director, Retail Media @ AMP

Will incrementality stop eluding us in 2026? My short answer is no. And that’s because we don’t have a universal definition of it. New-to-brand is a perfect example. Some brands use it as a kind of proxy for incrementality, but when each retailer defines and measures new-to-brand differently or not at all, it begs the question: Are you really measuring true incremental impact? It’s definitely getting closer in 2026, but it’s just not all the way there.

The impact of GenAI on sponsored ads: Imagine budget fluidity between sponsored search, sponsored brand, and some sort of Gen AI placement. It’s going to fundamentally reshape how sponsored ads show up, but not necessarily kill them. When an agent or an LLM is acting as the shopping assistant, retailers can’t just slap ads on there like it’s onsite display. Placement, labeling, logic—it all needs to feel credible considering how much shoppers put trust in these LLMs. So brands that aren’t investing in GEO or thinking about their ad strategy from an AI perspective are going to be a little bit behind the eight-ball.

Retail media networks will consolidate – or disappear. There are just too many retail media networks, and brands are going to get frustrated with the fragmentation and the lack of consistency. The ones that have the scale, the data advantage, and the ability to offer full-funnel capabilities are going to win. The rest are going to either consolidate, get acquired, or fade out because brands can’t manage 40 different platforms. It’s just not sustainable for them or for agencies.

The fate of retailer data clean rooms: Clean rooms are here to stay, but they’re going to evolve a lot. Advertisers are going to demand more interoperability, more automation, and more actionable outputs. The current state of clean rooms is too manual, too slow, and too expensive for most brands. The platforms that can turn clean room insights into real-time activation or optimization are going to stand out. We’ll also see retailers simplifying their clean room offerings because right now it’s overwhelming for advertisers.

More upper-funnel retail media: Upper-funnel retail media is going to keep growing because retailers finally understand that if they want to compete for brand dollars, they have to offer real reach and real storytelling opportunities. We’re going to see more video, more CTV integrations, more programmatic pipes, and more partnerships between retailers and the big media owners. I think by the end of 2026, most retail media networks will have something that resembles a full media offering, not just shopper ads.

Nick Martin, Media Operations Manager @ Scotts Miracle-Gro

With Amazon broadening its CTV and streaming TV footprint, integrating additional premium inventory while leveraging its unmatched first-party audiences and built-in shoppability, the platform is redefining what performance-driven video can look like. As these capabilities mature, it’s highly likely that CTV budgets will migrate away from traditional DSPs and consolidate within Amazon’s ecosystem, where both precision targeting and measurable commerce outcomes are inherently stronger.

Nathan Otwell, Retail Media Lead @ MaryRuth’s

Omnichannel won’t be optional: I think that omnichannel is going to be necessary for everybody in 2026. What I mean by that is: You need to have a full-funnel strategy. You need to have something that brings people in at the top of the funnel. You need to have something that talks to people in the middle of the funnel. And you have to close them at the bottom of the funnel. We have different ways of doing this, and everybody has their own platforms and strategies at those different levels of the funnel. But at the end of the day, that’s what it is: it’s a full-funnel strategy. And if it’s not all connected, if it’s not all cohesive, if the content doesn’t speak, it just doesn’t work out.

GenAI and media buying: With GenAI, media buying is going to get super easy. From a hands-on-keyboard perspective, audiences are just going to get better on each platform. That’s where media buying is going to be; that’s where sponsored ads are going to go. So how strong is your media? What’s your actual strategy with your content? Do you have a national media campaign along with your UGC campaign, along with your in-store demos and experiential marketing? All that media is going to come into play.

RMN consolidation is inevitable: We’re going to see consolidation because the retailers that don’t have enough scale are going to struggle. They can’t keep investing in tech, talent, measurement, clean rooms, APIs – it’s too much. Many of them are going to fold into bigger networks or go to white-label solutions. I think you’re going to end up with maybe ten real retail media networks that matter and the rest are going to be supplemental.

Cleaning up clean rooms: Clean rooms are great in theory, but terrible in practice right now. I think the next wave of clean rooms will be automated, and they’ll push insights directly into activation platforms. The manual work is going away. Brands aren’t going to tolerate a situation where it takes weeks to get answers to simple questions. So in the next couple of years, somebody is going to solve that workflow problem, and clean rooms are going to go from a research tool to an activation tool.

The upper-funnel revolution will be… televised? Upper-funnel retail media is going to explode because brands want reach and retailers want budgets that aren’t just tied to conversion. I think retailers are finally getting their tech stacks upgraded enough to offer real upper-funnel inventory. And CTV is going to be the biggest piece of it. Eventually you’ll see retailers packaging their data with premium video inventory in a way that competes with the big networks.

Dan Roberts, Global SVP Search @ Assembly

In 2026, the primary point of influence in retail media will not be the search bar, but the AI that curates the consumer’s experience. Brands must transition from a strategy of winning the click to one of earning the automated recommendation from the shopper’s AI.

Giuseppe Peschechera, Head of Growth @ Remazing

The competitive edge won’t come from simply activating across the full funnel. The real differentiation will be mastery of full-funnel relevance: using the right audiences, the right creatives, and the right placements at each moment of the journey. Retail media networks like Amazon are deepening tools such as Ad Agent-powered audience discovery, expanded inventory, and creative automation to support this shift.

The pressure to prove incrementality, not just short-term ROAS, will intensify. Retail media investments will be evaluated through a multi-dimensional lens: contribution to new-to-brand reach, repeat behavior, geographic uplift, or category share gains. Brands will expect agency partners and tech providers to build clear frameworks for this, grounded in transparent data and measurable causality.

AI-assisted search will collapse the distance between evaluation and purchase. Shoppers will increasingly expect answers inside the browsing flow. The classic funnel will blur: comparison, evaluation, and decision will coexist in a single scroll. Visibility will depend on feeding AI models with structured, accurate, and differentiated product information.

Jen Hodgkinson, Managing Partner @ Tambo Marketplaces

In 2026, retail media will grow more complex and non-endemic competition will push CPCs higher. The winning brands will be those leveraging measurement insights like AMC to understand incrementality and CLTV, identify product-level growth drivers, and forecast where spend delivers the highest return. While also harnessing AI-powered creative solutions, providing more accessible OLV, to fully capitalize on high-intent retail environments with tailored, converting content.

Ladi Fagbola, E-Commerce Account Director @ .monks

The open web will experience further AI-driven traffic compression, fundamentally limiting non-authenticated scale. This will shift ad spend decisively toward walled gardens – retail media, CTV, social video – due to their first-party, logged-in audience data advantage. The resulting combined power of retail-fueled CTV will move from experimentation to the core of full-funnel media plans.

Conclusion: Get ready for 2026

The predictions from these industry leaders paint a clear picture: 2026 won’t be the year retail media simplifies, it will be the year the winners separate from the rest.

Consolidation is coming – not as a threat, but as a necessity. Clean rooms will evolve from research tools to activation engines. Upper-funnel capabilities will mature into legitimate alternatives to traditional brand media. And AI will move from a feature to a fundamental requirement for competitive advantage.

The brands and agencies that thrive will be those who stop treating retail media as a channel and start treating it as an ecosystem – one that demands full-funnel thinking, disciplined measurement, and the ability to move fast as platforms evolve.

The question isn’t whether these changes are coming. It’s whether you’re ready when they arrive.

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