3 unexpected trends powering the future of retail media

Retail media has become a proven growth engine for brands. With onsite and offsite advertising connected to store sales, marketers have greater control over the impact of their ad budgets when using retail purchase data. But some marketers are uncertain if retail media will continue to be a growing share of the media mix in the future.

At the Path to Purchase Institute’s Retail Media Summit 2025, Kroger Precision Marketing looked to the future. We discussed three big trends which make retail purchase data more important to the future of brand growth.

• Culture is moving faster. Culture is moving at the speed of TikTok. Trends change every week and people identify with increasingly more precise genres and products. The message is clear: consumers don’t stand still. You can’t rely on traditional demographics to understand your audience. Real-time purchase data is the FASTEST way to keep up with actual consumer lifestyles. “You are what you buy,” is the new mantra. And with culture changing fast – those purchase signals are more essential for brands.

• Mass media is dead. Mass media has entered its zombie era: still standing, but lifeless. People want personalized content. Streaming TV eclipsed linear TV almost three years ago and streaming audio is where people are spending their time. The implication for brands: relevancy matters in today’s media landscape. Addressable media allows brands to deliver unique messages to different audience segments. Retail data is enabling more precise brand messages everywhere: from social media to streaming audio to CTV to in-store experiences.

• Measurement is having a renaissance. Media measurement is not just a hot topic – it has become a center of action and brand investment. Retail media measurement is complex because brands have to control for more variables to get comparable results across retailers. But nobody wants to go back to vague traditional media metrics. And in a world with new AI models, it is easier to cut through complex retail data and see incremental impact.

The end result? More brand growth through better human connections. Not to mention less ad waste (and more efficient ad spending). Whatever your future media mix looks like – you can be sure that retail media data will be powering the impact.