Retail media analyst Andrew Lipsman of Media, Ads + Commerce is back, and his message to retailers is blunt: forget agentic commerce. The real money is the on-site ad inventory most of them still leave on the table. The former eMarketer principal analyst also gives his first read on DoorDash’s $17 billion Instacart deal, which merges two of the biggest retail media businesses outside Amazon and Walmart. In the news: Amazon’s quarter, Starbucks’ U.S. turnaround, steeper UPS and FedEx holiday surcharges, and Walmart letting AI shopping agents in the front door.
Retailers fretting over AI shopping agents are missing the “gold in their own backyard,” says retail media analyst Andrew Lipsman, who expects agentic commerce to stay “the most marginal behavior.” Andrew, founder of Media, Ads + Commerce and former principal analyst at eMarketer, joins Steve Dennis and Michael LeBlanc to talk about where retail media growth will actually come from and what DoorDash’s $17 billion acquisition of Instacart means for the ad business.
Retail media networks (RMNs) let retailers sell ads across their sites, apps, stores and partner channels, using their own shopper data to target those ads and tie them to sales. Amazon and Walmart control about 85% of the market, but Andrew says what’s left is hardly scraps. It’s already a $10 billion business, and the industry has monetized only about 38% of its owned-media opportunity. He explains how Walmart’s third-party marketplace created the “auction density” behind a $6 billion-plus ad business, and why loyalty programs like Amazon Prime and Walmart+ are the fulcrum of every network that works.
Then there’s the tension between ads and customer experience, online and in stores. Andrew argues that relevant search ads are what let Amazon and Walmart get away with heavy ad loads. He shares research with GroceryTV on how shoppers respond to in-store screens and names the “no-brainer” placements: checkout, the deli counter, the pharmacy and the store entrance. End caps are worth more than any of them, he says, and they’re also more political.
He’s just as blunt about measurement. ROAS and 28-day attribution windows push brands to over-invest in Meta, Google and programmatic, he says, and retail media networks won’t win brand budgets until they offer reach and frequency data. For regional grocers and mid-size retailers, his path to scale is aggregation: act more like a digital publisher than a walled garden.
In the news: Amazon’s third quarter, where AWS grew 39%, first-party online sales grew just 2%, and heavy AI spending pushed trailing 12-month cash flow $42 billion into the red. Plus Starbucks’ improving U.S. comps (against an easy comparison), why the DoorDash–Instacart deal may not close until late 2027 or early 2028, UPS and FedEx raising holiday surcharges 22% to 25%, and Walmart opening its site to ChatGPT, Gemini and other AI shopping agents while Amazon keeps them out.
On the radar: Steve is watching the regulatory review of DoorDash–Instacart and how competitors respond. Michael, fresh from moderating a Retail Council of Canada sustainability panel, looks at textile circularity and whether extended producer responsibility (EPR) rules for apparel are headed to North America.