RedVest Media announced new additions to its retail media network at its first 2027 Upfront event held on 27 August 2026. The network will offer off-site incrementality measurement, new-to-brand reporting, custom audience cohorts, and new advertising options across social, influencer, and DoorDash platforms. The expanded measurement suite is designed to indicate whether off-site campaigns produced sales that would not have happened otherwise.
This week's commerce media developments included new hires at companies such as Home Depot and Dentsu. Perion made an acquisition that had been the subject of rumors for months among retail media circles.
Ad tech provider Attekmi, which supplies monetisation solutions, has launched Private Marketplace Deals as part of its programmatic offering. The company states that PMP Deals address ongoing challenges around control and transparency that can accompany traditional open RTB auctions, despite those auctions giving media owners and advertisers broad access to one another. Attekmi reports that minimal manual work is required, as partners do not need to negotiate deal conditions outside of the platform.
Dentsu has hired Aisha Khan away from WPP Media to lead its retail and commerce offering as head of retail & commerce for Dentsu North America. The agency is focusing on expanding and consolidating its commerce media offerings while operating under new corporate leadership at the holding company level and regionally in the Americas.
AudioStack, an agentic audio production platform for media and advertising, announced that Gradium has joined its roster of voice providers. A representative named Alexis stated that finding the best partners globally with regional expertise has been a key priority as the platform expands the range of available models. For Gradium, the partnership provides access to AudioStack's agentic production tools and the customers building on them.
Nexxen, an advertising technology platform, announced the launch of standardized Smart TV home screen inventory specifications across original equipment manufacturers. Nexxen stated that it is introducing a unified framework for buying and activating these formats to address a challenge.
Independent agency Chief Media has acquired AMZ Advisers, an Amazon-focused consultancy, and social media agency Reach Social. The acquisitions come as agencies increase deals for retail and marketplace expertise.
Love's Media Group has exceeded twenty brand partnerships and is growing its staff to support its expansion nearly a year after launching. Love's Travel Stops & Country Stores began its retail media network in October. Patrick McLean, chief marketing officer of Love's, stated in a news release that brands seek impressions and strong customer connections at the right moment.
PubMatic announced on 10 August that it appointed Megan Ramm as global chief revenue officer. Ramm joins PubMatic from Uber Advertising, where she served as head of global sales.
Myer has launched the Myer Media Network, an in-house retail media offering for its brand partners. Myer says the offering gives brand partners advertising opportunities and insights to grow their brands with its customers.
Criteo and Massmart announced a retail media collaboration in South Africa. The companies said it will help brands and marketplace sellers reach consumers across Massmart's South African digital properties.
The Iconic has rebranded its unified retail media offering as ICONIC Media. The offering brings together onsite advertising, first-party data and bespoke campaign opportunities.
The Trade Desk has appointed Kristi Argyilan as Chief Commercial Officer and Executive Vice President. Argyilan will report to Chief Executive Officer Jeff Green.
ZetaDisplay said it has bought retailmediatools, calling it a retail media infrastructure-as-a-service platform that extends ZetaDisplay's position as a full-service digital signage and retail media provider. The companies said pairing retailmediatools with ZetaDisplay's enterprise-scale digital signage know-how gives retailers one strategic partner spanning campaign creation, in-store execution, and measurement.
Founders Mark Heitke and Derek Nelson launched a nonprofit that organizes educational networking events for commerce media professionals in Minneapolis and Chicago, with plans to expand to Atlanta and Boston. Adweek reports the founders hope forming a nonprofit lets the group expand to more cities.
Myer launched an in-house retail media network called Myer Media Network. The network runs on data from the MYER one loyalty program and serves sponsored product ads across myer.com.au. It is built on Mirakl Ads, an AI-native retail media platform.
Pacvue and Ace Hardware announced a partnership that brings RedVest Media, Ace Hardware's retail media network, into Pacvue's commerce operating system. Brands can manage RedVest Media campaigns from the same platform they use for other retailers.
StackAdapt announced Ivy Studio, an AI-first advertising hub for marketers. The hub helps marketers uncover opportunities, make decisions and act faster.
SuiteDSP has introduced AI Decisioning, allowing advertisers to evaluate each programmatic impression using real-time intelligence before making a bid. The new feature enhances SuiteDSP's optimisation engine by applying AI-driven decision-making throughout the bidding process. AI Decisioning works with unified reporting and transparent supply-path visibility, letting buyers track campaign performance from impression to outcome in a single workflow.
Gemini 3.6 Flash was introduced on 21 July with 3.5 Flash-Lite and 3.5 Flash Cyber. Google describes it as a workhorse for coding, knowledge work and multimodal performance.
CallTrackingMetrics has launched a native OpenAI Ads attribution and conversion integration and an in-platform AI agent called AskCTM. The integration captures and attributes leads from ChatGPT campaigns and sends qualified conversion outcomes to OpenAI.
Leadde AI has launched an AI agent in India that creates editable professional explanation videos from business documents. The product converts PDF, PowerPoint, Word and standard operating procedure documents into videos in more than 120 languages and accents.
Ironmark has launched Ignition AI, an AI-powered distributed marketing platform for multi-location organizations. The platform combines brand management, campaign execution, marketing-fund workflows and ROI measurement with brand-trained AI.
Tec-Do unveiled Navos 2.0, an AI agent for coordinated international growth work. The product includes agents for product selection, creative generation, and influencer discovery and outreach.
Zensar launched ZenseAI.AssureAI to test, validate, monitor, and govern machine learning, generative AI, and agentic AI systems. The offering uses more than 30 automated checks across four assurance pillars.
GAPVelocity AI launched VELO for PowerBuilder as part of the VELO platform. The release uses agentic AI to translate PowerBuilder applications into Blazor and .NET on Azure.
Monotype launched the beta of its Enterprise MCP Connector for brand governance in AI-assisted creative work. It connects AI tools with a customer's font library, brand guidelines, licensing information, and production approvals.
Smartria launched SmartArchive, an AI-powered communications archiving and surveillance feature. SmartArchive helps firms capture, retain, and supervise business communications from one platform.
Altudo launched FastLane for SitecoreAI, an AI-powered model for building and modernizing Sitecore experiences. FastLane for SitecoreAI is available globally.
Canva launched Code 2.0 for AI-powered website, app, game and interactive experience creation. Users can build websites, apps, games and interactive experiences with simple text prompts.
Stagwell announced Curate, a centralized marketplace for deals and inventory curation across its network. Stagwell says the AI-powered platform applies its intelligence, quality standards and performance signals before inventory reaches a bid.
Dotdigital Group announced Agents in Dotdigital, a natural language prompting interface inside core platform workflows. Dotdigital says Agents in Dotdigital is now live and available to customers.
GumGum announced the launch of Mindset Agent, an AI-powered tool that turns campaign briefs into custom mindset segments brands and agencies can review, refine, and activate. The Trade Desk is the first platform and launch partner to support activation of Mindset Agent.
Minty, described as a pioneer in proactive commerce, launched ads that surface offers inside AI conversations and channels where purchase decisions are already happening. The launch arrives as AI is changing how consumers shop and brands compete for attention.
Moonshot AI announced Kimi K3, a new large language model built with 2.8 trillion parameters, calling it set to become the largest open weight model once the weights go public on July 27. SiliconANGLE reports that benchmarks show Kimi K3 outperforms the best models from OpenAI and Anthropic in some applications.
OpenAI launched its GPT-5.6 model family into general availability on 9 July 2026. The release covers three variants: Sol, described as the company's strongest model to date, Terra for everyday use, and Luna, its lowest cost model.
OpenAI released Codex Micro on 15 July 2026, its first branded hardware, a compact macro pad built with keyboard maker Work Louder. It is priced at 230 dollars and is a hardware controller for Codex, not a new model or AI capability.
Omneky launched a public API and a Model Context Protocol server on 10 July 2026, opening its ad-creative generation engine to developers, commerce platforms, and AI agents. Omneky said a developer can pass a single product URL and get back finished, ready-to-launch creative.
ActiveCampaign launched a Google Ads connector for Active Intelligence, its AI engine, on 8 July 2026. ActiveCampaign said marketers can launch Google Performance Max campaigns from inside ActiveCampaign using conversational prompts, without switching platforms.
Zappi launched Amplify AI on 7 July 2026, a predictive ad testing tool aimed at the high volume of social video ads that usually ship untested. Zappi said it predicts consumer response to creative so marketers can screen ads before and during campaigns.
Amazon Ads launched Alexa+ Agentic Ads, a conversational ad format that lets a customer complete a purchase within the ad. Amazon Ads describes it as its first format that carries a shopper from seeing an ad to buying without leaving the conversation. It runs on Echo Show.
Madison and Wall revised upward its worldwide and U.S. ad-spending growth estimates for this year and next, which boosted MediaPost's composite forecast for both. The firm raised its global ad-spending growth projection for 2026 by 2.2 points to +11.6% and its U.S. projection by 3.5 points to +15.6%.
A report based on the 2026 IPA TouchPoints database found that British adults now spend 44% of their commercial media time alone, a 10% increase from 2015 when tracking began. The study links much of this change to smartphones, which now match television in total commercial media consumption time among all British adults. ISBA has published the second phase of its Digital Retail Media Study.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau revised its U.S. advertising spending projection upward by 2.8 points to over 12.3% for 2026, compared to its January 2026 estimates. The report attributes stronger-than-expected first-half ad spending to record-setting audience and revenue figures from the Winter Olympics and World Cup. The study notes that buyer sentiment appears optimistic about the upcoming midterm elections, which will conclude a busy, event-driven year.
Restrictions on behavioural tracking and targeted advertising aimed at children may drive more Gen Alpha advertising budgets toward retail and commerce media, as brands seek to measure sales without tracking individual young consumers through the digital advertising funnel. This reallocation reflects a broader reset in how brands could spend money to reach Gen Alpha. Dingra estimates that 35 to 50 percent of Gen Alpha media currently reliant on behavioural or audience-level targeting could be reallocated over the next few years.
OpenAI announced that its advertising operations have achieved a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate. The report notes that for new, consistently growing businesses like OpenAI's ad sector, this run rate metric offers a helpful projection of the upcoming year's performance.
An Association of National Advertisers member report released on Tuesday found that 55% of advertisers consider the lack of consistent standards the top barrier to retail media success, despite record ad spending and growth. The report notes that when retail media is expanded to include commerce media networks connecting multiple retailers and partners, ad spending is expected to exceed $100 billion. It also recommends advertisers standardize baseline metrics such as impressions, clicks, viewability, and invalid traffic.
VIOOH has entered into a strategic partnership with b.drops to expand programmatic access to digital out-of-home advertising inventory in Brazil's self-care and wellness environments. The collaboration enables access to more than 165 million monthly impressions across 7,680 digital screens throughout Brazil, accounting for 5% of the country's DOOH market.
NORA's 2026 State of Play report used input from more than 60 brands, retailers and practitioners across Australia and New Zealand. Across its survey groups and interviews, measurement was the most consistent constraint on retail media growth, while attribution and return on ad spend did not provide enough proof of incrementality.
Walmart has implemented artificial intelligence in areas such as inventory management, supply chain operations, developer productivity, customer shopping assistants, and retail media. Walmart has diversified into sectors like retail media and digital advertising, which provide new revenue streams and deeper customer insights.
Search Engine Journal says Google's AI performance insights in Merchant Center show a brand's share of voice on AI surfaces against similar brands, comparing it to a rank report for the shortlist economy. The publication cautions that this verification is a confirmation exercise, not an open search.
eMarketer says tier one retail media networks Amazon and Walmart must expand beyond on-site saturation and innovate to sustain growth. The firm says last-mile delivery platforms must embed themselves as essential retail and media partners.
Modern Retail argues that retail media content is becoming more complex as brands invest in video for store screens and ecommerce apps. The article presents Albertsons Media Collective's first episodic campaign with Procter & Gamble as an example.
eMarketer analyst Arielle Feger says retail media should measure enduring business growth, not only return on ad spend or closed-loop attribution. Feger says retail media networks need to link point-of-sale, loyalty and in-store measurement with wider business objectives.
84.51° says shoppers are planning ahead, buying across channels, and becoming more open to new brand choices this back-to-school season. The company says that as families move into school-year routines, shopping behaviors shift across channels, categories, and baskets.
afaqs! argues that commerce media is collapsing discovery, influence, and purchase into a single journey. The publication asks whether marketers chasing measurable growth can avoid sacrificing long-term brand equity.
