### Retail Media's Maturation in 2025Retail media underwent structural transformations in 2025, shifting from foundational growth to sophisticated, full-funnel operations. Recorded live at NRF 2026 in New York, the final episode of The Retail Media Podcast marked a full-year reflection, highlighting marketplace sellers as primary growth drivers, product-led monetization, and AI integration as core infrastructure rather than add-ons. This episode, featuring industry voices, framed 2025 as the year retail media achieved fluency, with product catalogs evolving into central assets for discovery and agentic commerce.US retail media ad spend surpassed $60 billion in 2025, projected to near $70 billion in 2026, outpacing broader digital advertising growth, according to Tinuiti's Q4 2025 Digital Ads Benchmark Report. Momentum appeared in channels like Amazon Sponsored Products, with 23% year-over-year click growth and declining CPCs, alongside 31% spend increases in DSP formats. Global revenue projections point to $176 billion by 2028, underscoring sustained expansion.### Core Shifts Reshaping OperationsThree pivotal changes defined the year: marketplace-driven growth elevated third-party sellers from peripheral to engine roles, product catalogs transitioned from back-office tools to monetization hubs, and full-funnel strategies integrated onsite, offsite, and in-store activations. Agentic commerce emerged as a unifying force, with AI agents handling discovery and transactions, demanding real-time adaptability from retailers and advertisers.Programmatic access scaled this via demand-side platforms, where DSP now comprises 40% of certain ad budgets, blending retail inventory with open-web reach. Shoppable connected TV gained traction, with streaming video spend rising 13% year-over-year in Q4 2025, fueled by 127% growth in Prime Video ads alone. In-store advancements digitized shelves and screens, leveraging first-party data to bridge online research with physical purchases.### Implications for E-Commerce Product InfrastructureThese shifts place unprecedented demands on product feeds, elevating structured data as the backbone for AI-mediated shopping. Agentic systems require comprehensive attributes—descriptions, images, specifications—to deliver contextual recommendations, directly impacting **feed quality** and completeness. Poor data leads to suboptimal visibility in agent-driven discovery, where AI prioritizes relevance over volume.Cataloging standards must evolve to support automation, with marketplaces streamlining onboarding for sellers to accelerate assortment deployment. Speed becomes critical: real-time updates enable rapid shelfing of new products, capturing peak demand periods like Cyber Monday, where sales spiked over 30% via sponsored formats. No-code tools facilitate this, allowing non-technical teams to enrich feeds without custom development.AI optimizes further by curating experiences and automating workflows, from ad targeting to performance measurement. Retailers investing in data infrastructure gain advantages in shopper data richness and assortment breadth, positioning product catalogs as strategic assets for 2026 competitiveness.### The 2026 Playbook Takes ShapeSuccess hinges on embracing these levers: treating marketplace sellers as core advertisers, weaponizing product data for agentic flows, and automating beyond onsite limits. Interoperability improvements and advanced metrics, including in-store upgrades, enable closed-loop attribution across funnels. Retail media now aligns precisely with shopper paths, from awareness via CTV to conversion at shelf, rewriting rules in real time.*InternetRetailing*; *Tinuiti*.---The evolution of retail media highlights the critical role of product data quality and accessibility. As AI-powered discovery and agentic commerce become more prevalent, the completeness and accuracy of product feeds will directly impact sales performance. At NotPIM, we recognize this shift and provide a no-code solution for optimizing product data. This empowers e-commerce teams to quickly adapt to these changes by streamlining product enrichment, **catalog management**, and feed optimization for various marketplaces. We understand that good product descriptions are also crucial for e-commerce, and help merchants learn **how to create sales-driving product descriptions without spending a fortune.** As businesses are looking at other ways to optimize their operations and gain a competitive advantage, they can discover **how delta feeds save resources**.