Retail media is expected to be a $62 billion pie per Emarketer, and Meta is quietly angling for a piece of it.

Over the previous yr, the tech big has been sharing extra information, rolling out new merchandise, and updating previous ones, all geared at retailers, eight sources advised ADWEEK.

Meta is doing this as retail media sellers are constructing instruments that permit them place advertisements off their owned-and-operated websites, stated Sammy Rubin, vp of built-in media at Wpromote. Many sellers are actually shopping for advertisements on CTV platforms like Roku. If Meta doesn’t step up its retail media providing, it dangers dropping out on attracting these {dollars}, a number of sources stated.

Meta helps show that retail media advertisements labored

One in every of Meta’s most vital new merchandise is an API that enables on-line marketplaces that promote merchandise from third events to run advertisements on Meta, a number of sources advised ADWEEK. Most significantly, the API collects information that lets each {the marketplace} and model know whether or not these advertisements drove gross sales.

In a hypothetical instance, if DeWalt buys an advert that seems on Meta to get individuals to purchase a drill at House Depot, now Meta’s API will let each DeWalt and House Depot know if that advert resulted in a sale, stated James Avery, CEO and founding father of Kevel.

Whereas Meta launched the API in 2021, it was initially solely accessible to marketplaces with at the very least 20,000 distinctive sellers—a excessive threshold for nascent retail media networks. Meta dropped the 20,000 requirement in 2024.


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Entrepreneurs say Meta must employees up

There are two different latest examples of how Meta is jockeying for a bigger piece of retail media.

Final spring, Meta began sharing product-level reporting with advertisers that lets retailers match SKU-level information again to gross sales, serving to them to trace which advertisements labored.

Meta has additionally begun sharing “impression logs” with at the very least two retailers, which use Meta advert impression information to assist retail media networks observe how Meta customers work together with advertisements and whether or not they result in the gross sales of particular person merchandise. One supply at a retail media agency advised ADWEEK that two of its retailer purchasers have been given “hands-on entry” to those impression logs for the primary time from Meta, with two extra in talks for entry.