Battle Lines Drawn in New York City as Retail Media Networks Vie for Billions in Brand Advertising Dollars

The landscape of modern advertising is undergoing a profound structural transformation, driven largely by the proliferation of retail media networks (RMNs). Over the past several years, consumer-facing enterprises—ranging from traditional brick-and-mortar grocers and specialty hardware stores to financial institutions and e-commerce giants—have aggressively monetized their first-party data and digital properties. This competitive rush to capture coveted brand marketing dollars converged in New York City, where industry leaders, advertising agencies, and corporate executives gathered for a high-stakes industry summit.

The gathering served as a microcosm of a broader macroeconomic trend: as traditional digital advertising channels face increased privacy regulations, cookie deprecation, and signal loss, corporate balance sheets are pivoting toward companies that possess direct, authenticated relationships with consumers.

The Ascendant Network Showcase: Context and Chronology

The recent surge of RMNs into the media-buying spotlight culminated on a Wednesday in New York City, where the advertising events company Ascendant Network hosted its flagship commerce media upfront, known as Showcase. Designed specifically to bridge the gap between emerging commerce media networks, major ad agencies, and global brand marketers, the event featured 15 distinct presentations.

The lineup reflected the cross-industry nature of the modern retail media boom. Participants ranged from legacy big-box staples like The Home Depot and regional grocery powerhouses like Albertsons and H-E-B to financial technology platforms including PayPal and Chase Media Solutions.

While the formal presentations commanded the stage, the broader ecosystem was heavily represented across the venue. Attendees and industry observers took stock of specialized networks including Ahold Delhaize USA’s AD Retail Media, the Dollar General Media Network, Sallie Mae’s Backpack Media, and Ace Hardware’s RedVest Media.

This chronology of expansion highlights how far the concept of retail media has traveled. Once viewed merely as point-of-sale display ads or simple sponsored product listings on e-commerce sites, RMNs have evolved into sophisticated, multi-channel ecosystems encompassing connected TV (CTV), in-store digital screens, mobile applications, off-site programmatic advertising, and even proprietary consumer-facing media properties.

Data Strategies: Legacy Retailers Versus Fintech and E-Commerce Giants

During the New York City upfront, the participating companies categorized their competitive advantages into distinct strategic pillars. Leaders from legacy retailers and long-standing financial institutions heavily emphasized their deep, historical reservoirs of internal data, which span decades of consumer behavior. Conversely, e-commerce platforms and fintech leaders leaned into their expansive, cross-merchant visibility and vast transactional reach. Specialty retailers focused on the power of niche audience demographics, arguing that their shoppers exhibit specialized intent that benefits brands far beyond the physical or digital shelves of the retailer’s own store.

Arun Ramaswamy, Vice President of Technology and Product at The Home Depot, highlighted the technical convergence defining the sector. Speaking to industry reporters, Ramaswamy noted a unified focus across presentations on measurement, driving explicit business outcomes, and achieving technological interoperability across consumer channels and ad platforms.

"If you look at where the industry is going, incrementality is a key ask: Prove that the investment truly works," Ramaswamy stated, identifying accountability as the primary demand from modern brand marketers.

Peter Giordano, General Manager of Ads Platform and Growth Services for DoorDash, echoed this sentiment regarding consumer signal aggregation. According to Giordano, the core objective for modern RMNs is anticipating human behavior by synthesizing disparate data points.

"That’s what we’re doubling down on: truly understanding people’s life moments and different occasions and different purchase behaviors for how all our brands, and retail and merchant partners, can interact with them at different points in that customer journey," Giordano explained.

Katie Daleo, General Manager of Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) Ads at DoorDash, added that networks are increasingly recognizing their capacity to execute upper-funnel campaigns. By leveraging new video formats and in-store digital screens, brands can capture consumer attention earlier in the purchasing cycle before executing surgical, highly targeted lower-funnel conversions.

Deep Dive: Individual Network Presentations and Strategic Positioning

Home Depot (Orange Apron Media)

The Home Depot’s Orange Apron Media division showcased its comprehensive visibility across the entire consumer lifecycle—from initial project browsing and instructional video consumption to real-time interactions with customer service chatbots. Kailey Emery, Director of Ad Sales Marketing for Orange Apron Media, emphasized the profound halo effect of advertising adjacent to the home improvement giant. According to internal data presented at the event, brands appearing alongside The Home Depot experience a 30% increase in brand trust, a 70% jump in recall, and a 40% surge in purchase intent.

Emery contextualized the emotional weight of the retailer’s data: "Think about what a trip to The Home Depot can represent: a new home, a major renovation, a backyard built for entertainment, an empty nester downsizing their space, a business that’s starting to grow. Those moments can tell us something powerful, not just what a customer needs today, but what they may need next."

Albertsons Media Collective

Brian Monahan, Senior Vice President of Retail Media at Albertsons, underscored the evolution of grocers from traditional item-and-price distributors into rich content platforms. Highlighting the company’s "Rico’s Tacos" campaign—a micro-sitcom integrated into online shopping interfaces and in-store digital screens—Monahan illustrated how storytelling drives commerce.

Albertsons reported that ad placements displayed alongside the Rico’s Tacos video content outperformed standard industry benchmarks by 200%. Furthermore, a broader America 250 civic campaign executed by the grocer yielded a 24% increase in unit sales for participating CPG brands.

DoorDash Ads

DoorDash Chief Marketing Officer Tim Castree detailed the platform’s structural shift from a restaurant delivery service to an on-demand utility for everyday household needs. Processing billions of orders annually, DoorDash provides advertisers with granular insights into purchase correlations and temporal shopping patterns. For instance, platform data indicates that health food orders surge by 30% on Tuesdays compared to Fridays, while toothbrush purchases spike by nearly 30% over weekends.

"Individually, these are super interesting correlations and fun facts, but together, they reveal patterns in how needs change across days, categories, occasions and within hours inside the day," Castree noted. "And at our scale, that becomes something that marketers can actually act on."

PayPal Ads

Mark Grether, Senior Vice President and General Manager of PayPal Ads—whose resume includes leading advertising divisions at Uber and Amazon—highlighted PayPal’s expansive purview. Unlike traditional retailer-centric RMNs confined to a single store’s ecosystem, PayPal leverages financial transactions spanning browsing, spending, and peer-to-peer transfers across its core platform and subsidiary Venmo.

Grether pointed out that PayPal’s off-site ad capabilities, bolstered by instant transaction buttons, offer brands a window into consumer behavior across a multitude of merchants where customers may not yet regularly shop. "We wouldn’t pretend to know more than our favorite advertisers and marketers, but they have a limited view," Grether said. "The availability of data that we have […] allows us to understand a lot more."

Macy’s Media Network

Michael Krans, Vice President of Macy’s Media Network, focused on the department store’s unique positioning during major life milestones, such as weddings, graduations, relocations, and the winter holidays. Because consumers traditionally look to Macy’s for product discovery, Krans argued that the network enables brands to capture attention much earlier in the buying process.

"Most retail media strategies focus heavily on demand capture," or targeting consumers who already have high purchase intent for a specific item, Krans explained. "At Macy’s, we think the opportunity is larger. We help brands create demand, shape choice and capture demand."

Chase Media Solutions

Representing the financial sector, Lauren Griewski, Chief Growth Officer for Chase Media Solutions, outlined how the institution personalizes ad targeting using massive transaction data reserves, anchored by more than $1.9 trillion in debit and credit sales recorded in 2025.

"This isn’t just a matter of scale," Griewski stated. "It’s actually a window into how consumers live, spend and make decisions, and it helps us understand not only what people buy, but how their behavior changes over time, what they prioritize and where loyalty exists."

Dick’s Sporting Goods

David Young, Vice President of Media at Dick’s Sporting Goods, directed attention toward an often-overlooked demographic: youth sports. While professional and collegiate sports advertising remain fiercely competitive, Dick’s leverages its physical stores, e-commerce channels, and its mobile scorekeeping platform GameChanger (acquired in 2016) to reach millions of families.

Citing a joint survey conducted by the company and eMarketer, Young noted that 63% of U.S. parents have children involved in youth sports, and 84% report that youth sports heavily influence their household purchasing decisions. This dynamic creates prime opportunities not only for athletic brands but also for quick-service restaurants, CPG companies, and the automotive sector.

"Sports, as we know, is probably one of the last bastions of the monoculture," Young observed. "It is something that drives conversation, it is something that drives emotion out of many of us, […] but I think it also drives identity."

Instacart

Ali Miller, General Manager of Advertising at Instacart, emphasized the technological infrastructure required to scale retail media. Beyond managing its own marketplace, Instacart powers retail media solutions for third-party grocers via its Carrot Ads platform, bridging websites, apps, connected TV, and in-store screens.

"Instead of more fragmented retail media networks, the answer is actually a shared ecosystem that can benefit retailers, brands and consumers," Miller argued. "We will never be a retailer, we’re a retail technology company, and retail media is increasingly table stakes when it comes to competitive retail technology."

Chewy Ads

Frank Mulcahy, Head of Chewy Ads, underscored the unmatched stability of pet-care retail media. Drawing on his extensive background in digital advertising at Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, and Wayfair, Mulcahy highlighted the integration of pets into modern households and the unique predictability of pet-care purchasing.

Crucially, Mulcahy noted that approximately 84% of all sales on Chewy are driven by automatic subscription models. "That is incredibly valuable for marketers," he said. "You get them, and they stay, and then you build another cohort."

Walgreens Advertising Group

John Storms, Vice President of Digital and Retail Media at Walgreens, addressed internal operational realignments aimed at smoothing collaboration with major agencies and brand partners. Stressing the importance of unifying merchandising, media, marketing, and digital departments, Storms noted that breaking down internal silos directly correlates to improved return on investment (ROI) for advertisers.

Underscoring its forward-looking strategy, Walgreens utilized the platform to announce a strategic partnership with in-store media firm Looma, which will deploy a comprehensive network of digital screens across 1,200 retail locations starting in October.

H-E-B Retail Media

Texas-based regional grocery powerhouse H-E-B closed out discussions by emphasizing its dominant footprint in one of the United States’ most economically dynamic states, serving roughly 8 million households weekly across nearly 500 stores. Stacy Torstrick, General Manager of Retail Media at H-E-B, detailed ongoing investments in advanced planning and forecasting tools designed to streamline collaboration with national brands.

"We’re competing in the most important growth markets in the country," Torstrick asserted. "We own this state, and it’ll help you understand these moments that competitors can’t touch."

Broader Market Implications and Future Outlook

The fierce competition displayed at the Ascendant Network’s Showcase in New York City signals a permanent maturation of the retail media sector. As brands face mounting pressure to demonstrate clear attribution and measurable return on ad spend (ROAS), the battleground has shifted from basic banner ads to sophisticated, data-driven storytelling spanning physical stores, mobile apps, streaming television, and financial transactions.

The proliferation of specialized RMNs—from home improvement warehouses and pet supply subscription giants to credit card issuers and food delivery apps—proves that virtually any company owning direct consumer transaction data can transform into a media publisher. For brand marketers, the challenge moving forward will not be finding ad inventory, but navigating an increasingly complex, fragmented ecosystem to identify the highest-yielding customer touchpoints across the entire consumer journey.