The next major move in US retail media is likely to be another shoppable-connected-TV buy, and the pattern points to it landing before the third-quarter earnings season closes in early November 2026. Within a single fortnight in late June, Walmart, Target and Amazon each planted a flag in shoppable CTV: Walmart agreed to buy a self-serve CTV platform, Target’s Roundel took a retail media network onto premium video for the first time, and Amazon switched on remote-enabled shopping inside Samsung’s streaming inventory. Three of the largest commerce-media operators moving the same way in the same window is not coincidence; it reads as a category deciding where its next growth has to come from. The signals suggest that at least one more top-ten US retail media network will announce a CTV acquisition, an exclusive CTV inventory or measurement partnership, or a dedicated shoppable-video product before Q3 results are reported.
In short
- The prediction: at least one additional top-ten US retail media network is likely to announce a shoppable-CTV acquisition or exclusive CTV partnership before Q3 2026 earnings season closes (roughly early November), and Walmart and Amazon are likely to foreground off-site and CTV ad growth in that same reporting cycle.
- Signal 1: Walmart agreed to acquire self-serve CTV platform Vibe.co, reported at around $1.4bn, announced June 23 at Cannes Lions.
- Signal 2: Target’s Roundel launched a first-of-its-kind DirecTV shoppable-video pilot with closed-loop measurement back to Target purchases, alongside a fresh leadership line-up and a five-year doubling mandate.
- Signal 3: Amazon Ads and Samsung went live on June 22 with remote-enabled “add to cart” advertising inside Samsung TV Plus, bought through Amazon DSP.
- Timeframe and test: falsifiable within roughly 90 to 120 days; watch for a Kroger, Instacart, Best Buy, Home Depot or Albertsons CTV move, and for CTV language in the next earnings calls.
Why this matters now
Retail media has spent three years as the highest-margin growth story in the industry, but the easy growth is thinning. On-site search and sponsored-product inventory, the format that built the category, is close to saturation at the largest retailers, where ad load on the digital shelf is already dense. When a channel runs out of its cheapest inventory, operators either raise prices or go find new inventory, and the more durable answer is new inventory.
That is why the off-site shift has been building for months, a move we flagged when we argued that retail media’s next land grab moves off-site before the 2026 holidays. Connected TV is the largest and most attractive of those off-site pools, because it carries the reach of television with the addressability of digital. The strategic prize is to attach a retailer’s first-party purchase data to that reach and prove, in a clean room, that an ad drove a sale.
The timing is not accidental either. Cannes Lions in late June is the industry’s annual moment to set the agenda, and Q3 is the quarter in which retailers build the ad-sales pipeline that monetizes the holiday peak. A capability announced in June has to be sellable by the fourth quarter to matter, so the June moves are best read as positioning for the back half of 2026 rather than distant bets.
The pattern also fits how this category tends to move. Retail media operators watch each other closely, benchmark against Amazon relentlessly, and rarely let a rival hold a distribution advantage for long. When three leaders make the same category-defining move at once, the followers usually feel the pressure within a quarter or two.
Signal 1: Walmart’s $1.4bn move on self-serve CTV
On June 23, on the opening days of Cannes Lions, Walmart said it had agreed to acquire Vibe.co, a self-serve connected-TV advertising platform aimed at small and mid-sized businesses. The Wall Street Journal put the value at roughly $1.4bn, structured as about $1.2bn in cash plus around $180m in retention for top executives over four years, though Walmart did not officially disclose terms. For a company that usually builds rather than buys in media, writing a cheque of that size is a strong revealed preference.
The strategic logic is about the long tail of advertisers. Vibe.co lets a small business launch a CTV campaign for as little as $50 a day and go live in minutes, according to the company’s pitch, which is precisely the segment Walmart Connect has struggled to serve with its enterprise-grade tools. Folding a self-serve engine on top of Walmart’s commerce audiences, its Vizio inventory and its closed-loop measurement is an attempt to widen the funnel of who can buy TV against Walmart data.
Walmart framed the deal explicitly against Amazon. Walmart Connect general manager Ryan Mayward said the aim was “making commerce media more accessible, measurable and easier to activate for advertisers of all sizes,” and the company’s own materials noted that Amazon “announced a deal this week with Samsung.” Context matters here: Walmart Connect ad revenue reached roughly $6.4bn in 2025, and the company has been open that it wants first-party shopper data to underwrite upper-funnel video the way Amazon already does.
This also extends a thesis about where Walmart’s profit is heading. We have argued that Walmart’s profit growth will lean on ads and membership, not aisles, and a CTV acquisition of this scale is consistent with a company treating media as a core earnings engine rather than a bolt-on. The signal is less about Vibe.co specifically and more about Walmart deciding that self-serve CTV reach is worth buying outright rather than waiting to build.
Signal 2: Target Roundel puts a retail media network on premium video
Around June 19, in the same Cannes window, Target’s Roundel unveiled a first-of-its-kind premium-video pilot with DirecTV, described as the first time a retail media network has been available on the DirecTV advertising platform. The pilot lets brands participating in Roundel reach Target shoppers through DirecTV inventory, then measure whether people exposed to those ads later bought the advertised products at Target. That closed-loop measurement, tying video exposure to actual Target purchases, is the whole point.
The move sits on top of a leadership reset that reads as a strategic upgrade rather than routine churn. Matt Drzewicki became SVP leading Roundel effective June 1, after serving as interim leader since January; he joined Roundel in 2022 and previously spent more than a decade at Google. His predecessor, Sarah Travis, was promoted to executive vice president and chief digital and revenue officer, a title that pulls retail media closer to the center of Target’s revenue strategy.
The mandate attached to that reset is telling. Roundel has set a goal of doubling its media business over the next five years, from a base that already generates close to $2bn of value for Target and grew at a double-digit rate in the first quarter. You do not double a $2bn on-site business on sponsored search alone; you do it by opening new surfaces, which is exactly what a DirecTV video pilot represents.
Roundel has been an early mover on new surfaces before, having tested advertising inside ChatGPT earlier in 2026. Read together, the ChatGPT test and the DirecTV pilot describe a retail media network deliberately pushing beyond its owned digital shelf into video and conversational surfaces, with measurement as the connective tissue. The executive change signals intent; the DirecTV pilot signals execution.
Signal 3: Amazon and Samsung make the remote shoppable
On June 22, Samsung Ads named the first brands and agencies activating Amazon Ads’ interactive video ad technology across Samsung TV Plus, the free ad-supported streaming service. It marked the first time viewers watching that inventory could use their remote to take a commerce action inside an ad, including “add to cart” straight into an Amazon storefront for brands that sell on Amazon. The underlying deal was announced at NewFronts in March; the June activation is when it became real for advertisers.
The mechanics reveal the strategy. Advertisers buy Samsung TV Plus inventory through Amazon DSP and combine Samsung’s device-level viewing signals with Amazon’s shopping, browsing and streaming data inside Amazon’s clean room for targeting and measurement. Launch partners spanned consumer goods and technology, including Reckitt and Logitech, which signals that large brand budgets, not just experimental spend, are being pointed at the format.
What makes this a distinct signal rather than a repeat of Walmart’s is the direction of travel. Amazon is extending its commerce graph onto someone else’s screens, turning a third-party TV maker’s inventory into shoppable Amazon surface. That is the mirror image of Walmart buying its way into self-serve CTV, and it means the two largest US retail media operators are attacking the same shoppable-CTV opportunity from opposite ends of the stack.
The common thread across all three signals is that the remote, or the measurement layer behind it, is becoming a checkout-adjacent surface. When the biggest operators agree that television should be both a reach medium and a shoppable, measurable one, the smaller networks are left with a clear choice about whether to follow.
What the pattern suggests
Read individually, each of these is a single company move. Read together, within a two-week window, they look like a category converging on a shared conclusion: the next unit of retail media growth is shoppable, measurable CTV, and the way to capture it is through acquisition or exclusive partnership rather than slow organic build. That convergence is the core of the prediction.
The following matrix lays out why the three signals reinforce rather than merely echo one another.
| Signal | Operator | Date | Mechanism | What it reveals |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vibe.co acquisition | Walmart Connect | June 23, 2026 | Buys self-serve CTV platform (~$1.4bn) | Willing to buy, not build, to reach the long tail of advertisers |
| DirecTV shoppable-video pilot | Target Roundel | ~June 19, 2026 | First RMN on DirecTV, closed-loop to purchases | New leadership plus a doubling mandate forces new surfaces |
| Interactive video go-live | Amazon Ads x Samsung | June 22, 2026 | Remote “add to cart” via Amazon DSP clean room | Extends the commerce graph onto third-party screens |
Two features make the pattern credible rather than anecdotal. First, the moves are structurally different (a buy, a media partnership, a data-and-inventory integration), which means they are not three firms copying one press release but three firms independently arriving at CTV. Second, all three attach first-party purchase data to video and insist on closed-loop measurement, which tells you the competition is not really about screens; it is about proving sales impact.
This also rhymes with the deeper structural shift we described when arguing that retail media consolidation is moving to its infrastructure layer. Buying a self-serve platform or locking an exclusive DSP-to-inventory pipe is an infrastructure play, not a media buy. The pattern suggests the category is maturing from selling ads to owning the pipes and measurement that make off-site ads sellable at scale.
Wider context: the measurement war beneath the CTV land grab
The visible story is a race for CTV inventory, but the more important contest is over measurement. Every one of these moves leans on a clean room and a closed-loop metric, because the value of retailer data on television is only realized when a brand can see that exposure converted to a basket. Off-site expansion is a measurement problem before it is a media-buying problem, and whoever owns the credible measurement layer captures the margin.
This is where the incrementality question bites. It is one thing to show that people who saw an ad later bought a product, and another to prove the ad caused the purchase rather than reaching buyers who would have converted anyway. Industry scrutiny of retailer CTV measurement, including the Walmart-Vizio integration, has centered on exactly this incrementality gap, and it is the most likely reason the wave could stall.
The shoppable-TV thread also connects to broader media consolidation. Structural deals such as Fox’s acquisition of Roku point to shoppable television gaining scale as a distinct commerce surface, which gives retail media operators both more inventory to buy and more competition for it. The CTV opportunity is not forming in isolation; it is forming as the entire video ecosystem reorganizes around commerce.
None of this displaces the in-store push. The same operators are still scaling screens and audio at the shelf, a trend we covered in arguing that in-store retail media crosses from pilot to scale by holiday 2026. The likeliest near-term shape is a barbell: shoppable CTV for reach and upper funnel, in-store media for the moment of purchase, with the retailer’s data and measurement stack tying the two ends together.
Who is likely to move next
If the prediction is that another top-ten US retail media network follows, the sensible question is who. The candidates are the operators with enough first-party data to make CTV valuable, enough ad revenue to justify a build or buy, and a competitive reason not to cede the surface to Walmart and Amazon. The table below ranks the most plausible next movers on those criteria.
| Candidate | Ad-network vehicle | Why a CTV move is likely | Relative likelihood before Q3 close |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kroger | Kroger Precision Marketing (84.51°) | Deep loyalty data, strong grocery-shopper graph, active in M&A | High |
| Instacart | Carrot Ads | Already announced off-site streaming and search partnerships | High |
| Albertsons | Albertsons Media Collective | New retail media leadership, needs a differentiator versus Kroger | Medium |
| Best Buy | Best Buy Ads | High-value electronics audience well suited to premium video | Medium |
| Home Depot | Orange Apron Media | Large pro and DIY audience, scaling off-site ambitions | Medium |
| DoorDash | DoorDash Ads | Frequent-purchase data, expanding beyond sponsored listings | Lower |
Instacart looks like the shortest odds because it has already publicly extended its shopper graph to streaming and search partners, so a formal shoppable-CTV product would be an extension rather than a leap. Kroger is close behind, with one of the richest loyalty datasets in US grocery and a demonstrated appetite for deals, having recently pursued grocery consolidation such as its acquisition of Giant Eagle. Albertsons, refreshed at the top of its media unit, has the clearest competitive motive to answer Kroger.
A move need not be a billion-dollar acquisition to satisfy the prediction. An exclusive CTV inventory deal, a clean-room measurement partnership with a streaming platform, or a launched shoppable-video product would all count. The bar is a concrete, announced commitment to shoppable or measurable CTV from a major US retail media network, which is a lower and more likely threshold than a marquee buyout.
Implications for retailers, brands, platforms and investors
For retailers, the message is that scale in retail media increasingly requires a video and measurement strategy, not just a search-ad business. Operators without a credible off-site plan risk being capped at the on-site ceiling while rivals monetize reach they cannot match. The likely response is a wave of partnerships and selective acquisitions as mid-tier networks try to buy capability they cannot build in time for the holidays.
For brands and agencies, the near-term reality is more fragmentation before more consolidation. Each retailer’s CTV offering arrives with its own clean room, its own measurement definition and its own buying path, which raises the cost of comparing performance across networks. The pragmatic stance is to treat 2026 as a testing year, insist on incrementality rather than last-touch attribution, and avoid locking large budgets into any single walled garden until the measurement claims are independently validated.
For platforms and TV makers, retailer data is becoming the currency that makes their inventory premium. Samsung’s willingness to route inventory through Amazon DSP shows that device makers will trade some control for access to commerce signals and demand. Expect more streaming services and connected-TV platforms to court retail media operators, because retailer-attributed sales are the outcome advertisers will pay the most for.
For investors, the read-through is that retail media’s growth narrative is shifting from margin expansion on existing inventory to capability acquisition for new inventory. That likely means more deal activity, some multiple compression as capex and acquisition costs rise, and a sharper divide between operators that own their measurement stack and those that rent it. The next earnings cycle is the moment to watch for how explicitly management teams tie CTV and off-site growth to guidance.
Caveats: what could go wrong
The strongest counter-signal is measurement credibility. If incrementality studies keep showing that retailer CTV mostly reaches buyers who would have converted anyway, advertiser enthusiasm could cool quickly, and the June moves would look like premature land-grabbing rather than a durable wave. The scrutiny already directed at retailer-CTV measurement is a real and current risk, not a hypothetical one.
A second caveat is that Cannes announcements are often louder than the spend behind them. Some of the June activity may be positioning designed to dominate the industry conversation, with real dollars arriving far more slowly than the press releases imply. A splashy pilot is not the same as a scaled, repeatable business, and a follower move that is mostly optics would only weakly confirm the prediction.
Macro conditions are a third risk. Retail media budgets are ultimately funded by trade and marketing dollars that soften when consumer demand weakens, and a pullback in ad spend in the back half of 2026 could push would-be followers to delay rather than commit. A cautious mid-tier retailer may simply choose to wait out the uncertainty.
Finally, fragmentation could deter rather than accelerate. If every retailer stands up an incompatible walled garden with its own metrics, advertisers may resist rather than reward the proliferation, slowing the very expansion the leaders are betting on. Regulatory and privacy scrutiny of first-party-data clean rooms feeding open-web and CTV inventory adds a further layer of uncertainty. The base case remains that a follower moves before Q3 close, but these caveats are the reasons a reasonable observer could bet the other way.
| Scenario | What happens by Q3 close | Rough odds |
|---|---|---|
| Base case | At least one top-ten RMN announces a CTV buy or exclusive partnership; Walmart and Amazon foreground CTV in earnings | Most likely |
| Bull case | Two or more followers move, and a mid-tier network is acquired for its CTV or measurement stack | Plausible |
| Bear case | Incrementality doubts and macro caution stall followers; June moves stay isolated | Less likely but real |
Frequently asked questions
What exactly is the prediction and when can it be checked?
The prediction is that at least one additional top-ten US retail media network will announce a shoppable-CTV acquisition, an exclusive CTV inventory or measurement partnership, or a dedicated shoppable-video product before the Q3 2026 earnings season closes, roughly early November. It is checkable by a future reader simply by scanning retail media news and the next round of earnings calls in that window.
Why connected TV specifically, rather than social or search?
On-site search is near saturation at the largest retailers, and CTV offers the rare combination of television-scale reach with digital addressability. That makes it the most attractive off-site pool for attaching first-party purchase data, which is why the leaders are concentrating there rather than on already-crowded surfaces.
Isn’t this just three companies doing unrelated things at Cannes?
The moves are structurally different, which is what makes the convergence meaningful rather than coincidental. A buy, a media partnership and a data-and-inventory integration all pointing at shoppable, measurable CTV in the same two weeks suggests independent firms reaching the same strategic conclusion.
Who is the most likely next mover?
Instacart and Kroger look like the shortest odds. Instacart has already extended its shopper graph to streaming and search partners, and Kroger has one of the richest US grocery loyalty datasets plus a demonstrated appetite for deals. Albertsons, with refreshed media leadership, has the clearest competitive motive to respond.
What would prove the prediction wrong?
If no major US retail media network makes a concrete shoppable-CTV commitment before Q3 results, and if Walmart and Amazon do not meaningfully foreground CTV or off-site growth in their earnings commentary, the prediction fails. A follower move that is pure optics with no product or spend behind it would only weakly support it.
What is closed-loop measurement and why does it matter here?
Closed-loop measurement ties ad exposure to an actual purchase, usually inside a privacy-safe clean room that matches viewing data with a retailer’s sales data. It matters because retailer CTV is only worth a premium if a brand can see that a TV ad drove a basket, which is the entire value proposition these moves are built on.
What is the biggest risk to the thesis?
Incrementality. If measurement keeps showing that retailer CTV mostly reaches shoppers who would have bought anyway, advertiser demand could cool and followers could hesitate. That, combined with any softening in ad budgets, is the most credible path to the prediction not landing.
How should brands respond in the meantime?
Treat 2026 as a testing year, demand incrementality rather than last-touch attribution, and avoid over-committing budget to any single retailer’s walled garden until its measurement claims are independently validated. Running controlled tests across two or three networks is a more defensible stance than betting early on one.
Does this replace in-store retail media?
No. The likeliest shape is a barbell, with shoppable CTV handling reach and the upper funnel while in-store media captures the moment of purchase. The retailer’s data and measurement stack is what ties the two ends together, which is why measurement, not screens, is the real battleground.