🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Broadcasters face deeper cuts than headline numbers suggest

• ITV plans £35 million in cuts 1. TV+ (linear TV and broadcaster video-on-demand) held over a third of the £4.3 billion video ad market in H1 2025 1.
• A mid single digit drop in broadcaster ad sales hides a shift. Retail media (ads on retailer-owned sites/apps and their ad networks, powered by shopper data) in the UK reached £1.5 billion in H1 2025. It now pulls performance budgets from TV 1.
• In Europe, retail media will double over four years 2. It now reaches beyond sponsored search into display and audio, formats long used by broadcasters 2.
• Linear TV lacks a clear path to stability, so broadcasters may need deeper cuts as programmatic (software-driven automated ad buying) takes 78% of digital display spend 1.

Measurement and activation vendors can capture retail media’s European expansion

• In Europe, retail media grows twice as fast as digital ads 3. 40% of agency executives see it as a full-funnel solution (from brand awareness through to conversion) over lower-funnel search (purchase-focused ads) 3.
• Measurement and activation (campaign execution) vendors can fill gaps as retailers expand off-site (placements beyond retailers’ properties using retailer data) 3. They offer measurement tools, clean rooms (privacy-safe environments for matching data between partners) or cross-platform attribution (measuring impact across channels) 3.
• Retail media could reach $196.7 billion globally in 2026, or 16% of ad spend, so retailers need data collaboration and incremental measurement infrastructure (isolating the lift attributable to ads beyond the baseline) 3.
• Vendors with agentic AI (systems that can take actions to pursue a goal) for creative optimization or self-serve ad buying can serve SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) entering retail media. Fifty six percent of industry leaders cite AI transparency and algorithm reliance as top challenges 1.