Retailers Are Being Too Cautious to Compete with Amazon in 2020—It's Time to Change That | Criteo
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Retailers Are Being Too Cautious to Compete with Amazon in 2020—It’s Time to Change That
Retailers have to change the way they run their ecommerce businesses in our price- and convenience-driven world, or risk losing more sales to Amazon.
Updated on February 25, 2026
Online retailers are under pressure to offer the lowest prices and the fastest shipping. And they’re competing with Amazon, which has a 38% share of total ecommerce sales in the US—not to mention a thriving media business.
As retailers plan for 2020, many are looking for opportunities to grow their digital businesses. They’re focused on increasing online sales and getting a bigger slice of the ecommerce market.
But there’s something missing in their plans: retail media.
What is retail media?
Retail media takes the advertising model used by digital publishers and applies it to ecommerce sites.
Advertisers are attracted to digital publishers because they have large audiences and engaged readers. Digital retailers have these same engaged audiences, and something extra: Their site visitors have a high intent to browse and buy products. It’s the perfect context for brands, who once paid for the best shelf space in physical stores and now want better visibility on retailers’ digital shelves.
Barilla places ads in the search results for “pasta” on Peapod.com.
Retailers also possess valuable first-party data that brands need to attribute their ad campaigns back to SKU-level sales. (Brands that sell most of their products through retailers don’t have point-of-sale data, so they can’t see what their customers actually bought.)
When retailers open up their websites to brand advertising, they can offer these benefits to their brand partners and create a new steady revenue stream for their businesses.
Why aren’t more retailers trying retail media?
Let’s look at three big misconceptions holding retailers back, and how to fix them.
Myth #1: I Don’t Have the Expertise In-House to Build My Retail Media Business
Retailers know that for their retail media business to be successful, it needs to be scalable and cost efficient. It also has to be easy for brand advertisers to manage their own campaigns through a self-service platform and get full transparency into performance.
The right technology partner will not only get their business up and running, but also bring them into a broader retail media ecosystem, where retailers come together to create enough scale to compete in the advertising marketplace and attract more brand advertisers.
Myth #2: Ads Will Ruin the Shopper Experience on My Website
The shopper experience should always come first. When advertising on ecommerce sites is done right, the ads feel like part of the browsing experience and help shoppers make more informed purchase decisions.
MICHAEL Michael Kors places ads on product pages on Macys.com.
Myth #3: Retail Media Will Put My Customers’ Personal Data at Risk
Retailers should ask their potential technology partners two key questions: Are you helping me leverage data that’s collected in a privacy-compliant way? And do you have tools that let me control exactly who has access to my audience data? The right partner can do both.
The retail media opportunity is now
Forrester’s report predicts that retail media will become a standard part of retailer revenue.
It’s not too late for retailers to build competitive media businesses, but if they don’t start now, they risk falling behind.
We built Criteo Retail Media to solve every challenge that’s keeping retailers from opening this new revenue stream.