By Robert Smolarski, Director, Global Strategy & Partnerships – Commerce, MiQ
At this time of year, it’s become a ritual for the ad industry and media executives to share their predictions for what’s coming next. Those perspectives, equally drawn from experience, market intelligence and instinct, are an important part of how our industry puts its focus towards progress and innovation.
As a global company, leaders from MiQ are fortunate to complement the conversation with a different kind of vantage point: taking insight from the world’s most advanced markets to launch our own crystal ball in growth markets across Europe. By analysing the shifts already underway in those environments, we can start to see which new developments are likely to gain momentum globally and become established practice rather than mere hype.
Drawing on that data and the work we’re doing with clients around the world, here is my pick of the trends that will be especially important in 2026.
Retail Media continues to push full funnel and needs to be measurement led
Retail media continues to evolve from exclusively on-site media into a full-funnel, omnichannel ecosystem, with CTV, social, off-site, in-store screens, loyalty data, and clean rooms. MiQ already activates across retail media networks via programmatic and off-site retail media integrations, serving as the connective tissue between retailers’ data and omnichannel media delivery.
Retail media has officially transitioned from a niche on-site tactic to a full-funnel, omnichannel ecosystem. According to the IAB’s Attitudes to Retail Media report, brands are rapidly diversifying, with the number of advertisers working across four to six networks more than doubling year-over-year. While on-site remains a core pillar, off-site investment is surging, with nearly half of buyers now allocate significant budgets to display, social, and CTV. This has shifted the focus toward a channel-diverse mix that leans on loyalty data and clean rooms.
As this fragmentation grows, the need for measurement-led strategies becomes critical. MiQ already activates across retail media networks via programmatic off-site retail media integrations, serving as the connective tissue between retailers’ data and omnichannel media delivery. We help brands navigate this shift by unifying siloed retail signals into a single, cohesive omnichannel delivery, ensuring every dollar spent across the funnel drives proven incremental impact.
Incrementality measurement
While ROAS has long been the industry standard, it often tells a siloed and incomplete story that fails to capture the full value of campaign spend. As brands face tightening budgets and increased economic uncertainty, the focus is shifting towards true incrementality. It is no longer enough to simply track a sale; brands need to know if that purchase was driven by the media placement or if it would have occurred naturally.
Leading US marketers are moving away from rigid, one-size-fits-all KPIs in favour of custom, blended metrics that bridge the gap between brand health and performance. By integrating geo-holdout tests, Market Mix Modelling (MMM), and advanced measurement frameworks, brands are finally gaining a holistic picture of their investment and applying that to their retailer investments.
Because we know the uncertainty of the global economy is causing businesses to constrain their budgets and scrutinise every marketing dollar, it’s important now more than ever to have a partner who can help determine the incremental impact of your marketing efforts.
Is the triple threat of retail, social and video the next evolution?
In the US, the traditional linear shopping funnel has collapsed. Consumers, led by Gen Z, now move fluidly from discovery to evangelism in a non linear, omnichannel journey centred heavily on social platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Major players like Meta, Amazon, and Walmart have responded by blurring the lines between social commerce and retail media, but for brands, this fragmentation makes a unified strategy difficult to achieve.
MiQ is uniquely positioned to bridge these gaps. By leveraging our Commerce Intelligence stack, we move beyond the limitations of a single retailer or channel to provide a holistic view of the shopper. We don’t just offer insights; we turn them into action, allowing your brand to show up in the unexpected spaces where social conversations are happening. We seamlessly connect our proprietary shopper audiences to traditionally walled-garden platforms, ensuring your strategy is as fluid and interconnected as the modern consumer.
By combining AI-powered intelligence with proprietary shopper audiences, we translate signals from commerce, media, and culture into live activation, enabling brands to show up in unexpected, high-impact environments where social conversations are already happening. Through this approach, anonymised shopper behaviours can be activated seamlessly across traditionally walled-garden platforms, allowing brands to connect intent to influence and drive measurable outcomes in a way that mirrors how consumers actually move through the modern media ecosystem.
Agentic AI and “Zero-click search”
While the full technical and consumer implications of zero-click commerce are yet to be known, retailers expect agentic AI to be the most disruptive force in retail media over the next three years. The rise of retailer-native assistants, such as Amazon’s Rufus, and independent agents like ChatGPT is fundamentally changing product discovery. This is now being accelerated by moves from platforms like Google, which is actively enabling agentic commerce through new AI tools and protocols that allow agents to research, compare and even transact on behalf of users across retailers and platforms.
This completely collapses the funnel and will force brands and retailers to figure out how to surface their products in agent responses. Ultimately, this completely changes how brands can drive engagement with their onsite experience and how they upsell products. As highlighted in the eMarketer 2026 trends report, ads are already beginning to integrate into these agentic workflows. Because retail audiences are already accustomed to sponsored products, retailers have a unique opportunity to weave monetised, agentic responses into the user experience. For brands, the challenge is no longer just winning the search results page, but ensuring their products are the ones surfaced by AI assistants in these high-intent, zero-click moments.
In-store retail media activations are gaining momentum
In-store retail media is quickly moving from experimental to essential. In 2025, Sam’s Club showed what strong execution looks like, making a significant investment in in-store activations supported by a measurement solution that tracks outcomes at the individual store member level. That focus on accountability helps address one of the biggest historical challenges of in-store media.
It’s also important to distinguish between formats. High-impact physical activations like aisle takeovers and end caps deliver brand presence and stopping power, while digital in-store screens, increasingly bought programmatically, bring flexibility, targeting and optimisation into the physical retail environment.
And market adoption is accelerating. IAB Europe reports that the proportion of retailers not offering any in-store media dropped from 28% in 2024 to 15% in 2025, signalling growing confidence in in-store as both a sales driver and a brand-building channel.
For advertisers, the real value lies in connection. In-store media works best when integrated into an omnichannel strategy, reinforcing brand activity before shoppers arrive and closing the loop at the point of purchase to support long-term brand growth.
Rise of non-retail media networks (Travel, Financial, and Intermediaries)
In Q4 of this year, we saw a few interesting announcements and relaunches from non-retail businesses launching their own version of a retail media network, including Mastercard, United Airlines, and Paypal. For CPG brands, these networks provide a unique opportunity to move beyond endemic retail data and reach consumers via lifestyle context. Instead of just targeting “shoppers,” brands can now reach specific audiences (like a business traveller in need of compact toiletries) at the exact moment of relevance.
We expect more brands to lean into non-retailer data to drive discovery, finding high-intent audiences that endemic retail data often misses. These networks also unlock value for brands that don’t sell directly at the retailer (e.g. insurance), allowing them to leverage rich commerce data to reach specific personas in high-attention environments.
As budgets tighten, these platforms offer uncontested space for brands to prove incrementality, connecting with shoppers in highly relevant moments outside the saturated traditional store environment.
To stay ahead of this rapid evolution, brands must move beyond fragmented testing and adopt a unified commerce strategy. Preparing for 2026 requires more than just better data; it demands a partner who can bridge the gap between social discovery, agentic AI, and diverse commerce networks. At MiQ, we help you turn this complexity into a competitive advantage. By focusing on true incrementality over siloed metrics, we can help you navigate these emerging trends and ensure your media budget is an optimised investment in genuine business growth.
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