Market
Retail media
Retail media is advertising sold by retailers and marketplaces across their own digital properties, using their first-party purchase data for targeting and measurement.
Last reviewed
In detail
Retail media has become one of the fastest-growing advertising channels globally, and China is its largest single market. WPP Media data reported by Axios in June 2025 put China at 44.1% of global retail media spend, driven principally by Alibaba and JD.com.
That dominance is directly relevant to outbound advertising, because it means Chinese advertisers are unusually fluent in retail media as a discipline. They arrive in international markets already understanding closed-loop measurement and commerce-adjacent media in a way many Western advertisers do not.
dentsu forecasts retail media growing 14.1% in 2026, faster than any other digital channel, which makes it a natural bridge category for Chinese advertisers expanding internationally.
Related terms
- China outbound advertising
- China outbound advertising is advertising bought by Chinese companies to reach audiences outside mainland China, as part of international expansion.
- Trading desk
- A trading desk is a centralised team that executes programmatic media buying on behalf of advertisers, operating demand-side platforms and managing bidding strategy.
- DSP (demand-side platform)
- A demand-side platform is software that lets advertisers and agencies buy advertising inventory programmatically across many publishers through automated real-time bidding.