Retailer media is set to become a US$125.7bn market globally this year according to latest number crunching by WPP-owned GroupM.

The firm predicts it will eclipse TV spend, including CTV within five years, with retailer media nudging US $176bn by 2028, equating to 15.4 per cent of all ad spend globally. Search is one of the main marketing channels predicted to lose out.

Locally, GroupM said Australia will record very little growth in media spend this year, forecasting 0.2 per cent year on year.

Meanwhile, the report highlighted a global focus and a regulatory ramp-up on misinformation by governments, which could act as a drag on revenue and profit at the big platforms.

Per the report: "We expect platforms including TikTok, Meta, Twitter and YouTube to face pressure from governments regarding their ability to identify, prevent, take down and report on both misinformation and disinformation." The report suggest news media could benefit as trust and transparency rises the political and consumer agenda.

GroupM also flags pressure on data collection, consent to use and storage as incoming headwinds, with legal action in Europe potentially forcing Meta to change its consent frameworks and targeting. The firm said that could have a similar impact to Apple’s ATT changes in terms of ‘signal loss’ – i.e. measurement and attribution.

The report suggests Meta’s Australian revenues have declined since Apple’s move in 2021. More broadly, it moots a wholesale shift away from the kind of tracking that the digital ad industry has embraced for the last 15 years. “Increasing trust and transparency among audiences and consumers should, in the long-term, be more valuable than behavioural data that can be, in many cases, replaced with synthetic audience data, contextual data and properly consented conversion data,” states the report.

It also outlines the challenges and opportunities presented by wholesale adoption of large language models and AI – and predicts a "new class" of agency springing up to spot AI-created ads, content and copyright breaches.

See the report here.