Omnichannel marketing is evolving fast, and the stakes are rising. Global digital ad spend—expected to hit $650 billion in 2025 and reach $1.483 billion by 20341—is a dynamic and rapidly expanding landscape of activity across marketing channels, with everyone racing to reach omnichannel audiences.
But with today’s shopper journey fragmented across touchpoints — online, in-store, on streaming platforms and through retail media — reaching them is a complex proposition. As consumers move fluidly between channels, data becomes more difficult to capture and creating a recipe for omnichannel success can boil down to guesswork.
Channel Surfing: Consumer Crosscurrents2
- 73% shop on multiple channels.
- 87% want consistent experiences across all channels.
- 92% swap between channels during their purchase.
- 57% have made multiple purchases from different channels in a single shopping journey.
With the days of broadcasting broad, one-size-fits-all campaigns behind them, brands today must shift from wasteful mass messaging to precision engagement across channels. The legacy targeting paradigm, which relied on large demographic swaths, mass media and third-party data, is falling by the wayside as brands grapple with a new norm: Targeting strategies must engage audiences consistently across every channel or miss the mark.
Table Reset: From Third- to First-Party Data
While Google relented in its plans to automatically phase out third-party cookies, the search engine juggernaut is increasingly ceding more control to users to make informed choices about their privacy with its Privacy Sandbox Initiative. Given that the goal of the initiative is ultimately to replace them with privacy-preserving alternatives, cookies are crumbling as the data source that 75% of marketers relied on.3
As third-party cookies continue to deprecate and browsers restrict their usage under mounting privacy and regulatory pressures, brands must lean into first-party or permissioned data. Website and app interactions, purchase histories, email and social media engagement, and interactive content like surveys have emerged as strategic data sources.
“The legacy targeting paradigm is riddled with limitations, from being subject to changing privacy rules to low precision and wasted media,” said Megan Keleshian, vice president of digital marketing for The Food Group. “Brands need to shift to strategies like contextual advertising, which places ads based on the content of the page a user is viewing, rather than on their individual browsing behavior.”
Keleshian also stresses the importance of CRM data — information like contact details and past interactions stored in customer relationship management systems.
Ready, Set, Grow: First-Party Data
- 71% of brands, agencies and publishers are increasing first-party datasets.4
- 35% average growth rate expected over the next 12 months for increased first-party datasets.4
- 48% of marketing leaders cite first-party data growth as a top priority.5
Given today’s ever-multiplying screens, paths to purchase and micro-moments when consumers use their devices for quick research or impulse buys, manufacturers need to track the full customer journey. By integrating data across touchpoints, brands can create a complete picture of the journey and identify weak points and opportunities for engagement.
A good CRM will provide the closed-loop attribution brands need to track each lead from the initial source, like a social ad, through a series of interactions of their sites. In a nutshell, the CRM establishes a direct line from ad spend to sales generated.
Lots in Store: Retail’s Plateloads of Opportunities
The rise of retail media networks has also played a pivotal role in the transformation of the omnichannel marketing landscape. Brands now feed on retailer first-party data to target consumers on the cusp of purchase.
In 2023 alone, food brands increased ad spend on RMNs by 14%, reaching $717 million through to November.6 Given that 67% of consumers shop for groceries online, while 40% of online grocery shoppers buy food and beverages online at least once a week,7 we can expect the retail media market to continue to mushroom.
Ka-ching! It’s Raining Retail Media8
- $1.3 trillion expected contribution to enterprise value by 2026.
- 50% to 70% projected profit margins.
Amazon Ads and Walmart Connect are dominant players in the food and beverage retail media market, but the playing field is becoming more crowded and competitive, from Albertsons and Walgreens to grocery shopping apps like Instacart and Gopuff.
“With so many retail media ecosystems to figure out, food and beverage brands can feel at a loss,” Keleshian said. “You need an expert retail strategy that uses quick insights across channels to reach customers at scale, while being mindful of the constraints of what retailer partners share. The more insights, the better.”
TFG Media Planner Jade Brown also points out the importance of increasing off-site awareness to drive in-store and online sales. On-site tactics like sponsored products and promotional or seasonal placements are high value, she pointed out, but off-site is a must too.
“That’s definitely a vital piece of retail media strategy,” she said. “Eighty-five percent of shoppers still purchase in-store,9 but awareness is built off-site. Programmatic buying that taps into retail network audiences can promote high-intent, known audiences and reduce waste by preventing audience overlap with traditional programmatic audience targeting.”
An Eye on AI: How the Retail Future Looks
AI and machine learning are driving optimization and enabling RMNs to deliver results more efficiently.
At an EMARKTER summit, Jonatan Fasano, business development director at Walmart Connect Mexico and Central America, shared a success story from a Mexican milk brand that ran two different campaigns using identical audience segments from Walmart's first-party data.
One campaign focused on branding objectives; the other targeted ROI. “The machine learning algorithm selected the best performing media for each campaign and increased or reduced the audience population to improve results,” he said.10
The algorithm generated a 4x return on ad spend for the branding campaign and a 13-14x return for the ROI-focused campaign.10
What’s more, AI-powered modeling is transforming how brands predict demand and connect with audiences. Marketers tap the technology to analyze patterns across sales, search and shopper data and optimize campaigns in real time. The result: smarter audience expansion and more efficient media spend across channels.
- Nestlé leverages AI-driven demand forecasting to anticipate shifts in consumer preferences and optimize product availability.
- PepsiCo uses machine learning models to identify “lookalike” audiences — consumers who resemble their most loyal snack buyers — extend reach, and boost relevance across digital and retail media channels.
- Walmart optimizes inventory management and makes informed media spend decisions and placements with AI forcecasting.
- Zara leverages AI forecasting to stay ahead of changing fashion trends with data collected from customer feedback, point-of-sale transactions, social media trends and other sources.
Blend in, Don’t Opt Out: Hybrid Mitigates Privacy Concerns
Given increasingly stringent privacy compliance regulations, hybrid targeting is gaining traction as a privacy-safe approach to omnichannel marketing. A blend of behavioral (based on user actions and interests) and contextual (based on the content being viewed) methods, hybrid targeting helps marketers reach the right audiences without an overdependence on personal data.
A Craving for Context11
Programmatic advertising overall is projected to become a $700 billion industry, with contextual targeting growing at around 13.8% annually to 2030.
In its “Fresh Take” campaign, Kraft Foods used hybrid targeting to reach home-cooking moms looking for quick meal solutions. The ads enabled Kraft to target prospects whose online behavior revealed an interest in cooking and to place ads on sites where they engage with food content and recipes.
The Takeaways: Do’s and Don’ts
Do’s: Actionable Steps
- Know your data: Audit what first-party assets you truly own.
- Test and learn: Pilot lookalike and expansion models in a controlled way.
- Go deeper with retail media: Negotiate for audience insights and data, not just impressions.
- Mix your methods: Use hybrid targeting (behavioral + contextual) for privacy-safe reach.
- Measure smarter: Build feedback loops, incrementality tests and attribution models.
- Get a 360-degree customer view: Use a CRM to collect and store data and track performance.
- Explore AI solutions: AI advances in predictive analytics can help ensure success.
Don’ts: Pitfalls to Avoid
- Don’t stay siloed: Disconnected data kills visibility and speed.
- Don’t ignore attribution: Complex paths to purchase need smarter crediting to form a clear understanding of the customer journey.
- Don’t rely solely on retailers: Data access has limits — plan around them.
- Don’t overlook capability gaps: Invest in talent, tools and analytics maturity.
- Don’t over-segment: Tiny audiences drain efficiency and impact.
For more insights to help your business adapt its marketing efforts for a shifting omnichannel landscape, be sure to refer to “Smart Moves: How to Feed Your Business By Optimizing for AI-Powered Search” and “Dishing on Data: A New Recipe for Success in Data Management.”
1 Precedence Search, Digital Ad Spending Market Size, Share and Trends 2025 to 2034, July 24, 2025
2 Eser, Alexander, “Multichannel Marketing Statistics,” Zippo, May 30, 2025
3 Fleish, Ryan, “Adobe Study: Brands that rely too heavily on third-party cookies are leaving money on the table today, risking long-term business harm,” March 9, 2023
4 IAB, “How the Digital Ad Industry Is Adapting to the Privacy-by-Design Ecosystem,” March 2025
5 Semerano, Eleanor, “48% of Marketers Say First-Party Data Growth Is Top Priority,” May 20, 2025
6 Media Radar, “Q4 2023 12 for ‘24 - Retail Media Networks,” December 18, 2023
7 Marlin, Dana, “ How Food and Beverage Brands Are Winning With Retail Media,” May 5, 2025
8 Amra & Elma, “Top Omni Channel Marketing Statistics 2025,” 2024
9 Epsilon, “How CPG Marketers Can Optimize Strategies This Back-to-School Season,” June 17, 2021
10 Feger, Arielle, “First-Party Data and Omnichannel Strategies Drive Retail Media’'s Future,” EMARKETER, May 19, 2025
11 Cheeseman, Alex,“Trends in Programmatic Advertising and Contextual Targeting in 2025,” Warc, 2024