Meta’s Metrics, Retail Media Acceleration Vs. E-Com Deceleration, The Cord-Cutting Singularity and More
Madison and Wall: Saturday Summary for August 23, 2025
On this week’s M&W Podcast we review our work of the week. Separately, on Agency Business, Fusion Front Media’s Olivia Morley and I interview KSM Media’s Chad Maxwell
Weekly Work:
Meta's Inflated Ad Metrics (2025 Version): Impact Likely Negligible
Commerce/Retail Media Accelerated to Grow ~24% in 2Q25 in the US
Overall Spend on Video Services Grows While Pay TV Subs Hit 50% Household Penetration in 2Q25
Kantar 2Q25 Results Show Tepid Growth With Mixed Trends Across Businesses
More Context:
We wrote and published data about retail media advertising during the second quarter this week. We can now estimate that commerce media / retail media by around 24% in the period, an acceleration from the 19% pace observed during 1Q25 and for all of 2024.
Most remarkably, demand for commerce-related advertising remains robust despite overall e-commerce sales that only grew by 5.3% in the US according to the latest data from the US Census Bureau. The outsized gains for advertising revenues at retailers of goods and services highlight how growth in competitive intensity – which is a hallmark of most commerce media companies’ digital advertising platforms – causes marketers to increase their overall advertising budgets to a higher level of intensity (i.e. advertising as a percentage of revenues) than might otherwise occur.
Stepping back, we continue to see this group of companies outperform US advertising more broadly and this latest rate will compare favorably to the broader US ad market once again. Notwithstanding the ongoing risks to the economy, our earlier questions about a potential pull forward in demand vs. underlying strength in the ad market might have been answered as we see strong momentum across many businesses that sell ad inventory.