Navigating Canada’s C$3.7B Retail Media Landscape: What the 2025 Report Card Reveals

Navigating Canada’s C$3.7B Retail Media Landscape: What the 2025 Report Card Reveals

The Canadian retail media landscape has reached a pivotal moment. With spending projected to hit C$3.7 billion in 2025—representing approximately 20% of all digital advertising dollars—retail media networks (RMNs) have officially transitioned from experimental channels to essential components of modern marketing strategy.

But here’s the challenge that most brands aren’t talking about: not all retail media networks are created equal.

Mars United Commerce’s latest Retail Media Report Card offers the most comprehensive evaluation of the Canadian market to date, analyzing nine major networks across 99 distinct performance criteria. The findings reveal a fragmented ecosystem with significant capability gaps that directly impact ROI, measurement accuracy, and strategic effectiveness.

At geekspeak Commerce, we created Retail Media Agency specifically to help brands navigate this complexity. Here’s what the data tells us—and what it means for your retail media strategy in 2025 and beyond.

The Market Opportunity Is Undeniable

Canadian retail media spending is on an aggressive growth trajectory. The C$3.7 billion projected for 2025 represents nearly 20% year-over-year growth, and analysts forecast the market will surpass C$6 billion by 2028—a 62% increase in just three years.

What makes these projections particularly noteworthy is their stability. While eMarketer has adjusted retail media forecasts downward in other global regions, Canadian estimates have held steady throughout 2024 and into 2025. This suggests the Canadian marketplace continues to thrive even as economic headwinds and evolving trade conditions create uncertainty elsewhere.

The underlying drivers are clear: consumers are increasingly shopping online and through digital-first channels, retailers are investing heavily in their media network capabilities, and brands are recognizing the unique value of first-party purchase data in a privacy-first advertising landscape.

But growth alone doesn’t guarantee success. The real question facing marketing leaders is: how do you allocate budget effectively across a fragmented landscape where capabilities vary dramatically?

The Nine Networks Evaluated

The Mars United report card examines Canada’s major retail media players across grocery, general merchandise, delivery platforms, and specialty retail:

Established Leaders (launched 2015–2019):

• Amazon Canada (2015) – 28+ million users
• Walmart Canada (2019) – 18.5 million unique visitors
• Loblaw Companies Ltd. (2019) – 19 million in-store shoppers, 17+ million PC Optimum loyalty members

Growth Stage Networks (launched 2021–2022):

• Instacart Canada (2021)
• Canadian Tire Corp. (2022) – 11.7 million users
• Uber Canada (2022)

Emerging Platforms (launched 2023):

• DoorDash Canada (2023)
• Best Buy Canada (2023) – 15 million users
• Metro Inc. – Conversion Media (2023) – 4.95 million MOI loyalty program members

The launch dates alone tell an important story. Amazon has been refining its advertising platform for a decade, while some networks are barely two years old. This maturity gap translates directly into capability differences that affect everything from audience targeting to measurement sophistication.

Five Critical Capability Gaps That Impact Your ROI

1. The Omnichannel Measurement Problem

Perhaps the most significant finding: only 67% of evaluated networks can provide true omnichannel sales data that encompasses both online and offline purchases.

For brands selling primarily in physical retail—which includes most CPG, food and beverage, and health and beauty products—this represents a fundamental measurement blindspot. You might be optimizing campaigns based on online conversion data while remaining completely unaware of in-store sales impact, which often represents 80–90% of total volume.

This gap makes it nearly impossible to calculate true ROAS or make informed optimization decisions. If a network can’t attribute in-store sales, you’re essentially managing half your business in the dark.

2. The Incrementality Illusion

Most retail media networks report “attributed sales”—purchases made by shoppers who were exposed to your ads. But attributed sales and incremental sales are fundamentally different metrics.

The Mars United evaluation reveals that only 67% of networks offer true incrementality testing that goes beyond simple attribution. Real incrementality analysis examines whether your advertising actually changed shopper behavior—did it drive new-to-brand customers, increase purchase frequency, or expand basket size?

Without incrementality measurement, you can’t distinguish between sales you earned and sales you simply got credit for. This difference has massive budget implications.

3. The Rest-of-Market Blindspot

Here’s a finding that should concern every multi-retailer brand: zero networks currently offer “rest of market” analysis.

You have no way to measure whether your Walmart retail media campaign is driving incremental sales at Loblaws, or whether your Amazon investment is creating halo effects at other retailers where you’re sold.

Without rest-of-market measurement, you’re missing the full picture of campaign impact and likely making suboptimal budget allocation decisions.

4. The Transparency Tax

The evaluation found that 78% of networks gate premium reporting and analytics behind predetermined spending thresholds.

This creates a perverse incentive structure: you need to spend more money to access the data required to determine whether your spending is effective. Smaller brands or those testing new channels face a particular disadvantage.

5. The Self-Service Capability Spectrum

“Self-service platform” has become a standard feature in retail media network marketing materials, but the Mars United evaluation reveals dramatic differences in what this actually means.

Some networks offer fully automated campaign management with real-time optimization, AI-powered bidding, custom audience creation, and comprehensive analytics. Others provide a basic portal with canned reports and manual processes.

Only 56% of networks offer true self-service measurement and reporting for onsite campaigns, dropping to 33% for offsite campaigns. For in-store digital media, self-service is virtually nonexistent.

What This Means for Your 2025 Strategy

The fragmentation revealed in the Mars United report card has direct strategic implications:

1. Stop treating all RMNs equally. Investment decisions should reflect capability maturity, not just audience size.
2. Build platform-specific KPIs. Don’t measure all networks against the same metrics.
3. Demand transparency before increasing investment. Spend thresholds should be negotiable.
4. Create unified reporting yourself. Networks won’t standardize measurement, so you need to.
5. Plan for a portfolio approach. Diversify investments based on strengths and capability gaps.

How Retail Media Agency Solves the Fragmentation Problem

At geekspeak Commerce, we built Retail Media Agency specifically to address these challenges. Our approach recognizes that retail media success requires specialized expertise that spans network evaluation, portfolio strategy, measurement standardization, and continuous optimization.

1. Capability Mapping: We evaluate networks using the same 99-criteria framework employed by Mars United, providing objective assessments of what each platform can truly deliver.
2. Investment Frameworks: We build allocation models that match budget to platform maturity.
3. Unified Measurement: We normalize network data into standardized cross-platform reporting.
4. Portfolio Optimization: We manage networks holistically, reallocating budgets based on relative performance.

The retail media opportunity in Canada is enormous—C$3.7 billion this year and projected to exceed C$6 billion by 2028. But capturing that value requires strategic sophistication that accounts for network fragmentation.

The fragmentation isn’t going away. Networks have little incentive to standardize when differentiation drives competitive advantage. Your strategy needs to account for this reality.

Want to see how your current retail media mix measures up against the 99-criteria framework? Let’s talk about building a portfolio strategy that matches your business objectives to actual platform capabilities.

Visit retailmediaagency.co to learn more about our approach