Nordstrom Inc. Vice President of Nordstrom Media Aaron Dunford speaks with Roundel Partner Solutions Group Senior Director Monique Perlmutter and EMARKETER Senior Analyst of Ads and Media Max Willens at NRF 2025.
Retail media advertising hit a huge milestone last year.
For the first time, retailers spent more on off-site ads — advertisements on external social media, search engines or other websites that leverage the retailers’ data — than on-site advertising (ads and sponsored product placements on retailers’ 5own websites or apps).
“It just squeaked past on-site display last year, but we think that next year, it’s going to blow past it,” Max Willens, senior analyst for ads and media at EMARKETER, said during a session at NRF 2025: Retail’s Big Show. The latest numbers show a 40% year-over-year increase in off-site retail media ad spending, he said, and it is projected to grow from about $13 billion this year to more than $25 billion by 2028.
“How is this possible?” Willens said. “How is it going to essentially function as one of the fastest-growing, largest-spending areas in all of media? Well, it’s going to happen because advertisers are already turning to off-site retail media for lots of things.”
Roundel Partner Solutions Group Senior Director Monique Perlmutter speaks at NRF 2025.
As Target’s retail media network partner, Roundel Partner Solutions Group has experience in blending off-site and on-site advertising. “We have a differentiator in the off-platform space,” said Senior Director Monique Perlmutter. “About 30% of our investment comes from off-site, which over-indexes compared to the industry, which is about 21%.” Roundel works with companies including Pinterest, Google and Meta, she said, to deliver “frictionless commerce experiences.”
For Target, Rondel taps into insights from the retailer’s over 165 million shoppers. “Everything we do anchors back to the guest,” Perlmutter said. “We’re trying to meet that omnichannel shopper where they want to shop. We know that’s on social, they’re searching Google, they’re watching their favorite TV show on connected television, so we’re trying to build full-funnel solutions that deliver against advertisers KPIs.”
With all the Target customer data Rondel can access, the company plans to further meld the two offerings and “make our off-platform offering more part of the brand, so we’re shifting from a single-format buying methodology to a solutions-based approach,” she said.
Nordstrom Inc. has also been melding its advertising offerings to incorporate off-site and onside advertising, said Aaron Dunford, vice president of Nordstrom Media. In fact, the retailer just brought together enterprise media and retail media teams under the same leadership as Nordstrom Media.
“It’s been really helpful for us to take a step back and say, ‘How does the customer see Nordstrom?’” Dunford said. “They don’t see it as Nordstrom online, Nordstrom in-store or even in the Rack business. They see it as one Nordstrom. And they see our enterprise media the same way as they see our retail media.”
Nordstrom Inc. Vice President of Nordstrom Media Aaron Dunford speaks at NRF 2025.
For Nordstrom Media, “our focus is really on how we can serve the customer across their shopping journey and how can we do it in a way that’s less transactional and more experiential?” Dunford said. Having one dedicated media advertising team allows the company to “make the customer experience more seamless, where we don’t have one retail media message and [another] enterprise media message – they are cohesive.”
While there are challenges to be navigated for retailers, the massive opportunities for brands and retailers include raising their profile with potential consumers, burnishing advertisers’ brands and increasing revenue.
“These are all big, big opportunities for you to, again, not just bring more money in the front door,” Willens said, “but also just kind of raise the profile of your own business, which is fundamentally a great way to use media in general.”