The promise is that brands gain the ability to see whether campaigns drive incremental sales rather than just clicks or impressions.

Platforms are now scaling that capability as they leverage their massive datasets. As reported by PYMNTS, PayPal is using a transaction graph that connects activity across more than 430 million consumer accounts and tens of millions of merchants to map purchase journeys and measure outcomes tied directly to spend.

JPMorgan is extending the same logic into banking through its Chase Media Solutions platform, which leverages transaction data from roughly 80 million consumers to help brands target and measure offers based on real purchase behavior.

Stores Become Media Channels

At the same time, physical retail is being pulled into that same measurement loop. Retailers are evolving into what might be termed “media environments” where brands pay to influence decisions at the moment they are made.

Dollar General’s announcement last week of the expansion of its AI-enabled in-store audio network illustrates that trend. By linking messaging to point-of-sale data and local store conditions, the retailer is attempting to measure whether exposure inside the store translates into purchases. Through that effort, the store itself becomes a measurable channel, not just a backdrop for transactions, allowing brands to move beyond awareness and into influence tied directly to what ends up in the basket.

This scaling of retail media is being driven by how consumers now shop. The PYMNTS Intelligence Global Digital Shopping Index shows that 39% of consumers globally are “Click-and-Mortar” shoppers, blending digital discovery with in-store purchasing, while 71% still view the physical store as central to their experience even as digital tools shape how they navigate it.

Digital signals identify intent and guide the shopper, while the store becomes the place where conversion happens. In theory, this creates a closed loop where data informs targeting and purchases validate the outcome.

Redemption as Constraint

But there are challenges in the mix, tied to what happens at the final step. Data from PYMNTS Intelligence and FIS shows that nearly half of retail shoppers did not notice an offer during their most recent purchase, indicating that offers often fail to reach consumers in a usable way.

Among those who do find them, most offers require multiple steps to redeem, and only a small minority are automatically applied at checkout. That gap directly affects whether retail media can do what it is designed to do—which, in a nutshell, boils down to changing consumer behavior. If the offer is not visible or requires effort to use, the consumer defaults to the existing purchase decision, and the promotional spend fails to generate incremental value.

The research estimated a $42 billion gap between promotional dollars spent and consumer value delivered, reflecting offers that exist but do not translate into changed purchasing behavior.

Even when consumers notice offers, only about 13% of online offers and 10% of in-store offers are applied automatically, leaving the majority dependent on manual steps that introduce drop-off at each stage.

The gap has been narrowed, depending on where you look. Instacart addressed part of this problem by embedding offers directly into the shopping flow, reducing the steps between discovery and redemption.

Amazon operates at a larger scale by integrating advertising, discovery and checkout into a single environment, where offers are visible and easily applied. These models demonstrate that the ability to influence purchasing behavior depends less on data sophistication and more on whether the offer is embedded into the transaction itself. Amazon’s advertising business generated $68 billion in revenues last year, according to company filings.

By way of comparison, Macy’s market cap as of this writing is about $5.1 billion. The contrast highlights the ways in which traditional retail is moving toward the “platformization” and harnessing of data, with a digital thread running through it all, in-store and online.

Automatic application of offers, integration with payment methods and real-time personalization at checkout are the mechanisms that can turn data into measurable outcomes. As Click-and-Mortar shopping continues to grow, consumers are expecting the same level of convenience in physical environments that they experience online.

Retail media has the infrastructure to influence decisions in real time, but its effectiveness will depend on whether the system can make offers visible and usable at the moment those decisions are made.

That missed moment is not an anomaly, nor the opening shot of a retail-themed horror story. It is the contemporary operating model of 21st-century retail.

New findings in the PYMNTS Intelligence report “Embedded Offers: The Billion-Dollar Opportunity Inside Recent Consumer Spending,” done in collaboration with FIS, highlight the scale of the problem. Multiply that one shopper moment of missed offer opportunities across millions of transactions, and the result is a $42.4 billion hole in the retail economy representing value that exists but never converts.

The incentives exist. The demand exists. What is missing is a system capable of connecting the two at the moment of decision.

As a result, banks, merchants and technology providers are increasingly converging on a single, shared objective to build the next-generation systems that can automatically identify and apply the best available offer in real time.

Platform Competition

Leading retail infrastructure stakeholders are increasingly competing over the same moment, checkout, which is the only point in the customer journey where all these elements (product choice, price, payment and reward) intersect.

Each participant brings a different asset base. Merchants have direct access to the shopping experience and first-party data. Banks and card networks control payment credentials and rewards infrastructure. Technology firms bring the ability to integrate across systems and scale rapidly.

The report data suggests that offers, when delivered effectively, do not simply reduce price. They alter behavior. Roughly 7 in 10 consumers change what they buy when presented with a relevant offer, and that includes switching products, adjusting quantities and even changing payment methods.

If the payment layer can determine which incentives are surfaced and which payment method unlocks them, it becomes the mechanism through which demand is directed. A card, wallet or checkout interface that consistently delivers the best outcome ceases to be a passive tool. It becomes an active agent in shaping the basket.

Read the report: Embedded Offers: The Billion-Dollar Opportunity Inside Recent Consumer Spending

The marketplace response is already converging on the concept of embedded offers: a checkout experience that aggregates all available discounts, rewards and incentives and applies them automatically in real time.

Nearly 9 in 10 consumers surveyed for the report said they want to see all discounts before deciding what to buy, and more than 80% say such a system would influence their choice of merchant. Just as significantly, 77% say they would change their default payment method if it delivered real-time savings.

This has the characteristics of a platform shift. Control is moving away from discrete components such as cards, coupons, loyalty programs, etc., and toward the systems that coordinate them. That system becomes the interface through which value is experienced and, by extension, the place where loyalty is established.

What makes this development strategically significant is that no single player currently owns this layer.

Commerce has always been shaped by whoever controls the critical interface. In physical retail, it was the shelf. In eCommerce, it was search and recommendations.

The next interface is emerging as a repricing of the checkout experience itself. Historically, checkout has been viewed as a cost center, necessary, but not a source of competitive advantage. That assumption may no longer be a viable one. As offers, payments and data converge, checkout increasingly becomes the point at which value is created or lost.

The shopper with three unused discounts is a symptom of a fragmented system. The race now under way is to replace that system with one that is unified, intelligent and, above all, effortless.

New data from the latest issue of PYMNTS Intelligence’s “Share of Wallet: Amazon vs. Walmart” report reveals where each of the retail behemoths is winning in that quest and where they’ve got work to do.

If You Can’t Beat ‘em, Join Them?

The data shows that Amazon still leads in the fun, non-essential stuff, while Walmart dominates in necessities. For instance, Amazon captured 35% of consumer spending in the sporting goods, hobby items, music and books category, while Walmart has seized 21% of food and beverage spend. Now, both are pushing into the other’s territory.

The two retailers may be at odds. But in a way, they’re also each other’s best teachers.

“What’s changing is how aggressively both retailers are moving beyond those traditional lanes,” Doug Straton, chief marketing officer at Bazaarvoice (and former chief digital officer of Hershey), told PYMNTS in an interview. “Walmart is expanding its digital and marketplace capabilities to compete in more discovery-driven categories, while Amazon is pushing further into everyday essentials and repeat purchases.”

Busy shoppers want this kind of all-in-one experience. They don’t just want convenience for some purchases, nor are they happy only being able to trust items they can see for themselves at the store.

“The line between routine and discretionary shopping is blurring, and consumers now expect both speed and confidence regardless of where they shop,” Straton said.

Overall, Amazon’s in the lead, capturing 11% of consumer retail spending and 4.6% of overall consumer spending in Q4 2025. Walmart was at 7.7% and 2.9%, respectively. Much of the gap comes down to Amazon’s eCommerce strength.

Need for Speed?

In a want-or-need-it-now world, Amazon’s speed is a shiny lure, with items arriving faster than ever. Recently, the company began rolling out new one- and three-hour delivery options, a Trojan horse service that could help ingrain the Seattle-based company in people’s everyday consumption habits.

“This is less about faster shipping and more about increasing purchase frequency, capturing impulse demand and embedding Amazon deeper into the fabric of daily consumption,” Shauna Bowen, chief digital and transformation officer at Radial, told PYMNTS. “As Amazon expands automated, purpose-built local fulfillment, Walmart will need to invest in automation and operating model changes or absorb higher costs to stay competitive.”

But delivery speed isn’t everything. Dinesh Gauri, a professor of marketing at the University at Buffalo School of Management, argued in an interview with PYMNTS that, while quick fulfillment is important, Amazon and Walmart are “killing their margins” by prioritizing it too much. Shoppers, he added, also want competitive pricing and accurate inventory information (which isn’t always easy to find, per previous PYMNTS Intelligence research).

Another key factor is making sure that customers feel supported, able to easily get help when something goes wrong.

“Amazon has great customer service,” Gauri said. “You call, and many things are taken care of within a few minutes, if not seconds. I think Walmart is playing a lot of catch up in the online space. He added that while Walmart was “stepping up their customer service game,” he’d prefer to talk to an associate in a store, not online.

Food for Thought

Given Amazon’s lead in so many retail categories, its weakness in grocery stands out. It’s captured just 3% of the market. Its Whole Foods division has its happy place with higher-end shoppers, but its mass-market brick-and-mortar grocery moves have stumbled. At the start of this year, the retailer said it was pulling the plug on Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go.

“Walmart has really leveraged their physical footprint towards driving convenience for consumers, with same-day delivery and curbside or in-store pickup, making it very easy and seamless, though it’s certainly not perfect,” Ricky Volpe, a professor of agribusiness at Cal Poly, said in an interview with PYMNTS. “I think Amazon is still struggling with the infrastructure side of the cold chain, dealing with perishability and aesthetics and all.”

Walmart has had decades to slowly build up its hub-and-spoke network of warehouses and stores across the United States. Amazon, meanwhile, has tried to muscle on in-real-life shopping without that time-tested expertise.

Here’s where Walmart’s focus on brick-and-mortar proves to be a key asset, even in the age of digital commerce. It’s not just because customers can, say, feel for the ripest avocado with their own hands, but also because its stores work as Amazon-style fulfillment hubs. Whole Foods has been relatively successful, because Amazon acquired the brand when it had already laid all the groundwork. So, Volpe prediced, if Amazon is going to have more success in mass-market grocery, that’s also going to “happen through acquisitions.”

After all, it’s not easy to start a grocery chain from scratch.

“When we’re talking about food,” Volpe said, “which is costly, expensive, challenging and logistically involved to get from point A to B to C, Walmart, frankly, has a huge advantage in leveraging its stores. It’s brilliant, and it’s very, very effective.”

Pedal to the Metal

One area where Amazon has been gaining ground—and where Walmart has been sliding—is auto parts. In the six years between Q4 2019 and Q4 2025, Amazon’s share of consumer retail spending in the category grew from 10% to 14%. Walmart’s fell from 19% to 16%. Walmart still has the lead, but at the rate the two companies are going, that might not be for long. For instance, Amazon has been expanding its Amazon Autos test, which lets car companies list their vehicles through Amazon’s site and app.

But that initiative might not turbocharge things.

CarEdge Co-founder Ray Shefska argued in an interview with PYMNTS that Amazon Autos might not be such a game-changer, since it doesn’t remove the notorious friction for car-buying consumers so much as delay it.

“Customers may end up disappointed when they complete the process at the dealership and the usual pressure is applied to add protection packages and other ancillary items when signing their paperwork,” Shefska said. “It just delays the aggravation and sales pressure until you pick up your vehicle.”

Out of the Box (Literally)

Over the last few years, consumers have been spending less on retail and more on services. If Amazon and Walmart want to both capture more spending and stay relevant in people’s lives, it may mean expanding to categories that can’t be fit inside a cardboard box.

“The next decade of retail competition will be won or lost in categories that neither Amazon nor Walmart has historically dominated,” economist Shawn DuBravac told PYMNTS. “Health, financial services and subscription-based experiences are where the incremental consumer dollar is flowing, and that is where the real battle is now being fought.”

This collaboration enables Pinterest users to discover recipes on the visual search and discovery platform, tap on ingredients from eligible recipe Pins to add them to their online cart on Walmart’s website or app, and then check out on the retailer’s website or app, Pinterest said in a Monday (Dec. 8) blog post.

Users can also select alternate products, see real-time pricing and select a store for pickup or delivery, according to the post.

“Our collaboration with Walmart makes it even easier for people to turn a spark of inspiration, like a holiday recipe, into real-life moments,” Julie Towns, vice president of product marketing at Pinterest, said in the release. “Through this new experience, we’re bringing our vision to make every Pin shoppable closer to reality.”

In the post, Pinterest invites other businesses to collaborate with the company on other shoppable experiences.

Pinterest CEO Bill Ready said during an earnings call in November that the company has transformed from a digital mood board into an “AI-powered visual-first shopping assistant.”

Company executives highlighted an agentic commerce offering in which the platform now guides users through “decision-making journeys.” Purchases still occur off-site, but users with Amazon-linked accounts can move directly from a shoppable pin to Amazon’s checkout page in near one-click fashion.

In August, Wix announced an integration that enables online stores built on Wix to promote and sell products directly on Pinterest. These merchants can connect their Pinterest accounts directly from the Wix dashboard and immediately begin promoting their products. Product information automatically syncs so that updates on Wix are reflected on Pinterest.

In June, Pinterest and Instacart teamed up to make Pinterest ads directly shoppable via Instacart. The companies said the collaboration would enable Pinterest users to complete a purchase in a few clicks and have the items delivered in as little as 30 minutes.

“This partnership transforms discovery into purchase in just a few clicks, bridging the gap between inspiration and action for millions of Pinterest users,” a Pinterest executive said at the time in a press release.

“It is not linear anymore,” said Tapestry’s Global Head of Data and Analytics Technology Fabio Luzzi. That shift — from slow, sequential decision-making to real-time, data-driven action — is the result of a multi-year investment by the global fashion house to unify its systems and move data upstream across the entire value chain.

For a retail brand of Tapestry’s scale, the stakes are high. Forecasting accuracy, production timelines, assortment decisions, and the ability to spot and respond to fast-changing consumer trends all depend on having the right data at the right moment. Yet, as Luzzi noted, “retail companies tend to focus on the end of the value chain… when the product is ready to be sold,” a backward-looking orientation that makes mismatches between supply and demand almost inevitable.

Speaking with PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster for the SKU series, Luzzi explained how Tapestry’s unified architecture now gives merchandising, planning, design, and supply chain teams access to shared, real-time signals. Instead of waiting weeks for one step to finish before another begins, “people can react faster to changes” because the entire organization is working from a single source of truth. That investment is helping Tapestry shorten lead times, align more precisely with consumer demand, and ultimately drive better sales outcomes.

Why Data Has Become Retail’s Most Urgent Priority

If the SKU series has revealed anything so far, it’s the industry-wide urgency around real-time data. Retail brands need visibility into customer demand, inventory positions, operational efficiency, and marketing performance.Not after the fact, but as signals emerge.

To compete for share of wallet, brands must anticipate what shoppers will want next, not simply analyze last month’s receipts. That means delivering products with greater precision and communicating at the right moment with the right information.

But between setting merchandising targets and getting products onto shelves, retailers must navigate long production cycles, external volatility, and customer behavior influenced by inflation and fluctuating confidence. With legacy structures and outdated operating rhythms, most retailers still lack the real-time responsiveness needed to adapt.

Shifting Data Upstream Shortens Lead Times

Luzzi was clear: shortening the value chain could transform retail outcomes. “Being able to reduce the value chain and the lead times… would have a huge impact.”

Tapestry’s unified data architecture creates real-time or near-real-time feedback loops across the organization. Merchandising, planning, design, and supply chain teams no longer operate in a rigid sequence. They work in parallel, reacting to consumer signals as they appear. With shared access to the same data, they can identify demand shifts sooner and adjust production, allocation, and inventory strategies accordingly.

Luzzi said that the result is a more agile, responsive network capable of catching trend changes early, avoiding costly stockouts or overstocks, and improving the top and bottom line.

Fashion Still Depends on Magic — Data Protects It

Despite the new data-driven backbone, fashion still requires creative judgment at the center. Luzzi emphasized that “there is a lot of magic that happens” in design and brand expression — and AI cannot replace that.

But it can protect it.

By automating the complexity of forecasting, SKU-level analysis, and demand prediction, AI gives designers, planners, and buyers more freedom to focus on the creative work only humans can do. Tapestry uses sophisticated machine learning to detect baseline demand signals for evergreen products, then blends those insights with expert judgment. With six- to nine-month lead times, this hybrid approach ensures that both data and human insight shape the final decisions.

Fixing Retail’s Biggest Technology Problem

Luzzi’s experience across industries gave him a clear perspective: managing data at retail scale is fundamentally “a technology problem.” Most retailers have not historically operated as tech companies and often outsource critical data functions resulting in siloed information that cannot support enterprise-wide decisions.

Tapestry took a different path. Among its innovations is the “product historian,” a massive archive of digital assets and purchasing data for hundreds of thousands of SKUs. It allows teams to identify analogs for new products and pull insights quickly, even when historical sales data doesn’t exist.

Next: AI Agents for Real-Time Answers

The next phase of Tapestry’s transformation involves conversational analytics. Historically, answering a business question required waiting days for a dashboard or an analyst’s SQL query. Now, Tapestry is building domain-specific AI agents that let employees ask questions in plain English and receive answers in minutes.

These agents span merchandising, supply chain, and inventory use cases — areas where speed and clarity directly influence sales, production, and planning outcomes.

Luzzi’s advice for other retailers was simple and grounded: start with the business problem, bring people into the process from day one, and let technology be the enabler — not the end goal.

“There is no one silver bullet,” he said. “But if I have to pick, I would say be business driven, let technology enable the outcome, and bring people into the process from day one.”

The company announced the change Monday (Nov. 24), nearly seven months after picking Bender to fill-in after the company fired former CEO Ashley Buchanan.

Kohl’s said it worked with a third-party firm and conducted a “comprehensive search” before making its choice, picking Bender as its third CEO in as many years.

“Over the past several months as interim CEO, Michael has proven to be an exceptional leader for Kohl’s – progressively improving results, driving short and long-term strategy, and positively impacting cultural change,” said John Schlifske, chair of Kohl’s board.

“With three decades of leadership experience across retail and consumer goods companies and a deep commitment to the Kohl’s brand, we are confident Michael will continue to lead the company forward in a way that will benefit our associates, customers, and shareholders.”

Prior to his time with Kohl’s, Bender served as CEO of optical retailer Eyemart Express. He also held executive management positions at Walmart, including chief operating officer of global eCommerce. Bender also held senior positions at Cardinal Health and Victoria’s Secret after launching his career with PepsiCo.

“I’m honored to take on the role of CEO at Kohl’s. Working with the teams over the last six months has deepened my love of this company and my conviction in what’s possible for our future,” said Bender.

“Kohl’s has a storied and important role in the retail industry, serving and celebrating families with great products, compelling value, and a differentiated shopping experience. I’m looking forward to reestablishing our leadership position by putting our customers first every day.”

Bender’s appointment comes at a tumultuous time for Kohl’s, which fired Buchanan in April after an investigation found he violated company policy by directing the company to agree to a multimillion-dollar consulting contract with a vendor despite “undisclosed conflicts of interest.”

Buchanan, who became CEO of Kohl’s Jan. 15 of this year, was found to have had a personal relationship with that vendor, and the agreement included “highly unusual terms favorable to the vendor,” the company said in a securities filing.

In addition to the leadership changes, Kohl’s has also been wrestling with dwindling sales, announcing in August that it expects net sales to fall by 5% to 6% for the fiscal year.

But no matter the innovations around convenience and the ongoing race to turn commerce invisible and frictionless, there’s always been a bigger factor at play when it comes to consumer behavior. A factor so huge it also shapes the operational realities of both Walmart, Amazon, as well as the rest of the retail landscape.

This factor is, of course, the macro environment. And today, as 2025 turns to 2026, that macro environment is being increasingly revealed as a challenging one that has thrown consumer confidence into a tailspin. Households remain more selective, trading down on discretionary items while continuing to prioritize essentials.

Today’s softening economy is forcing a reimagining of what value really means in a cautious consumer economy. Walmart and Amazon’s week-to-week moves illuminate a rivalry no longer just about who sells more stuff and at what cost, but about who has the best pulse on the direction for the entire consumer economy.

Read more: Amazon and Walmart Battle for Relevance as Spend Shifts to Essentials

Inside the Weekly Grind of a Relentless Retail Rivalry

Both Amazon and Walmart are rolling out new forms of innovation, from AI-assisted purchasing and revamped advertising engines to sustainability-driven manufacturing and structural workforce realignments. The result is a sweeping recalibration of the retail landscape that signals not only where the market is headed but how the average American will shop, work, and spend in the coming years.

This evolution is unfolding against a backdrop of spending restraint. Consumer confidence is uneven, neither deeply pessimistic nor reassuringly strong, creating a marketplace where loyalty can be won or lost in an instant.

Data from the October “New Reality Check: The Paycheck-to-Paycheck Report” by PYMNTS Intelligence finds that today, more consumers are struggling to get by. More than 1 in 4, or 26%, had difficulties paying their bills last month, the highest share in at least two years.

In this environment, innovation is less about spectacle than about utility: tools that reduce friction, platforms that speak more fluently to business and advertising customers, and supply chains that absorb economic shocks before they reach the checkout page.

Amazon, long the industry’s technological bellwether, is leaning heavily into this moment with the introduction of new AI-powered capabilities geared toward business procurement.

Amazon Business has quietly grown into a multi-billion-dollar segment serving companies that increasingly mirror consumer behavior in their purchasing patterns: high-frequency orders, rapid replenishment cycles, and an expectation of seamless digital experiences. A new suite of AI solutions launched Wednesday (Nov. 12) is designed to help those buyers navigate complex approval flows, compare products, and ensure compliance with corporate purchasing policies.

At the same time, about a year after launching Amazon Haul and Amazon Bazaar, Amazon is expanding that shopping experience to another 14 markets.

Parallel to these efforts, Amazon is rebuilding its advertising machinery to appeal to a much broader segment of the market. The new structure consolidates disparate ad-buying paths into a single, unified system, making it significantly easier for mid-market brands to participate.

Elsewhere across the ecommerce giant’s ecosystem, Whole Foods, which once operated with semi-independent governance, is increasingly being absorbed into Amazon’s broader operations under a project known internally as Cremini. The shift reduces duplicative functions and brings food retail closer to Amazon’s unified logistics and technology systems.

Related: 10 Years Later, Platforms Still Define the Connected Economy

Walmart’s Countermove: Value, Velocity, and U.S.-Led Innovation

Meanwhile, Walmart is rewriting a different version of the innovation story. The company’s recent emphasis on “American innovation” is more than patriotic branding; it represents a significant shift in how Walmart thinks about its role in the supply chain.

Walmart’s partnerships with U.S.-based materials companies and agricultural innovators illustrate a desire not only to reduce reliance on vulnerable supply routes but also to position the company as an engine of economic renewal.

These efforts coincide with an aggressive holiday strategy, including early access Black Friday events and deeper-than-usual promotional cycles. The timing and structure of these events signal an understanding of the modern consumer’s psychology: shoppers are deal-sensitive but fatigue quickly; they want value but not at the cost of convenience.

Consumers may not see the machinations of Amazon and Walmart directly, but they will feel the effects. More intuitive purchasing experiences. Faster and more reliable deliveries. Deals that appear earlier, run longer, and respond more dynamically to demand patterns.

The choices big retailers are making this season are not merely responses to cautious spending, but the early lines of a blueprint for retail’s next decade. 

The report noted that DataWeave’s analysis compares each retailer’s prices to its earlier prices, not to competitors, so a company could have a higher rate of increase from a lower initial price.

CNBC attributed the three companies’ price increases to the impact of new U.S. tariffs. However, it noted that Amazon’s steepest price increases came before the tariffs were imposed and may have been due to price normalization after offering discounts during the holiday shopping season.

Overall, the report suggested that Amazon’s price increases may have been higher because the platform’s marketplace sellers, which may be small businesses, are less equipped to deal with new tariffs.

While Target and Walmart have online marketplaces, Amazon earns a higher percentage of its revenue from third-party sales, per the report.

Guru Hariharan, founder and CEO of CommerceIQ, told CNBC that third-party sellers are “far more exposed to tariff-driven cost increases.”

“They don’t have the scale, inventory flexibility or private-label leverage that large retailers like Walmart or Target can use to offset costs,” Hariharan said in the report.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Profit Slips, Policy Shifts: Product Leaders Navigate the Crossfire” found that among mid-market companies, nine in 10 goods firms and more than seven in 10 services firms have raised prices in response to tariffs and other macroeconomic pressures.

Among companies of all sizes, however, some are absorbing most of the cost of tariffs. It was reported in July that companies were cautious about raising the prices to make up for the costs of tariffs because they could lose market share to competitors who don’t raise price and because the tariffs could be temporary.

It was reported in October that Goldman Sachs economists estimated that consumers will ultimately bear more than 50% of the total cost of U.S. tariffs. As of mid-year, consumers had shouldered only about 22% of the cost.

The company on Tuesday (Oct. 7) announced the launch of PayPal Ads Manager, designed to help small businesses “create billions of new advertising impressions for brands of all sizes” using a “fast-growing and highly profitable segment of digital advertising.”

Retail media networks, PayPal said in a news release, are now a multi-billion-dollar industry generating revenue by letting businesses sell advertising on small business websites and apps. For the most part, this has been the domain of large enterprises with substantial traffic and advertising and technical resources.

PayPal argues it is “uniquely positioned” to help small and medium sized businesses (SMB) with advertising as the company already works with tens of millions of merchants worldwide.

“Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, but they’ve been locked out of the retail media revolution that’s transforming how major retailers generate revenue,” said Mark Grether, senior vice president and general manager for PayPal Ads.

“PayPal Ads Manager changes that equation entirely. We’re enabling small businesses to participate in the same high-margin advertising model that’s powering growth at some of the largest companies in the world, while simultaneously creating thousands of new, high-quality advertising placements for brands.”

In a recent interview with PYMNTS, Dani Kenady, vice president of operations at Affinity Solutions, talked about the benefits retail media networks provide for merchants.

“They’re getting insights that they never had before,” she said, noting also that there’s a “handshake” effect as data passes among consumer-level accounts, issuers and the merchants.

“The strongest benefit comes from measurement and analytics,” she continued, noting that “there is near-instantaneous, if not instantaneous, measurement and attribution that leads to real-time reporting, which retailers love … and they can map out where their customers are coming from, and going to.”

That level of insight, she told PYMNTS, can speed and sharpen the digital transformation of retailers as they transform the look and feel of their own offerings and eCommerce efforts driven by browsing history and site engagement.

In other PayPal news, the company this week announced it would let American customers earn 5% cash back through its pay later program.

The offering, in effect now for the rest of the year, is designed to offer PayPal Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) users greater financial breathing room during the holiday shopping season.

The lawmakers fear that this technology would make it easier for grocery chains to use dynamic pricing, a strategy in which they could raise prices during times of high demand, CNBC reported Friday (Oct. 3).

Electronic shelf tags, which are digital screens that replace paper price tags on retailers’ shelves, are becoming more common, per the report.

The technology has been deployed by Kroger, Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods, and some retailers in other countries, according to the report.

In addition, Walmart has said that it plans to roll out the technology in 2026 in order to reduce the time it takes to change prices from two days to minutes, per the report.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and then-Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., expressed concerns about the technology and its potential to facilitate surge pricing in a September 2024 letter to Kroger’s then-chairman and CEO Rodney McMullen, according to the report.

Kroger replied, per the report, that it had never engaged in surge pricing and that it uses electronic shelf labels to better manage inventory and to lower prices on goods that are perishable.

It was reported in July that grocery stores in Norway that use electronic shelf labels adjust prices multiple times per day to keep up with competitors.

The Wall Street Journal report said it is only a matter of time before this trend makes its way to the United States.

The report also said the arrival of the technology in grocery stores like Kroger raised worries among lawmakers that companies could use it to raise prices during holidays or weather emergencies.

A Kroger spokesperson told the WSJ that the company plans to use electronic shelf labels not for dynamic pricing, but to reduce paper waste and save time for workers.

When Walmart announced in June 2024 that it had begun rolling out digital shelf labels, it said that in addition to saving time, the technology streamlines stock replenishment, order picking and fulfillment.

The PYMNTS Intelligence and ACI Worldwide collaboration “Big Retail’s Innovation Mandate: Convenience and Personalization” found that 32% of grocers think consumers would be very or extremely likely to switch merchants if not given access to digital price tags or smart shelf tags.

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