Retail media platforms
Asked as “retail media advertising platform”, and as “platform to run and manage retail media ads”, on behalf of a mid-market B2B software company. 55 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, six models each. Added to the September 2026 Edition; its answers are read by the distilled judge (ai-indexes-judge-qwen3-14b), not the claude-opus-5 judge of the earlier categories: how the two compare.
Standing · first-choice share
33%
Contested · Walmart Connect 16%
33Amazon Ads16Walmart Connect07Amazon Advertising44others
33% of first choices, contested.
The standing
Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all six models, for a mid-market B2B software company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrantSince September 2026
Show the three products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
08
Kroger Precision Marketing0%19%16accepted challengernewNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now.
Kroger Precision Marketing0%19%16accepted challengernewNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now.The floor is 12 points of share, measured: how far the models move a leader on their own when the same questions are asked twice with nothing changed. A larger change is movement; a smaller one is noise, and both are shown. How the floor is measured
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its product page.
Recommended versus criticized
Every product with at least 10 labels here, on both axes. The 30% line names a quadrant, not the verdict above: that one needs more than 40%.
Criticized challengerCriticized default
Negative label rate →
A01
02
03
04
05
06
0708
09Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative50%
Key
01Amazon Ads33%
02Walmart Connect16%
Walmart Connect16%03Pacvue7%
Pacvue7%04Skai5%
Skai5%05Instacart Ads2%
Instacart Ads2%06Criteo2%
Criteo2%07Target Roundel0%
Target Roundel0%08Kroger Precision Marketing0%
Kroger Precision Marketing0%09Amazon0%
Amazon0%What they warned about
A high negative share on a product with few labels is a warning. A low share on a product with many labels is salience, not sentiment.
Walmart Connect18%
10 of 56 labels negative · 8 of 6 models · 1 hard negative
“**Avoid** pure retail media platforms (like standard Amazon Ads or Walmart Connect)” Kimi K2, direct prompt
Target Roundel31%
9 of 29 labels negative · 8 of 6 models
“Platforms like Amazon Advertising, Walmart Connect, Target Roundel, and similar retail media networks focus on: Consumer shopping behavior” Claude Haiku 4.5, paraphrase prompt
Amazon33%
4 of 12 labels negative · 4 of 6 models
“**Amazon** if you **don’t sell on Amazon**, need more **upper-funnel brand storytelling**, or face **high CPCs** that break unit economics.” Perplexity Sonar, negative prompt
Instacart Ads14%
4 of 29 labels negative · 4 of 6 models
“such as Swiftly and Instacart Ads, have limited third-party review coverage, making it harder to validate their performance and reliability” Mistral Small, negative prompt
What they cite
Citations exist only for the models that return a source list: fourteen of the six in this edition.
Sites the answers cite
78 of 84 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 14 of 6 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 1010 links across 268 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.
vendor site · Guideflow40 answers · 40 citations · 12 models
vendor site · Improvado37 answers · 38 citations · 11 models
vendor site · Osmos32 answers · 44 citations · 9 models
22 answers · 30 citations · 10 models
22 answers · 23 citations · 9 models
vendor site · Moloco19 answers · 20 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Shopify17 answers · 23 citations · 8 models
17 answers · 19 citations · 11 models
vendor site · Topsort17 answers · 19 citations · 9 models
17 answers · 17 citations · 8 models
vendor site · Madgicx16 answers · 24 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Skai14 answers · 19 citations · 9 models
Pages the answers cite
The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.
39 answers · 12 models
37 answers · 11 models
20 answers · 7 models
18 answers · 10 models
17 answers · 8 models
17 answers · 9 models
17 answers · 8 models
14 answers · 9 models
14 answers · 7 models
14 answers · 10 models
Search against answers
Each company's standing in the answers beside its site's footprint in Google search, one row a site: the products the models named on it with their shares, and the share they add up to; monthly searches on Google, and DataForSEO's estimate of AI search demand (modeled from search signals, directional, not a count of queries to any assistant), for the most-searched of the company's and its products' names (the name is in each row's hover text); estimated monthly organic visits to the site; and its best position in Google's top ten for “best retail media advertising platform”, “retail media advertising platform”. US estimates from DataForSEO and Google's Ads Transparency Center. A small company's site, or a mid-sized company's site for its flagship, is marked company; a product on a large parent's site (Google, Microsoft) has no site figures. A column with no figures for this category is left out, and an empty cell means none were seen, not none exist. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
| Company and products | Share | Own site cited | Name searches, Google | AI search demand, est. | Organic visits | Paid search a month, est. | Google ads, last 30 days | Best Google position |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Ads | 33% | 18,100 | 2,303 | |||||
| Walmart Connect walmartconnect.com | 16% | 152 | 4,400 | 1,026 | ||||
| Amazon parent site Amazon Advertising 7%, Amazon Business Ads 2% | 9% | 36 | 151,000,000 | 1,380,939 | ||||
| Pacvue pacvue.com | 7% | 47 | 2,900 | 59 | ||||
| Skai skai.io | 5% | 155 | 6,600 | 2,387 | 12,905 | 35 | 3 | |
| Mirakl Ads | 4% | |||||||
| LinkedIn linkedin.com LinkedIn Campaign Manager 4% | 4% | 123 | 11,100,000 | 77,031 | 331,033,472 company | $1,032 | 113 | 4 |
| StackAdapt stackadapt.com | 4% | 376 | 8,100 | 167 | 26,512 | $18,665 | 39 | |
| Criteo criteo.com Criteo 2%, Criteo Commerce Media Platform 2% | 4% | 49 | 6,600 | 245 | 37,077 | $577 | 120 | 2 |
| Instacart Ads instacart.com | 2% | 73 | 1,600 | 31 | 20,045,198 | $14,806 | 101 |
Google's top ten for the two searches hold 17 sites; 3 of them are among the sites the models cited here (skai.io, topsort.com, voyado.com). The first result for “best retail media advertising platform” is tinuiti.com.
How they answered
Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.ShowHide
How they answered
Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.
ShowHideModelDirect“What is the best retail media advertising platform for a mid-market B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which platform to run and manage retail media ads would you recommend to a mid-sized B2B company?”Comparative“What are the top retail media platforms and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best retail media advertising platform for a company with a limited budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 500 person company evaluating a retail media advertising platform. What should we look at?”Negative“Which retail media platforms should I avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Opus 5no first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choicenothing named
Claude Opus 4.8no first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choicenothing named
GPT-6 Astrano first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choicenothing named
GPT-5.6 Solno first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choicenothing named
Gemini 3.1 Prono first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choicenothing named
Perplexity Sonar Prono first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choicenothing named
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against
The record
One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency. Full answer text is in the free responses file. Download the record
Zero rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.
| Prompt | Model | Version string | Time (UTC) | Searched | Sources | Latency |
|---|
Normalization in this category
Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.
ShowHide
Category-scoped readings
Epsilon read as Epsilon Retail Media
Moloco read as Moloco Retail Media Platform
Moloco's Retail Media Platform read as Moloco Retail Media Platform
Unresolved, counted raw
Alibaba / Taobao/Tmall
Amazon Attribution
Ankorstore
BJ's Wholesale
Best Buy Advertising
CVS Media Network
Carrefour
Chewy
CitrusAds
Commerce Media
Deltatre
FiveX
GAP's failed RMN
Home Depot's retail media network
Improvado's Retail Media Networks
Macy’s
Marinsphere
Mercado Libre
NextRoll
PMG
Petco
ShopRite
Shopify's ecosystem
Swiftly
Tesco
The Home Depot (Orange Apron Media)
The Home Depot Media Network
Tradeling Group
Ulta
Ulta Beauty (UB Media)
Voiado
Voyado's Retail Media Software
Zalando
Zoro
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.