Data Dollars: Exploitation of your data is more lucrative than selling products
Each time you swipe a loyalty card, you’re not just saving on groceries—you’re feeding a powerful data machine known as retail media. What began as a scheme to offer loyalty discounts has morphed into a multibillion-dollar industry where retailers like Kroger, Walmart and Amazon turn consumer behavior into advertising gold, offering brands precision targeting based on detailed shopping habits. This model yields slim profits on groceries but massive margins—up to 90%—on data-driven ads. Amazon, the dominant player with $56 billion in ad revenue and 77% of U.S. retail ad spend, now sells ad tech to competitors, deepening its surveillance-based advantage. As this power grows, it disrupts journalism by diverting ad dollars away from news and raises alarm about privacy, competition, and fairness in the supply chain.
Join us for a conversation with Karina Montoya Guevara of the Center for Journalism & Liberty at the Open Markets Institute in Washington, about the consequences of a model that treats consumers as both audience and product in an increasingly concentrated data economy.
Hosted by: Alexa Raad and Leslie Daigle.
Further reading:
- How the new rules of online advertising helped to drive the Kroger-Albertsons merger
- The New Gold Rush in Advertising Is Your Shopping List
- Policy Brief – Retail Media: The Battle for the Next Advertising Monopoly
- Amazon’s Ad Business Enters New Dangerous Territory in 2023
- FTC Details How Amazon Aims to Deceive Customers and Harm Sellers
The views and opinions expressed in this program are our own and may not reflect the views or positions of our employers.
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