Release of the "Retail Media Trends Report ~ARUTANA Lab Vol.3~" Thoroughly Comparing the Strengths and Weaknesses of 5 Major Platforms in the Retail Media Market

DearOne, Inc. (Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo, President & CEO: Yasuhisa Kono, hereinafter: DearOne), a new business-type subsidiary in the marketing field of NTT DOCOMO, INC., has released the "Retail Media Trends Report ~ARUTANA Lab Vol.3~," which thoroughly compares the strengths and weaknesses of five major platforms in the retail media market.

In this report, five major genres—e-commerce, digital flyers, payment/points, digital signage, and official apps—are compared across four behavioral axes to organize the criteria for selecting the "platform that solves your company's challenges."

■ Main Topics of this Report

Across its 27 pages, this report clarifies the structural challenges faced by retail businesses in the ever-expanding retail media market and explains the guidelines for maximizing media value.

1. The Selection Criteria Lies in Shopper Behavior: A Thorough Comparison of 5 Major Platforms

In response to the question "Where should we invest?", the five major genres of e-commerce, digital flyers, payment, signage, and official apps are analyzed along the behavioral axis from "outside the store (planning)" to "inside the store (execution)." It presents the criteria for investment decisions based on the structure of which media contributes most to the "decision to purchase."

2. Balancing In-App Ads and UI/UX: The Structural Problem of Frequency (Contact Frequency)

The biggest concerns when turning an official retail app into a media platform are the "limits of reach" and the "impairment of user experience (UX) due to the concentration of frequency." This report outlines methods to solve this issue not through the "presence or absence of ads," but through the "delivery mechanism." It explains a structure that maximizes revenue without compromising the convenience of the app by expanding the delivery surface through networking, thereby distributing the ad load per person.

3. Selecting a Strategic Model: Methods to Breakthrough the "Two Walls" Hindering Monetization

How to break through the "wall of reach" and the "wall of frequency" faced by official apps. It organizes the benefits of different strategic models and shows the path to balancing monetization with the company's carefully nurtured CRM foundation.

Through these analyses, this report summarizes the approach to simultaneously achieving the maintenance of user experience and the maximization of revenue while leveraging the CRM foundation, which is essential for the future success of retail media.

■ Retail Media Trends Report ~ARUTANA Lab Vol.3~

Contents

The "Full Report" can be downloaded from the link below.

■ Background of the Release of the "Retail Media Trends Report"

The domestic retail media advertising market is expanding rapidly and is expected to reach 606.6 billion yen (of which store operators account for 83 billion yen) in 2025*. Along with this, the role of retail media is shifting from a limited phase of traditional "sales promotion" to a new phase as a "highly accurate advertising medium" that visualizes advertising effectiveness and supports marketing optimization.

In particular, among manufacturer companies, there is a full-fledged movement to position retail media as an investment target for "advertising budgets" aimed at brand awareness and fan formation, rather than just an extension of in-store sales promotion.

On the other hand, as many retail companies accelerate their media conversion, challenges have emerged, such as the structural dilemma that "the more you pursue revenue, the more you impair the user experience (UX)" and the lack of reach power with standalone apps.

In response to this situation, DearOne has created and released this report to present criteria for achieving a "win-win-win" for retailers, manufacturers, and consumers, based on operational knowledge of "ARUTANA," a retail media platform capable of cross-sectional ad delivery to the official retail apps it provides.

*Source - CARTA HOLDINGS, Inc. conducts a survey on the retail media advertising market ( https://cartaholdings.co.jp/news/20260127_1/ )

■ About "ARUTANA"

"ARUTANA" is a retail official app ad network that turns official apps of retail companies into an ad network and enables cross-sectional ad delivery.

Advertisers can deliver ads simultaneously to multiple retail official apps simply by placing ads on "ARUTANA." There is data showing that about 75% of retail official apps actively launched by users are launched in-store (according to our research), allowing direct appeal to consumers with high purchasing intent, and expecting high conversion rates and return on investment.

Retail businesses can secure new advertising revenue without incurring development costs simply by introducing the "ARUTANA" mechanism into their official apps. They can manage ad placements with simple operations from the management screen, smoothly achieving app monetization.

Currently, many retail companies are participating, including Tsuruha Co., Ltd., Daiso Industries Co., Ltd., Loyalty Marketing, Inc., and EDION Corporation. The MAU (Monthly Active Users) of the destination apps reaches 47.5 million (as of February 2026).

Retail Media Platform "ARUTANA"
https://www.dearone.io/arutana/

■ About DearOne, Inc.

It is a new business-type subsidiary of NTT DOCOMO, INC. in the marketing field. It provides "ModuleApps2.0," which allows the development of official apps simply by incorporating the necessary functions from an abundance of app features, as well as "ARUTANA," a retail media platform capable of cross-sectional ad delivery to official retail apps. Furthermore, it handles various MarTech tools for CDP, analytics, and customer engagement, such as the user behavior analysis tool "Amplitude," the customer experience analysis platform "Contentsquare," and the AB testing tool "VWO," supporting the growth of digital products such as apps and e-commerce sites.

・Representative: Yasuhisa Kono, President and Representative Director

・Headquarters: NTT Toranomon Building 4F, 3-8-8 Toranomon, Minato-ku, Tokyo

・URL: https://www.dearone.io/