OTTO Advertising yesterday disclosed a 49% increase in retail media revenue for fiscal year 2025/26, capping a year in which the Hamburg-based company also launched a proprietary Demand Side Platform and introduced keyword targeting for its Sponsored Product Ads. The results were presented at OTTO's annual press conference by board members Dr. Boris Ewenstein and Andrea Becker, who confirmed that retail media now represents one of the group's fastest-growing business lines - outpacing the broader retail media market for the fourth consecutive year.

The disclosure arrives after two product announcements that bookended the second half of 2025: the keyword targeting capability went live on August 13, 2025, followed by the DSP launch on October 13, 2025. Today's revenue figure is the first consolidated look at how those investments performed across the full fiscal year.

Scale behind the numbers

The 49% growth figure does not exist in isolation. According to data published on OTTO Advertising's website, the platform delivers an average of 5.9 billion ad impressions per month. Sponsored Product Ads generate an average of 7 clicks per second. Visitors to otto.de spend 8.5 minutes per session on average and generate up to 35 orders per second. The Otto Group counts 31 million active user accounts, with a new account added every 8 seconds. These are the data assets that underpin the advertising proposition.

The group's commerce footprint is also substantial. OTTO lists more than 18 million articles across 34,000 brands, with approximately 6,200 marketplace partners selling on the platform. Revenue for fiscal year 2024/25 exceeded 7 billion euros. Retail media, growing at 49% within that context, is gaining share within a well-established commercial base.

Sabine Juenger, Vice President of OTTO Advertising, described the year in a LinkedIn post as a turning point. "2025 - ein mega Jahr! Wir haben unseren RetailMedia-Umsatz um 49 % gesteigert - mit durchschnittlich 5,9 Milliarden Impressions pro Monat und 7 Klicks pro Sekunde auf unsere SPAs," she wrote. She attributed the result to strong growth in trading and marketplace businesses, which generate the reach and data that form the foundation of the advertising operation. She also noted that 2026 has started strongly and that the team intends to continue at the same pace.

The DSP: launched October 13, 2025

The OTTO DSP was announced on October 13, 2025 - roughly six weeks after the keyword targeting product and several months before today's fiscal results. Its construction is the more structurally significant of the two product launches. Rather than licensing a third-party demand side platform, OTTO built its own programmatic infrastructure in-house, making it independent of external technology vendors and third-party data providers.

Volker Richter, Head of Programmatic Advertising at OTTO Advertising, explained the rationale at the time of the launch. "Durch unseren Inhouse Programmatic Stack profitieren Werbetreibende von einer hohen Kosteneffizienz und -transparenz, sowohl auf der Buy- als auch auf der Sell-Side," he said - cost efficiency and transparency on both the buy and sell sides. That framing directly addresses a recurring advertiser concern about retail media: the chain between budget and impression is often opaque, with intermediary fees difficult to isolate. An in-house stack removes that layer.

The platform supports both self-service and managed service modes. Self-service targets media agencies, giving them the ability to configure campaign parameters independently and have the DSP bid in real time across eligible inventory. Managed service allows OTTO Advertising's own team to handle execution on behalf of clients. At launch, Richter confirmed that self-service was initially focused on upper and mid-funnel inventory, with conversion-focused lower-funnel capabilities planned for a subsequent phase.

Inventory available through the DSP spans display placements within a network of German premium publishers as well as Digital Out-of-Home steles in public spaces. The DOOH inclusion is notable for a retail media platform. As programmatic DOOH investment is projected to surge 44% globally and as programmatic methods now account for more than half of all DOOH campaigns in major markets, a retail DSP that incorporates DOOH from the outset places OTTO ahead of most comparable platforms.

The targeting foundation is the 31 million active Otto Group accounts. This first-party dataset covers purchasing behavior, brand preferences, and browsing patterns. Because it is first-party and collected with consent, it operates without dependence on third-party cookies - an increasingly important characteristic as European privacy regulation tightens. Richter stated at launch: "Mit dem Launch der OTTO DSP im Self-Service richten wir uns gezielt an Media-Agenturen. Auf Grundlage exklusiver First-Party-Daten aus über 31 Millionen aktiven Nutzerkonten der Otto Group ermöglichen wir ein hochpräzises Targeting und eine effiziente Kampagnensteuerung."

Non-endemic advertisers and new revenue streams

One of the more commercially significant aspects of the DSP is its explicit orientation toward non-endemic advertisers - brands that do not sell products on otto.de but wish to use OTTO's audience data to reach consumers through other inventory. This expands the potential addressable market for OTTO Advertising well beyond its marketplace partner base.

Richter made the scope clear at the October launch: the DSP in managed service already supports full-funnel campaigns for non-endemic clients, and self-service conversion solutions for those clients are planned. The move parallels approaches taken by other European retailers - but most have done so through technology partnerships rather than proprietary infrastructure. MediaMarktSaturn launched its first offsite retail media program in September 2025 through a partnership with Unlimitail, the joint venture between Publicis Groupe and Carrefour, using Epsilon Retail Media's technology platform. OTTO's decision to build internally positions it differently - greater control over data and cost structure, at the expense of the speed and interoperability that established vendor partnerships provide.

The Mediaplus Group was the first media agency to execute live campaigns on the OTTO DSP. Mattis Koch, Unit Director Realtime Media at Mediaplus, described a test conducted during the autumn 2025 campaign window for a tourism client. "Wir haben die Funktionalität der neuen OTTO DSP im Rahmen der Herbst-Kampagne für einen unserer Tourismus-Kunden getestet," Koch said. "Dank des neuen Daten-Angebots der Otto Group konnten wir unsere Value-Zielgruppe sehr passgenau adressieren, dies schlägt sich auch in dem sehr guten Kampagnenergebnis nieder." A travel brand activating against retail purchase data is a clear non-endemic use case, and the reported result provides early evidence that OTTO's first-party data holds value outside the product categories sold on the platform.

Keyword targeting: launched August 13, 2025

The keyword targeting capability for Sponsored Product Ads predated the DSP by two months, announced on August 13, 2025. It addresses a different layer of the advertising stack: the ability for marketplace partners to control which search queries trigger their product ads, rather than relying entirely on OTTO's automated, context-based matching system.

The beta results were concrete. According to OTTO Advertising, campaigns using keyword targeting achieved a 120% uplift in return on advertising spend (ROAS) and a 50% increase in click-through rate (CTR) relative to automated campaigns. Both are substantial differentials, though the beta context means they reflect early adopters running deliberate configurations rather than a broad cross-section of partners.

The mechanism is direct. Partners book specific search terms through the Partner Connect interface. When shoppers enter those terms in the OTTO app or on otto.de, ads aligned to those keywords are prioritized in the search results. An automated keyword report shows which terms have historically driven traffic to a given product, providing a data feedback loop for iterative refinement. Campaigns can be structured for different phases of the marketing funnel - product launches, growth, or conversion - and bids can be set at the individual keyword level, giving granular control over cost-per-click.

Juenger described the logic at launch: "Our data shows that advertisers can significantly increase the relevance of their product ads through manual targeting. This offers partners, in addition to the already high-performing context-based targeting, another strong option to boost the sales of their assortments." The framing positions keyword targeting as complementary to automation rather than as a replacement.

The strategic applications extend beyond direct response. Manual targeting allows partners to deliberately enter adjacent product categories - a footwear brand that focuses on sports shoes can bid on "trail running shoe" if a product has cross-category potential, deliberately reaching queries not typically associated with its core assortment. Alexander Vogel, Senior Marketplace Manager at Snocks, confirmed the appeal in strategic terms: "Especially in strategic campaign planning, targeting specific search terms will continue to provide us with real added value to promote our products more precisely and grow further with OTTO."

Philipp Merkel from the Remazing Group agency added: "Keyword targeting from OTTO Advertising enables us to support our clients even more effectively in the conception and implementation of their individual marketing strategies. We are convinced that this strategic approach will be reflected in optimized campaign performance and improved goal achievement."

Keyword-level CPC bidding also introduces comparability with market-standard metrics. Advertisers running campaigns on Amazon or Google already work within CPC frameworks and can now apply equivalent analytical disciplines within OTTO's search environment. Retail media networks have been embracing real-time bidding for sponsored products since Pentaleap and Teads announced an industry-first RTB integration in July 2025, and manual keyword controls at OTTO align with the broader expectation that competitive retail media platforms must offer search-style precision.

The European retail media context

OTTO's results and product developments arrive during a period of sustained structural growth in European retail media. IAB Europe's updated retail and commerce media landscape map, published in October 2025, documented extensive ecosystem expansion across both participating brands and technology providers. European retail media spending grew 22.1% in 2024, compared to 6.1% growth for the broader advertising market - a gap that reflects significant budget reallocation into retailer-owned data environments. OTTO Advertising's 49% growth sits far above even that elevated sector rate.

Transparency has become a central evaluation criterion for retail media buyers. IAB Europe's 2025 Attitudes to Retail Media Report identified ROAS and incrementality measurement as the primary criteria buy-side stakeholders use to assess retail media investments. Large advertisers had begun requesting third-party verified media quality across previously unmeasured onsite campaigns. An in-house DSP claiming cost transparency on both buy and sell sides speaks directly to that demand - though independent third-party audit of those claims would constitute a further step.

The choice to build in-house rather than partner reflects a distinct view of where long-term competitive advantage lies. Most European retailers that have recently expanded retail media have done so through vendor partnerships. Migros chose the partnership route when launching Switzerland's first grocery retail media offering through Criteo in February 2026, as did The Trade Desk when it enabled programmatic retail media buying through Koddi in October 2025. OTTO presents a counterpoint: a retailer concentrating control and cost internally, accepting the engineering burden that entails.

Sponsored product coverage across major retail media networks climbed 7% in H2 2025 according to Pentaleap's benchmark data, with networks shifting from static ad placements toward dynamic, algorithm-driven positioning. OTTO's keyword targeting product occupies a complementary space - offering deliberate human override and precision control within a default-automated system, rather than removing automation. That layered approach, machine-set baselines with manual refinement available on top, matches the operational model increasingly favored by experienced retail media buyers managing multi-network programs.

Timeline

Summary

Who: OTTO Advertising, the retail media division of Otto GmbH & Co. KGaA, Germany's largest online shop, headquartered in Hamburg. Key figures include Sabine Juenger (Vice President, OTTO Advertising), Volker Richter (Head of Programmatic Advertising), and board members Dr. Boris Ewenstein and Andrea Becker, who presented fiscal results today. The Mediaplus Group, specifically Mattis Koch (Unit Director Realtime Media), served as the first agency partner on the DSP. Alexander Vogel of Snocks and Philipp Merkel of Remazing Group provided early validation of the keyword targeting product.

What: Three interconnected developments define OTTO Advertising's recent trajectory. Keyword targeting for Sponsored Product Ads launched August 13, 2025, enabling manual bid management against specific search terms; beta results showed +120% ROAS and +50% CTR versus automated campaigns. A proprietary Demand Side Platform launched October 13, 2025, built on in-house technology and drawing on 31 million Otto Group user accounts, offering programmatic access to display, Digital Out-of-Home, and premium publisher inventory in both self-service and managed service modes. Today, OTTO disclosed 49% retail media revenue growth for fiscal 2025/26 - the fourth consecutive year outpacing the broader retail media market, which itself grew 22.1% in 2024.

When: Keyword targeting was announced August 13, 2025. The DSP launched October 13, 2025. The fiscal 2025/26 revenue results were disclosed today, March 27, 2026, at OTTO's annual press conference.

Where: All products and results apply to the German market. OTTO operates from Hamburg, with otto.de as its primary digital property. The DSP's inventory covers German premium publisher environments, public Digital Out-of-Home placements, and the OTTO platform itself. The self-service model targets media agencies operating in Germany.

Why: OTTO Advertising's product launches and financial results reflect a strategic push to build a vertically integrated, first-party data advertising stack independent of external technology vendors. The DSP's in-house construction positions cost transparency and data control as differentiators in a European retail media market that IAB Europe documented growing at 22.1% in 2024. Keyword targeting responds to marketplace partner demand for search-style precision and CPC frameworks familiar from other platforms. The 49% revenue growth demonstrates that the investments made across both products, underpinned by the broader retail and marketplace expansion of the Otto Group, translated into commercial outcomes substantially above the sector baseline.

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