Every Q4, the same question comes up in budget planning meetings: should we put more into Amazon and retail media, or double down on Meta and search where we already have data? For a small or midsize business without an unlimited budget, this isn’t an academic question — it’s the difference between an efficient season and a wasted one.
The retail media boom, in numbers
eMarketer forecasts U.S. retail media ad spend will reach $69.33 billion in 2026, up from $58.79 billion in 2025 — and projects that Amazon and Walmart alone will capture more than 89% of that incremental growth. That’s a lot of budget concentrating into a small number of platforms, and it’s worth understanding why before deciding whether to follow it.
On the social side, Triple Whale’s same-shop analysis found Meta captured 67.6% of Black Friday/Cyber Monday ad spend in 2025 — still the dominant social platform for holiday performance marketing. Meanwhile, Tinuiti found Amazon DSP spend rose 34% year-over-year during the 2025 Cyber Five, with a particularly sharp increase in Prime Video ad investment — suggesting retail media platforms are expanding well beyond simple sponsored-product placements into genuine video and display inventory.
Why retail media works differently than social or search
Retail media platforms like Amazon and Walmart put your ad in front of a shopper who has already demonstrated purchase intent — they’re on the platform specifically to buy something, often already searching for your category. That’s a fundamentally different (and often higher-converting) moment than a social scroll or even a search query, which is part of why budget keeps concentrating there.
But it’s not automatically the right move for every business. Retail media generally requires:
- An actual retail media presence (a store or catalog on the platform) to advertise against.
- Margins that support the platform’s fee structure, which can differ meaningfully from social/search.
- Enough catalog depth to make sponsored placements worth managing.
A decision framework, not a default
Rather than assuming “more budget should go to whatever’s growing fastest,” a more useful question for a small business is: where does an incremental holiday dollar convert most efficiently for my specific model?
If you sell primarily through your own site (DTC): Meta and search remain your highest-leverage channels, since you don’t have a retail media storefront generating that high-intent moment. Retail media may still be worth a smaller test if you also have marketplace presence, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of your owned-channel budget.
If you have meaningful marketplace presence (Amazon, Walmart) alongside your own site: this is where the retail media growth story is most relevant. The high-intent nature of that traffic can justify shifting incremental Q4 dollars there, particularly for Cyber Week specifically, when marketplace search volume spikes hardest.
If your margins are thin: be cautious about chasing retail media growth simply because it’s the trend. Meta and search often give you more direct control over cost-efficiency at scale, and thin-margin businesses can least afford to fund a channel simply because “that’s where budget is going industry-wide.”
The real lesson from the 2026 numbers
The retail media growth story is real, but it’s concentrated in businesses with the retail presence to take advantage of it — mostly larger brands with marketplace scale. For most SMBs, the smarter Q4 read isn’t “follow where the biggest dollars are going,” it’s “understand why they’re going there, and check whether that reason applies to my business model.”
If you want help building a channel allocation plan for this year’s holiday budget, let’s map out where your dollars will work hardest.
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