Retail Media’s Growth Masks Margin Pressure, New Survey Finds

Feedvisor’s 2026 Brand Survey reveals rising budgets, tightening efficiency, AI’s impact on commerce, and the growing need for integrated commerce optimization.

NEW YORK CITY, NY, UNITED STATES, March 9, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Retail media investment continues to rise, but profitability is becoming harder to sustain, according to Feedvisor’s 2026 Brand Survey, which examines how more than 1000 brands are adapting to rising advertising costs, expanding full-funnel strategies, and the growing influence of AI in digital commerce.

While most brands plan to increase retail media budgets this year, many report that each incremental dollar is becoming harder to make productive as CPC inflation, marketplace fees, and competitive density place pressure on margins.

The findings suggest that retail media has evolved from a performance lever into a structural cost of participating in digital commerce, requiring greater discipline in coordinating pricing and promotions, media allocation, inventory availability, and broader unit economics.

“Retail media is no longer a discretionary growth channel; it has become the price of visibility in digital commerce,” said Dani Nadel, President and COO of Feedvisor.
“Budgets continue to rise, but so does the economic pressure behind every click or view. Brands need to treat retail media as an economic system to be engineered, not simply a marketing channel to fund.”

Key Findings from the 2026 Brand Survey

Retail media budgets continue to expand
75.8% of brands expect overall retail media budgets to increase this year
74.8% plan to increase Amazon advertising investment

Full-funnel retail media is becoming standard
61.5% of brands are already running upper-funnel campaigns
63.7% expect retail media networks to operate as full-funnel platforms by 2026
70.4% expect incremental dollars to flow to Amazon DSP and Prime Video – 41% said it will go to sponsored ads due to untapped opportunity

AI is reshaping product discovery and advertising performance
52.4% of brands expect 11–25% of product discovery traffic to come from AI-driven interfaces by the end of 2026
67.6% say AI assistants and agentic commerce will have the greatest impact on their business

As AI-driven discovery expands, consumers are increasingly shopping through conversational prompts and recommendation systems rather than traditional search queries.

“The biggest mistake brands can make right now is treating retail media as a marketing channel in isolation,” Nadel added. “It has become a commercial operating system. The companies winning are the ones engineering visibility, pricing, and demand as a unified system.”

A More Disciplined Phase of Retail Media

The report suggests that the next phase of retail media will reward measurement rigor, operational coordination, and AI-enabled decision systems rather than incremental budget increases alone.

Brands are increasingly linking advertising decisions with pricing strategy, inventory availability, and profitability models to better understand how media investment translates into sustainable growth.

The full 2026 Brand Survey explores how brands are adapting their operating models to navigate rising costs, full-funnel complexity, and AI-driven commerce.

Download the full report.

Marissa Incitti
Feedvisor
+1 347-803-2758
email us here

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