Under $50M: Half the Trade Budget Goes to Retail Media | Harness the Halo 3/6
DTC Podcast · with Mike Chiasson · September 17, 2026 · 26 min
Summary
Brands under $50M are allocating nearly half their trade and shopper marketing budget to retail media, largely sourced from trade budgets, not traditional digital ad spend. This shift highlights a significant opportunity for growth and brand building beyond bottom-funnel search, especially in the upper-funnel where targeting is becoming the true product. Ecommerce operators should re-evaluate their retail media strategy to leverage these opportunities for broader brand awareness and customer acquisition.
Key takeaways
For brands under $50M, recognize that approximately 50% of your combined retail media, trade, and shopper marketing budget is likely going to retail media; benchmark against this and larger companies (15-30%) to optimize allocation.
Shift your retail media strategy beyond solely bottom-funnel search; explore upper-funnel opportunities within retailer networks (e.g., Walmart, Vizio, streaming video) to build broader brand awareness and leverage the "halo effect."
Understand that much of retail media spend originates from trade budgets and is often managed by sales teams; establish clear measurement frameworks and collaborate between sales and marketing to track ROI effectively.
Prioritize granular audience targeting in your retail media campaigns, as the episode highlights "targeting is the actual product" for maximizing reach and relevance even with non-branded ads.
Investigate how retail media spend compounds within platforms like Amazon to inform your strategy, recognizing its unique dynamics compared to traditional brick-and-mortar advertising.
Do not limit your retail media to just amazon but expand to new players like Walmart, Vizio or other streaming platforms as part of an overall brand awareness strategy
To Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupA brand doing under $50 million a year is putting roughly half of its combined retail media, trade, and shopper marketing budget into retail media. At larger companies that share drops toward 30, 20, then 15 percent. Mike Chiasson works on Keen's models, which cover $45 billion in marketing investment, and his read on where that money comes from is the part worth sitting with. It is mostly net new, sourced out of trade rather than pulled from Meta and Google, which is why so much of it sits with sales teams and never gets measured the way media does.If you run growth at a brand moving into retail: this is the episode about what the retail media line in your budget is actually buying, and which part of it is buying customers you already had.If you own the media budget: Chiasson makes the case that the untapped return in retail media is upper funnel, inside retailers where almost everyone is still only buying search.What he gets into:Where the money comes from, and why trade budgets rather than media budgets explain retail media's growthThe benchmark: about half the retail media, trade, and shopper marketing bucket at brands under $50M, versus 15 to 30 percent at large onesWhy small brands with a narrow distribution footprint default to bottom-funnel search, and what that costs themThe Amazon question: whether retail media spend compounds on a retailer's algorithm the way it does on a listing, and why brick and mortar has no real equivalentRetail media ads that carry no visible association with the retailer at all, and why targeting is the actual productWalmart, Vizio, and streaming video as the moment upper-funnel retail media became buyableRetail media social, which he calls
What does this episode say about retail & omnichannel?
For brands under $50M, recognize that approximately 50% of your combined retail media, trade, and shopper marketing budget is likely going to retail media; benchmark against this and larger companies (15-30%) to optimize allocation.
What does this episode say about paid acquisition?
Shift your retail media strategy beyond solely bottom-funnel search; explore upper-funnel opportunities within retailer networks (e.g., Walmart, Vizio, streaming video) to build broader brand awareness and leverage the "halo effect."
What does this episode say about analytics & attribution?
Understand that much of retail media spend originates from trade budgets and is often managed by sales teams; establish clear measurement frameworks and collaborate between sales and marketing to track ROI effectively.
What does this episode say about dtc strategy?
Prioritize granular audience targeting in your retail media campaigns, as the episode highlights "targeting is the actual product" for maximizing reach and relevance even with non-branded ads.
What does this episode say about retail & omnichannel?
Investigate how retail media spend compounds within platforms like Amazon to inform your strategy, recognizing its unique dynamics compared to traditional brick-and-mortar advertising.
