If you’re a food or beverage brand investing in CPG retail media targeting, you’ve already noticed the landscape looks nothing like it did a few years ago. There are more platforms, more data, and a lot more competition sitting on the digital shelf.
Here’s the upside: when you understand how it all fits together, retail media opens the door to real, measurable growth. The numbers make the case on their own. U.S. retail media spending is projected to reach $71 billion in 2026, up from $60 billion in 2025, and globally the market has surpassed $200 billion with projections to exceed $312 billion by 2030. For food and beverage brands specifically, commerce media channels now capture 70 to 75 percent of digital ad budgets.
With the right strategy, retail media can do more than just capture demand. It can help you reach new customers, influence purchase decisions across channels, and connect your marketing efforts into one cohesive system.
In this guide, we’ll go over what’s changed, what actually matters, and how CPG food and beverage brands can build a smart retail media strategy by connecting channels so they work together rather than as disconnected pieces of the puzzle.
Table of Contents
- The CPG Retail Media Ecosystem: Networks, Aggregators & Platforms
- What Is a Retail Media Strategy?
- Recipe for Success: 8 Key Elements of a High-Performing CPG Retail Media Strategy in 2026
- Build a CPG Retail Media Strategy That Drives Sales With The Missing Ingredient
The CPG Retail Media Ecosystem: Networks, Aggregators & Platforms
Before we dive into retail media strategy, it helps to understand how the consumer packaged goods (CPG) retail media ecosystem is structured so you can prevent wasted ad spend and increase real performance.
Let’s keep it simple. There are three basic components of CPG retail media strategy: networks, aggregators, and platforms.
Retail Media Networks
Retail media networks are where your ads show up. Think Walmart, Target, Amazon, and Kroger.
This is where your ads actually appear, usually:
- At the top of the search results (sponsored products)
- On product pages
- Within on-site display or video placements
These networks give you access to that retailer’s shopper data, both on-site and, increasingly, off-site. It’s worth noting the concentration at the top: Amazon and Walmart together command approximately 85 to 90 percent of total U.S. retail media spending. Amazon alone generates over $60 billion in annual ad revenue. Walmart Connect, meanwhile, is the fastest-growing major player, posting $6.4 billion in global ad revenue for fiscal 2026 (a 46 percent year-over-year increase).
For food and beverage brands, the grocery-specific networks are equally important. Kroger Precision Marketing leverages its loyalty card data across millions of households, enabling precise targeting based on actual purchase history. Albertsons Media Collective has expanded aggressively in 2026, rolling out in-store digital screens across 800+ stores and launching a rigorous incrementality measurement framework that proved a 14 percent sales lift for a Sargento campaign.
Aggregators
Aggregators sit in the middle of the ecosystem and are how you scale efficiently. They give you access to multiple retailers through one platform. Examples include Instacart and Criteo.
Aggregators help you:
- Reach shoppers across multiple retailers at one time
- Use retailer data for off-site targeting
- Launch campaigns faster without managing each network individually
Instacart stands out for food and beverage brands because of its extreme purchase intent concentration. Grocery delivery users on Instacart convert at 18 to 25 percent, compared to 10 to 15 percent on Amazon and 12 to 18 percent on Walmart. In February 2026, Instacart also launched Data Hub, a clean room offering that lets brands join their own data with Instacart’s purchase signals for deeper strategic insights.
The tradeoff is less control in some cases. For example, certain platforms don’t allow retailer-specific or geo-targeting, which can impact your strategy depending on your goals.
Platforms
Platforms are basically how you manage and optimize ads. This is the technology used to manage budgets, performance, and optimization.
Platforms are used to:
- Allocate spend across retailers
- Analyze performance (ROAS, incrementality, new-to-brand)
- Optimize campaigns based on real-time data
As retail media gets more complex, these platforms are becoming essential for keeping everything aligned. According to Skai’s 2026 State of Retail Media report, advertisers now work with an average of six retail media networks, projected to reach eleven by the end of 2026. Without a platform layer tying everything together, managing that many networks becomes nearly impossible.
Why is this important for your food and beverage brand? When you understand how these three layers work together, you can:
- Target shoppers more precisely
- Scale without sacrificing efficiency
- Get clearer reporting across all channels
- Avoid wasting budget on the wrong placements
Managing the ecosystem can get messy and overwhelming fast. Partnering with an experienced marketing team like The Missing Ingredient can help you make sure all the layers are working together to drive trackable growth.
What Is a Retail Media Strategy?
A CPG retail media strategy is a brand’s plan to leverage retailer-owned ad channels and shopper data to promote its products at the right place and at the right time (when a shopper is ready to buy).
At its core, retail media strategy no longer relies on traditional ads to build awareness; it places your products directly in front of high-intent shoppers on retailer sites and apps.
Why Retail Media Is Reshaping Marketing for CPG Brands
Just a few years ago, retail media was a fairly simple concept: buy a sponsored placement on a retailer’s website to bring in shoppers searching for your product.
However, this model has expanded, and for food and beverage brands that sell primarily through retail channels (national grocery chains, big-box stores, online marketplaces, etc.), retail media strategies are imperative to driving growth.
The balance of power has shifted; retailers now own some of the most valuable data in the buying journey, and having this data has pushed CPG brands to rethink how and where to invest their marketing dollars.
Brands still have on-site retail media (sponsored products, display ads, and placements directly on retailer websites and apps).
But now, it doesn’t stop there.
Off-site retail media has become the fastest-growing segment in the space, growing at twice the rate of on-site spending. U.S. off-site retail media ad spending is projected to reach $17 billion in 2026, up nearly 30 percent year-over-year. Off-site allows brands to reach shoppers outside of the retailer’s platform through display ads, connected TV, social media, and strategic placements across the internet, all powered by the retailer’s first-party purchase data.
The developments here are moving fast. Walmart’s acquisition and integration of Vizio has unlocked triple-digit growth in connected TV advertising, with three-quarters of those CTV audiences not reachable through linear television alone. Instacart has launched shoppable formats on Roku. Albertsons rolled out “Collective TV” with shoppable YouTube integrations. And Netflix expanded its retail media ties through Amazon DSP in Q2 2026, allowing brands to target Netflix viewers based on actual Amazon shopping behavior.
It’s no longer just about being present while someone searches. It’s about influencing decisions before that moment even happens. The result is a full-funnel approach that uses on-site and off-site retail media together to curate a more connected experience that drives measurable sales.
How Measurement for CPG Retail Media Strategies Has Changed and What To Track Now
For years, Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) was the go-to metric for evaluating retail media performance; if the return looked strong, things were working, and vice versa.
Now, it’s not quite that straightforward. Only 15 percent of commerce media advertisers strongly trust their current measurement, and 41 percent of advertisers feel retail media networks lag behind other channels in measurement capabilities.
CPG brands need to ask themselves a far more important question: are these ads actually driving new sales, or are we just paying to reach people who would’ve bought our product anyway?
This shift is reshaping how CPG brands measure success. The IAB released Commerce Media Measurement Standards V2 in early 2026, delivering clearer definitions and robust guidance on incrementality, new-to-brand reporting, and sales measurement. A six-month transition period runs through July 2026, making this a pivotal year for measurement standardization across the industry.
Platforms like Instacart have introduced new-to-brand customer metrics, which tell you what percentage of sales are coming from shoppers who’ve never purchased your product. For CPG brands, this is huge. Now you have a clearer picture of whether your strategy is expanding your customer base or just recycling the same buyers.
Data clean rooms are also becoming standard infrastructure for measurement. Sixty-six percent of organizations have adopted clean rooms in some form, enabling brands and retailers to join datasets in secure, privacy-safe environments without exposing user-level information. Instacart’s Data Hub and similar offerings let you combine your own data with retailer purchase signals for smarter planning and optimization.
Measurement is also becoming more cross-channel. You can’t evaluate on-site and off-site performance in isolation anymore. An off-site campaign may have lower direct ROAS but still drive strong on-site conversions.
Bottom line: ROAS still matters, but it’s not enough. You need to look at the overall impact, new customers, and how channels work together.
Recipe for Success: 8 Key Elements of a High-Performing CPG Retail Media Strategy in 2026
#1: Start With Sponsored Searches
Sponsored searches are still the foundation of any strong retail media strategy. They capture shoppers who are actively looking for your product or category, making it one of the most reliable and highest-ROI tactics.
The intent concentration is hard to beat. On Amazon, 89 percent of searches indicate purchase readiness within 48 hours, compared to just 34 percent on Google. That’s why sponsored search remains your baseline, making sure you’re visible at the exact moment purchase decisions are being made.
Even as retail media expands into a full-funnel approach, sponsored searches still remain as your baseline, making sure you’re visible at the exact moment purchase decisions are being made. They capture existing demand, drive direct conversions, and deliver the most reliable ROAS of any retail media format.
#2: Protect Your Brand from Competitors
As more brands invest in retail media, competition for visibility on the digital shelf is intensifying. Competitors can, and do, bid on your branded keywords and product terms. This basically means they’re cutting in front of you when a shopper is specifically looking for your product.
Let’s say you’re an organic snack brand called Eat Better Snacks, and a shopper searches “Eat Better Snacks granola bars” on Walmart’s website. If a competitor is bidding on your branded keyword, their product could appear above yours in the results, even though that shopper was looking for you specifically.
Protecting your branded search placement by running a branded sponsored search campaign ensures that the awareness you’ve built through other channels actually converts for your brand, rather than getting intercepted at the last step.
Think of this as defending your shelf space in the digital store.
#3: Invest in Multiple Platforms
When it comes to CPG retail media strategies, you can’t put all your eggs in one basket. No single retail media network does everything well, which is why diversifying across platforms is so important for a scalable and sustainable CPG strategy.
Instacart, for example, doesn’t support retailer-specific or geographic targeting. So, if your goal is to support a specific region or retail partner, you’ll need to find other tools to fill that gap. However, where Instacart excels is scale and discoverability. You get access to thousands of retailers through a single platform, making it a powerful tool for reaching shoppers broadly across product categories and purchase behaviors.
Amazon offers unmatched conversion volume but operates as a closed ecosystem, meaning the data and learnings stay within Amazon. Walmart Connect brings a unique omnichannel advantage, reaching approximately 150 million U.S. shoppers weekly across digital and 4,600+ physical stores. Target Roundel reaches a higher-income, urban professional demographic that’s particularly valuable for premium food and beverage brands.
Building a thoughtful mix across the entire ecosystem gives your brand broader reach, more targeting flexibility, and reduces over-reliance on any one channel.
#4: Connect All Marketing
Retail media doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The most effective CPG strategies break down the traditional divide between shopper marketing (in-store promotions, demos, and displays) and consumer marketing (digital ads through search engines and social media).
Discovery for food and beverage consumers increasingly starts on social platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest, where visual content and creator recommendations drive initial awareness. Paid search captures the research and comparison stage. Retail media reaches consumers at the critical conversion point when they’re actively building shopping carts. And paid social reinforces messaging throughout the entire journey.
Those channels are reaching the same shopper at different points in their path to purchase, and when messaging and targeting are connected, you create a more consistent and effective customer journey. Progressive CPG organizations are restructuring around this reality, consolidating their agency partners and building unified strategies rather than letting each channel operate in a silo.
At The Missing Ingredient, this connected approach is at the core of how we build retail media strategies for food and beverage brands.
#5: Focus on Incrementality
Strong ROAS numbers can be misleading if they’re not telling you whether your ads are actually driving new sales. Incrementality measurement focuses on the more important question: would this shopper have purchased my product anyway?
For CPG food and beverage brands, understanding the difference between capturing existing demand and genuinely growing your customer base is important for making smart budget decisions and demonstrating real impact from your retail media investment.
Let’s say your sponsored search campaign for your new probiotic soda on Kroger’s network shows strong ROAS. On the surface, that looks like a win. But if you dig deeper, you might find that the majority of those purchasers were buyers already seeking out your products regardless of whether they saw your ad. They would’ve purchased your new soda because they’ve already committed to your brand through other products.
Albertsons Media Collective offers a model worth watching here. Their incrementality measurement framework compares performance in stores exposed to campaigns versus comparable control stores, calibrating against more than 60 factors to isolate the true causal impact of the advertising. That kind of rigor is where the industry is heading.
Media mix modeling remains the most widely used approach, with 61 percent of retail decision-makers employing it. But regardless of the methodology, the principle is the same: shift your budget towards campaigns that reach new shoppers, rather than paying to convert people who were already going to buy.
#6: Expand Into Off-Site and Connected TV
If your retail media strategy is still limited to on-site placements, you’re missing the fastest-growing part of the channel. Off-site retail media lets you reach shoppers across the open internet, connected TV, social platforms, and publisher sites, all using retailer first-party data for targeting.
For food and beverage brands, connected TV is particularly compelling. Retail media networks sold nearly $5 billion in CTV ads in 2025, a figure projected to more than double to $10 billion by 2028. Walmart’s integration with Vizio lets advertisers reach shoppers through CTV with closed-loop purchase attribution. Amazon DSP extends targeting into Netflix, Roku, and other premium streaming environments.
The beauty of off-site is that it solves the ceiling problem. On-site inventory is limited (there are only so many search result slots and product detail pages), and as more brands compete for those placements, costs rise. Off-site gives you nearly unlimited reach while still benefiting from the retailer’s purchase data for precision targeting.
The key is connecting off-site and on-site together. An off-site CTV or display campaign may have lower direct ROAS, but if it’s driving new shoppers who then convert through on-site sponsored products, the combined impact is what matters.
#7: Use AI and Automation to Stay Competitive
Artificial intelligence is no longer a nice-to-have in retail media. It’s becoming the operational backbone.
Amazon launched Full-Funnel Campaigns in early 2026, which uses natural language processing to help advertisers build complete awareness-to-conversion strategies with AI assisting in creative development, audience selection, and cross-format optimization. Amazon’s Creative Agent can now produce professional-quality ad creative (images, video, animation, voiceovers) in hours rather than weeks, at no additional cost.
Beyond creative, AI is transforming how campaigns are optimized in real time. The most sophisticated setups now connect retail signals (inventory availability, pricing changes, competitive positioning) directly to media bidding workflows. When a product goes out of stock, bids automatically reduce. When competitors drop prices, creative and bidding adjust in real time.
For food and beverage brands managing extensive product catalogs with rapid changes in promotion calendars and seasonal demand, this kind of automation is becoming essential. Fifty-three percent of marketers believe AI will significantly enhance how shoppers are targeted and served relevant ads, and the platforms are investing heavily to make that a reality.
The brands that embrace these tools will be able to optimize faster, scale more efficiently, and free up their teams to focus on strategy rather than manual campaign management.
#8: Keep Testing and Improving
Retail media platforms are constantly evolving. We’ve already seen how what used to work two years ago is an obsolete media strategy today. Today’s wins may be tomorrow’s waste.
The most successful brands stay on top of new targeting capabilities, ad formats, and measurement tools. They view optimization as an ongoing process, not just a one-time setup.
Keep testing audience segments, creative approaches, and budget allocations. Pay attention to what’s driving conversions and true growth, not just padding your ROAS numbers.
Retail media rewards CPG brands that stay curious and consistently refine their approach using real performance data.
Build a CPG Retail Media Strategy That Drives Sales With The Missing Ingredient
The retail media landscape grows more sophisticated and competitive every day. For CPG food and beverage brands, the opportunity is massive, but it can quickly become confusing and complex. With advertisers now managing campaigns across six or more networks (each with its own tools, audience data, and reporting logic), 56 percent cite lack of technical expertise as the primary obstacle to scaling their retail media programs effectively.
The Missing Ingredient works with CPG food and beverage brands to build retail media strategies that are based on data and your specific goals. Rather than reacting to retailer recommendations or wasting your budget on channels that aren’t aligned with your objectives, we help you make confident, informed decisions that move your brand forward.
Whether you need help navigating Amazon Ads, Instacart, Walmart Connect, Target Roundel, or building a connected strategy across all of them, we bring the expertise to make it work together.
If your retail media strategy feels scattered, underperforming, or hasn’t kept up with how much the space has changed, reach out to us, and together, we’ll build a strategy that connects every part of the customer journey.