The State of Retail Commerce 2026
Full-funnel investment is the biggest performance unlock for 2026: Brands that consistently invest in Awareness and Consideration drive higher blended revenue and ROAS by creating demand upstream that compounds efficiency downstream.
Diversification strengthens performance across the entire media mix: Spreading spend across Paid Social and emerging channels compounds impact across platforms, outperforming concentrated, single-channel strategies.
AI-led automation is now a material performance lever: AI-driven formats are outperforming manual setups at scale, while automation enables teams to manage complexity and focus on higher-value strategic work.
.png)
Why This Playbook Matters
Most retail commerce brands are entering 2026 with more complexity than clarity. Spend is spread across more platforms, customer journeys now span multiple purchase destinations, and automation is reshaping how performance is delivered -yet many teams are still planning with fragmented reporting and incomplete visibility.
The State of Retail Commerce 2026 brings together performance data from 172 enterprise retail brands across the US, UK, and EMEA to show how the strongest teams are adapting. It reveals how leading brands are diversifying media mixes, investing full-funnel, and using unified measurement to uncover incremental growth and deploy budget with confidence.
This playbook translates those findings into a clear operating blueprint for 2026 — helping marketing and growth leaders understand where performance is really coming from, how to plan investment more confidently, and how to scale what drives measurable revenue.
Alongside Fospha’s data and modeling insights, the playbook also features strategic and creative perspectives from TubeScience, offering an agency-side view on how the highest-performing teams are adapting creative strategy and execution for an increasingly automated, full-funnel world.
What you'll learn
Where incremental growth is actually coming from in 2026
How leading retail brands are identifying and scaling true incremental revenue across Paid Social, Search, marketplaces, and social commerce -not just optimizing what’s easy to measure.
How to build a full-funnel media strategy that compounds returns
Why top-performing teams are investing beyond bottom-funnel capture and how upstream demand creation is improving blended ROAS and long-term efficiency.
How automation is reshaping performance marketing execution
What AI-driven platforms mean for budget allocation, creative strategy, and team structure - and how to turn automation into a growth multiplier rather than just an efficiency tool.
Where incremental growth is actually coming from in 2026
How leading retail brands are identifying and scaling true incremental revenue across Paid Social, Search, marketplaces, and social commerce -not just optimizing what’s easy to measure.
How to build a full-funnel media strategy that compounds returns
Why top-performing teams are investing beyond bottom-funnel capture and how upstream demand creation is improving blended ROAS and long-term efficiency.
How automation is reshaping performance marketing execution
What AI-driven platforms mean for budget allocation, creative strategy, and team structure - and how to turn automation into a growth multiplier rather than just an efficiency tool.
How to plan and allocate budget with forward-looking confidence
How the strongest brands use unified measurement and headroom analysis to identify where to scale next before returns plateau.
Stay ahead with the inside scoop from Fospha.
For over 10 years we've been leading the change in marketing measurement.
.png)
