With questions about tariffs and the economic outlook persisting, brands are prioritizing a strong start to the year. The wrong plan can set them back and allow their competitors to get ahead, so it’s imperative that they find the right marketing channels to meet their goals. The best approach to creating a 2026 roadmap is to look at the trends that shaped 2025 spending and adjust accordingly. 

Below, we’ll explore some of the major investment trends that happened last year and how brands can use these insights to plan their 2026 budget. 

Choosing the Right Channel

Based on an analysis of over 350 brands and more than $50 billion of historical marketing investment across a diverse set of verticals, social media and streaming video will be valuable channels for marketers, with spending expected to once again rise in these mediums. Streaming video, in particular, is one of the main channels primed for further adoption in 2026. 

The increasing popularity of user-generated content, influencer marketing and YouTube as a main viewing platform led marketers more fully embracing these mediums in 2025. As such, both channels each accounted for 18% of all media spending, trailing only linear television and search, which accounted for 22% and 21%, respectively. 

While search had the second largest share of spending, it will stay relatively constant in 2026. The rise of generative AI will cause marketers to rethink their investments in search as they seek other ways to reach consumers. Many are embracing generative AI as recent research found that over six in 10 (61%) of worldwide marketing agency leaders are adapting to genAI search by optimizing for it. 

Additionally, traditional media like print and radio as well as out-of-home advertising and other event-based marketing activation should see a surprise increase in 2026 as they deliver the most efficient ROI of all channels. Print delivers nearly 66% higher than average while radio delivers nearly 40% more ROI per dollar spent. With many consumers embracing a return to analog channels, they’re more likely to pay attention to the ads they encounter. 

As such, marketers generally should look to invest in traditional media, streaming video and social media to see the highest ROI in 2026. However, this isn’t always a one-size-fits all approach. 

Next, we’ll explore how brands of different sizes are splitting up their spending. 

Fueling the Funnel

Larger brands should prioritize top-of-funnel tactics while smaller brands should focus on bottom-of-funnel approaches. In 2025, brands with revenue over one billion dollars put 74% of their investments into the top of the funnel, compared to 26% to the bottom. Brands making less than $50 million invested only 61% of their budget into the top of the funnel, while 39% went to the bottom of the funnel. This is a massive shift in investment as brands making less than $50 million have historically been much heavier in the bottom of the funnel. Brands who have adopted this approach have already seen strong results, as a small challenger non-alcoholic brand recently became the only brand in its category to see year-to-year growth in aided and unaided awareness. 

Smaller brands have tight budgets that are closely scrutinized, so this has led to an overinvestment in the bottom of the funnel, where attribution models can justify the spend associated with those investments. Search was the most popular bottom-of-the-funnel tactic, accounting for 62% of spending. However, these smaller brands still need to build brand awareness, and shifting focus to more upper funnel investments yields greater demand, thus improving the returns generated from lower funnel tactics. Linear was the most popular top-of-funnel tactic at 33%, followed closely by streaming video (25%) and social media (23%). 

With search stagnating, though, we anticipate display and social media to gain a larger share of spending among smaller brands in 2026. These channels can still be effective brand awareness builders at a relatively low cost, so we expect a gradual shift in spending throughout the year. 

Brands of all sizes have different priorities, so it’s important to identify the tactics that will best help them meet their sales goals. Now, we’re going to explore how brands of different sizes should utilize retail media in 2026. 

Amazon’s Retail Media Dominance

Amazon continues to see the largest share of retail media investment among brands, surpassing competitors like Kroger, Target and Walmart. For instance, Amazon accounts for 79% of all spending among brands making less than $50 million in revenue and 61% for those making between $50 and 100 million.

Amazon has an infinitely growing catalog that any brand can add to and immediately gain retail distribution. There’s no limitation of a physical shelf, and the amount of products that can be neatly organized and shown to the customer. Also, other retail media networks don’t have the shelf space to add many smaller, growing brands that don’t reach the same velocity as larger, more established brands. As such, advertising for smaller brands heavily skews towards Amazon. 

On the other hand, larger brands with broader distribution exhibit more balanced investment across retailers. For example, Walmart accounts for 29% of all spending by brands making between $500 million and $1 billion in revenue, while Target jumps to 16% among brands making over $1 billion. Larger brands have distribution and placement across numerous retailers, so they’re incentivized to use diversification in their product marketing support strategy. 

Breaking down by retail media network ad type, display spend is heavily skewed towards Amazon whereas search investment is more balanced across retailers. In 2026, we expect display and video spend to expand beyond Amazon and lean more into other retailers like Target and Walmart for all brand types. 

In sum, Amazon offers great agility for brands of all sizes, while larger brands should utilize a broader range of retail media networks to reach consumers. Even though these larger brands are more diversified in their spending, the retail media industry is still mostly consolidated in three to four platforms. There have been a plethora of retail media networks developed over the last few years. While we do expect that trend to continue, albeit at a slower pace, the industry is waking up to realize many of the smaller networks do not have the distribution and audience size to make an impact worth the investment. As such, we expect dollars to continually flow towards the larger, more mature retail media networks that benefit from the flywheel growth of users, data and brands.

With advertisers feeling the pressure to start the year strong, they can set themselves up for success by following some of the trends we observed at the end of last year as they wait to see how the year shapes up. 

Social media and streaming video are growing in importance, and Amazon continues to dominate retail media networks. Additionally, despite being largely neglected in recent years, traditional media like out-of-home advertising, radio and print still deliver strong ROI for advertisers. 

By following this path, most brands can keep their momentum going in 2026.