GrowthLoop, a pioneer in agentic AI-powered marketing solutions, today released its 2026 Commerce Media Investment Index, revealing that activation speed and audience options have become decisive factors in where advertisers place retail and commerce media budgets. Conducted in partnership with Ascend2, the study surveyed nearly 300 U.S. and Canadian marketing professionals involved in retail media network (RMN) or commerce media network (CMN) advertising decisions.
The findings reveal what motivates advertisers to spend more with network partners and shed light on how execution friction could put that spend at risk:
- 86% say slow audience fulfillment could cause them to reduce spend or leave a network partner, while 85% say they would pay a premium for same-day fulfillment.
- Nearly all respondents indicate that access to more segments would make them more likely to increase spend.
- 32% of advertisers have reduced, paused, or reconsidered investment because of difficulty proving ROI to leadership.
“Advertisers are telling media networks how to win more budget: Provide better audiences, activate them faster, and deliver meaningful results quickly enough to inform the next campaign,” said Anthony Rotio, co-founder and co-CEO of GrowthLoop. “As we’ve seen with customers like Gopuff, a warehouse-native audience building solution is the way to fulfill these requirements and ultimately build stronger advertiser relationships.”
Key report findings
The Index shows that advertisers spread significant budget across a crowded commerce media market. The majority of advertisers allocate at least 15% of their digital advertising budgets to these networks and 90% work with two or more RMN or CMN partners. No respondents plan to decrease commerce media spend in the next year, and a full 85% plan to increase their spend.
Additional findings include:
Speed shapes spending decisions
- 92% would be more likely to increase spend with faster audience fulfillment.
- 94% would likely spend more with partners offering self-service audience-building tools.
- Advertisers reporting the strongest ROI are five times more likely than others to receive custom audiences the same day.
Advertisers want more audience choice
- Only 38% are extremely satisfied with the number of audiences available through their partners.
- 95% say they would be more likely to increase spend with access to more segments.
Confidence in incrementality measurement drives investment and ROI
- Only 40% are very confident in their partners’ incrementality measurement.
- Advertisers with high confidence in their partners’ measurement spend a larger share of their digital budget on RMN/CMN and are more than twice as likely to significantly exceed ROI targets.
Campaign results often arrive too late to guide the next decision
- Nearly half of advertisers wait at least one week for post-campaign performance data, while only 8% receive it the same day.
- Just 32% say they can consistently use campaign results to optimize future audience targeting.
Putting audience scale and speed into practice
As audience speed and scale remain top of mind for advertisers, Gopuff — the leading instant commerce platform that delivers thousands of everyday products to customers in minutes — has shown how media networks can successfully address these priorities. Leveraging a composable commerce media solution, Gopuff can provide brand advertisers with a larger pool of audiences, activate campaigns quickly, and provide faster, more comprehensive visibility into campaign metrics.
“Advertisers increasingly expect both greater audience customization and faster activation, and we no longer have to trade one for the other,” said JR Crosby, director of data partnerships at Gopuff. “After implementing a warehouse-native stack, we increased our audience segments from 100 to more than 600, and expanded audiences for our subsidiary, BevMo!, from 75 to 400. These expanded audience catalogs give our internal teams and brand partners a broader range of ready-to-use targeting options and create the groundwork for more customized segment offerings.”
To download the full 2026 Commerce Media Investment Index, visit go.growthloop.com/cmn-index. To learn more about GrowthLoop’s Composable Commerce Media solution, visit https://www.growthloop.com/teams/commerce-media.
