New research reveals advertisers are navigating a fragmented commerce media landscape where budget sources, decision-makers, and success metrics are increasingly diverse and complex.

"We're operating in one of the most crowded advertising landscapes in decades," said EMARKETER's head of business development Rob Rubin during our virtual Summit last week.

Reality reshapes strategy

Commerce media has evolved beyond a single-budget channel, with funding now coming from multiple sources across organizations. Brand and upper funnel budgets lead the way (74% of organizations), followed closely by dedicated retail media budgets (60%), ecommerce budgets (55%), and performance budgets (54%), according to EMARKETER's "Ad Buyer Insights Survey."

Nearly half (47.5%) of advertisers pull from two or three different budgets, while almost a third draw from four or more sources. This budget fragmentation creates complex decision-making processes that impact everything from campaign planning to measurement.

"Commerce media has become a multi-budget channel, and that complexity shapes everything that follows," said Rubin.

Decision-making by committee

Rubin said the research reveals that while brand teams influence the largest share of investment, retail media teams, performance teams, and ecommerce teams each play significant roles depending on campaign objectives.

This committee approach to decision-making means platforms are no longer selling to a single buyer but to multiple stakeholders with different priorities:

• Retail/commerce media teams prioritize broad reach and tactics that matter to retail partners
• Brand teams focus on reach and upper-funnel signals
• Performance teams demand precision, conquesting, and efficiency
• Ecommerce teams concentrate on driving conversions

Industry differences further complicate the landscape.

"Consumer packaged goods (CPG) and apparel over index towards retail commerce, media budgets, entertainment, media and financial services rely heavily on brand and upper funnel budgets and hard goods leans heavily into ecommerce budgets," said Rubin. "This matters because your buyer's industry determines which KPIs they push, which targeting they expect and which friction points they feel most sharply."

Targeting expectations by team

Targeting preferences align with budget ownership, which Rubin said creates fundamentally different expectations for what success looks like:

• Retail media teams blend tactical targeting with broad reach approaches
• Brand teams favor broad audiences, affinity targeting, and demographics
• Performance teams prioritize conquesting, retargeting, and lookalike audiences
• Ecommerce teams remain focused on bottom-funnel conversion

"This is why advertisers often feel fragmentation and why platforms struggle to build a single offering that satisfies everyone," Rubin noted.

Three implications for 2026

Looking ahead to 2026, Rubin said the research points to three major implications for the commerce media landscape:

1. Enterprise-level complexity: Commerce media has officially become an enterprise channel influenced by multiple teams, KPIs, and definitions of success.

2. Measurement must evolve: No single metric will satisfy all stakeholders. Brand teams want outcome metrics, performance teams demand incrementality, and ecommerce teams require clean attribution.

3. Differentiation is essential: Advertisers struggle to distinguish between platforms. Winning in 2026 means clearly articulating unique strengths rather than trying to be everything to everyone.

"Decisions are getting harder, not easier," Rubin concluded. "Advertisers need clearer intelligence to navigate the landscape. Agencies need clear narratives for their clients, and platforms need sharper understanding of how they're perceived."

Watch the whole session.

This article was prepared with the assistance of generative AI tools to support content organization, summarization, and drafting. All AI-generated contributions have been reviewed, fact-checked, and verified for accuracy and originality by EMARKETER editors. Any recommendations reflect EMARKETER’s research and human judgment.

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