Key stat: Tools and home improvement delivered the strongest ad returns of any industry at $4.56 for every dollar spent in Q4 2025, nearly 2.5x the return clothing, shoes & jewelry advertisers saw ($1.86), according to a Q4 2025 report from SellMetric.

Beyond the chart:

• The best-converting ads don't deliver the best returns. Electronics ads converted at 7.58%, the highest rate of any retail category, yet returned just $1.99 per ad dollar, near the bottom of the pack, according to the same SellMetric data.
• Ad dollars are chasing momentum, not just efficiency. US retail media ad spend in health and beauty grew more than 50% YoY in Q4 2025, according to Skai, while discretionary categories like consumer electronics stayed cyclical, posting declines earlier in the year before recovering.

Use this chart: Drop this into a media planning deck to benchmark expected returns before you set category budgets. Use it to push back when leadership expects uniform ROAS across verticals, and to justify why tools, appliances, and home categories can absorb more spend than apparel or electronics.

Related EMARKETER reports:

• Search and Retail Media Search KPIs Q2 2026 (EMARKETER subscription required)
• Commerce Media Ad Buyer Insights 2026 (EMARKETER subscription required)

SellMetric's data is based on the analysis of various data sources, including transactional data, marketing campaign data, product inventory and sales data, and relevant third-party data. The dataset encompasses over 30,000 customers worldwide. The primary focus of this analysis is for marketplaces in key regions: the United States (US) and Canada. Approximately $350 million in e-commerce ad spending across platforms such as Walmart and Amazon DSP & Sponsored Advertising was examined. To ensure accurate analysis, the raw data underwent essential preprocessing steps, including data normalization, standardization, aggregation and transformation.