Key takeaways
- Retail marketers heading into the 2026 holiday season should avoid major late-stage campaign restructures and instead optimize within existing platform mixes using Q3 performance data as a guide.
- Tinuiti’s Andy Taylor details budget and efficiency shifts across major ad platforms, including stronger interest in Amazon DSP, rising Walmart competition, normalizing Google CPCs and a growing need for video-ready creative on Meta and Google.
Retail advertisers are heading into the 2026 holiday season with new data on where their budgets went in the third quarter and how those dollars performed. Tinuiti’s Q3 2026 Digital Ads Benchmark Report tracks year-over-year changes in ad spend, cost per click (CPC), impressions and return on ad spend (ROAS) across Google, Amazon, Walmart and Meta. With holiday shopping already underway for many consumers, the findings give retail marketers a baseline for Q4 decisions on budget allocation, campaign structure and creative.
The report points to several shifts across the major platforms. Performance Max accounted for 62% of Google Shopping investment but only 59% of sales, and it still trailed standard Shopping on ROAS. On Amazon, Sponsored Display spend fell 37% year over year while Amazon DSP spend rose 35%. Walmart Sponsored Products spend climbed 33%, with CPC up 14%. Meta spend grew 17%, though Facebook CPMs rose sharply while Instagram impressions increased 17%. Google Search CPC growth rebounded as advertisers lapped Amazon’s exit from Google Shopping auctions, a sign that search costs are returning to normal after last year’s disruption.
To put the data in context, RetailTouchPoints.com spoke with Andy Taylor, vice president of research at Tinuiti. Taylor explains how retail marketers should divide products and budgets between Performance Max and standard Shopping without overhauling campaign structures late in the year, outlines why advertisers continue to move dollars from Sponsored Display to Amazon DSP and rising competition on Walmart.
RetailTouchPoints.com: Performance Max accounted for 62% of Google Shopping investment but only 59% of sales, and it still trailed standard Shopping on ROAS. For retail marketers heading into holiday planning, how should they decide what belongs in PMax versus standard Shopping?
Andy Taylor: I think the answer certainly depends on each advertiser’s ability to use and optimize each campaign type, but high level I think the most important consideration is that advertisers shouldn’t try to radically revamp their campaign structure at this late stage in the year considering holiday shopping has already started for many consumers.
RetailTouchPoints.com: Sponsored Display spend fell 37% year over year, while Amazon DSP spend rose 35%. What is driving that shift, and what does it suggest about how retail brands should divide budgets between lower-funnel marketplace ads and broader audience targeting?
Taylor: Amazon advertisers have been steadily shifting away from Sponsored Display in favor of the Amazon DSP for a few years now, as the DSP has greater targeting and measurement controls available. I think the fact that DSP spend continues to grow faster than more direct-response-focused campaign types like Sponsored Products makes it clear that advertisers continue to grow their appetite for more upper-funnel Amazon advertising opportunities over time, in part because they’re able to better measure the downstream impact of those efforts on the performance of other ad types through Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) data.
How Are Ad Costs Changing on Walmart, Amazon and Google Heading Into Q4?
RetailTouchPoints.com: Walmart Sponsored Products spend jumped 33% year over year, with CPC up 14%. What does that say about growing competition on Walmart, and where do you still see room for retailers and brands to gain efficiency there?
Taylor: The landscape is certainly continuing to get more competitive as brands increasingly lean into Walmart’s advertising suite, not only for Sponsored Products but also for Sponsored Brands and display advertising as well. One new development that brands should be looking to take advantage of is the July launch of negative keywords for Sponsored Products, which allows advertisers to reduce wasted spend by preventing their ads from showing for irrelevant queries to help improve efficiency.
RetailTouchPoints.com: Amazon Sponsored Products spend grew 10% year over year in Q3, but that was shaped in part by Prime Day moving from July to June. How should retail advertisers adjust their read on Amazon performance so they do not mistake calendar shifts for demand changes?
Taylor: The big takeaway is that slower year over year growth in Q3 shouldn’t cause advertisers to expect a slow Q4, as we expect ad spending and the sales attributed to ad interactions to ramp right back up in the fourth quarter. This is always important to some extent when it comes to key stretches like Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, which can shift meaningfully depending on the timing of Thanksgiving each year, and it’s important for advertisers to understand how the holiday calendar might impact consumer urgency from one year to the next.
RetailTouchPoints.com: Google Search CPC growth rebounded in Q3 as advertisers lapped Amazon’s exit from Google Shopping auctions. How should retailers think about search costs now that the market appears to be normalizing after that disruption?
Taylor: Some advertisers look at rising CPC and assume that something is wrong, but that’s just not the case in a lot of situations. This Q4 retail advertisers should expect CPC to rise year over year as they lap those soft comparisons from last year but also dig in and make sure they’re hitting efficiency targets across their portfolio.
How Should Retailers Approach Meta and Video Ads This Holiday Season?
RetailTouchPoints.com: Meta spend rose 17% year over year, but the story was very different across Facebook and Instagram, with Facebook CPMs rising sharply while Instagram impressions grew 17%. Where should retail marketers look for the best balance of scale, efficiency, and conversion potential across Meta placements?
Taylor: The audiences on Instagram and Facebook are very different from a demographic standpoint, and so a large part of this equation will center on the target audience for each brand, where they’re active, and which formats they’re engaging most with.
RetailTouchPoints.com: Your report notes likely Q4 increases in video share within both Performance Max and Demand Gen. What should retail advertisers do now to prepare their creative mix and measurement strategy for a holiday season that may lean even more heavily on video?
Taylor: We do find that advertisers are more willing to invest in video during Q4 as traffic sources that might generate a more marginal return during the rest of the year are worth the additional investment during the holiday shopping season. As shopping ramps up, brands need to make sure that they have the right assets in place in their Demand Gen and Performance Max campaigns to be eligible to serve for video inventory, and they should have a measurement strategy in place that looks at the full picture from discovery to conversion.
