For decades, CPG companies split their commercial investment between above-the-line advertising and trade promotion — slotting fees, co-op advertising, end-cap displays. Trade promotion was managed separately from media, treated as a cost of doing business rather than a marketing investment.
That’s changing. Trade dollars are going digital. And as they do, they’re flowing into retail media at a rate that’s expanding the total advertising market — not just redistributing existing budgets.
The Size of the Trade Budget Pool
CPG companies have historically allocated 15–25% of revenue to trade and shopper marketing. Across the global CPG industry, that’s a pool of hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Only a fraction has migrated to digital retail media so far — which is precisely why the growth runway looks so long even at current market sizes. As e-commerce penetration grows and physical retail visits decline as a share of commerce, the justification for physical trade promotion investment weakens. That budget has to go somewhere. Digital retail media is the logical destination.
The Organisational Friction
The migration is slower than it might be because trade marketing budgets in CPG organisations are often managed by a different team than media and brand marketing. Commercial teams own trade; marketing departments own advertising. These budgets don’t always talk to each other. The companies moving fastest are those that have broken down this siloing — creating unified commerce marketing functions that can direct both trade and brand budgets toward retail media opportunistically.
The Digital Equivalent of the End-Cap
In digital retail media, a sponsored product at the top of search results is the end-cap display. A branded retailer email is the co-op circular. An investment in sponsored listing placement during a product launch is the slotting fee. The mechanics are digital, but the commercial logic is identical — you pay for visibility at the point of purchase. The difference is precision: you can now target specific audience segments, and measure the outcome at the transaction level.