The Maze: Consumer brands are putting a larger share of sales into recorded advertising, according to new research from WARC, an advertising research provider. Its comparison runs against the trend among 25 large US-based advertisers. One reason matters to retailers selling ads: some money is moving from existing promotion budgets.
The Details:
More advertising does not always mean greater intensity. Advertising intensity means advertising spending divided by sales revenue. WARC's public summary shows the ratio for 25 large US-based advertisers falling from 6.1% in 2019 to 5.5% in 2025. That is 6.10 versus 5.50 spent on advertising for every 100 units of revenue. It describes the weight of advertising within those businesses, rather than the effectiveness of individual campaigns. A growing company can spend more on ads while that share falls if revenue grows faster.
Consumer brands move the other way. WARC's six-brand comparison reports advertising spending up 36%, ahead of revenue growth of 29%. InternetRetailing names Coca-Cola, L’Oréal, Nike, PepsiCo, Estée Lauder and Procter & Gamble. The report summary and the coverage describe the comparison's starting period differently, so the precise interval remains uncertain. The useful distinction survives: advertising grew faster than the sales supporting it. That is a statement about the combined group. It does not establish that every brand made the same budget decision or earned the same return.
Some of the increase changes budget categories. InternetRetailing reports WARC's explanation that slower sales growth and money moving into retail media both raise the ratio. Retail media is advertising sold through a retailer's shopper relationships, websites, apps or stores. Trade and shopper budgets fund promotions with retailers. Moving that existing funding into measurable ads makes it appear within recorded advertising spending. The available evidence does not say how much of the increase comes from this transfer. It also does not establish how much additional customer buying the ads caused.
MarketMaze Take: Retailers can win a bigger advertising business without receiving an equally large increase in a brand's total commercial spending. The distinction is especially useful when sales growth slows: a rising ratio can reflect pressure on revenue, a different budget category, or both. It is an accounting clue before it is a growth verdict.
The funding source shapes the opportunity. In June 2024 research, management consultancy BCG described trade and shopper budgets as major funding for retail-media growth. Brands wanted better results before opening other sources of money. That historical context makes today's reported transfer commercially plausible. For retailers elsewhere, the portable lesson is to distinguish money won from existing promotion arrangements from genuinely additional brand funding. The WARC sample does not measure that distinction worldwide.
Measurable sales still need a meaningful comparison. A retailer can connect advertising and purchases within its own business. That makes the channel attractive, but identifying a sale after an ad is different from showing that the sale would not have happened otherwise. Retail media may create additional demand. These spending ratios do not settle that question. Treating every increase as proof of demand would ask a budget statistic to do a sales experiment's job.
Sources: WARC, InternetRetailing, BCG
