Retail media leaders can find wasted spend by testing where they can reduce investment while maintaining sales, purchase share, and profitability. Start with campaigns that consume substantial budget, including branded search, and examine whether changes in spending produce meaningful changes in business results. Small, controlled adjustments can help teams identify money they can redirect toward growth.

At the 2026 Commerce Media Brand Summit, Jenny Turner, Senior Director, Growth & Ecommerce at Genexa, described how her team examined branded search spending through Amazon's search query performance reporting. "We've used it to understand our purchase share against our branded terms," she explained. By tracking purchase share as they reduced branded spending, her team could assess how much defensive investment they needed and adjust as performance changed.

Across the conference's budget and measurement discussions, participants examined how spending efficiency changes with investment levels and how teams can identify diminishing returns. Their recommendations point toward reviewing potential overinvestment within individual campaigns and tactics, then testing the commercial effect of a reduction before reallocating the savings.

Ask your analytics and agency partners to identify a small group of high-spend campaigns for review, starting where you have reliable sales and purchase-share data. Agree on a limited budget reduction, a review period, and thresholds for restoring spend, while tracking changes in pricing, promotions, inventory, and competitive activity. Treat stable performance as evidence to investigate further, and validate the findings before applying the same cuts across other retailers or categories.

Join the next Commerce Media Brand Summit to learn how brand-side leaders uncover spending inefficiencies, test reallocations, and protect growth when budgets are flat.