I’ve watched budgets move before. Print to cable. Cable to search. Search to social. Each shift came wrapped in theory — targeting, intent, engagement, community. We built narratives to justify the reallocation because the outcomes were still a bit fuzzy. We were buying influence and hoping for sales.

But Retail Media is all about the math. When a CFO can see the ad, the click and the sale tied together in one dashboard, It’s hard to get them to listen to arguments about brand value. Marketing stops being a debate about storytelling and becomes a discussion about contribution margin. That’s why this shift feels different. Previous migrations were persuasive. This one is provable.

Retail Media Is No Longer a Test Budget

Retail media is defined simply: advertising inside retailer environments powered by first-party shopper data with closed-loop attribution to sales. When a brand buys a sponsored listing on Amazon, that placement can be measured against actual transactions. That’s not just modeled awareness. That’s measurable revenue.

The scale tells the story. Global retail media spend is forecast to reach $174.2 billion in 2025, surpassing global TV advertising for the first time according to WPP Media as reported by the Wall Street Journal. That alone explains why budget conversations have changed tone.

In the United States, retail media is now the third-largest digital advertising channel behind search and social. Amazon Ads generated more than $45 billion in advertising revenue in its most recent annual reporting, growing faster than many legacy media companies. Walmart Connect has reported sustained double-digit growth as brands chase grocery and mass retail purchase data tied to real baskets. The channel has gone from incremental spending to massive budget reallocation in less than a decade.

Why CFOs Are Driving the Shift

Retail media thrives because it collapses the distance between marketing and revenue. McKinsey has estimated that retail media networks can deliver two to three times the return on ad spend compared to traditional digital display. In an era of shrinking cookies and weaker open-web targeting, that clarity is irresistible.

Deloitte’s latest CMO Survey shows performance marketing continuing to claim a growing share of total marketing spend while traditional channels decline. Retail media sits squarely inside that performance allocation, but with a critical twist: it controls placement at the moment of purchase.

When sponsored listings dominate the top of search results on Amazon, the shelf itself becomes paid real estate. Trade spend and media spend merge. That is not a small shift in terminology. It is a structural change in power.

AI Will Push Retail Media Even Closer to the Transaction

AI search and AI shopping agents will intensify this shift, not dilute it. As consumers increasingly rely on AI tools to compare products, summarize reviews and narrow choices, browsing compresses and discovery moves upstream. But the transaction still executes inside a retailer environment. That means sponsored placement, pricing strategy, ratings and product data become even more critical because they feed the algorithm that recommends the final choice. Retail media does not disappear in an AI world. It becomes embedded in the decision logic itself, making control of the digital shelf even more commercially decisive.

This Is a Global Phenomenon

More than 80% of global retail media ad spend is concentrated in the United States and China according to eMarketer’s latest projections, reflecting the dominance of large ecommerce ecosystems.

In China, Alibaba and JD.com have long integrated advertising into their marketplaces. Retail media there operates inside fully developed commerce ecosystems where payments, logistics and live commerce converge. Conversion rates for in-platform ads routinely outperform open web benchmarks because the consumer is already in buying mode.

Europe is accelerating. Carrefour and Tesco have both scaled retail media offerings leveraging loyalty card data. IAB Europe reports retail media as one of the fastest-growing digital segments across the region, driven by retailer data monetization and measurable performance.

In Latin America, Mercado Libre has identified advertising as one of its fastest-growing revenue lines in recent investor disclosures. In India, Flipcart continues expanding sponsored listings as ecommerce penetration rises. 

In the Middle East, Noon is building its advertising capabilities alongside rapid ecommerce growth in the Gulf.

The pattern repeats across markets: retailers are becoming media owners because margins on advertising significantly exceed margins on physical goods. Company earnings disclosures consistently show advertising carrying materially higher profitability than retail operations.

The Hidden Cost: Fragmentation and Creative Compression

There are now more than 200 retail media networks globally according to Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) estimates. That means global brands must manage dozens of retailer dashboards, attribution models and creative specifications.

Retail media ads are inherently product-centric. They optimize for conversion, not narrative. Product-led ads outperform brand-led ads inside retail environments because the consumer is already shopping. That performance bias subtly shifts creative strategy toward immediacy and price.

The danger is not that retail media is ineffective. It is that it becomes over-weighted. The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), the UK-based professional body for advertising agencies has repeatedly shown that sustained brand investment drives long-term profit growth beyond short-term activation. Retail media excels at the bottom of the funnel. It does not replace upper-funnel demand creation.

Budgets are shifting because they work. But balance still matters.

What Smart Marketers Are Doing 

This is where it gets interesting.

First, the smartest brands treat retail media as a data engine, not just a sales lever. They mine retailer search term reports to uncover unmet demand signals, then feed those insights into product development and pricing strategy. Retail media becomes market research in real time.

Second, they negotiate data access aggressively. Retailers want ad dollars. Brands should demand granular audience insights in return. Shopper-level behavioral data can inform media outside the retailer environment, even if activation remains privacy-compliant.

Third, they align trade and media teams structurally. Historically, trade marketing negotiated shelf space while media bought impressions. Retail media collapses those silos. The marketing genius move is integrating those teams so budget allocation optimizes total commercial impact, not departmental KPIs.

Fourth, they use retail media to test pricing elasticity. Because campaigns can be tied directly to SKU-level sales, brands can run controlled experiments on pricing tiers, bundle offers and promotional depth with immediate feedback.

Fifth, they protect brand equity. That means ring-fencing brand-building budgets rather than allowing performance success to cannibalize long-term investment. Retail media should capture demand, not become the sole creator of it.

Finally, they diversify intelligently. While Amazon dominates in the US and Alibaba leads in China, regional players like Mercado Libre, Flipkart and Noon offer growth opportunities where competition is less saturated and cost-per-click dynamics can be more favorable.

Retail media is not just a channel. It is a commercial negotiation layer sitting between brand and buyer. The marketers who win will be those who understand both its power and its limits.

Retail media is reshaping marketing budgets because it sits closest to revenue. The question is not whether to participate. The question is whether you control it — or it controls you.

Sources: WPP Media global advertising forecast 2025, Wall Street Journal reporting on retail media surpassing TV, Amazon, Walmart, Alibaba, JD.com, Mercado Libre, Carrefour, Tesco earnings reports 2024–2025, eMarketer global retail media market projections 2024–2025, McKinsey retail media ROAS analysis, Deloitte CMO Survey 2024–2025, IAB and IAB Europe retail media reports, IPA Effectiveness research on brand investment.

Go Google your own company. But you must be incognito. Trench coat, hat and sunglasses optional. 

Open a new tab…ideally on a stranger’s device that doesn’t know your search history. Maybe try a hotel business center or drop by an Apple Store and use a display model. Type your company name and look at what shows up. Force yourself to look at it as if you were a prospect with no loyalty and no patience.

That is exactly what I do from time to time…with clients and even with my own agency. I want to see what a skeptical prospect would see, the kind of executive who has ten tabs open, three agencies shortlisted and zero tolerance for hype. So, I type our name into Google and force myself to look at the screen as if I had never heard of us.

A few years ago, I would see our company site and a page of content, announcements, reviews, etc. But now, up comes our description, reviews, phone number, location, FAQs, a Google Business profile, “People also ask,” and an AI-generated summary that stitched together who we are and what we do in neat, confident prose. It’s clean, efficient and strangely complete. And I don’t even have to click my own website. If I don’t need to click to understand us, why would anyone else?

If you haven’t Googled your company recently, you may find it clarifying. Marketing is losing the right to be the final step. The old funnel assumption is breaking

Welcome to the world of zero-click search.

For two decades, marketers operated on a comfortable assumption: discovery leads to traffic, traffic leads to conversion and conversion happens on your website. The website was the stage. Search was the usher. Social was the invitation. Paid media was the spotlight. Now the customer often makes the decision before the website ever loads, and the shift is measurable, global and accelerating.

This shift is called zero-click search. It simply means someone types something into Google and gets their answer directly on the results page without clicking through to any website. According to SparkToro, nearly 60% of Google searches in the United States and the European Union now end without a click, and a growing share of remaining clicks go to Google-owned properties. That means most searches do not produce traffic for independent websites.

At the same time, GroupM’s 2025 forecast projects global advertising revenue to exceed $1.15 trillion, and digital advertising alone accounts for an estimated $720 billion globally in 2025 according to eMarketer projections. The industry is investing aggressively in attention even as measurable clicks decline. Money is up. Clicks are down.

Why Google is keeping the customer on Google

To understand why this is happening, you have to look at how search itself has changed — and how Google actually makes money.

Google does not earn revenue when someone clicks an organic search result. It earns revenue when someone clicks a paid ad. Alphabet’s advertising revenue is expected to exceed $255 billion globally, with search advertising remaining the dominant contributor. Google’s business is not distributing traffic to websites. It is capturing intent and monetizing it.

Google has introduced Featured Snippets, which display a summarized answer at the top of the page, Knowledge Panels, which show company profiles on the right-hand side and AI Overviews, which use artificial intelligence to generate a summary from multiple sources. These features keep users inside Google longer, increase engagement with the results page and protect Google from losing users to TikTok, Amazon, YouTube or ChatGPT.

An AI Overview is a Google-generated answer that combines information from different websites into a single summary displayed directly in search results.

If your insight feeds that answer but the user never visits your site, your content is consumed without traffic. From Google’s perspective, the user was satisfied, remained on the platform and is more likely to perform another search — possibly a commercial one with paid ads attached.

Most zero-click searches are informational and were never the most lucrative queries. High-intent commercial searches — “buy,” “best,” “near me” — still carry paid placements. Google can afford to answer informational queries directly because the real monetization engine is commercial intent.

Reuters and The Wall Street Journal have reported that Google’s AI Overviews are reducing referral traffic for certain publishers. At the same time, AI summaries function as a defensive strategy. If users get fast, coherent answers inside Google, they are less likely to defect to external AI tools.

When you Googled your company, did you notice how much of your story was already told before anyone clicked? If the customer forms an opinion from that summary, your website becomes optional — and from Google’s perspective, that is the system working exactly as designed.

Search is splintering: people are searching on TikTok and Instagram

Search behavior is also fragmenting across platforms. Google executives acknowledged that roughly 40% of young users turn to TikTok or Instagram for search-style queries such as restaurant recommendations. TikTok is estimated to exceed 1.6 billion monthly active users globally. YouTube reports over 2.7 billion monthly logged-in users worldwide.

Apple’s Services segment is projected to exceed $90 billion in annual revenue for fiscal 2025, reflecting the continued monetization of App Store and in-platform search.

Deloitte’s 2025 Global Gen Z and Millennial Survey found that social media influences more than half of Gen Z purchase decisions worldwide. If someone searches “best coffee in Dubai” inside TikTok, YouTube or Instagram, they watch videos, read comments and decide. Discovery, evaluation and validation all occur inside the app. No website is required and no Google Analytics session is recorded.

If your category is being searched inside TikTok, YouTube or Instagram, have you looked at what appears there under your brand name?

Amazon and retail media: the funnel collapses inside the store

Ecommerce platforms have quietly gone even further. Amazon is projected by analysts to exceed $650 billion in revenue for 2025, and accounts for roughly 40% of ecommerce sales in the United States.

On Amazon, discovery, reviews, comparison, pricing and transaction all happen inside the platform. Brands invest heavily in Amazon advertising and search optimization because consumers rarely leave the platform to visit brand websites.

Retail media — advertising inside ecommerce platforms using shopper data — is one of the fastest-growing segments of global advertising because it places marketing directly at the point of purchase. Global retail media spend is projected to surpass $170 billion, according to eMarketer estimates.

If you sell on Amazon, your Amazon listing is your brand and the click to your own website is largely irrelevant if the sale happens inside the platform. Have you searched your product inside Amazon the way a customer would?

Social commerce: inspiration and purchase now live in the same place

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, reported over 4 billion monthly active users across its family of apps and is projected to continue modest user growth. Instagram Shopping allows users to discover and purchase products directly within the app, and Shopify reports that social commerce continues to grow rapidly for many merchants globally.

The traditional funnel separated inspiration and transaction into different steps and different places. Social platforms have fused them.

When someone discovers you on Instagram, can they buy without ever leaving? If they can, your website may not matter. If they cannot, you may be forcing a click that feels unnecessary.

AI answers compress the journey even more

Artificial intelligence is adding another layer of compression. ChatGPT reached 100 million users within two months of launch and now handles billions of prompts. OpenAI is projected to exceed 150 million weekly active users. Microsoft integrated AI into Bing and Google embedded AI Overviews directly into search.

When someone asks an AI tool, “What are the best marketing agencies in Dubai?” the answer may be a summarized list compiled from multiple sources. The user may form an opinion without ever visiting a single website.

The New York Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI alleging unauthorized use of its content and Axel Springer signed a licensing deal with OpenAI, both reactions to a world in which consumption is shifting from page views to AI-generated answers. Have you asked an AI tool what it says about your company? 

A preview of the future: super-apps

A super-app is a platform that combines messaging, payments, shopping and services in one ecosystem. In China, WeChat has over 1.3 billion monthly active users and continues to grow modestly into 2025 according to Tencent projections, and brands operate mini-programs inside WeChat where users can browse, pay and access customer service without leaving the app.

In that model, the website is optional because the platform owns the entire journey from awareness to transaction to loyalty. The Western web is not fully there yet, but the direction of travel is obvious.

What marketers should do now

So what should marketers actually do in response, beyond panicking about traffic reports?

First, stop equating traffic with relevance. If more than half of searches end without a click, declining sessions do not automatically mean declining demand. They may mean resolution happened upstream.

Second, treat search results as prime advertising real estate. Your Google Business Profile, reviews, structured data and FAQs should be curated with the same care as your homepage. Structured data is a standardized format that helps search engines understand and display information about your business.

BrightLocal’s 2025 Consumer Review Survey found that 87% of consumers read online reviews before choosing a business, and many of those reviews are visible directly in search results. If you Googled your company, what would those reviews communicate before anyone clicked?

Third, design content that survives compression. Clear definitions, credible data and concise positioning increase the likelihood that AI summaries and featured snippets represent you accurately.

Fourth, build platform-native strength. If your audience searches on TikTok, invest in TikTok search optimization. If your product sells on Amazon, master Amazon ranking and retail media. If Instagram drives discovery, design for in-app purchase journeys.

Budgets should move closer to the decision surface. That means shifting investment from driving clicks to strengthening presence where the decision is formed. More into retail media if the sale happens inside Amazon. More into review acquisition and reputation management if the choice is made on Google’s results page. More into platform-native content if discovery happens on TikTok or Instagram. More into brand clarity if AI summaries are shaping perception before interaction.

It also means reallocating some performance spend into influence infrastructure. That includes structured data, first-party data systems, creative that is built for compression and measurable brand lift studies. If clicks are no longer the reliable proxy for intent, then capital must follow influence, not sessions.

Fifth, measure influence, not just clicks. McKinsey’s 2025 consumer research confirms that more than 70% of consumers engage in omnichannel journeys, meaning they interact across multiple platforms before purchasing. Brand lift studies, share of search and platform-specific conversion metrics provide a more realistic picture of impact than raw sessions.

Finally, sharpen your positioning. When the decision happens inside a search result, a TikTok video or an AI answer, your value proposition must be unmistakable.

If you haven’t Googled your own company recently, do it. Then ask yourself a simple question: Would you click?

Sources: SparkToro Zero-Click Search Update 2025, GroupM This Year Next Year Global Advertising Forecast 2025, eMarketer Global Digital & Retail Media Forecast 2025, Alphabet 2025 Analyst Revenue Projections, Amazon 2025 Revenue Projections (Consensus Estimates), Meta 2025 Earnings Guidance, OpenAI 2025 Usage Disclosures, Tencent 2025 Projections, Deloitte Global Gen Z and Millennial Survey 2025, BrightLocal Consumer Review Survey 2025, McKinsey Global Consumer Research 2025

I don’t resent subscriptions because I dislike the content or because I don’t appreciate the business model. I resent them because at some point the whole system starts to feel like a scam.

At last count, I subscribe to Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Peacock, Paramount+, Netflix, HBO, Disney+ and Hulu. I subscribe to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Gulf News and a few other publications I’m sure once felt essential. On the work side, I pay for Canva, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Adobe Creative Suite and various SaaS tools that seemed indispensable at the moment I signed up. And countless others…some I have probably forgotten entirely, quietly billing me each month like digital ransom.

Every so often I hit the same breaking point. I want to unsubscribe from everything and start over. Not because the content is bad. But because the cognitive load becomes absurd. I find myself setting calendar reminders to cancel “introductory offers” before the anniversary date hits and the price suddenly jumps three, four or five times higher than what I originally agreed to. The Wall Street Journal is a masterclass in this. The journalism is excellent. The pricing feels like a bait-and-switch. It’s hard not to feel ripped off.

What bothers me most isn’t the money. I can afford these subscriptions. What bugs me is the auto-renew culture, the annual price creep with no additional value and the assumption that customers won’t notice or won’t bother to act. Of course I don’t use all of these services every month. Nobody does. And the worst offenders are still the ones that make cancellation deliberately painful. Easy online signup, but to cancel you need to call, email or argue with a chatbot trained to misunderstand you. That should be criminal. Frankly, auto-renew on credit cards should be opt-in every year, not opt-out. If a brand had to re-earn permission annually, behavior would change overnight.

When Winning Turned into Overreach
Subscriptions won because they removed friction at the point of purchase and turned commitment into convenience. Zuora’s Subscription Economy Index (Zuora is a subscription billing and analytics software company) showed subscription businesses growing 3.4x faster than the S&P 500 over a 12-year period, proof that predictability beats persuasion when it’s done right. Netflix, Spotify and Adobe trained consumers to accept “small monthly” as painless, while enterprise SaaS (software delivered via subscription rather than one-time license) followed with multi-seat, multi-year lock-ins that CFOs tolerated because growth disguised the complexity.
The problem was never the model. It was the pile-on.

Subscription Inflation Is Mental, Not Just Financial
Today, households juggle a staggering number of subscriptions. Deloitte (a global professional services firm) reports that the average US consumer manages between 10 and 15 paid services, many of which go unused in any given month. Klarna data in Europe (Klarna is a global payments and buy-now-pay-later platform) shows consumers regularly forgetting active subscriptions entirely, only discovering them during bank or card reviews.
This isn’t a budgeting problem. It’s mental clutter. When every brand insists it’s essential, the brain quietly rebels.

The Feature Subscriptions Forgot to Build: Mercy
What most subscription businesses failed to build wasn’t better pricing. It was mercy.
Life isn’t linear. People travel. Projects end. Budgets tighten temporarily. Attention shifts. When the only way to stop billing is to cancel entirely, brands turn short-term fatigue into permanent churn. In many cases, I don’t want to leave a service. I want to stop for a month or two without feeling punished or forced to make a dramatic exit.
Pause acknowledges reality. Cancel assumes betrayal.

Streaming’s Quiet Admission of Guilt
Streaming platforms didn’t introduce ad-supported tiers because they suddenly fell back in love with advertising. Netflix’s ad tier reached more than 40 million monthly active users globally within its first year because viewers wanted optionality.
Disney+, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video followed with bundles and mixed tiers, effectively admitting that one-size monthly pricing no longer fits how people actually watch. The smartest shift wasn’t ads. It was flexibility.

SaaS Learns the Cost of Rigidity
Enterprise software is going through a similar reckoning. Usage-based pricing moved from experiment to expectation. Snowflake’s consumption model (Snowflake is a cloud data platform that charges based on usage) reframed value around usage rather than contracts, aligning cost with real demand and enabling scale without resentment.
Atlassian’s move away from perpetual licenses toward flexible cloud tiers (Atlassian is an enterprise collaboration software company) reflected a simple truth: teams change faster than procurement cycles. Gartner (a global technology research and advisory firm) now reports that more than half of SaaS vendors offer hybrid pricing models, not out of generosity, but because rigidity kills expansion.

Consumers Aren’t Anti-Subscription, They’re Pro-Control
Consumers aren’t rejecting subscriptions. They’re rejecting helplessness.
McKinsey research (McKinsey is a global management consulting firm) shows churn drops when customers can pause, downgrade or temporarily suspend services without penalty. Spotify’s family and student plans reduced churn not by lowering prices, but by matching life stages. Peloton’s troubles (Peloton is a connected fitness subscription company) weren’t just about hardware fatigue. They were a warning about stacking premium subscriptions on top of premium commitments without flexibility.
Control has become the new loyalty program.

Bundling Is Back, But It Grew Up
Bundling is returning, but smarter. Apple One (Apple’s multi-service subscription bundle) works not because it’s cheaper, but because it collapses multiple decisions into one mental category.
In Asia, super-apps like Grab and Gojek (ride-hailing and payments platforms that bundle multiple services) bundle transport, payments and subscriptions into ecosystems that feel simpler despite enormous underlying complexity. Simplicity is a perception problem, not a pricing one.

Paid Simplicity Is the New Premium
The next premium isn’t access. It’s clarity.
Brands like Notion (a productivity and workspace software platform) and Canva (a design platform for non-designers) don’t win on price alone. They win because their pricing ladders are legible. Bain research (Bain & Company is a global management consulting firm) shows customers are more willing to pay higher prices when pricing structures are transparent and predictable.
A visible pause option is part of that clarity. It signals confidence, not weakness.

What Unbundling Actually Means
Unbundling doesn’t mean stripping value. It means separating commitment from consumption.
Adobe’s photography plan succeeds because it isolates a real use case instead of forcing an entire creative suite. Automotive brands experimenting with feature subscriptions learned the hard way that nickel-and-diming basics destroys trust faster than high sticker prices ever could.
Unbundling only works when it feels fair and reversible.

Designing the Exit Is Now Strategic
Zuora’s 2025 Subscription Economy Index shows subscription companies still growing 11% faster than the S&P 500. The leaders share one trait. They design exits as carefully as entries.
Pause, downgrade and resume paths are no longer edge cases. They are core product decisions. If cancelling feels respectful, returning feels natural.

What Marketers Should Do Now

If you’re a marketer and all this feels uncomfortable, good. 

First, stop measuring success only by acquisition and retention. Start measuring cognitive load. How many decisions does a customer have to make just to stay with you? How many reminders do they need to set to avoid feeling tricked? If your best customers need spreadsheets or calendar alerts to manage your pricing, that’s not loyalty. That’s fatigue.

Second, design the pause as carefully as the signup. A pause option isn’t a leakage point. It’s a trust signal. Customers who pause instead of cancel are telling you they still see value, just not right now. Treat that as intent, not abandonment. Build messaging, UX and lifecycle communications around pause as a normal state, not a failure.

Third, flatten your pricing story. Not cheaper. Clearer. Most pricing pages look like legal documents written by someone terrified of leaving money on the table. The irony is that opacity kills far more lifetime value than simplicity ever will. If a customer can’t explain your pricing to someone else in one sentence, you’ve already lost.

Fourth, stop punishing honesty. Customers who downgrade or reduce usage are not disloyal. They’re being rational. Brands that reward that honesty with flexibility get invited back. Brands that weaponize friction get ghosted.

Fifth, treat renewals as a moment of respect, not a trap. Customers should receive ample, unmistakable warning before a renewal charge hits, especially when pricing has increased. Silent auto-renewals and surprise price jumps don’t drive retention. They drive resentment.

Finally, treat exit as part of the brand experience. The way someone leaves you will define how they talk about you long after they’re gone. Cancelling should be as easy as joining. Don’t hide the cancel subscription button. Highlight it. It signals confidence in your offering. If cancelling feels respectful, returning feels natural. If cancelling feels like a hostage negotiation, they won’t come back, even when they want to.

This isn’t a pricing problem. It’s a marketing problem. 

The Rule for the Next Subscription Era
The subscription era didn’t die. It matured.

The brands that win next will stop asking how to lock customers in and start asking how to stay useful without demanding constant attention. Consumers aren’t cancelling brands. They’re cancelling the noise around them.

Sources: Zuora Subscription Economy Index (2024, 2025), McKinsey Global Consumer Sentiment Reports, Deloitte Digital Media Trends, Gartner SaaS Pricing Forecasts, Bain & Company Pricing and Loyalty Studies, Netflix Investor Updates, Apple Services Financial Disclosures, Snowflake Investor Materials, Klarna Consumer Spending Reports, Statista Global Subscription Data

I realized something long ago in London, at dinner. When I’m not at Boisdale—my favorite restaurant (and my favorite investment)—I almost always end up at Burger & Lobster. Guess what they serve? Whole lobsters, lobster rolls, fries, salad, dessert and a proper bar. That’s about it. And because the choice is limited, everything is relentlessly perfected. The burger isn’t just a burger, it’s precision in a bun. The lobster roll isn’t one of many options, it’s the reason you’re there. The fries are hand-cut, not an afterthought. When you stop trying to be better at everything, you suddenly have the time, focus and discipline to be the best at a few things.

Operationally it’s a masterclass. A ruthlessly efficient kitchen. Serious buying power that turns scale into fair prices rather than bloated margins. Lines outside many nights. And I’ve heard that they rank among the largest lobster importers in the UK with numerous locations around London and a few globally. This isn’t minimalism to be trendy. It’s curation as strategy.

Burger & Lobster is the living antithesis of brands like the The Cheesecake Factory, a model of infinite choice and infinite regret. You don’t go there to browse. You go to decide quickly, eat exceptionally well and leave satisfied. That feeling—that someone smarter already did the hard thinking for you—isn’t just pleasant. It’s premium.  And it applies to many brands far beyond restaurant industry.

Why Fewer Choices Sell More

This isn’t intuition. It’s backed by decades of behavioral science. A meta-analysis published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology reviewing 50+ studies found that while large assortments attract attention, they reduce purchase likelihood and satisfaction. More options increase cognitive load, decision anxiety and post-purchase regret. In other words, variety looks good in theory but often performs badly in practice.

Retail data tells the same story. Costco carries roughly 4,000 SKUs versus around 30,000 in a typical supermarket. That constraint isn’t accidental. Costco converts “less choice” into trust, speed and value, helping drive membership renewal rates consistently above 90 percent in North America according to company filings. Customers pay to not have to think.

In Germany, Aldi operates with around 1,400 core products. OECD grocery pricing studies show Aldi regularly undercuts full-assortment grocers by double-digit percentages while maintaining strong margins. Fewer decisions for shoppers. Fewer costs for the business. Everyone wins.

Digital Didn’t Kill Curation. It Made It Mandatory

E-commerce promised infinite shelf space. What it delivered was infinite abandonment. Baymard Institute’s long-running global research shows nearly 70 percent of online shopping carts are abandoned, with “too many options” and “difficulty choosing” repeatedly cited as primary causes.

The winners don’t expand catalogues. They compress decisions. Netflix aggressively limits visible choice despite a massive library. Internal Netflix disclosures have shown that artwork personalization and row curation materially increase viewing starts by reducing the time to decide. The catalogue stays large. The decision set stays small.

Spotify reports that curated playlists drive the majority of listening hours on the platform. Users don’t want every song ever recorded. They want the right next one.

In China, Pinduoduo grew explosively by collapsing choice into group-buy offers and limited daily selections. Fewer options, stronger social proof and faster decisions powered one of the fastest e-commerce growth stories of the past decade.

Trust Has Gone Local

Edelman’s Trust Barometer shows a sustained shift away from institutional authority toward “someone like me.” Trust is no longer broadcast. It’s contextual. In that environment, brands don’t win by claiming expertise. They win by simplifying decisions in ways that feel aligned and human. 

This is why Muji, the Japanese lifestyle and retail brand built on radical simplicity, thrives globally with restrained palettes and tightly edited product lines. Minimalism here isn’t aesthetic. It’s reassurance.

It’s why Decathlon, the French sporting goods retailer serving everyday athletes at scale, reorganized stores and websites around “best choice” recommendations rather than endless variants, contributing to higher conversion rates and faster in-store navigation reported in European retail studies.

It’s why Patagonia, the US outdoor apparel company known for durability, repair and resale, limits seasonal drops and colorways while outperforming peers on loyalty and resale engagement. Fewer choices signal conviction.

The fact is, no one actually wants your brand to offer everything. That’s a myth marketers tell themselves to justify bloated menus and infinite filters. What people really want is reassurance. Look at the explosion of curators promising the best headphones, the best carry-on, the best mattress, the best restaurant in town. Even on ChatGPT, one of the most common follow-up prompts isn’t “show me more options,” it’s “just tell me which one I should buy.” Choice isn’t empowering when it’s unlimited. It’s empowering when it’s resolved.

Feature Creep Is the Quiet Enemy of Premium

In tech, restraint correlates with profit. Apple maintains a remarkably narrow product matrix compared with Android competitors yet captures the majority of global smartphone profits according to Counterpoint Research. Fewer models. Clear positioning. Less regret.

In QSR, McDonald’s simplified menus globally during COVID to manage operations. Earnings calls throughout 2020–2021 cited faster service times, higher order accuracy and improved margins. Complexity crept back later. Performance gains softened.

In aviation, Ryanair stripped fare structures to bare essentials, outperforming competitors on cost per seat kilometer while maintaining strong load factors even in volatile markets.

What Marketers Should Actually Do

Reducing choice isn’t about shrinking inventory blindly. It’s about redesigning decision-making.

First, decide where the brand will think so the customer doesn’t. Best sellers, editor’s picks and default bundles consistently outperform open choice sets across e-commerce categories.

Second, collapse options into meaningful differences. Remove cosmetic variants. Keep distinctions that genuinely change outcomes.

Third, design for speed. Measure time-to-decision, not just conversion. Brands that reduce decision time convert better and refund less.

Fourth, use curation to signal values. What you exclude communicates as loudly as what you include.

Finally, operationalize simplicity. Fewer SKUs simplify supply chains, marketing, training and innovation cycles. Bain research shows companies that actively manage portfolio complexity deliver higher long-term margins than those that don’t.

The brands winning right now aren’t minimalist because it looks cool. They’re curated because it sells.

Sources: Journal of Consumer Psychology choice overload meta-analysis, Edelman Trust Barometer, Costco annual reports, OECD grocery pricing studies, Baymard Institute e-commerce research, Netflix product and technology disclosures, Spotify investor disclosures, Counterpoint Research smartphone profit share, McKinsey and Bain portfolio complexity research, Company earnings calls and annual reports for referenced brandsю

Back in June I wrote about Brandformance—the not-so-ugly lovechild of brand and performance marketing. That piece argued for integration: emotional resonance plus measurable impact. But integration is only half the battle. The other half is recognizing that one of the most celebrated metrics in performance land—ROAS—might be the least interesting number you track.

I’ve sat in too many meetings where ROAS was toasted like gospel, champagne corks flying because a campaign “paid for itself” in six weeks while brand awareness, trust and repeat purchase scores quietly slid into oblivion. Despite the ubiquity of promotion and discounting that props up most performance marketing, I’ve never wavered on one principle: discounts erode brands. It’s a race to the bottom. Depending on your brand, sector and market, that race may be a marathon or a sprint.  But you are definitely headed to the same finish line.

In the old bricks-and-mortar world, “location, location, location” could save you. You could sell the same thing as the shop five blocks away, but if you were closer to a bus stop or sitting on the corner where the crowd passed, you won—sometimes even charging a bit more. In the online world there is no corner. If you’re a retailer without a unique proposition, you’re competing with everyone in your market. Price comparisons are instantaneous. You end up spending more to chase fewer sales. And soon, when AI shopping agents go mainstream, performance ads will matter even less. Those agents will leapfrog your offers and simply hunt down the cheapest, fastest, most trustworthy option. And trust in that scenario comes from brand equity. Legacy brands will have the edge—and they’re already exploiting it.

Why ROAS Is Seductive—and Misleading

On the surface, ROAS looks like the neatest metric ever invented. Spend a dollar, make five back—what could be clearer? It explains why marketers over-index on it and why finance teams love it. But ROAS measures only efficiency at a point in time; it ignores momentum.

Samsung Electronics, a company we worked with for over 20 years, proves the danger of myopia. In Interbrand’s 2024 Best Global Brands ranking Samsung’s brand value hit US $100.8 billion, up 10% year on year. That growth didn’t come from performance coupons—it came from positioning itself as a leader in AI and connected experiences which build trust and long-term preference. A short-term ROAS chart could never explain that kind of billion-dollar lift.

The Trace “72% Growth Advantage” study backs this up: brands that balance long-term building with short-term performance saw about 72% growth in brand value over five years while brands chasing only efficiency eked out 20%. It’s the difference between compounding returns and eking out margin.

The Real Risks of Chasing ROAS Alone

Marketers addicted to ROAS often find themselves discounting into oblivion. Coca-Cola is a case study in avoiding that trap. In Interbrand’s 2024 report Coca-Cola still sat in the Top 10 with a brand value of US $61.2 billion. Its secret isn’t efficiency metrics—it’s cultural saturation and trust which allow it to maintain pricing power while competitors rely on coupons.

There’s also the false comfort of attribution. Just because a conversion shows up after an ad impression doesn’t mean the ad caused it. Interbrand estimates that Best Global Brands have collectively left US $3.5 trillion in potential value unrealized by leaning too hard on short-term tactics. In just the past year alone that figure was US $200 billion. That’s what misplaced attribution bias costs.

And then there’s diminishing returns. Retarget audiences until their eyes glaze over and you’ll get declining ROAS and rising irritation. Ferrari illustrates the opposite path. In 2024 its brand value grew 21%—the steepest gain among global brands. That wasn’t the result of squeezing more retargeting out of lookalike audiences; it was Ferrari expanding its brand arena into fashion, lifestyle and experiences, deepening emotional equity so customers lean in willingly.

What Matters More Than ROAS

If ROAS is the sugar rush, brand equity is the long-term nutrition. Consider e.l.f. Beauty. From 2020 to 2024 its unaided awareness in the U.S. climbed from 13% to 3%, a twenty-point leap that translated into market share gains and revenue growth. They didn’t get there by hacking last-click ROAS—they invested roughly 22–24% of sales back into marketing and storytelling that people remembered.

Toyota is another example. In 2024 its brand value reached US $72.8 billion, up 13% year on year. Not bad for a 90-year-old automaker. Toyota’s consistency in quality and innovation means customers trust it which keeps margins healthy even when the competition discounts heavily. That resilience isn’t captured in a ROAS dashboard—it lives in brand perception.

And trust itself is quantifiable. Edelman’s Trust Barometer shows 81% of consumers say they must trust a brand to buy from it. That’s not a metric you’ll see in a performance report but it’s one of the most predictive numbers in marketing.

Winning the Budget Battle in the C-Suite

Of course, the pushback is always: “We need sales now.” But the right counter is: “We’ll need them later too—and at a lower cost per acquisition.” The Trace report is a powerful slide in that debate. A balanced 60/40 split between brand and performance doesn’t just protect long-term equity—it delivers higher total growth.

Legacy brands can point to compounding effects. Microsoft and Google each posted double-digit brand value growth in Interbrand’s 2024 table (+11% and +12% respectively) despite already being giants. That’s what happens when brand strength amplifies performance instead of leaving it to do all the work alone.

Challenger brands can point to cases like e.l.f., where spending aggressively on brand drove measurable equity gains and repeat purchase. The lesson is the same: ROAS can’t be your north star. At best it’s a mile marker.

So, What Should You Do?

Audit what you’re measuring. If your reports begin and end with ROAS you’re starving yourself of context. Add unaided awareness, repeat purchase, retention and trust.

Rebalance budgets. Not everyone will shift to 60/40 overnight but even moving 10 points away from performance-only will give you more compounding returns.

And tell better stories. Ferrari isn’t just selling cars; Samsung isn’t just selling screens. They’re embedding themselves in culture, technology and aspiration. That’s why they can grow brand value at double-digit rates while competitors chase click-through rates.

The Final Word

ROAS is too neat to ignore but too narrow to revere. AI shopping agents will soon strip the emotion out of buying decisions and prioritize trust, convenience and price the only brands that thrive will be the ones people already believe in.

The brands that survive aren’t the ones with the cheapest clicks—they’re the ones people would miss if the clicks disappeared.

Sources: Trace Brand Building, Interbrand Best Global Brands 2024б, Samsung Electronics press release, e.l.f. Beauty (WARC), Edelman Trust Barometer, Ferrari Interbrand 2024 report, Toyota Interbrand 2024 report

I wasn’t planning to spend too much. I just needed a roundtrip airline ticket from Boston to San Juan. It’s just a four-hour daytime flight. No need to fly fancy. The options popped up on my screen: Main Basic at $323, Main Classic at $393, Comfort Classic at $493 and First Classic for $873.
That $323 Basic fare? A punishment masquerading as a bargain (by today’s inflated standards). No seat choice. No changes. No upgrades. And baggage…are you joking? Main Classic at $393 suddenly felt like a life preserver. For $70 more, you get sanity: a seat, a bag, a modicum of dignity.
But here’s where it got clever. Once I’d mentally committed to $393, the $493 Comfort Classic fare—just a hundred bucks more—started whispering promises: extra legroom, early boarding, an air of superiority. And just like that, Delta nudged me up the ladder without ever pushing. Well, maybe a little shove. I mean, I no longer book airline tickets without expecting to get screwed. But at least I got to choose how I was going to get screwed. And where I would be sitting while I was getting screwed.

That’s the decoy effect.

And it’s not just for airline tickets. It’s one of the most quietly powerful levers in marketing psychology—and it’s everywhere.

There is a classic principle in behavioral economics known as the asymmetric dominance effect. But in the marketing world, it’s better known by its sharper alias: the decoy effect.

The term was popularized in the 1980s by a group of behavioral researchers who showed that when a third, inferior option is added to a choice set, it can predictably shift consumer preference toward the option it’s meant to make look better. It’s not about offering more choice—it’s about shaping the choice architecture itself.

This third option—the decoy—isn’t supposed to win. It’s designed to make one or both of the other two options (usually the more profitable one) feel smarter, safer or more valuable by comparison. It might be more expensive but stripped of features, or cheaper but inconvenient. Either way, it’s the psychological scaffolding propping up your real target.

It’s also not always about upselling. It’s about anchoring expectations, reframing what counts as “value,” and nudging consumers toward the option you actually want them to pick.

The Loser Option

In the UK, Pret A Manger offers a £25/month coffee subscription to its caffeine-addicted loyalists—up to 5 drinks a day, no questions asked. But in certain trial markets, they quietly rolled out a £20 version that gives you only 3 drinks. The result? Nobody bites. The £20 plan isn’t there to compete—it’s there to lose. That’s the point. It’s a soft decoy that makes the £25 option feel like a steal without ever changing the offer itself.

A recent global survey by Growth Method in 2025 found that over 70% of consumers rely on relative comparison when evaluating product value, rather than assessing absolute price.

Making the Middle Feel Like Luxury

Uniqlo isn’t known for upselling, but even minimalists play the decoy game. Take their denim wall: you’ll find the €24.90 basic slim fit jeans—no stretch, basic washes, limited sizing—neatly stacked beside the €49.90 “Ultra Stretch” or “Selvedge” lines. The entry pair isn’t there to sell—it’s there to anchor. Once you feel the cardboard-stiff basics, the mid-tier jeans feel like Japanese-engineered comfort for just a little more.

You Don’t Need a Perfect Ladder

Nespresso mainly sells pods in sleeves of 10, 30 and 50 worldwide, and introduces seasonal or limited-edition bundles to create perception contrast and anchor higher-value choices among its core range. This approach leverages consumer reference points—highlighting premium capsules next to standard variants—which encourages buyers to select what feels like the smartest, most balanced deal.Marketing case studies show that the decoy effect works especially well in physical products and FMCG, with clear pricing contrasts guiding customers toward value-aligned mid-tier purchases—a strategy consistently used by brands like Nespresso and major retailers in 2025

Retail Theater: Stage Your Decoys

Sometimes the decoy is the most expensive.  At Dyson’s flagship in Tokyo, three vacuum models are theatrically lit like they’re about to give a TED Talk. The most expensive one—rarely purchased—sits dead center under a spotlight, while the more popular mid-tier models lurk on either side of it. The decoy is doing its job without ever leaving the shelf. It doesn’t need to move units—it needs to move minds.

Retailers globally use the decoy effect with physical staging—strategically placed decoy products in flagship stores guide consumer choices toward the desired models, as seen in electronics and FMCG sectors.

Subscription Psychology: The Middle-Tier Mirage

The New York Times sells three types of access: Digital for $4 a week, Cooking + Games for $5, and All Access for $6. The middle tier doesn’t get much love, but it’s not supposed to. It’s the decoy that makes All Access look like a no-brainer. Just a dollar more? Of course I’ll take everything.

In a famous test with The Economist’s subscription plans, nearly 84% of consumers selected the top tier when a closely priced decoy was added, compared to just 32% without it.

Prestige Pricing as Halo Generator

Lavazza’s “Tierra!” organic line isn’t just about ethical sourcing—it’s a high-margin beacon. At €7 per pack, it’s more than most Italians spend on coffee. But they don’t have to. The presence of Tierra! elevates everything else. Standard blends start to feel affordable, premium, even righteous by association.

A recent diamond retailer case study showed sales conversions for high-value products increased up to 3.2x due to well-placed decoy alternatives, with overall gross profit rising 14.3%.

Local Price Psychology: It’s All in the Name

Apple doesn’t just sell iPhones. It sells the iPhone 15, 15 Plus, 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max. Now it’s adding iPhone “Air” to the mix. They’ve tried bigger, smaller and now thinner—for the wild card slot (Hey, it worked for their laptops!). “Plus” sounds generous, “Pro” sounds elite, “Pro Max” sounds like your phone has a corporate card. “Air” whispers minimalist cool even before you see the spec sheet. The features shift slightly—sometimes barely—but the names do the heavy lifting. 

Most buyers confirm Apple’s strategy and state that model names shaped their perception of value more than tech specs. When every pixel counts and price gaps widen fast, naming isn’t just branding—it’s behavioral design.

Misdirection: The “Look Over There” Strategy 

Back in university, I had a side gig selling family photo packages in department stores. Our job wasn’t just to pitch portraits. It was to close on the spot. We didn’t ask, “Do you want it?” We skipped straight to, “Will that be cash, check or charge?”

That wasn’t just a hard sell. It was a perceptual redirect. By asking how they wanted to pay, we shifted the customer’s mental frame away from whether they wanted to buy and toward how they’d complete the purchase. It worked far more often than it should have.

This is the same behavioral sleight-of-hand behind many modern decoy strategies. The power isn’t just in the price—it’s in the framing. The decoy reframes your decision from “Is this worth it?” to “Which one should I get?” Once you’re asking that question, you’re already in the checkout aisle.

Neuroscientists call this attentional narrowing—when a brain under cognitive load focuses more on comparing available options than stepping back to question the premise. In pricing, that’s gold.

Of course, when done with transparency, this isn’t manipulation. It’s designing decisions to feel intuitive. But the line between the two is thin—and how you cross it determines whether your customer feels smart or suckered.

Retail Theater: Stage Your Decoys
Sometimes the decoy is the most expensive. At Dyson’s flagship in Tokyo, three vacuum models are theatrically lit like they’re about to give a TED Talk. The most expensive one—rarely purchased—sits dead center under a spotlight, while the more popular mid-tier models lurk on either side of it. The decoy is doing its job without ever leaving the shelf. It doesn’t need to move units—it needs to move minds.
Retailers globally use the decoy effect with physical staging—strategically placed decoy products in flagship stores guide consumer choices toward the desired models, as seen in electronics and FMCG sectors.

Subscription Psychology: The Middle-Tier Mirage

The New York Times sells three types of access: Digital for $4 a week, Cooking + Games for $5, and All Access for $6. The middle tier doesn’t get much love, but it’s not supposed to. It’s the decoy that makes All Access look like a no-brainer. Just a dollar more? Of course I’ll take everything.

In a famous test with The Economist’s subscription plans, nearly 84% of consumers selected the top tier when a closely priced decoy was added, compared to just 32% without it.

Prestige Pricing as Halo Generator

Lavazza’s “Tierra!” organic line isn’t just about ethical sourcing—it’s a high-margin beacon. At €7 per pack, it’s more than most Italians spend on coffee. But they don’t have to. The presence of Tierra! elevates everything else. Standard blends start to feel affordable, premium, even righteous by association.

A recent diamond retailer case study showed sales conversions for high-value products increased up to 3.2x due to well-placed decoy alternatives, with overall gross profit rising 14.3%.

Local Price Psychology: It’s All in the Name

Apple doesn’t just sell iPhones. It sells the iPhone 15, 15 Plus, 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max. Now it’s adding iPhone “Air” to the mix. They’ve tried bigger, smaller and now thinner—for the wild card slot (Hey, it worked for their laptops!). “Plus” sounds generous, “Pro” sounds elite, “Pro Max” sounds like your phone has a corporate card. “Air” whispers minimalist cool even before you see the spec sheet. The features shift slightly—sometimes barely—but the names do the heavy lifting. 

Most buyers confirm Apple’s strategy and state that model names shaped their perception of value more than tech specs. When every pixel counts and price gaps widen fast, naming isn’t just branding—it’s behavioral design.

Misdirection: The “Look Over There” Strategy 

Back in university, I had a side gig selling family photo packages in department stores. Our job wasn’t just to pitch portraits. It was to close on the spot. We didn’t ask, “Do you want it?” We skipped straight to, “Will that be cash, check or charge?”

That wasn’t just a hard sell. It was a perceptual redirect. By asking how they wanted to pay, we shifted the customer’s mental frame away from whether they wanted to buy and toward how they’d complete the purchase. It worked far more often than it should have.

This is the same behavioral sleight-of-hand behind many modern decoy strategies. The power isn’t just in the price—it’s in the framing. The decoy reframes your decision from “Is this worth it?” to “Which one should I get?” Once you’re asking that question, you’re already in the checkout aisle.

Neuroscientists call this attentional narrowing—when a brain under cognitive load focuses more on comparing available options than stepping back to question the premise. In pricing, that’s gold.

Of course, when done with transparency, this isn’t manipulation. It’s designing decisions to feel intuitive. But the line between the two is thin—and how you cross it determines whether your customer feels smart or suckered.

When Decoys Backfire

BMW tried to charge South Korean drivers a monthly subscription for heated seats. Yes, seats that were already installed in the car. The logic? Make higher-trim packages seem like the better buy. The backlash was instant. Nobody likes the feeling of being charged rent on their own furniture. It wasn’t just tone-deaf—it made consumers question the brand’s integrity.

Recent industry surveys show that clear and transparent pricing structures are among the top factors increasing consumer trust and loyalty in brands across global markets.

Ethics, Transparency and the Marketing Line

The difference between marketing and manipulation isn’t the trick—it’s the tell. The best decoy strategy doesn’t con the customer. It collaborates with them. It assumes they’re sharp, not sheep.

Consumers aren’t naïve. They know there’s psychology behind pricing. They’re fine with that. In fact, they often appreciate it. The resentment only kicks in when the logic is hidden or the tradeoffs feel like traps. That’s when clever becomes cynical.

Want to build trust? Treat pricing like UX. Label the tiers plainly. Don’t bury fees in footnotes. If your cheapest plan is restrictive, say so. If your top-tier is worth the premium, prove it. People don’t mind nudges when they know where the hands are.

Marketing psychologists consistently find that transparent pricing and clear communication strongly correlate with higher customer loyalty and perceived brand trustworthiness in both B2C and B2B environments.

In a world where algorithmic pricing, drip fees and subscription fatigue are all eroding confidence, transparency is a competitive advantage. Done right, your decoy doesn’t just guide the choice—it reinforces the relationship. Because when people feel in on the game, they’re far more likely to keep playing.
Final Takeaway
The decoy effect isn’t a hack. It’s a scaffold. Smart marketers don’t push. They build structures that make one option feel obvious, framing decisions so customers feel clever for saying yes.
You’re not choosing what people pay. You’re shaping what feels worth paying for.

Sources: Growth Method, Lead Alchemists, Shopify Enterprise, Cognitive Clicks, 7Boats, Julien Rio Marketing