Consumer Products Digital 2026.
The definitive snapshot of how Americans discover, decide, and buy in 2026 — ad spend, retail media, social commerce, AI search, creators, and the Gen Z shift. Built for food, beverage, and consumer brands trying to figure out where to plant their flag next.
Ten chapters. One playbook.
Where the money & the minutes are going.
U.S. digital advertising crossed a trillion dollars globally in 2025 and kept climbing. Social held the largest share. Attention shifted toward video, AI, and platforms designed for discovery — not destination.
Social is still where brands buy reach.
Up from $84.6B the year prior. Despite ongoing platform shifts and algorithm churn, paid social remains the single largest engine for brand awareness — and for CPG, the place where shelf decisions get made before consumers ever reach the aisle.
Advertising entered its trillion-dollar era.
WPP Media projects global ad revenue surpassed $1 trillion in 2025. Tariff fears didn't slow it; retail media did the opposite.
Long-form is back at the table.
YouTube commands the longest time-per-session of any platform in the U.S. — reinforcing its role for deeper storytelling. Recipes, founder stories, brand documentaries: not just :15 pre-roll.
Search and video still anchor the web.
The two highest-leverage owned-media plays for CPG brands haven't changed — they've just gotten more competitive. Both are increasingly mediated by AI.
Why Americans go online — the order has flipped.
For years, "staying in touch with friends and family" topped the list of reasons Americans went online. In 2026, it's #3. Information and how-to research now lead — which means CPG brands aren't just competing for attention. They're competing to be the answer.
- 01 · Finding information↑ New #1
- 02 · Researching how to do things↑ Risen
- 03 · Staying in touch with friends and family↓ Dropped
- 04 · Watching videos, TV, movies—
- 05 · Filling spare time / killing time—
How Americans actually buy CPG now.
Online grocery is no longer a pandemic story. It's a structural shift: $204B in 2024 sales, $228B forecasted for 2025, and pacing toward 20% of total grocery by 2026. The aisle and the algorithm are now the same shelf.
Digital grocery is growing 5× faster than in-store.
Online CPG and food sales grew 10–12% in 2024 vs. 1–2% for in-store. December 2025 was the largest single month ever recorded — $12.7B — with delivery accounting for 45%+ of sales.
Online grocery is mainstream — and omnichannel.
Nearly 60% of U.S. households will be omnichannel shoppers by 2025. Online grocery shoppers spend 44% more annually than in-store-only shoppers, per the NRF.
One in five grocery dollars will be digital.
Up from 8.8% in 2020. eMarketer projects digital grocery will be the largest U.S. e-commerce category in 2026, surpassing apparel.
The top 5 retailers own 70% of online grocery.
Walmart's Q2 FY2026 e-commerce grew 26% with store-fulfilled delivery up 50%. Kroger posted 16–17% digital growth. Albertsons sustained 21–25%.
Digital grocery is bigger than just F&B.
Every CPG category — household, beauty, pet, baby — now has a meaningful digital storefront alongside the supermarket shelf.
The CPG question is no longer "digital or shelf?" It's "how do they reinforce each other?" The brands winning in 2026 are building one strategy for an audience that lives in both worlds.
Retail media is the channel — not a channel.
U.S. retail media will hit $69.33B in 2026, growing 17.8% YoY — outpacing both social and search. CPG brands now allocate 39% of total ad spend here. Amazon and Walmart vacuum up the lion's share. The rest is fragmented and fast.
The fastest-growing major ad channel in America, by a wide margin.
— eMarketer Retail Media Forecast (H2 2025) · Adtelligent
CPG is the category most-bet on retail media.
62% of CPG marketers expect to increase retail media spend in H2 2025. Three-quarters plan to increase budgets again in 2026. Retail media now accounts for nearly 29% of all U.S. digital ad spend.
Amazon & Walmart will capture 89% of incremental retail media dollars in 2026.
Every other RMN's share will stay flat or decline through 2027 — even as 277+ retail media networks operate globally. Concentration is the story.
80% of consumer spending is in-store. 90% of retail media is online.
That gap is the biggest open opportunity in CPG marketing. In-store digital screens, programmatic DOOH, and smart-shelf inventory crossed $500M in 2025 — and are accelerating fast.
- Retail media = 50% more effective than social at driving actionCiente
- Walmart Connect ad revenue, FY26$6.4B (+46%)
- Target Roundel ad revenue~$2B
- Off-site share of Walmart self-serve, Q4 '2560%
- ROAS on top RMN campaigns200–400%
Social commerce will pass $100 billion in 2026.
U.S. social commerce hit $87B in 2025 (+21.5% YoY) and is projected to surpass $100B in 2026. TikTok Shop alone grew 108% to $15.8B and now commands 18.2% of the category. Half of all U.S. social shoppers will buy on TikTok in 2026.
Crossing the $100 billion line — and not slowing down.
— eMarketer Social Commerce Forecast (Dec 2025) · Retail Dive
$15.82B in U.S. sales — 18.2% of all social commerce.
After growing 407% in 2024, TikTok Shop continued its breakneck pace in 2025. Forecast to hit 24.1% of social commerce by 2027. There are now 475,000+ TikTok shops in the U.S.
For CPG, TikTok isn't brand-awareness anymore. It's a checkout.
Beverages, snacks, supplements, sauces, and seasonal foods are among TikTok Shop's top-performing categories. Food & beverage holds 6.96% of global GMV share — and growing.
The social commerce category map.
Instagram / Meta
- Top categoriesPremium F&B, specialty grocery, beauty, lifestyle CPG with strong visual identity
- StrengthBrand-building & retargeting. Strongest paid social ROAS for established brands
- AudienceBroader generational mix. Higher AOV than TikTok
- 2026 forecast~52% of social commerce buyers; total Meta ad spend continues outpacing other platforms
TikTok Shop
- Top categoriesPersonal care, household, food & bev, beauty, snacks, supplements, sauces, beverages, kombucha, hot honey
- StrengthDiscovery-led, demo-friendly content. Strong with impulse, trending products, low-price-point CPG
- AudienceSkews Gen Z & Millennial. 100K+ active affiliate creators driving 60% of platform transactions
- 2026 forecast$20B+ U.S. GMV. Half of all U.S. social shoppers will buy here
Creator marketing is infrastructure now.
$6.24B in U.S. influencer ad spend (+11% YoY). 100,000+ active TikTok creators. 60% of platform transactions driven by creator content. The creator economy is no longer a test line item — it's the trusted layer between CPG brands and the audiences making the decisions.
Creator content has graduated to a permanent budget line.
Globally, the influencer marketing industry is forecast at $22.3B in 2025. The creator economy moved well past experimentation — it's now how brands connect with audiences in more personal, trusted ways.
Creators drove ~60% of TikTok Shop transactions.
100,000+ creators are active in the TikTok affiliate program. For CPG brands, the gap between "creator content" and "creator-driven sales" is collapsing fast — and programs without a commerce layer are quietly becoming the most expensive way to do social.
What actually converts.
- 01How-to / demo videos
- 02Honest product reviews
- 03"Day in the life" usage
Gen Z values authenticity and utility. They don't just want to see a product — they want to see how it works.
Over half of Gen Z follow influencers — and act on them.
Influencer endorsements carry the weight of peer recommendations for Gen Z. The line between content creator, friend, and salesperson has effectively dissolved.
The viral CPG flywheel is real — and repeatable.
From matcha and hot honey to Dubai chocolate and cottage cheese, viral creator content has driven supply-chain-breaking demand for CPG brands. The challenge isn't going viral. It's surviving it.
A creator strategy without a commerce layer in 2026 is a brand-awareness budget pretending to be a sales channel. The brands winning have both wired up — content that earns attention, and conversion infrastructure that catches it.
AI is the new front door to your category.
22.3% of Americans 16+ use ChatGPT monthly. 59% of Americans now use generative AI tools for shopping. AI-referred shoppers convert 31% higher and spend 45% more time exploring. For CPG, AI visibility is the new shelf placement.
AI isn't an emerging category. It's becoming infrastructure.
ChatGPT alone accounts for 78.53% of all AI web traffic referrals — more than 7× the next closest tool (10.47%). For CPG brands, that means a meaningful share of product discovery, ingredient questions, and "best of" research is now happening inside a chat window, not a SERP.
From 11% to 56% in one year.
Holiday-season AI shopping use jumped 5× year over year. Gen Z leads at 61%. AI-referred shoppers convert 31% higher than traditional traffic and are 38% more likely to buy.
The fastest-growing source of retail traffic on record.
AI-referred visitors convert up to 23× higher than traditional organic search. Cyber Monday saw a 670% spike in AI referrals. Amazon captured 54% of all ChatGPT-driven referral traffic.
64% of consumers will use AI chatbots for shopping in 2026.
Nearly 1 in 4 say they'll make AI their default way to shop. For CPG specifically: food & beverage is among the top three AI-shopping categories (tied with beauty at 30%).
The translation: if your product isn't represented well in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews — you're missing the new digital shelf.
- Find the best price55%
- Curiosity / exploration46%
- Product discovery39%
- Gift inspiration~33%
- Personalized recs22%
- Curated experience~17%
Marketers are betting where consumers are already going.
Behind ChatGPT: Google's Search Generative Experience (45%), Meta AI (26%), Microsoft Copilot (15%), TikTok AI (12%), Amazon Rufus (12%). 54% expect consumers to use AI tools and traditional search equally within two years.
AI suggests. Reviews still close.
Only 2% buy without checking first. That means reviews, social proof, and search-result presence all stay critical — they're how the AI's recommendation gets confirmed. The dual-optimization era is here.
For CPG, the playbook just got two new chapters: be findable in AI answers, and be reviewed enough to survive verification. The brands that win the next decade will treat AI like the new retail shelf — and earn their spot on it.
Where attention still lives — and what it costs.
YouTube leads U.S. time-per-session. Streaming fandom drives culture. Adjacent categories like travel show consumers are still spending — they're just doing it through screens. The lesson for CPG: meet people in the long-form spaces where they're actually paying attention.
The Summer I Turned Pretty was the most-streamed show on Amazon Prime Video — in the U.S. and globally.
A reminder that fandom — not reach — is the cultural engine. The audiences moving CPG categories now live inside fan communities, group chats, and the social conversation around the shows they love. As We Are Social's Managing Director Dana Neujahr put it in Ad Age: the series shows just how much fandom can fuel culture, and why social media is now central to how audiences experience TV.
Discretionary spend is digital-first.
$147B on flights, $92.4B on hotels, $25.5B on packages — each up double digits. Consumers are still spending; they're just transacting and being influenced through digital channels first.
Three platforms are doing three different jobs.
YouTube wins for depth and long-form storytelling. TikTok wins for discovery and impulse. Instagram wins for considered visual decisions. For CPG, the strategic mistake in 2026 isn't being absent from one of them — it's treating them like they're interchangeable.
- YouTube · time-per-session#1 U.S.
- TikTok · discovery + commerce#1 GenZ
- Instagram · paid social ROASHighest
- Facebook · reach + retargetingBroadest
- Pinterest · CPG planning intentUnderrated
Gen Z isn't a future audience. They're $12 trillion.
Gen Z's spending power is forecast at $12T by 2030. 60% discover new products via social — nearly double the overall rate. 44% have purchased on a social platform. 33% will pay 5–10% more for sustainability. They're not a segment. They're the new defaults.
The CPG category mix Gen Z normalizes today, everyone buys tomorrow.
From "Sephora tweens" to protein-everything to functional beverages, Gen Z and younger Millennials are setting the standards that diffuse upward. Nearly 40% of Millennials and Gen Z follow a specialty diet by choice — high-protein leads, with 50%+ of both groups on it.
Almost 2× the rate of the average shopper.
For Gen Z, social isn't where they hear about new products. It IS the discovery layer. 44% have made a purchase on a social platform, and they're 82% more likely than the average consumer to say social ads influence decisions.
Discover on TikTok. Verify in search. Buy in store.
37% of Gen Z plan to shop in-store more in 2025 (up from 27%) — to touch products, soak up store atmospheres, and chase promos. The path is no longer linear; it's a relay.
Values are now a category, not a callout.
60% of Millennials and 59% of Gen Z report willingness to pay a premium for sustainable goods. 79% of Gen Z say businesses should help consumers be more sustainable. Asks are increasingly structural — not symbolic.
18% of Gen Z use AI chatbots to learn about products.
For CPG, that's a meaningful share of "what supplement should I take" or "best protein bar" queries flowing through AI rather than search. The product card matters as much as the product itself.
The behaviors that foreshadow mainstream CPG buying.
Total Consumer
- Social as discovery30% use social to discover gifts
- Social as research27% use social to research
- Social as comparison22% use social to compare
- Trend responsiveness~28% buy on trend
- Brand-switching28% tried a new brand on "creative"
- Average holiday spend (2025)~$1,650
Gen Z
- Social as discovery43% use social to discover holiday gifts
- Social as research39% use social to research before buying
- Social as comparison32% use social to compare items
- Trend responsiveness40% buy products based on trends
- Brand-switching33% tried a new brand for "creative" marketing
- Average holiday spend (2025)$1,357
Reach got cheaper. Trust got more expensive.
For the first time, We Are Social's Digital 2026 report unpacks why people use ad blockers. Privacy concerns are at a generational high. 76% of consumers worry about how AI uses their data. The paradox: never more channels, never less patience.
The top three reasons — in order.
- 01Too many ads
- 02Ads get in the way
- 03Privacy protection
- 04Slows down browsing
- 05Ads aren't relevant
The first three reasons all signal the same underlying problem: experience. Volume isn't trust. Frequency capping, message rotation, and creative quality matter more than ever — especially for CPG, where over-served audiences develop ad blindness fast.
60% don't trust chatbots with payment info.
63% are worried about AI shopping scams. The new channel is exciting — and consumers are guarded. Brands that show up clean, cited, and consistent build durable trust advantage.
The brands winning attention in 2026 aren't the loudest. They're the ones most useful per impression. Frequency without value is the fastest way to get blocked, scrolled, or filtered out.
Six things to actually do in 2026.
Reports without recommendations are wallpaper. Here's the short list of what we're working on with our CPG clients right now, built on the data above. Use it as a checklist.
Build a retail media portfolio. Stop concentrating spend.
Amazon and Walmart will eat 89% of incremental dollars. That doesn't mean abandoning the others — it means knowing which retail networks reach your shopper. Build a portfolio: Amazon for scale, Walmart for value, Kroger/Target/Instacart for category-specific reach. Measure incrementality, not just ROAS.
Add a commerce layer under your creator program.
Creator content without a shoppable backend is just advertising with extra steps. TikTok Shop, Instagram Shop, and Amazon influencer storefronts close the loop. The brands earning the strongest creator ROAS aren't paying for views — they're paying for measurable conversions.
Optimize for AI discovery, not just SEO.
Structured product data, schema markup, complete attributes, and review volume now determine whether your product gets named in a ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI answer. Audit your AI presence quarterly. Generative Engine Optimization is the new SEO — and most CPG brands have done nothing about it yet.
Plan content for the three-platform attention economy.
YouTube for depth, TikTok for discovery, Instagram for considered visual decisions. Stop repurposing the same 9:16 across all three. Each platform rewards different content jobs — and the brands posting the same content everywhere are getting flat results everywhere.
Lead with Gen Z. The rest follows.
Specialty diets, sustainability premiums, AI-assisted shopping, social commerce — every behavior Gen Z normalizes today shows up in Millennial and Gen X buying within 18–24 months. Marketing to Gen Z isn't a niche play. It's an early-warning system for your entire category.
Trade frequency for usefulness.
Ad blocking, AI summarization, and channel fatigue all point the same direction: every impression has to earn its place. Treat your paid media like content. Treat your content like a product. Brands that show up consistently useful are the ones that survive the trust collapse already underway.
Ready to build your 2026 plan?
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Every stat. Every source.
All data points cited above are drawn from the following published reports, surveys, and industry trackers. Cool Nerds Marketing compiled, synthesized, and added the CPG framing & commentary.
We Are Social & MeltwaterDigital 2026: The United States (November 2025). The foundational global digital report. Source for U.S. social ad spend ($96.7B), influencer ad spend ($6.24B), online travel spend, YouTube attention data, top sites, ChatGPT usage stats, ad blocker reasons, and "why Americans go online." wearesocial.com
eMarketerRetail Media Ad Spending Forecast (H2 2025); Social Commerce Forecast (Dec 2025); TikTok Shop Forecast. Source for $69.33B retail media projection, Amazon/Walmart concentration, $87B / $100B / $119B social commerce trajectory, and TikTok Shop sales data. emarketer.com
Brick Meets ClickMonthly U.S. eGrocery Sales data. Source for $127–$130B annual online grocery total and December 2025 record month of $12.7B (+32% YoY).
Coresight Research & CircanaU.S. CPG Sales Tracker. Source for in-store vs. e-commerce growth disparity and category-level breakdowns.
PartnerCentricAI Shopping Use and Perception Statistics (Dec 2025, n=1,004). Source for 64% planning AI shopping in 2026, top reasons (price, curiosity, discovery), and trust/privacy concerns.
PwC2025 Holiday Outlook Survey. Source for Gen Z social-discovery percentages, in-store shopping increases, holiday spend forecasts, and value-consciousness data.
NielsenIQ & GfK / World Data LabSource for the $12 trillion Gen Z spending power forecast by 2030.
Numerator Generations HubSource for the 44% Gen Z social purchase stat and 82% lift in social-ad influence vs. average.
SPINSThe Next Generation of Consumers report. Source for specialty diet adoption, AI-chatbot product learning behavior among Gen Z (18%) and Millennials (13%), and supplement/wellness trends.
Adobe Digital InsightsSource for generative AI traffic growth (+4,700% YoY), Cyber Monday AI spike, and Black Friday AI referral data.
CapgeminiConsumer Trends survey. Source for Gen Z vs. total social-media product discovery rates (60% vs. 33%).
Harris Poll / QuestDIYGen Z Shopping Study. Source for influencer content preferences, trend-buying behavior, and sustainability premium data.
FMI · The Food Industry AssociationThe Power of Produce 2025. Source for produce-shopper social media engagement and grocery digital-engagement trends.
Ringly.io · Capital One Shopping · Idea Grove2026 AI ecommerce statistics. Sources for AI shopper conversion lift, AI verification behavior (98%), and revenue-lift data.
WPP Media · Madison and Wall · MarketplaceSources for the $1 trillion global ad market milestone and retail media as the leading 2026 growth driver.
Social NativeTikTok Shop Creator Program research. Source for 100K+ active creators, $5.4B U.S. creator-driven GMV (2024), and 60% creator transaction share.
UniSight Insights · MarketFlect · ResourceEraU.S. grocery e-commerce data, retailer market share, and TikTok Shop statistics.