By Adam Ortman
For years, many brands have treated sites like Amazon or Walmart as incremental revenue streams, useful for clearing inventory or capturing high-intent shoppers already deep in the funnel. That framing is outdated. These platforms are becoming the infrastructure layer of modern e-commerce.
I’ve spent nearly 20 years helping brands succeed in e-commerce. My agency has partnered with brands across the full spectrum of business life cycles, from scaled players moving millions of products to early-stage direct-to-consumer (DTC) startups still finding their footing.
That experience has given me a front-row seat to how dramatically the rules of marketplace growth have shifted, and what separates the brands that capitalize on those shifts from the ones that get left behind.
The Shift: From Channel To Ecosystem
E-commerce continues to expand in the U.S., with sales estimated at $326.7 billion in the first quarter of 2026 (amounting to 16.9% of total retail sales).
What’s been most striking to me over the past two decades is how e-commerce marketplaces have moved from being supplemental sales channels to primary environments where consumers discover, evaluate and purchase products. Twenty years ago, brands focused almost entirely on driving traffic to their own websites. Today, many consumers start and end their buying journey within a marketplace ecosystem, making platform strategy just as important as traditional brand-building efforts.
Marketplace platforms absorb a disproportionate share of e-commerce activity, with approximately 83.4% of global gross merchandise value generated through marketplaces. On Amazon, third-party sellers drive more than 60% of total sales, reinforcing a structural shift: Brands are no longer just selling through marketplaces; they’re competing within them.
One thing I’ve seen repeatedly is that marketplace growth rarely happens without some level of paid support. Sponsored placements and retail media campaigns generate the early conversion signals that marketplaces use to determine visibility. When executed well, paid media doesn’t just drive sales; it also helps create the momentum that fuels long-term organic growth.
The Consumer Psychology Driving The Change
Modern shoppers don’t move cleanly from awareness to consideration to purchase. They compress the journey, often collapsing discovery and conversion into the same moment. Marketplaces are uniquely positioned to capture that behaviour because they combine three core psychological drivers:
1. Cognitive Efficiency
Consumers tend to default to environments that reduce friction. Marketplaces centralize options, pricing, reviews and fulfilment into a single interface. Instead of evaluating five different brand websites, a shopper can scan, compare and decide in a matter of seconds.
2. Social Proof
Ratings, reviews and purchase volume on marketplaces act as immediate trust signals. A product with 10,000 reviews signifies popularity and lower perceived risk. Considering that 96% of consumers check reviews before buying a new product or service, the social proof on marketplaces is significant.
3. Perceived Objectivity
Marketplaces often feel less biased than brand-owned environments. Even though that perception isn’t always accurate, it can influence behaviour because consumers often trust the platform to surface the best option.
Platforms like Amazon also provide secure, branded experiences that are familiar and desirable: Quick shipping, easy returns and fraud monitoring all reduce buyers’ perception of risk.
The Expansion: New Entrants And Global Complexity
If this conversation were only about Amazon, the strategy would be simpler, but the marketplace landscape is fragmenting quickly.
Platforms like TikTok Shop are blurring the line between content and commerce, enabling impulse-driven purchases directly within entertainment environments. Global players like Temu are expanding aggressively into Western markets, reshaping pricing expectations and supply chain dynamics. At the same time, niche marketplaces like Etsy continue to gain traction.
Each platform comes with its own algorithms, audience expectations and competitive pressures. I’ve seen brands make the mistake of treating marketplace expansion as a replication exercise, copying the same listings, pricing strategies and messaging from one platform to another.
In practice, marketplaces aren’t interchangeable shelves. They’re distinct ecosystems with different consumer behaviours, ranking systems and expectations. What works on Amazon can struggle on TikTok Shop because users’ underlying intent is often fundamentally different. Amazon is primarily search-driven, while TikTok is discovery-driven. Understanding those nuances is often the difference between growth and stagnation.
The Strategic Shift: From Participation To Ownership
The brands winning on marketplaces are the ones building marketplace-first operating models.
Such a model requires:
• A Dedicated Marketplace Strategy: Don’t copy and paste your DTC strategy across platforms; design a system specifically for each platform’s dynamics, taking into account pricing architecture, review generation, content optimization and competitive positioning.
• Integrated Media And Merchandising: Treat paid media, product listings and inventory management work as interconnected levers, not separate functions.
• Data Feedback Loops: Marketplaces provide some of the most immediate, high-signal data available in commerce, so use your marketplace performance data to inform your broader strategy, including product development, messaging and pricing elasticity.
What This Means For Your 2026 Planning
As I work with brands planning for the remainder of 2026, the conversation is rarely about whether marketplaces are important. The discussion is about how central they should become within the broader growth strategy.
The brands seeing the strongest results aren’t treating marketplaces as supporting channels. They’re treating them as core infrastructure, investing in the systems, visibility and momentum required to win over time. Brands that do this well will shape the next phase of e-commerce growth. The rest will be competing for what remains.
Feature image credit: Getty
By Adam Ortman
Adam Ortman is CEO and founder of Kinetic319, a leading marketing agency rooted in cutting-edge strategy and consumer psychology. Read Adam Ortman’s full executive profile here.
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