Meta ad costs are rising faster than the results behind them, and DTC brands are responding by moving budget into retail media, TikTok Shop, and retention marketing rather than waiting for CPMs to come back down. This isn't a story about brands quitting Meta. It's a story about brands refusing to let one platform's auction dynamics set their entire growth plan, and the 2026 data shows exactly where that reallocated budget is landing and what it's actually returning.
The cost of finding a customer on Meta has been rising faster than the platform's own audience growth, which is the mechanical reason so many brands are looking elsewhere. Facebook's average cost per lead climbed 21% year over year in 2025, and Meta itself has reported a 14% jump in ad costs against only a 6% increase in impressions. During peak shopping periods, the gap widens further: advertisers have seen CPMs spike by as much as 66% in key ecommerce categories.
A few things are driving that gap:
The result shows up differently depending on how much a brand spends. One 2026 analysis of 500 DTC ad accounts found that Meta still accounts for 62% of DTC ad spend overall, with a median cost per acquisition of $38, but the allocation shifts hard with scale: brands spending $10,000 to $50,000 a month put 72% of budget on Meta, while brands spending $200,000 or more a month cut that down to 45%.
The pattern holds across more than one dataset: as ad spend scales, Meta's share of the budget shrinks, even though the dollar amount going to Meta usually keeps growing too. Diversification is something brands earn into as they scale, not a one-time platform switch.
Retail media is the biggest single beneficiary of reallocated ad budget. US retail media ad spending is projected to reach $69.33 billion in 2026, up from $58.79 billion in 2025, a 17.9% increase. The growth is heavily concentrated: Amazon Ads and Walmart Connect together are capturing more than 89% of all the incremental dollars entering the category this year. For a brand already selling on Amazon or Walmart Marketplace, that ad spend follows the customer to where they're already comparison-shopping, rather than trying to interrupt a scroll on a separate platform.
TikTok Shop's growth has outpaced almost every other channel brands are testing. US sales rose 84% between March 2025 and February 2026, and the platform generated over $1.3 billion in sales in just the final two months of 2025. eMarketer projects another 48% increase this year, on top of 108% growth the year before. About 9% of US households made a TikTok Shop purchase in 2025, and roughly a quarter of all US digital buyers, and more than half of social commerce buyers, are projected to buy on the platform in 2026. It's also not purely an acquisition channel: the same 2026 ad-account analysis found TikTok's paid performance has caught up to Meta for smaller brands specifically, delivering comparable ROAS for accounts under $5 million in revenue, even though its median cost per acquisition still runs higher than Meta's.
Retention marketing keeps showing up as the highest-ROAS, lowest-visibility line item in a DTC budget. Industry benchmarking puts email, SMS, and loyalty programs at only 10-18% of total marketing spend, yet they generate an estimated 25-35% of total revenue for brands with a mature program. That's consistent with what we've seen across Cart.com's own client base: email and SMS routinely deliver the widest ROAS range of any channel, often 8x to 20x or more, because the program is marketing to people who already know the brand. A brand diversifying off Meta gets more out of that move if it's simultaneously investing in the retention infrastructure to keep the customers it already has.
Creator and affiliate spend has grown into 8-15% of total marketing budget for DTC brands, and a meaningful share of that isn't replacing Meta spend so much as changing what runs inside it: brands are increasingly whitelisting creator content and running it as paid ads on Meta and TikTok rather than only as organic posts. That blurs the line between "off Meta" and "on Meta" in a useful way. The diversification isn't only about which platform gets the dollar, it's also about not relying on brand-produced creative as the only input into the paid channels a brand already runs.
The clearest finding across this data is also the most important one: brands are diversifying away from Meta, not away from advertising on Meta altogether. Even at the highest spend tier, Meta still commands close to half of paid ad budget. The shift is about reducing single-platform dependence, not eliminating a channel that, cost increases aside, still produces a respectable median ROAS around 2.8x for most DTC categories.
That distinction matters for how a brand should actually plan a diversification effort. It isn't a migration project with a finish line. It's a portfolio decision: which channels are worth testing at what pace, how much retention infrastructure needs to exist before acquisition spend gets reallocated, and what reporting needs to be in place to compare a $38 Meta acquisition against a $44 TikTok acquisition or a retail media placement, honestly, on the same dashboard.
Diversifying off Meta touches paid media, retail media, retention, and marketplace strategy all at once, which is exactly the kind of cross-channel program that gets fragmented when each channel has a different specialist agency and no one is looking at the whole picture. Cart.com's growth marketing team runs paid media, SEO, and retention marketing as one integrated program, across Google, Meta, TikTok, YouTube, and Amazon Advertising, rather than managing each channel in isolation. That matters most exactly when a brand is trying to shift budget between channels: the team that runs your Meta account is the same team that can stand up TikTok or tighten your retention flows, with one shared view of what's actually working.
For brands selling on Amazon or Walmart Marketplace, Cart.com's marketplace management team runs the retail media side of this playbook directly, sponsored placements, marketplace-specific creative, and the reporting to see how a marketplace ad dollar performs next to a paid social dollar. Combined with Cart.com's broader commerce services, brands get one connected view of acquisition, retention, and marketplace performance, instead of stitching together reports from four different vendors to answer a question as simple as "where should the next dollar go."
Talk to Cart.com's growth marketing team →
Meta's ad costs have risen faster than its audience has grown. Reported cost per lead was up 21% year over year in 2025, and Meta itself has cited a 14% jump in ad costs against only a 6% rise in impressions, driven by more advertisers competing in the same auctions, more sophisticated AI-driven bidding, and weaker targeting precision following years of privacy changes. Brands are responding by capping how much of their budget rides on one platform's pricing, rather than leaving the platform entirely.
No single channel is replacing Meta outright. The budget is spreading across retail media (Amazon Ads and Walmart Connect specifically, which are capturing the large majority of retail media's growth), TikTok Shop, and creator and affiliate partnerships, alongside heavier investment in retention marketing (email, SMS, and loyalty) to get more value out of customers already acquired.
The growth data suggests yes for many categories. US TikTok Shop sales rose 84% between March 2025 and February 2026, with eMarketer projecting another 48% increase this year. It's grown especially strong for smaller brands, delivering ROAS comparable to Meta for accounts under $5 million in revenue, though its cost per acquisition still tends to run higher than Meta's at scale.
There's no universal number, but the data shows a consistent pattern by spend tier: brands spending $10,000 to $50,000 a month in paid media put around 72% of that budget on Meta, while brands spending $200,000 or more a month bring that down closer to 45%, spreading the rest across Google, TikTok, and YouTube. The right mix depends on category, but the direction (more channels as spend scales) holds broadly.
For most brands, no. Even among the highest-spending accounts in recent industry analysis, Meta still represents close to half of paid budget and continues to deliver a respectable median ROAS around 2.8x. The brands managing this well are reducing dependence on Meta as the only channel, not eliminating it as a channel.
A significant one. Email, SMS, and loyalty programs typically consume only 10-18% of total marketing budget but generate an estimated 25-35% of total revenue for brands with a mature program, often at 8x to 20x ROAS. Every dollar a brand keeps from going back out the door as new-customer acquisition spend is a dollar it doesn't need Meta, or any other paid channel, to replace.