What did the industry get wrong that TopRank saw early?

First, that Amazon and Walmart are advertising problems. They are operating problems, and agencies that led with paid media stalled when ad efficiency gains ran out. Second, that grocery on Amazon was a rounding error. It was not, and leaning into grocery early built the client base and reputation.

What stayed constant over five years?

Three things: real numbers over adjectives, with every claim sourced or it does not ship; operator-to-operator, because everyone on the team has run accounts rather than only consulted on them; and no hype, using the swap test on every piece of client-facing work.

FILED: SEP 2, 2026 · TO: OPERATORS & BRAND LEADERS · FROM: JP

Five Years of TopRank Partners: What Compounded

Q: Where does year six take TopRank?

Deeper into what already works: more Amazon Fresh and grocery capacity because the category is under-served, more creative firepower because listing conversion is the choke point most brands cannot solve alone, and more marketplace acceleration for brands that want the full operating layer without the enterprise cost curve.

We passed our five-year mark this summer. Five years is long enough to notice which decisions kept paying us back, grounded in real client numbers, not milestones for their own sake.

TL;DR: Key Takeaways

The clients who kept us let us operate the whole system, advertising, listings, catalog, forecasting, and creative under one cadence. That is the compounding effect.
Amazon and Walmart are not advertising problems. They are operating problems. The agencies that led with paid media stalled; the ones that operated the whole account stayed useful.
What stayed constant across five years: real numbers over adjectives, operator-to-operator, and no hype.

By JP, CEO, TopRank Partners · 3 min read · Filed Sep 2, 2026 5 Years In

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We passed our five-year mark this summer. Five years is not long enough to claim we have figured out how marketplace operating should work. It is long enough to notice which decisions kept paying us back and which ones we would make differently if we started tomorrow.

What compounded across the last five years?

The clients who kept us are the ones who let us operate the whole system, not one lever inside it. When advertising, listings, catalog, forecasting, and creative live under one operating cadence, every decision gets sharper. When they live under four vendors, they get slower. That is the compounding effect.

The numbers back it. On the Del Real Foods engagement, catalog-wide listing work happened before advertising scaled, so the first ad dollar landed on a page built to close: 7.3x blended ROAS, 50% conversion lift, 6x year-over-year reorder volume from Amazon itself, and every month for the last year running above forecast. On the AT&T engagement, catalog rightsizing from 295 offers to 120 and Unit Session Percentage moving from 7.5% to 12.9% happened in parallel with a rebuilt content system, one lever pulled to make the others sharper.

AT&T: catalog rightsized, 295 offers to 120

Active offers cut from 295 to 120 and parent items from 106 to 48, so every ad dollar landed on a tighter catalog. Unit Session Percentage climbed from 7.5% to 12.9% alongside it.

Del Real Foods: 7.3x blended ROAS, 50% conversion lift, 6x year-over-year reorder volume from Amazon, and every month for the last year running above forecast.

What did the industry get wrong that we saw early?

Two things.

First, the assumption that Amazon and Walmart are advertising problems. They are operating problems. Advertising is one input into a system whose real bottleneck is usually the listing, the forecast, or the fulfillment lane. The agencies that led with paid media grew fast in 2021 and 2022 and stalled when the ad efficiency gains ran out. The ones that operated the whole account stayed useful.

Second, the assumption that grocery on Amazon was a rounding error. It was not. Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods, and the unified Amazon Grocery label reshape how a CPG brand thinks about digital shelf placement. TopRank leaned into grocery when most agencies still treated it as a sideline. That decision built the client base and the reputation we have today.

Amazon and Walmart are advertising problems. They are operating problems.

What stayed constant?

Three things. Real numbers over adjectives, every claim gets sourced or it does not ship. Operator-to-operator, everyone on our team has run accounts, not just consulted on them. And no hype, the swap test on every piece of client-facing work: could a competitor have said this? If yes, we rewrite until they couldn't.

Where does year six take us?

Deeper into what we have already proved works. More Fresh and grocery capacity because the category is still under-served. More creative firepower because listing conversion is the choke point most brands cannot solve alone. More marketplace acceleration for brands that want the full operating layer without the enterprise cost curve.

If your brand is one year in on Amazon and stuck, or five years in and plateaued, the gap is almost never one tactic. It is a system that needs one owner. That is the case for TopRank Partners in year six the same as it was in year one.

One year in and stuck, or five years in and plateaued?

Talk to us about your Amazon channel. The invitation, not the sales pitch. If the gap is a system that needs one owner, we will tell you plainly.