Let’s get one thing clear: this isn’t media planning anymore. It’s hostage negotiation — and your product’s shelf placement is tied to a digital ransom note that reads: “Buy the full stack, or enjoy irrelevance.”

We’re entering a new era of what I’ll politely call corporate bundling with sharp elbows. Retailers — Amazon, Walmart, and their media-obsessed sidekicks like Roku — are no longer just offering ad placements. They’re offering terms. And not the kind you can just tweak in your DSP dashboard.

They’re selling access. Visibility. Reach. Search rank.
And the cost? Your media budget, carved up and reallocated according to their preferred media stack — not yours.

This isn’t a partnership. This is a "Steak Knife" deal. You know the kind. You go in to buy one thing — shelf space, a bit of search love — and suddenly you’re walking out with the whole 10-piece box set. Sponsored display. CTV inventory. Fire TV campaigns. First-party targeting bundles you didn’t ask for. Measurement “add-ons” that only measure how much control you’ve lost.

They don’t tell you this up front. They don’t write it in the RFP.
They whisper it on the call. They slide it into the JBP deck on page 47. They tell your VP of Sales the real deal in the green room at a category review.

This is the new retail media economy — not built on data, but on quiet coercion and strategic bundling that blurs the lines between shopper marketing, national media, and corporate hardball.

Let me give you two real-world case studies. Names redacted (for now), but the deals? They’re real.

The ask was simple: endcap placement across thousands of Walmart locations.
The catch? A required $2 million in CTV ad spend — not through just any platform, but via Roku, tied directly to Walmart shopper data.

The result? Sure, they got a nice sales lift in-store. But they also saw a 15% media budget overage on inventory they didn’t want, didn’t choose, and couldn’t clearly attribute to performance. The kicker? The CTV buy was billed as "premium targeting," yet half of it landed on mobile gaming apps repackaged for big screens.

This one’s even slicker.

Amazon’s media reps made it very clear — off the record, of course — that if Brand B wanted to maintain its search visibility for a flagship beauty product, it needed to grow its Prime Video investment. By how much? 30% YoY.

The brand pushed back. “We’re investing in TikTok right now,” they said.
The answer? “Totally understand. But that won’t help you on Amazon.”

To sweeten the poison, Amazon tied in access to the Brand Referral Bonus Program, which offers sellers fee reductions — but only if 20% of your CTV campaigns run through the Amazon DSP.

Welcome to the “spend or disappear” economy.

Let’s stop pretending this is just integrated media strategy. It’s not.
This is commercial blackmail, elegantly disguised as retail alignment.

Amazon doesn’t care if your TikTok campaign outperforms Prime Video.
Walmart doesn’t care if your programmatic plan excludes Roku.
What they care about is control — over your ad dollars, your targeting, and your media mix.

This is how they win:

And no one’s saying this out loud — because no one wants to be the brand that admits it was strong-armed.

But trust me: this is the conversation happening behind closed doors at every Fortune 100 CPG media team this quarter.

🔒 The actual leaked spend breakdowns from these deals
🔒 One retailer’s full-tiered contract terms (Bronze to Platinum — and what you have to trade for page-one visibility)
🔒 The private agency negotiation scripts used to counter “CTV-first” mandates

👉 Subscribe for $50/month — Before your media budget gets sliced, bundled, and repackaged without your permission.

There’s smoke—maybe even a full-blown barbecue—around the idea that CTV ad spend is becoming the new price of entry for shelf space. While no one’s openly saying it’s a direct quid pro quo, a growing chorus of sources points to a not-so-subtle handshake between CTV investments and retail visibility:

The implication? If you want shelf space, you might need screen space first.

Let’s rewind.

In Part 1, we showed you what’s happening when you think you're just negotiating for shelf space or search visibility. The answer? You're not. What you’re really doing is walking into a media deal you didn’t ask for — one that ropes in connected TV, retail media, search, data partnerships, and, often, a whispered threat that if you don’t play ball, your product disappears.

Brands thought they were walking into a merchandising conversation.
What they got was a programmatic ransom note dressed up as a Joint Business Plan.

And now, in Part 2, we lay it bare.

Because the receipts? They’re here.

Retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Kroger are no longer just your distribution partner. They’re your DSP, your publisher, your data broker, your CTV placement handler — and your judge, jury, and executioner.

And if you're not writing media checks in every category, you're at risk of disappearing.

We've spoken to insiders, reviewed anonymized but disturbingly detailed contracts, and pieced together how today's JBPs work in the real world. These are the playbooks being handed to the biggest CPG brands — and the price of not playing along is very real.

Let’s break down three leaked deal structures that show exactly how media spend is now inseparably bundled with product placement.

A household-name snack brand negotiated for eight weeks of premium endcap placement in Walmart stores. But the catch? A $2 million CTV commitment through Roku, with targeting restricted to Walmart first-party data segments.

That wasn't optional. That was the ticket in the door.

Their JBP included:

They didn’t just buy the shelf. They bought the screen time to justify it.

This mid-sized beauty brand was already spending heavily on Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands. But Amazon had new marching orders: boost Prime Video spend by 30% YoY, or risk losing top-tier search placement.

It wasn’t in the contract. It was "suggested" in the same way your landlord might suggest not complaining if you want to keep your deposit.

Inside their JBP:

Translation? If you want to stay visible, you better feed the video beast.

A nationally distributed cereal brand signed a JBP with Kroger Precision Marketing that blended in-store promotions, connected TV, and targeted display.

They committed $1.5M to off-site ads targeting Kroger loyalty households on Roku and other programmatic platforms.

The structure?

The message was clear: either you drive the results, or you double down.

Here’s the truth: JBPs are no longer strategic marketing documents.

They’re contracts designed to extract maximum multi-channel media spend in exchange for access to basic distribution infrastructure — the shelf, the search bar, the badge.

They’re built with:

You’re not negotiating ad spend. You’re negotiating existence.

The age of “I’ll take the shelf, skip the CTV” is dead.

You’re not buying product visibility anymore. You’re buying permission to participate — and you’re paying in bundled ad spend, managed DSP routes, and performance clauses written in disappearing ink.

Retailers have become your media partners, your sales gatekeepers, and your programmatic overlords — all in one. And if you're not negotiating like you're buying a media stack disguised as a merchandising agreement, you're already behind.

🔒 The full JBP contract from a top 5 retailer (Bronze, Gold, Platinum tiers)
🔒 The agency-side playbook for how to push back on DSP requirements
🔒 The bundled budget negotiation scripts they don’t want you using

_{Editor’s Note: The examples above are based on real-world deal structures reported in 2023–2025 across industry case studies, closed-door briefings, and leaked agency strategy decks. They reflect trends previously reported in AdExchanger, Retail Dive, FTC filings, marketing analyst briefings, and interviews with brand-side insiders. Specific brand names have been changed, but the terms are all too real.}