The e-commerce industry has a habit of chasing the next thing. Over the past few years, the focus has shifted from getting the digital shelf basics right, to retail media, to AI and agentic search. Each wave brings a rush of conference presentations, LinkedIn posts, and agency pitches. And each time, something fundamental gets overlooked.
That something is eCategory Management.
In mid-2025, we published a piece in partnership with Daedal exploring why eCategory leadership is the next big opportunity in digital retail. That article outlined the concept and the strategic case. Since then, we have spent more time working directly with retailers and brands on this challenge. The gap between how categories are managed in store and how they are managed online is significant, and it is costing both brands and retailers real money.
This article builds on that foundation with specific examples, practical observations, and a closer look at why this matters for CPG and FMCG brands selling through online grocery retailers.
What is eCategory Management?
Category management in physical retail is a well-established discipline. Brands and retailers collaborate to organise, merchandise, and promote products in ways that grow the overall category, not just individual brands. It is how fixtures get planned, how promotions get positioned on gondola ends, and how shoppers are encouraged to discover and trade up.
Online, this discipline barely exists.
Most brands focus their digital shelf efforts on what might be called the basics: making sure titles contain the right keywords, images meet retailer specifications, products are in stock, and review scores are healthy. These things matter. They are table stakes. But they are not category management.
eCategory Management is the application of category management thinking to the online retail environment. It means looking at how products appear together in search results and category pages, whether the assortment encourages shoppers to trade up or simply defaults to the cheapest option, how promotional activity is reflected in organic rankings, and whether retail media spend is working with or against the broader category story.
The organic opportunity that most brands are ignoring
Across a typical online grocery retailer, somewhere between 60% and 70% of the products visible on any given search results page are organic. They are not sponsored. They are not paid placements. They are products that appear because the retailer's algorithm has determined they are relevant.
Yet the industry's attention and investment flows disproportionately towards the paid positions. Brands spend significant budgets on retail media to secure sponsored slots, often without questioning whether the organic results beneath those slots are doing their job.
This is the equivalent of spending your in-store budget exclusively on gondola end promotions whilst paying no attention to what is happening on the main shelf. It is hard to imagine a category manager doing that in a physical store. But online, it happens routinely.
The opportunity here is substantial. When organic search results are well managed, when the right products appear in the right order for the right search terms, categories grow. Shoppers find what they are looking for more quickly, discover products they were not specifically searching for, and add more to their baskets.
How online category management looks today
It is not difficult to find examples of eCategory Management opportunities online. These three were found across different retailer websites in less than 15 minutes. They are not meant as criticism of any individual retailer. They illustrate how common these patterns are across the industry.
Cereal on Tesco
Search for "cereal" on Tesco's website and consider the first few results a shopper sees. The top three positions are sponsored. Two of them are occupied by products at full price with mediocre reviews. There is no promotional incentive for the shopper. The third sponsored slot is better: a new product, on promotion, with a decent number of reviews. That is closer to what you would expect from a well-managed gondola end in store, where branded products on promotion occupy the premium space.
Below the sponsored results, the highest-ranking organic product has a 2.5-star rating and is one of the cheapest products in the category. The next organic result is own-label. Neither encourages the shopper to trade up.
In a physical store, you would not place the lowest-rated, cheapest product at eye level on the main fixture. You would not fill your premium shelf space with own-label products when you could be showcasing branded products that encourage higher basket value. But online, the algorithm is making these decisions with no category management input, and the result is a poor experience for the shopper and a missed commercial opportunity for both the retailer and the brands.
Energy drinks on Morrisons
Search for "energy drinks" on Morrisons and a similar pattern emerges. Six sponsored positions, four of which are occupied by different variants of a single brand with no reviews and no existing shopper loyalty to draw on. There is nothing to inspire a purchase. No social proof, no promotional hook, no variety.
In store, a retailer would never give a single brand four out of six gondola end facings, especially a brand with no established customer base. It would be a poor use of premium space. But online, because the bidding process for retail media has no category guardrails, the result is an uninspiring wall of the same brand that does nothing to help the shopper or grow the category.
Breakfast on Sainsbury's
Sainsbury's provides a more mixed picture when you search for "breakfast," and that is partly what makes it instructive. Some of the results are genuinely good category management. A Kellogg's new product in a sponsored slot with strong imagery ticks all the boxes: it is a new launch, it replicates the kind of in-store disruption you would see from an NPD activation, and it catches the eye. Granola products with good star ratings and promotional pricing are sensible inclusions for a breakfast occasion.
But then there are three milk products in the results. Most regular online shoppers already have milk in their favourites or their regulars list. Three spots given over to milk is a waste of space that could be used for croissants, pains au chocolat, breakfast meats, or anything else that might inspire a larger basket.
The point is not that any individual retailer is doing everything wrong. It is that nobody is applying category management discipline to these online experiences in a consistent, strategic way.
Why super generic search terms represent a real growth opportunity
An interesting area within eCategory Management is what happens when shoppers use broad, occasion-based search terms rather than specific product searches.
When someone types "milk" into a retailer's search bar, they know what they want. When they type "breakfast," they are looking for inspiration. They are behaving more like a shopper browsing an aisle than someone picking up a specific product from the shelf.
These super generic search terms represent a significant commercial opportunity. In our experience, a term like "breakfast" can generate tens of thousands of searches per month on a given retailer. "Lunch" and "dinner" produce comparable volumes. When you add up all these occasion-based searches, the total opportunity is considerable.
But most retailers handle these terms poorly. Search for "breakfast" on most grocery websites and you will see a page dominated by cereal, because breakfast cereal products tend to include the word "breakfast" in their titles. The algorithm is doing exactly what it is designed to do: matching keywords. But it is not doing what a good category manager would do, which is curate an inspiring selection of products that represent the full breakfast occasion.
Think about how a physical supermarket handles the same challenge. You do not have a single "breakfast" fixture. But meal deal promotions work on exactly this principle: a curated selection of complementary products from different categories, presented together to encourage a larger basket. Starter, main, dessert, and a drink. Sandwich, crisps, and a chocolate bar.
Online, we have the opportunity to replicate this kind of curation for occasion-based searches. When eStore worked with Asda to optimise how products appeared against the super generic search term "Polish food," the result was a 6x increase in basket adds. It shows what becomes possible when you apply category management thinking to how search results are organised.
Not every shopper who searches for "Polish food" will buy something. But when the results are curated to reflect the full range of what that occasion might include, more shoppers find more products they want. The same principle applies to "breakfast," "lunch," "dinner," "BBQ," and any number of occasion-based terms.
Why retail media needs category management guardrails
Retail media is a valuable tool. It is also, increasingly, an unmanaged one.
A key challenge is that retail media operates in isolation from category management. Brands bid for sponsored positions through media agencies and programmatic platforms like Criteo & Citrus Ads. Nobody checks whether those placements make sense in the context of the broader category.
The result is situations like the Morrisons energy drinks example: a single brand occupying the majority of the visible sponsored slots because they have outbid everyone else. The brand is paying for it. The retailer is earning revenue from it. But the shopper experience is poor, and the category as a whole does not benefit.
In physical retail, there are natural guardrails. A retailer would not hand over an entire gondola end to one brand. Space is allocated based on category strategy, shopper demand, and commercial agreements that consider the health of the overall category. Online, these guardrails largely do not exist.
There is a conversation to be had between brands and retailers about how retail media should work as part of a broader eCategory Management strategy, not against it. Sponsored slots should complement the organic category story, not undermine it. New product launches, promotional activity, and trade-up opportunities should be prioritised in premium positions, whether paid or organic.
This is not an argument against retail media. It is an argument for retail media that works harder because it is informed by category thinking.
What needs to change
The shift towards eCategory Management requires collaboration between brands and retailers. Neither can solve this alone.
For brands, it means moving beyond the basics. Ticking the box on titles, images, and availability is necessary but not sufficient. Brands need to think about how their products appear in the context of the broader category, not just in isolation. They need to consider which search terms matter most for their category, how their promotional activity shows up in organic results, and whether their retail media spend is contributing to a good category experience or simply buying visibility at any cost.
For retailers, it means recognising that the algorithm alone is not enough. Algorithms are good at matching keywords and surfacing popular products. They are not good at curation, inspiration, or encouraging trade-up. Retailers who invest in category management for their physical stores but leave their online environments entirely to algorithmic sorting are leaving money on the table.
For agencies and media buyers, it means thinking beyond click-through rates and cost-per-click. A retail media campaign that dominates the sponsored slots but degrades the shopper experience is not a success, even if the immediate metrics look positive.
This is not about AI. That is the point.
There is a certain irony in writing a thought leadership piece in 2026 that deliberately avoids leading with AI. The conference circuit is saturated with it. Every digital shelf provider is talking about AI agents, agentic search optimisation, and automated everything.
We are not dismissing AI. It matters, and we are investing in it. But the feedback we are hearing consistently from brands is that they are tired of being told to chase the next technological wave when there are fundamental commercial opportunities sitting right in front of them.
eCategory Management is one of those opportunities. It does not require new technology. It requires applying established category management principles to the online environment in a way that has simply not been done at scale yet. It requires brands and retailers to have more strategic conversations about how categories are presented online. And it requires data and analytics that can show what good looks like, where the gaps are, and what the commercial impact could be.
At eStore, this is an area where we have genuine depth. Our work with Asda through the ASDA Xpert programme is a practical example of what becomes possible when a digital shelf analytics platform works directly with a retailer to improve category outcomes: better product visibility, stronger category growth, and a more useful shopping experience.
If you are a brand that sells through online grocery retailers and this resonates, we would welcome the conversation.
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