The Demand

Before your next platform contract review, pull the full cost of third-party delivery — commission, required ad spend, and any promotional subsidy — and compare it against 2022’s numbers, because the delivery P&L that made sense then does not make sense in 2026. Check whether your contract prevents your platform partners from bidding on your own branded search terms. Name your ad-spend-as-percent-of-sales this year and decide whether you are budgeting marketplace marketing as a real line item or still treating it as a pass-through cost.

The Work

Your current commission rate paid to each third-party platform you use:

Your current marketplace ad spend as a percent of platform sales:

Has this spend increased in the last two years — Yes or No, and by how much:

Does your platform contract prevent bidding on your own branded search terms — Yes or No:

Estimated dollar impact if a Guest searching your brand name lands on the platform instead of you:

Your promotional order average check lift on platforms, and who is actually funding that lift — you or the platform:

Rate how prepared you are for the Vertical Integration Threat — a platform owning your POS, reservations, and Guest data stack, 1-5:

Do you have any first-party channel operating in parallel — Yes or No:

The one action you will take this week to reduce Relationship Arbitrage on your largest delivery platform — renegotiate, add first-party capacity, or budget marketing properly: