Dollar General, Five Below each seek to enhance omnichannel experiences
Dollar General and Five Below both reported accelerating omnichannel growth in Q4 2025, with Five Below posting 24.3% total sales growth to $1.73B and Dollar General up 5.9% to $10.9B. Dollar General's DG Media Network generated $170M in retail media volume in 2025, with 80% of digital orders fulfilled within one hour via DoorDash, Uber Eats, and proprietary delivery. Dollar General reports 7M monthly active app users and 100M marketable customer profiles, signaling a serious first-party data infrastructure build. Both chains are explicitly investing in search, sponsored products, and off-site media — putting them in direct competition with Walmart Connect and Amazon DSP for CPG and consumer goods ad budgets.
The non-obvious threat here is advertising cost inflation on Amazon and Walmart Connect: as Dollar General's $170M retail media network scales and Five Below follows, CPG and consumer goods brands will face a new bidding arena for their trade budgets — pulling dollars that previously flowed exclusively to Amazon Sponsored Products.
A $10M/year seller in consumables, household goods, toys, or seasonal categories should audit their Amazon advertising ACoS benchmarks Monday and stress-test what a 10-15% CPM increase looks like if brand partners start diversifying media spend to DG Media Network. The more immediate P&L hit is competitive: Five Below's 15.
4% Q4 comp growth in the sub-$10 impulse category directly pressures Amazon sellers in toys, accessories, and home décor who rely on price-sensitive shoppers — Five Below is now winning that customer with same-day convenience, not just low price.
This is the next chapter of retail media fragmentation: every major retailer with first-party data and store density is now a media business, and the $170M DG Media Network is still early-innings.
For marketplace operators, this accelerates the trend of ad spend dilution across more platforms, meaning Amazon's share of brand co-op budgets will face structural pressure for the first time since Walmart Connect scaled.
In the 2026 landscape, sellers who over-index on Amazon advertising as a growth lever without building owned audiences (email, SMS, DTC) are the most exposed — the cost to reach a consumer through any single platform is going up as more retail networks compete for the same trade dollars.
Pull your Amazon Brand Analytics 'Repeat Purchase Behavior' report this week and identify any SKUs where your customer LTV depends on price-sensitive, convenience-driven buyers — if repeat rate has declined more than 5% YoY in toys, seasonal, or household categories, Five Below's omnichannel surge is likely cannibalizing your base and you need to reposition on value-adds (bundles, subscription, exclusive variants) before Q2.
On Walmart Connect: log into your campaign manager and check your CPM trends on Display and Video campaigns for the past 90 days — if CPMs are up more than 15%, begin shifting 20% of your Walmart media budget toward Sponsored Products (search-intent) where you control bids, because off-site demand from discount retail media networks will compress Walmart's open-exchange inventory margins and push CPMs higher through 2026.
In the next 30-60 days, prepare for brand partners and co-op budgets to fragment: if you manage brands that sell into Dollar General or Five Below, expect trade spend conversations to include DG Media Network allocations by Q3 2026 — get ahead of this by building a retail media attribution model now that can compare ROAS across Amazon DSP, Walmart Connect, and emerging discount retail networks so you control the narrative in budget reviews.
Bottom Line
Discount retail's $170M media network isn't a curiosity — it's the next CPM pressure point hitting your Amazon ad budget by Q4.
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Discount retail's $170M media network isn't a curiosity — it's the next CPM pressure point hitting your Amazon ad budget by Q4.
Key Stat / Trigger
$170M in DG Media Network retail media volume generated in 2025
Focus on the operational implication, not just the headline.
Full Coverage
Discount retailers Dollar General and Five Below both used their respective Q4 earnings calls to address new digital updates and how that work could improve their omnichannel experiences and sales. Both mass merchant retailers, known for their low price points, reported their quarterly and full-year 2025 earnings in mid-March.
They also both have leaned into third-party delivery services, executives shared on their respective earnings calls. For Dollar General, part of the omnichannel growth also will come from improving and expanding search capabilities, according to chief operating officer Emily Taylor.
She said upgrading search capabilities is important to both consumers and advertisers using its retail media network (which it calls the DG Media Network). It started the network in 2018, she said.
Although neither Dollar General nor Five Below disclosed ecommerce-specific sales for Q4, they each addressed comparable or same-store sales, which account for online transactions and give a sense of the retailers’ omnichannel advancements. At Dollar General, same-store sales increased 4. 3% year over year in Q4 and 3. 0% for 2025 as a whole.
Meanwhile, at Five Below, comparable sales increased 15. 4% year over year in Q4 and 12. 8% for 2025 overall. Dollar General’s total sales in Q4 grew 5. 9% year over year to reach $10. 9 billion. Its full-year 2025 sales increased 5. 2% to reach $42. 7 billion. Five Below’s total sales in Q4 grew 24. 3% to reach $1. 73 billion.
Its full-year 2025 sales increased 22. 9% to $4. 76 billion. Although Dollar General’s total sales are larger, Five Below ranks higher in the Top 2000 Database. Five Below is No. 519, whereas Dollar General is No. 674. The Top 2000 Database ranks North America’s largest online retailers by their annual ecommerce sales.
How Dollar General is growing omnichannel sales Todd Vasos, CEO at Dollar General, said the retailer believes it has “a tremendous opportunity to gain additional market share” by factoring in both in-store and digital shopping experiences.
The company is “advancing our digital initiatives as we seek to further enhance the omnichannel consumer experience at Dollar General,” Vasos told investors. He noted that the retailer’s mobile app has more than 7 million monthly active users and a total of more than 100 million “marketable customer profiles.”
As a way to drive growth, he said, Dollar General is focused on scaling its delivery options, personalizing customer experiences and growing its retail media network. Dollar General now delivers to customers through: Its roughly 18,000 stores. Its myDG Delivery same-day offering. Third-party last-mile delivery partners DoorDash and Uber Eats.
Vasos noted that collectively, the options have delivered 80% of digital orders within one hour. Dollar General also continues to see larger basket sizes online than its average in-store transactions, he said. It also sees “very strong repeat-visit rates,” he said. That all makes its delivery platforms a “more meaningful sales driver,” he added.
Dollar General sees its retail media network as “one of the most significant components of our digital initiative,” Vasos said. The network enables a more personalized experience for customers and a higher return on ad spend for advertisers, he added.
“Our DG Media Network strategy is focused on accelerating on-site performance through improved search, sponsored products and a stronger ecommerce experience while expanding our ability to capture emerging off-site spends across social, connected TV and video,” Vasos said.
He said Dollar General generated about $170 million “in retail media network volume” in 2025. Five Below’s omnichannel approach targets convenience Winifred (Winnie) Park, CEO at Five Below, told investors that the retailer’s future endeavors tied to omnichannel “are very much in a test, learn and ramp mode.”
She said Five Below has begun offering buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS), a decreasingly common omnichannel offering among retail chains after a boom during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’ve seen actually big, big growth with third-party delivery,” Park said.
“And so we’re going to continue to look at those avenues because we’ve got to meet the customer where they are. And I think particularly for the younger customers, specifically Gen Z, convenience is critical.”
She said Five Below sees omnichannel offerings as “an opportunity to acquire new customers who may not have considered us or walk away just because it’s not convenient.” Additionally, the retailer sees omnichannel offerings as a way to lead to greater conversion, she said.
The retailer has also redirected marketing spend toward social and creator content to “be faster and more agile in communicating newness,” Park said. &
Original Source
This briefing is based on reporting from Digital Commerce 360. Use the original post for full primary-source context.
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