April 2026 was a clean month for measuring the UK consumer-electronics digital shelf. We tracked 5,752,983 brand appearances across 34 retailers over 32 days — from 1 April to 2 May 2026. The pattern is sharper than at any point in the last six months: UK CE retailers split into two tiers based on whether they sell sponsored placements at all, and inside the tier that does, the variation is enormous.
Below is the full split. No averages, no headlines — just what we measured.
Twelve of the largest UK CE retailers we track in April. Sponsored share is the percentage of all brand appearances on category pages that carried a sponsored label.
| Retailer | April Appearances | Sponsored Share |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon UK | 131,518 | 27.4% |
| Very | 264,102 | 18.8% |
| Currys | 271,248 | 6.8% |
| John Lewis | 116,708 | 3.7% |
| Argos | 291,183 | 2.9% |
| Box | 158,592 | 0% |
| Laptops Direct | 125,073 | 0% |
| Ebuyer | 125,008 | 0% |
| Harvey Norman | 119,470 | 0% |
| Scan | 111,666 | 0% |
| Overclockers | 91,165 | 0% |
| AO | 76,438 | 0% |
The split is binary. Five UK retailers run a meaningful retail-media programme — Amazon, Very, Currys, John Lewis, Argos. Seven do not. Box, Laptops Direct, Ebuyer, Harvey Norman, Scan, Overclockers, and AO all show 0% sponsored share across the full month, on every category we monitor.
The gap inside the sponsored tier is a 9x range. Amazon's 27.4% means more than one in four products a shopper sees on a UK Amazon category page is a paid placement. Argos at 2.9% sits at the opposite end — sponsored exists, but as a thin layer over a mostly organic shelf.
For brand teams, the strategic implication is concrete: the same retail-media budget buys radically different shelf share depending on the retailer. EUR 10K spent on Amazon UK competes with 27% of the visible inventory; the same EUR 10K on John Lewis is fighting for less than 4%.
April sponsored shares for the major laptop and CE brands across the UK sponsored tier (Amazon, Very, Currys, John Lewis, Argos, Box, Laptops Direct — bottom three included for non-sponsored visibility floor):
| Brand | April Appearances | Sponsored Share |
|---|---|---|
| Sony | 9,637 | 96.1% |
| Samsung | 82,600 | 11.6% |
| HP | 154,358 | 9.9% |
| Acer | 158,156 | 6.8% |
| Dell | 11,625 | 5.2% |
| Lenovo | 133,572 | 4.5% |
| MSI | 87,414 | 1.7% |
| ASUS | 182,030 | 0.9% |
| LG | 16,976 | 0.7% |
| Apple | 56,852 | 0.3% |
| Razer | 16,096 | 0.0% |
Sony at 96.1% sponsored is the standout. Almost every Sony appearance on a UK CE shelf in April was paid. Sony's organic visibility on laptop and monitor category pages is structurally low — their CE catalogue is narrower than HP or Lenovo — and they compensate with retail media spend at a rate no other brand approaches.
At the other end, ASUS holds 182,030 appearances at just 0.9% sponsored. ASUS is the highest-volume brand in our UK CE measurement and effectively pays for none of it. Apple sits at 0.3% on 56,852 appearances — same pattern, smaller catalogue. Both brands have the same answer to the digital shelf problem: own organic position so completely that retail media stops being a useful lever.
The middle of the table tells a different story. HP, Acer, Dell, and Lenovo all run 4-10% sponsored shares — meaningful spend that materially affects their visible position. For these brands, the sponsored share is roughly the share of their digital shelf footprint that is rented rather than owned. If their retail-media budget were cut, that fraction of their visibility evaporates within a week.
The non-sponsored UK retailers (Box, Scan, Overclockers, Ebuyer, Laptops Direct, Harvey Norman, AO) are a useful diagnostic. Because there is no paid shortcut, brand position there is a clean signal of underlying organic strength — sales velocity, review density, content completeness, pricing competitiveness.
If a brand has 12% share on Currys but 4% on Box, the difference is mostly retail-media spend. If the same brand has 12% on Currys and 12% on Box, the visibility is real and durable. The non-sponsored tier is the truth-telling tier.
Most brand teams we talk to track only the headline retailers (Amazon, Currys, Argos). They miss this signal entirely.
The biggest April-over-March change in our UK CE dataset was on Very, which moved from low-teens sponsored share into the 18.8% range — effectively doubling sponsored saturation in one month. Currys held flat near 7%, Amazon held flat near 27%. John Lewis and Argos drifted slightly higher. None of the seven non-sponsored retailers introduced a programme in April; the binary split is stable.
On the brand side, Sony's sponsored share rose ~3 points; ASUS, HP, and Apple were unchanged within a percent. Lenovo trimmed sponsored share marginally — consistent with the brand pulling some retail-media budget back into Q2.
Data is from fact_brand_daily_all covering 1 April – 2 May 2026. Sponsored detection uses retailer-specific markers (Criteo on Currys, native ad classes on Amazon, data-testid on John Lewis, position-based heuristics on Argos). A "brand appearance" is one product in one position on one category-page scrape. The same product appearing across multiple hourly scrapes counts as multiple appearances — this reflects what shoppers actually see, not unique SKU counts.
The full retailer-by-retailer and brand-by-brand breakdown across all 34 retailers (UK + South Africa + Poland + Ireland) is in the free monthly digital shelf report below.
53 million data points, 34 retailers, every brand. Free monthly UK CE digital shelf report — updated April 2026.
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