The Cost of Momentum: Inside Adidas’s Bold Marketing & E-commerce Strategy

Adidas is charging ahead with an aggressive growth play, dramatically increasing its marketing investments and reshaping its sales channels to go direct-to-consumer (DTC). In recent years, the sportswear giant has steadily ramped up marketing spend — most recently increasing it by 14% year-over-year in Q1 2025 alone — reflecting a sustained commitment to “over-invest” in brand momentum. The company’s Own the Game strategic plan targets 50% of sales to come from DTC by 2025, up from just 30% in 2019.

This digital acceleration is fueling Adidas’s turnaround – currency-neutral sales climbed 13% in Q1 2025, driven by Adidas brand growing 17%. But scaling DTC isn’t cheap. Adidas’s CFO has noted that running a DTC model at this scale “requires significant investment in marketing and supply chain management.” In fact, Adidas planned to spend an extra $1.1 billion on marketing between 2021 and 2025, on top of over $2.75 billion annually in recent years.

This momentum comes at a cost: heavy upfront spending to capture long-term loyalty and margin improvement. The question is whether Adidas can keep that momentum efficient and accountable as it reaches for bold targets.

Embedding the Brand in Culture Through Innovation

Leaning into Storytelling and Emotional Branding

Adidas’s recent “Superstar, the Original” campaign exemplifies how storytelling can elevate a product from commodity to cultural artifact. Rather than promoting a new drop, the brand leaned into heritage and symbolism—positioning the Superstar not just as a shoe, but as a timeless icon.

Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson and brought to life by artists like Missy Elliott and JENNIE, the cinematic, black-and-white series served as both tribute and provocation.

This kind of “advertainment” blurs the lines between campaign and content. For younger audiences especially, it’s not about being sold to—it’s about being seen. When done well, it drives talkability and long-term brand equity.

Community Activation and Participation

Tech-Driven Experiences to Stay Culturally Relevant

Augmented Reality and Personalization

Innovation is also central to Adidas’s digital consumer experiences. The company offers AI-powered design tools that let customers customize shoes and apparel in real time. Behind the scenes, Adidas has even used robotics and machine learning in production (such as the now-famous Speedfactory pilot) to enable faster, on-demand manufacturing.

The Risk in Going Bold

However, pushing the envelope on marketing innovation introduces complexity. Bold bets on brand experiences, community building, and new channels can be hard to tie directly to short-term sales. Adidas’s strategy of being a cultural catalyst – from sponsoring creators and athletes to investing in membership (Adidas has grown its membership base to 150 million and is aiming for 500 million by 2025) – is a long game.

Momentum vs. Measurement: The Accountability Challenge

The Attribution Dilemma

Every marketer knows Peter Drucker’s old adage: “what gets measured, gets managed.” For Adidas, the explosion of channels—from its own apps and website to Amazon and TikTok—means measuring the true impact of its marketing has become a high-stakes challenge.

Fragmented ecosystems are the new reality. Adidas can invest heavily to drive traffic to its own e-commerce, but consumers might end up buying on Amazon or at Foot Locker, muddying attribution. For instance, Adidas’s big push in DTC advertising may have a halo effect on Amazon sales that traditional metrics miss.

What the Data Shows

Fospha’s Halo highlights this blind spot: an estimated 42% of Adidas’s Amazon sales are driven by non-Amazon media—ads on platforms like Google, Meta, or TikTok that ultimately lead a customer to purchase on Amazon. Fospha’s cross-channel attribution model identifies these hidden contributions by capturing both click- and impression-led journeys, offering Adidas a fuller view of marketing performance that’s impossible to get from siloed platform reports.

Why Unified ROAS Matters

Standard return on ad spend (ROAS) calculations confined to a single channel can understate marketing performance. Measuring Unified ROAS – the revenue an ad generates across all channels – offers a more complete picture.

One Fospha analysis found that when accounting for marketplace sales lift, unified ROAS was on average 45% higher than DTC-only ROAS for upper-funnel campaigns. In other words, a TikTok or YouTube campaign that seemed to barely break even on Adidas.com might actually be a big winner once spillover purchases on Amazon and elsewhere are factored in.

This is particularly relevant for brands like Adidas, where campaigns often drive interest that materializes across multiple destinations, from TikTok to Amazon to owned DTC stores.

Redefining Success in a Fragmented Market

Adidas is methodically rewriting its playbook for the digital age – investing in marketing, pioneering tech-driven experiences, and fostering community, all in service of long-term brand momentum.

The results so far are promising: DTC gains are driving healthier margins and direct relationships, and the brand has recaptured cultural relevance (witness the revival of classic sneakers like the Samba and new buzzworthy collaborations).

Yet this momentum comes with both a price tag and a challenge. 

The price tag: millions in campaigns, digital platforms, and innovation. 

The challenge: ensuring those investments translate into sales and loyalty across a landscape far more complex than the old wholesale model.

A Challenger to the Measurement Status Quo

Adidas’s story in 2025 is one of balance—balancing bold innovation with disciplined measurement. This echoes a broader trend across high-growth retail brands: the need for measurement systems that match the complexity of modern channel mixes, where impressions, not just clicks, shape conversions. The brand’s leadership is confident it can be both creative and data-driven, embracing a mindset that marries gut-led brand building with rigorous analysis.

In doing so, Adidas is positioning itself both as a marketing powerhouse and a challenger to the measurement status quo, insisting that the industry evolve how it defines and gauges success in a world where visibility is increasingly fragmented.

“We are building an integrated ecosystem,” former CEO Kasper Rørsted said of blending stores, online, and membership. That ecosystem’s strength will depend on seeing the whole picture.

Adidas’s wager is that by investing in cultural momentum now, and embracing modern, full-funnel measurement, the brand can stay on the winning side of both consumer hearts and business results for years to come.