Topsort retail media: auction infrastructure, pricing model and alternatives

Topsort's founding idea is that every store should be able to run auctions the way Amazon does. Its about page puts it plainly: "Commerce should run on auctions" (Topsort, about). The product is the auction itself. The retailer keeps its search engine and product pages; Topsort decides which promoted products win the sponsored product slots and at what price.

The product family has grown in layers:

Source for the timeline: Topsort, about, accessed 9 November 2026.

Toppie is Topsort's DSP for brands and agencies. One workspace lets a brand run campaigns on every Topsort-powered retailer. The docs also list Ad Intelligence tools for forecasting, retrieval and attribution (Topsort docs).

A retailer can integrate in two ways. The low-code path uses JavaScript libraries to render banners and send click, impression and purchase events. The API-first path uses three core APIs: Catalog, to keep products in sync; Auctions, to request winners; and Events, to report what happened (Topsort docs).

Here is a real auction request from Topsort's documentation. The retailer's own recommender picks four products, and Topsort runs an auction for two slots among the brands bidding on them (Topsort docs, sponsored listings):

• type sets the format. Banners use "banners", and sponsored brands use their own endpoint.
• slots caps the number of winners at two.
• products.ids limits the auction to these items. Bids on other products do not take part.
• qualityScores is optional. Each value is above 0 and at most 1 and tells Topsort how relevant the product is, so a high bid on a weak match is less likely to win.

The design leaves relevance with the retailer and price discovery with Topsort. That split is what a marketplace wants when its search team already owns ranking. For the wider picture of how an ad server sits next to search and catalog, see retail media network architecture.

Topsort does not publish prices, and topsort.com/pricing returned a 404 error on 9 November 2026. No dated trade report of its fee model was found. Ask whether fees are a share of ad revenue, a platform fee or both, and whether Toppie charges brands separately. The answer changes your take rate.

Strengths

• Auction depth. Quality scores, set-of-products auctions and autobidding are documented in public, which lets an engineering team judge the product before a sales call.
• Built for marketplaces and delivery apps. Topsort's logos lean toward marketplaces and delivery apps such as Glovo, Just Eat Takeaway and DoorDash, where many sellers advertise.
• Brand access across networks. Skai became the first API partner in September 2025, and Toppie gives brands one workspace across Topsort retailers.
• Wide geography. Topsort says it has customers in more than 40 countries and staff in 13 (company claim, PPC Land, September 2025).

Limits

• Offsite and in-store are recent. Both arrived in 2025, according to Topsort's own timeline (Topsort, about).
• The UK base is new. Topsort entered the UK only through the Phuzion Media purchase in October 2025 (PPC Land).
• No public pricing. A buyer cannot model cost without an RFP.
• Logos are not contracts. Topsort does not state which formats each logo customer runs, or since when.

• The amount and date of the Series A. Topsort's newsroom links a third-party item headlined "$20 million", but the item did not load.
• Pricing and fee structure.
• Which formats DoorDash and other logo customers run on Topsort, and since when.
• The full list of DSPs that can buy Topsort inventory beyond Skai and Toppie.
• Topsort's independent measurement certifications, if any.

1. Topsort, home page (accessed 9 November 2026). https://www.topsort.com/
2. Topsort, "About" (accessed 9 November 2026). https://www.topsort.com/about
3. Topsort documentation, "Welcome to Topsort" (accessed 9 November 2026). https://docs.topsort.com/en/overview/index.md
4. Topsort documentation, "Pick an integration path" (accessed 9 November 2026). https://docs.topsort.com/en/overview/pick-an-integration-path.md
5. Topsort documentation, "Sponsored listings from a set of products" (accessed 9 November 2026). https://docs.topsort.com/en/api-reference/examples/sponsored-listings/set-of-products.md
6. Topsort documentation index (accessed 9 November 2026). https://docs.topsort.com/llms.txt
7. PPC Land, "Topsort partners with Skai to expand global retail media reach" (28 September 2025, on the announcement of 23 September 2025). https://ppc.land/topsort-partners-with-skai-to-expand-global-retail-media-reach/
8. PPC Land, "Topsort partners with Breuninger for luxury retail media in Europe" (12 October 2025). https://ppc.land/topsort-partners-with-breuninger-for-luxury-retail-media-in-europe/
9. PPC Land, "Topsort acquires Phuzion Media to enter UK retail media market" (15 October 2025). https://ppc.land/topsort-acquires-phuzion-media-to-enter-uk-retail-media-market/
10. PPC Land, "Topsort secures investment from W23 Global for retail media infrastructure" (30 November 2025). https://ppc.land/topsort-secures-investment-from-w23-global-for-retail-media-infrastructure/