Earned & PaidKohl's
Kohl's spent $725M on advertising and marketing in fiscal 2026, down 7.9% on the year before and -27% since 2019. That's 4.7% of revenue, less than in 2019: the business outgrew its marketing.
Marketing spend by year
Bars: advertising and marketing expense, $B (10-K). Line: spend as a share of revenue.
What they told investors
“That team has done an amazing job of finding productivity and making our working media work harder for us.”management · 2025 Q4 · transcript
What the 10-K says about marketing
- investing in brand “We believe that differentiating Kohl's in the marketplace is critical to our success. We design our marketing and loyalty programs to increase brand awareness, build personalized connections with new and existing customers, and drive traffic and conversion. We believe these…” 10-K, Mar 19, 2026
Say vs do
We found no statement about the size of Kohl's's marketing budget on its earnings calls or in its 10-Ks, so here is its record against its peers.
What they said
No statement about the size of its marketing budget.
What they did
| Year | Marketing spend | Change | Share of revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY2026 | $725M | -7.9% | 4.7% |
| FY2025 | $787M | -1.1% | 4.8% |
| FY2024 | $796M | -9.9% | 4.5% |
| FY2023 | $883M | -1.1% | 4.9% |
| FY2022 | $893M | +13.3% | 4.6% |
| FY2021 | $788M | -23.2% | 4.9% |
Against its peers. Compared with the 7 other Retail advertisers we track (Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Lowe's, Best Buy and 2 more): since 2019 its marketing spend went -27% (peer median +11%); its share of revenue moved -0.2 pts (median -0.1); last year -7.9% (median +5.9%).
How we check: a statement gets a verdict only when it's clearly about the size of the whole company's marketing budget over a full fiscal year; we compare it with the advertising and marketing expense in that year's 10-K. Statements about one quarter, one brand or channel, or the mix between brand and performance can't be checked against annual filings.
What they say about media
The marketing channels it talks about using for itself on earnings calls and in its 10-Ks and 10-Qs, since 2019; counts are statements, not spending.
- Influencers & creators “Moving forward, we will continue to fund this campaign, leveraging a cross-channel marketing approach, utilizing a wide range of influencers on social media.” Michael Bender on the earnings call · Aug 31, 2026 · source
- Creative campaigns “Our Buy Kohl's marketing campaign is off to a strong start.” Michael J. Bender on the earnings call · May 28, 2026 · source
- Paid social “Alongside these product introductions, we are making strategic investments in dedicated social media campaigns to support these efforts.” Michael J. Bender on the earnings call · May 28, 2026 · source
- CRM, loyalty & first-party data “Can you just talk about the “By Kohl's” campaign that you are going to launch this spring, what it is going to involve, and then laterally, what is your expectation for comps in 2026 amongst your Kohl's cardholder given the recent improvement that you saw in the back half of…” Charles P. Grom on the earnings call · Mar 10, 2026 · source
- Measurement “When you actually look at first quarter, we made more marketing investments, and we didn't leverage our ADS because as we look at our media mix modeling, are able to move some spending out of Q4 into Q1, which helped us from an optimization and efficiency perspective.” Jill Timm on the earnings call · May 19, 2022 · source
What they see in the market
What its leaders and filings say about the ad market: its own ad business, or the channels advertisers use, since 2019; counts are statements, not spending.
- Retail media “Kohl's Marketplace is broadening our product offering online to capture incremental sales opportunities, and Kohl's media network is leveraging our digital platform and site traffic to partner with more of our key brands and capture more advertising dollars.” Tom Kingsbury on the earnings call · Mar 1, 2023 · source
- Creative campaigns “So our team has put a lot of thought into our integrated campaign, and we're looking forward to sharing it with your customers.” Michelle Gass on the earnings call · Aug 19, 2020 · source