“Below is an excerpt from an article originally published in WARC on October 19, 2023"

Why it matters

Retail media networks can wield a profound impact on upper funnel metrics, playing a pivotal role in establishing brand awareness, driving exploratory behavior, expanding reach, and creating a positive digital environment.

Takeaways

• Content-rich brand stores on platforms like Amazon help consumers to interact and explore, and in doing so develop a sense of familiarity develops, which directly influences their consideration when making future purchasing decisions.

• Another substantial impact of retail media advertising on upper funnel metrics is its role in expanding a brand’s reach.

• Retail media advertising also contributes to the cultivation of a positive digital ecosystem. By delivering relevant, non-intrusive, and useful ads, brands can create a more favorable user experience.

Picture the following scenario: a small, nimble company enters the market with a splash. It sees high engagement and views on its TikTok Shop, influencer content on Amazon, and high sales for the first six months of business. But after that initial period of success, the company fades into anonymity. Sound familiar?

Online virality can be briefly very effective for small e-commerce businesses. But it’s not always sustainable. Big well-known, blue-chip brands are blue-chip for a reason: they prioritize the basics. Only when companies have a solid foundation, can they safely experiment. This commitment to fundamentals is essential to brand building in retail media.

What are brands to do in this increasingly fragmented retail media space? Performance marketing often (and in my opinion, mistakenly) focuses on immediate conversion as a key metric for success. This strategy is applicable both in a brick-and-mortar and e-commerce setting: sales and conversions are usually deemed the best method for determining success. But this view places too much importance on the very beginning of a business’s existence; in essence, it’s a short-sighted way of expecting long-term growth.

Check out the full article in WARC here.