Retail media’s reputation has been built on performance. Sponsored product listings, search placement, and lower-funnel conversion campaigns — these are where retail media started and where most budget still flows. But the most sophisticated brands are finding that retail media can do much more than convert existing demand. It can build it.
The Lower-Funnel Dominance Problem
When brands first adopt retail media, the entry point is almost always sponsored products — essentially paid search within the retailer’s platform. These campaigns are easy to implement, clearly attributable, and deliver strong ROAS numbers that look good in performance dashboards. The problem: sponsored product campaigns primarily capture demand that already exists. They accelerate conversion of shoppers who were already likely to buy. Brands that only run sponsored products are leaving the upper funnel entirely to other channels — often less precise, more expensive, and less accountable than retail media could be.
What Full-Funnel Retail Media Looks Like
A full-funnel retail media strategy layers campaigns across different formats and objectives. Upper funnel: display advertising on-site and off-site using retailer audience data to reach new-to-category consumers, video formats for brand storytelling, CTV via Amazon Prime Video or Walmart’s streaming partnerships. Mid funnel: category-targeted search placements, branded landing pages on the retailer’s site, consideration campaigns targeting consumers who have browsed but not purchased, email and push notification campaigns through the retailer’s CRM. Lower funnel: sponsored product listings at the point of search, retargeting of cart abandoners, price-promotion placements for conversion-focused campaigns.
The Attribution Advantage of a Single Platform
The power of running campaigns across all three layers on a single platform is attribution coherence. When you run upper-funnel display and lower-funnel sponsored products through the same retailer, you can measure the contribution of brand exposure to downstream conversion — exposing a consumer to a brand video on a Tuesday and a sponsored product to the same consumer on Thursday, with a purchase on Friday, all observable in one data environment. Start small, test across the funnel, and build toward an integrated model. Sponsored products alone will never be enough.