Retail media has become a significant line item for CPG brands. Spend on Amazon, Walmart Connect, Instacart, and Loblaw Advance continues to climb, and for good reason. These platforms offer closed-loop measurement and the ability to reach shoppers at the point of purchase.
But more spend doesn’t always mean better results.
Over the past few years, we’ve audited retail media programs for brands of all sizes, from emerging players to some of Canada’s largest CPG companies. And while every brand is different, the same issues show up again and again.
Here are five of the most common problems we find, and what to do about them.
Key Takeaways
- • Brands often push media behind SKUs that aren’t set up to convert, burning budget on products with inventory issues, weak content, or poor ratings
- • Retail media campaigns built in isolation from product content lead to traffic that doesn’t convert
- • What works on Amazon doesn’t translate directly to Walmart, Instacart, or Loblaw, one-size-fits-all execution misses platform nuances
- • Under-leveraging retailer data and attribution models creates blind spots that limit growth
- • Campaign goals frequently disconnect from broader business priorities, leading to misallocated investment
Why Does Budget End Up Behind Underperforming SKUs?
This one’s simple but surprisingly common: brands push media dollars behind products that aren’t set up to convert.
Low inventory. Weak content. Poor ratings. Suppressed listings. When shoppers click through and find a product page that doesn’t instill confidence or worse, an out-of-stock message, that ad dollar is wasted.
We’ve seen campaigns where 30-40% of spend was going to SKUs that had no realistic chance of converting efficiently. The fix isn’t complicated: audit your catalog, flag what’s not retail-ready, and reallocate spend to products that can actually perform.
What good looks like: Media investment aligned to SKUs with strong content, solid ratings, and reliable inventory. A regular review cadence to catch issues before they drain budget.
Why Are Media and Content Strategies So Often Disconnected?
Retail media and product content are often managed by different teams, sometimes different agencies. The result is campaigns built in isolation from the product pages they’re driving traffic to.
We frequently find brands spending aggressively on sponsored products while their PDPs are underwhelming thin descriptions, low-quality images, missing attributes, incomplete A+ content. Traffic comes in, but it doesn’t convert.
Retail media amplifies whatever’s on the page. If the content isn’t doing its job, you’re paying to send shoppers to an experience that won’t close the sale.
What good looks like: Media and content strategies developed together. PDP audits before campaigns launch. A feedback loop where media performance informs content priorities.
What Happens When You Treat Every Retailer the Same?
Amazon is not Walmart. Walmart is not Instacart. Instacart is not Loblaw.
Each platform has different algorithms, different ad formats, different shopper behaviour, and different data. Yet we regularly see brands running near-identical strategies across all of them, same targeting, same budget splits, same KPIs.
What works on Amazon (where search intent is high and Prime drives conversion) may underperform on Instacart (where shoppers are building baskets for delivery windows) or Loblaw (where PC Optimum loyalty data changes the targeting equation).
What good looks like: Retailer-specific strategies that account for platform nuances. Separate performance benchmarks. Flexibility to shift budget based on where the opportunity is.
Why Do So Many Brands Under-Leverage Their Data?
Retail media platforms offer a wealth of data, but most brands aren’t using it fully.
Some aren’t pulling the reports at all. Others pull them but don’t act on the insights. And many lack proper attribution models, making it hard to understand what’s actually driving results versus what’s just along for the ride.
We often find brands optimizing to ROAS without understanding incrementality, which means they may be paying for sales that would have happened organically. Or they’re missing signals in the data that could unlock better performance: dayparting opportunities, keyword gaps, audience segments that over-index.
What good looks like: A clear measurement framework. Regular reporting that goes beyond topline ROAS. Attribution models that help distinguish correlation from causation.
What Happens When Campaign Goals Don’t Match Business Priorities?
This is the strategic miss that underlies many of the tactical ones.
We’ve seen brands invest heavily in awareness campaigns when what the business actually needs is velocity. We’ve seen others pour budget into branded search, protecting terms they already own while losing share on category and competitor keywords.
Retail media should be tied to what the business is trying to achieve: launch support, market share growth, category expansion, trade promotion amplification. When campaign goals don’t match business priorities, even well-executed media can feel like it’s not moving the needle.
What good looks like: Media strategy that starts with business objectives, not platform defaults. Regular alignment between ecommerce, brand, and sales teams. Willingness to shift investment as priorities evolve.
The Bottom Line
None of these issues are fatal but left unchecked, they compound. Budget leaks. Performance plateaus. And brands start to question whether retail media is worth the investment.
It is, when it’s done right.
If any of this sounds familiar, it might be time for a fresh set of eyes. We’ll take a look at your current campaigns, identify the gaps, and show you where the opportunities are.
Get in touch → commercemediaagency.co
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Published by Commerce Media Agency, powered by geekspeak Commerce - combining two decades of ecommerce expertise with deep commerce media strategy and content execution capabilities.