Executive Summary
Retail media has become the fastest-growing segment of digital advertising. According to eMarketer (2024), retail media ad spend in North America is projected to surpass $60 billion USD by 2025, accounting for more than one in five digital ad dollars.
As retail media investments scale, brands are realizing that campaign performance isn’t determined solely by bids and targeting—it’s equally shaped by the quality of the product content that sits behind each ad.
Research from Profitero’s The Content Advantage 2023 shows that optimized product detail pages (PDPs) deliver higher visibility and conversion, directly improving return on ad spend (ROAS). Both Amazon Ads and Walmart Connect publicly confirm that richer, more complete listings perform better across organic and paid placements.
The conclusion is clear: in retail media, content is not a creative exercise—it’s a performance driver.
1. Content Quality as a Performance Variable
Retail media performance depends on two forces: visibility and conversion. Paid placements secure visibility, but it’s content that converts.
Amazon’s own data shows that listings featuring A+ Content can increase sales by an average of 5–20 percent compared to basic listings (Amazon Ads A+ Content Overview, 2023). Similarly, Walmart Connect’s Retail Media Effectiveness Report (2023) found that products with rich imagery and video generated 2–3 times higher engagement rates than static listings.
These improvements translate directly into more efficient media spend: stronger click-through and conversion rates reduce cost per acquisition and raise ROAS.
2. The Three Dimensions of High-Performance Content
a. Discoverability: The SEO-to-Media Bridge
Product copy and metadata influence both organic ranking and ad relevance. Amazon’s A9 and Walmart’s search algorithms favor listings with well-structured, keyword-rich titles and bullet points.
Profitero (2023) found that products optimized around a unified keyword taxonomy achieved up to 28 percent greater share of search visibility compared with non-optimized peers.
For CPG brands, aligning retail media keyword strategy with on-page content ensures that advertising dollars amplify, rather than duplicate, organic discoverability.
Practical Steps:
- Base ad bidding strategies on the same core keyword sets used in PDP copy.
- Refresh language quarterly to reflect trending search behavior.
- Localize phrasing for Canadian shoppers (“4 L” vs. “1 gallon,” “crisps” vs. “chips”).
b. Conversion: Building Confidence Through Rich Media
High-quality imagery and storytelling convert browsers into buyers. Walmart Connect’s 2023 report showed that PDPs containing video or interactive imagery achieved 1.7× higher add-to-cart rates. Amazon’s Brand Success Metrics (2023) similarly highlighted that listings using lifestyle images—showing products in context—drove up to 40 percent higher conversion than product-only shots.
Content that communicates value, functionality, and fit creates the trust required to close the sale, especially in low-differentiation CPG categories.
Checklist for Conversion-Focused Content:
- Six or more high-resolution images, including at least one lifestyle photo.
- Concise, scannable bullets that highlight functional benefits.
- A+ Content modules describing usage or formulation details.
- Consistent creative between ads and PDPs to reinforce brand continuity.
c. Consistency: Synchronizing Across Retailers
As retail media spend expands across Amazon, Walmart, Instacart, and Loblaws, inconsistency in product content becomes a silent performance killer. Profitero’s benchmarking shows that brands maintaining consistent titles, imagery, and attributes across retailers capture 15–25 percent higher average share of shelf.
Consistency simplifies measurement, strengthens brand recognition, and signals reliability to both algorithms and shoppers.
Operational Tactics:
- Centralize digital-shelf assets in a shared taxonomy system.
- Conduct quarterly content audits across all retailers.
- Apply retailer-specific adjustments (dimensions, compliance wording) on top of standardized core content.
3. How Content Fuels Optimization
Beyond conversion impact, strong content improves how automation engines work.
Retail media management tools such as Pacvue and Skai ingest PDP data—titles, categories, attributes—to optimize bidding and targeting. Incomplete or inconsistent content introduces noise into these systems, leading to wasted impressions.
Brands with clean, structured PDP data enable more accurate audience modeling and bid efficiency. As AI-driven optimization expands, content integrity becomes the foundation of automation accuracy.
4. The Organizational Shift
Traditionally, content has lived under e-commerce or brand teams, while retail media sits with marketing or shopper activation. This separation is increasingly inefficient.
According to McKinsey’s “Future of Retail Media” (2023), companies that integrate creative, data, and media functions into a single retail media operating model achieve 20–30 percent greater campaign efficiency than those running in silos.
Forward-looking CPGs are establishing Retail Media Centers of Excellence (COEs) that unite content, data science, and performance marketing. These teams manage a single source of truth for creative assets and measurement—allowing insights from content analytics to directly inform media optimization.
Case Example:
A global food manufacturer cited in WARC’s 2023 Retail Media Benchmark Report consolidated its content and media operations. Within six months, it reported double-digit improvement in return on ad spend without increasing budget—purely through better coordination of creative and media teams.
5. Implications for CPG Leaders
1. Reframe content as a performance lever, not a production cost.
Investment in content creation should be measured against its contribution to ROAS and share of digital shelf.
2. Unify content and media analytics.
Build dashboards that correlate PDP health scores with campaign metrics—CTR, conversion, ROAS—to quantify impact.
3. Institutionalize governance.
Establish content standards, approval workflows, and retailer-specific templates to maintain consistency at scale.
4. Select partners who bridge content and media expertise.
The most effective agencies combine creative optimization with platform fluency, ensuring that campaigns and PDPs work as one system.
Conclusion
The era of “retail media as advertising” is over; the next phase is “retail media as content performance.”
Amazon and Walmart continue to raise expectations for what constitutes a retail-ready product experience. Brands that align creative excellence with media precision will not only maximize ROAS but also future-proof their e-commerce strategy in a marketplace where every product page is a storefront.
Published by Commerce Media Agency, powered by geekspeak Commerce - combining two decades of ecommerce expertise with deep commerce media strategy and content execution capabilities.