RETAIl
MEDIA
ALLOCATION
new
proprietary
research
How to allocate retail media budget
like an expert… across a dizzying array of options
by Kiri Masters and Matteo Bizon

A new model: allocation by funnel stage 6
Introduction 1
FOMO 2
Searching for an ‘ideal state’ for budget allocation 3
Challenges with current retail media allocation approaches 4
ROAS is a blunt instrument for measuring performance 5
A client example 9
Digital gets the scraps from traditional marketing channels
6
Retailers have their own agenda
5
Factors to consider 11
Limitations of this approach 12
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Test and learn 13
History repeats itself 16
What can brands do to combat this? 15
Comparing apples to oranges 14
Related work 16
About Bobsled, an Acadia Company 17

Introduction
It's your wedding day and you have the honor of pouring a champagne tower at a
wedding. The atmosphere is jovial but the guests are now waiting for a champagne toast.
You start to pour into the top glass in order to fill the rest like you know you’re supposed to
do.
But what about those glasses at the bottom… there just is not enough champagne to fill
those, if it all has to flow from the top.
Now your in-laws are starting to look at you in disapproval. What if they end up with an
empty glass?
The guests are getting impatient. You start to sweat. Whose glass do you fill first?
Most retail brands have significant resource constraints around their retail media
advertising strategy. Budgets are limited, and time and people resources are limited.
They don’t have enough champagne to fill all the glasses.
A second factor contributing to this crunch is the rising cost of advertising on Amazon,
which is generally the largest (and sometimes only) retail media channel that a brand
advertises on. Whether the goal is to grow market share or maintain profitability, most
brands need to look beyond Amazon advertising for future results.
And finally, within mid-market companies, in particular, all this responsibility is often
thrust on a small team (oftentimes a single person) who must become an expert on
media buying across a multitude of fast-evolving channels while meeting financial
objectives.
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FOMO
Retailers are launching media platforms at a faster clip than seen before. They each
promise great results and ways to reach net-new customers. On the surface, it’s always
great to have more options. But you can’t be everywhere at once! Each new media
platform requires time and budget. And there’s the risk that any given channel won’t
deliver.
With all the press and investment interest in retail media, executives are questioning
their marketing teams about these emerging platforms. Brands feel a sense of “FOMO”
(fear of missing out) if they don’t at least vet these new opportunities.
But mid-sized brands in particular don’t have huge armies of people on their ecommerce
teams that can assess, test, and properly manage all of these options.
“There’s a platform here, a platform there. How thin are you spreading yourself with all
these platforms?” - Research participant
Tactical tip
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And this paradox of choice will not go away
anytime soon - we expect there to be a greater
number of retail media options in the near
future, rather than less. While there may be
some consolidation in the highly competitive,
low-margin ultra-fast grocery delivery space,
there are still many retailers who have not
launched their own retail media platform or are
currently using a third party retail media
network (Criteo or CitrusAd, for example) but
might strike out on their own.
Cure the FOMO of execs who
want to expand to new channels
because of the media frenzy in
the space right now, by
resurfacing objectives. Where are
our customers shopping, and
what stage of the buying journey
do we want to be playing at, for
this particular product?

Tactical tip
Searching for an ‘ideal state’ for budget allocation
Our interviews with eCommerce and digital leaders from mid-sized retail brands
uncovered what an “ideal state” of retail media allocation would look like:
Focus on business strategy, rather than platforms. Brands don’t want to be beholden to
advertising platforms that can change on a dime, or become less relevant over time.
Design a fluid advertising budget that meets customers where they are at in their
journey and can move the budget where it is most efficient.
Be confident that the budget is being allocated where it will get the most “bang for your
buck”.
In our work at Bobsled, an Acadia company, the report authors hear concerns first-hand
from clients who are selling and advertising on Amazon, Walmart, Instacart, and Target
(our existing retail advertising managed services). Discussions around how much budget
to allocate to a given channel or strategy can become circular, for the challenges
mentioned elsewhere in this report.
Anticipating a future where our clients would have more advertising channel options
rather than fewer, we wanted to establish a framework that addressed the known issues
of the existing allocation models.
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In this white paper, we have
included many tactical tips,
located in these callout
boxes and checklists
throughout.
We interviewed and shared iterations of this model
with 9 mid-market brands to get a full picture of the
limitations and concerns.
While we are pleased with the basic message of our
recommendations and framework, it is just the
beginning of what we hope will become a more
nuanced conversation in the retail advertising
industry.

Tactical tip
It is the status quo for most companies.
It is easy to calculate. It allows a company to decide where to put more money
based on actual financial results.
It is easy to calculate (but as we explain below in the section “Apples and
Oranges”, there are flaws in comparing like metrics across platforms)
It can facilitate more consistent, predictable profit margins, as the cost of
advertising is ‘baked in’.
Challenges with current retail media allocation approaches
Our discussion with brands uncovered two main approaches to allocating media spend,
which did not meet the “ideal state” parameters.
1. Allocate by retailer or platform. The premise of this approach is to consider the
gross revenue that a given retailer or platform (such as Instacart) generates for the
brand as a percentage of overall revenue, and allocate a media budget that corresponds
with the revenue contribution. This is known as “top-down” allocation.
The benefits of this approach are:
The cons of this approach are that it is generally backward-looking, factoring in historical
revenue rather than future opportunities.
2. Allocate by metrics. The premise of this approach is to identify target metrics to
achieve (particularly profitability-oriented metrics like target ROAS) and allocate spend
to various channels or ad types based on over-performance or under-performance of
these metrics.
The benefits of this approach are:
If your company still has a siloed
shopper marketing team, take the
initiative to harness collaborators rather
than a team that you need to fight for
resources from. Shopper Marketers are
there to serve the customer, and many
are open to learning and pivoting to
digital channels. A podcast interview
with Julie Liu, National Manager of
Commerce Media at Ghirardelli
Chocolate Company, provides good
advice on this approach.
‘What we can learn from shopper marketing,’ Ecommerce Braintrust podcast, March 2022
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The cons of this approach are that the
target metrics can place an upper limit on
growth. Unless item-level profitability is
the ultimate goal of the company, focusing
on ROAS as a top priority will limit sales
growth and market share growth.
We cover further issues with these two
approaches below.

It creates a catch-22 effect. eCommerce receives a smaller budget because it has
historically been a more nascent channel. Only allocating digital channels a
percentage of their past sales keeps those channels small. It accounts only for a
rear-view of past performance, not a forward-looking view of future growth.
It doesn’t account for changing shopping behaviors. Consumers are browsing and
buying across many more channels than in the past, but a top-down approach
presupposes a type of channel loyalty that may not exist in the future. As one brand
told us, “Our customers buy (our brand) anywhere. They're loyal to the brand for the
most part, but not necessarily loyal to the platform they're buying on.”
A trade-based budget does not account for platforms that are not built around the
traditional retailer ecosystem. Sales from Instacart, for example, cannot be
attributed to a specific retailer. This model is also inflexible around re-allocating the
budget to other channels.
ROAS is a blunt instrument for measuring performance
In our work with brands, we often see ROAS mistakenly used as a catch-all measure of
success. Data from ad-tech solution Pacvue say that more than 90% of campaigns use
ROAS as the target goal.
And our own past research into “Amazon Maturity” found that 61% of brands whose
primary objective is to grow market share, actually had ROAS or ACoS as a key
performance metric.
But ROAS is not an appropriate measure of success if growth (e.g. topline sales growth,
market share growth, etc) is the primary objective. Reaching broader audiences and
targeting high-volume keywords are two growth strategies that generally command a
lower ROAS than using long-tail keywords, or brand keywords. The latter may produce
an attractive ROAS, but you’re unlikely to be actually growing your customer base with
those strategies.
“There's so much pressure on marketing dollars to show discernible results quickly. That's
why Amazon is so successful.” - Research participant
Digital gets the scraps from traditional marketing channels
For many established consumer brands, eCommerce or digital ad budget is acquired by
begging, borrowing, or stealing from other traditional marketing channels like shopper
marketing, and trade marketing. That history creates many issues for brands today.
“Our budget for retail media comes from the trade marketing budget, and is a
percentage of total sales - the better the results, the more budget for the next time
period.” Research participant
The issues with this “top-down” approach are:
The Amazon Maturity Matrix, Bobsled Marketing, January 2022
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For example, brands that were limited to only allocating spending to existing retail
accounts generally missed the opportunities that Instacart offered for early adopters.
In an environment where consumers are still switching which channels they use for
browsing and purchasing, a forward-looking view is needed - one that accounts for a
brand’s goals, not just past performance.
Retailers have their own agenda
Retailers set their own agenda in the data provided to advertisers. Media platforms want
to encourage increased spending on advertising. So the metrics are specifically chosen
to show where advertisers should be spending more: on new advertising types, at
different stages of the buyer journey, etc.
One example is Instacart, which does not share retailer-level advertising or sales data.
Despite this being incredibly valuable data for advertisers - who could then see which
retailers are benefitting from their ad spend, and how Instacart is contributing to the
Purchase Orders they are filling for each retailer, it is not in Instacart’s interest to share
this information with advertisers.
A new model: allocation by funnel stage
Our view is that the current top-down and metric-driven models of allocating retail
media budgets are flawed.
In a world where the number of available advertising channels is expanding rapidly, our
thesis is that brands should allocate retail media budgets by funnel stage, not by
platform.
The marketing funnel identifies the mechanisms used to drive certain outcomes in the
process of a shopper buying your product: awareness, engagement, and ultimately a
transaction.
When we map out the total retail media landscape, we can see that there are ad types
and targeting types that help to drive these specific outcomes. There is an ad type for
every conceivable goal for a brand, and each ad type is generally suited to produce
results in a very specific stage of the marketing funnel. The current top-down or metric-
driven models generally obscure that fact.
Rather than build an advertising strategy and scorecard around each retail platform,
brands should be building a strategy around what objective they are hoping to achieve.
The objective could be at the brand or company level (e.g. maintain a certain
contribution margin for the whole brand), at the product set level (e.g. drive market
share for a new sub-brand), at the retailer level (e.g. grow category share at Kroger).
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By identifying the objective of the brand or products in question (at its simplest, growth
or profitability), advertising campaigns can be set up with ad types that support the
objective at that time. Retail media can locate the shopper and meet them on their
purchase journey - whether at the start or the end.
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Tactical tip
Serving ads to shoppers at the start of their journey, in the ‘awareness’ stage, generally
fits brands or product sub-sets with a growth objective. The ad types used at this stage
are often impression-based ad types. In terms of targeting, these ad types allow the
advertiser to target an audience by their interests, demographics, or shopping behavior.
Or for keyword-driven ad types, they may be targeting very broad keywords. For
example, if a brand sells ready-to-drink protein shakes, a very broad keyword might be
“protein shakes” - it is relevant to the product but broad enough to attract a wide
audience.
Serving ads to shoppers closer to the end of their journey, before the actual purchase,
generally suits brands or product sub-sets with a profitability objective. The ad types
used at this stage are often pay-per-click ad units, where more specific keywords are
targeted. Using our protein shake example, a keyword aimed at conversion would be
“50-gram rtd protein shake”, which is much more specific and long-tail because it
describes exactly the product and it coincides with what users are searching for, thus
increasing dramatically the probability of the sale.
In today’s complex retail media landscape, brands run the risk of being overwhelmed by
the amount of available data and the different metrics being reported by each platform.
This can result in losing focus when trying to assess the efficacy of our efforts in each
stage of the funnel. So we recommend re-focusing on the core digital marketing KPIs.
Present your marketing budget to
execs in the context of your goals and
strategy for the year. Present four
buckets of goals: true awareness,
consideration, trial, and then below
that funnel line is loyalty. Then put
each tactic and the percentage of
budget there, showing the allocation of
budget based on brand goals.
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The initial focus was to set up ads only for the stages of consideration, purchase, and
loyalty. As such, there is very little ad spend for the awareness stage. Given the minimal
data for this stage, the following analysis excludes it.
When the raw data is split out by platform (table below), you may notice that spend is
currently distributed in a way that prioritizes Instacart and Walmart - given the
extremely positive levels of ROAS - while Amazon receives fewer resources.
A client example
We implemented this framework for one of our CPG clients, a snack food brand that
currently sells and advertises on 3 platforms: Amazon (PPC), Instacart, and Walmart.
All the active campaigns were segmented into the different stages of the funnel
according to our framework and the data was then aggregated at the platform level.
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It helps brands have a clearer understanding of the investment going into each
stage of the funnel. This quantifies the alignment between the brand’s strategic
goals and their actual implementation through advertising at the macro level. In this
example, our client is a well-known brand: we can see that a considerable
percentage of the total retail media budget is going to protect the brand from
competitors and to driving repurchases.
It helps brands set the right expectations in terms of profitability for each stage
of the funnel. In this scenario as well as in most cases, the consideration stage is
less profitable overall compared to bottom-of-the-funnel stages like purchase and
brand defense.
It helps brands assess the efficiency of their advertising efforts compared to
their strategic goals at a more granular level. In this case, the consideration stage
consists of a larger budget going to Instacart advertising because of the higher ROAS
it offers. However, since the main KPI for the consideration stage is clicks, the
priority would be to assign an additional budget to Amazon PPC and Walmart
consideration campaigns with the goal of increasing the number of people that pass
through the consideration phase in the most cost-effective way. This, in turn, will
fuel the subsequent purchase stage, with conversion being possible on a different
platform where the cost per conversion is lower.
This view is very useful for several reasons.
While this view is simple to calculate and may initially appear to contain the most salient
information to evaluate the platforms we are selling and advertising on, in reality, it fails
to provide extremely important insights. We believe that this approach is not accurate
and it might lead to a potential misallocation of resources.
The below segmentation uses our proposed funnel stage framework, whereby the spend
is broken down first by the stage of the funnel and secondly based on the platform.
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1. Maturity of category. John Denny, VP of eCommerce & Digital Marketing at CAVU
ventures, is a house of CPG brands like Beyond Meat, Oatly, and Whoop. These brands
have created their own categories, requiring huge investment in educating consumers.
As such, Denny allocates ad spend for these brands almost exclusively to top-of-funnel
initiatives.
2. Maturity of product within the competitive set. Brands trying to capture market
share also generally need to focus on top-of-funnel tactics, but perhaps also adding
some lower-funnel competitor conquesting. Compare this with an established brand
that’s got household recognition, which may instead focus more on defending their
brand search terms.
3. Size of company. Challenger brands and startups which don’t yet have brand
recognition often need to focus on building brand awareness.
4. Product performance in the catalog. ‘Hero’ SKUs may tend to attract more upper-
funnel ad spend because they have been proven, performers. However, they may have
originally been benefactors of upper-funnel spend - compared with average performers
who only receive lower-funnel investment - so it is important to understand if the tail is
wagging the dog.
5. Size of catalog. Firstly, Brands with very large assortments have an added challenge
of complexity in designing a strategy and tracking performance with the above factors in
mind. These brands in particular have a great need for robust digital shelf analytics
software that can track market share dynamically across the market. Secondly, having a
product-based strategy across a large assortment can create operational drag. One CPG
brand we spoke with has a large catalog of grocery products, where only one product
has a conquesting strategy due to it being a direct substitute for a household-name
brand. But no other product in the catalog has a conquesting strategy. Carving out a
unique strategy and reporting on this one product creates some inefficiency. One
solution here is ad-tech software like Pacvue that allows advertisers to assign tags to
different campaigns & portfolios, so you can track advertising performance by strategy.
This is particularly helpful for larger catalogs.
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Tactical tip
Create a matrix across your product
assortment by product maturity,
differentiation in market, profitability, etc.
Understand which products need a growth
or profitability strategy. One respondent
shared how this works for their brand on
Amazon: “Some products may or may not
be sold on Amazon, some that are ripe for
growth on Amazon. And some products
that we pretty much go dark on and don’t
invest in growth.”
Factors to consider
Rarely will a brand have a universal,
clearly defined profitability or growth
objective that applies to all products,
retailers, and markets. The reality is
often much more complicated, which is
where the “art” component of the art
and science of advertising comes into
play.
The following factors may impact which
stage of the funnel to target with
advertising.

Being last in line. Established consumer brands often have entrenched budget
allocation processes and are driven by the existing Brand, Trade Marketing, and
Shopper Marketing functions. Digital and eCommerce are less proven channels by
comparison, and may be the last ‘glass’ to be filled, or need to fight to trade, brand, or
shopper marketing to be carved out to them.
Availability of data from each platform. Some retail media platforms simply have
inferior data availability or they choose to make more sophisticated reporting
available only to a subset of advertisers. For example, Instacart segments advertisers
into different reporting tiers based on the percentage of invested dollars compared to
the generated revenue, which gives an advantage to advertisers willing to spend more
on the platform. Platforms can also change reported metrics over time. Instacart
recently changed the way impressions are calculated by switching from served
impressions to viewable impressions, which greatly affected the overall numbers and
made historical comparisons much more difficult.
Attribution and reporting consistency. There is a large discrepancy between how
various retailers approach things like attribution windows and CPC auctions, which
can lead to significant variations in stated performance. See the section ‘apples and
oranges’ below.
Overhead vs volume. A surge in the number of retailers offering a media opportunity
means more potential fragmentation of spend. Smaller retailers may only be able to
offer a small audience (volume). But they still require a similar amount of oversight as
a large-volume channel. Similar to the world of (non-retail) display media, there are
hundreds or even thousands of places to invest, but few have a critical mass which is
why Google and The Trade Desk consolidated the market so well. What this means is
that many brands (particularly mid-market brands) may need to limit the number of
retailers that they actively advertise on.
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Make sure to set appropriate goals for your
Make sure to set appropriate goals for your
Make sure to set appropriate goals for your
brand or product lines based on maturity
brand or product lines based on maturity
brand or product lines based on maturity
and focus not only on ROAS, but on the
and focus not only on ROAS, but on the
and focus not only on ROAS, but on the
true KPIs for the different stages of the
true KPIs for the different stages of the
true KPIs for the different stages of the
funnel: impressions for awareness, clicks
funnel: impressions for awareness, clicks
funnel: impressions for awareness, clicks
for consideration, and conversions for
for consideration, and conversions for
for consideration, and conversions for
purchase.
purchase.
purchase.
Be wary of focusing on a total blended
Be wary of focusing on a total blended
Be wary of focusing on a total blended
ROAS across all products. Break
ROAS across all products. Break
ROAS across all products. Break
assortment into categories - “grow or
assortment into categories - “grow or
assortment into categories - “grow or
hold,” as one brand says - and allocate
hold,” as one brand says - and allocate
hold,” as one brand says - and allocate
unique ROAS goals to each.
unique ROAS goals to each.
unique ROAS goals to each.
Organizational silos. Especially within
larger companies, there can be a lack of
intelligence-sharing which would
otherwise benefit retail media
advertising. Past keyword performance
and creative assets are two significant
assets that can deliver huge returns in
efficiency and effectiveness. At best,
this could be due to laziness or
ignorance about the benefits of doing
so; at worst it can be vindictive and
territorial.
Limitations of this approach
While allocating ad spend by funnel stage
rather than by retailer may be intuitively
logical, there are some real-world
limitations that practitioners need to
navigate.
Tactical tip

Ad types transcending funnel stages. Some ad types are applicable to more than
one stage of the marketing funnel. Amazon’s shoppable OTT (over the top) video ads
for example can be used for lower funnel, mid, and upper-funnel tactics.
Shopping behaviors change around shopping events. The Cyber Five, Prime Day,
and Christmas shopping periods all have a tendency to skew the traditional shopping
funnel. Shoppers may start browsing and researching weeks ahead of when they
plan to ultimately make a purchase, making lower-funnel advertising campaigns
appear to perform poorly in the weeks leading up to an event, then perform
extremely during the event.
Retailer JBPs, mandated budgets, and getting on the radar. One edge case we
heard was a brand buying retail media not with a growth or profitability target in
mind, but to pique the interest of a buyer at a major retailer. Similarly, some brands
may be required to spend a certain budget each year as part of a JBP (joint business
pilot) or under their vendor agreement.
Test and learn
Creating, protecting, and actually using a test-
and-learn budget was a key strategy used by the
savviest brands we spoke with.
Brands that test new ad types can get a serious
edge. Data from Pacvue say that % spend of new
ad types is typically 4% within the first 3 months
(of the ad type being launched). Based on total
sales, advertisers that adopt new ad types within
the first 3 months typically see 8% greater total
sales than those who do not.
Tests don’t always go to plan, and it is important to allocate an amount that
everyone can stomach losing. But remember that a failure can be as instructive as a
success, in terms of lessons for the future. The key to protecting this budget is to
have a mechanism to learn from mistakes and convert those lessons into pattern
recognition, such as a post-mortem report that is shared with executives.
Having a certain percentage of your total ad budget allocated to testing new initiatives is
critical, especially for brands who have their ad budgets locked in each year. Digital
marketing, and particularly retail media, is changing much more rapidly than an annual
budget cycle.
Here are some best practices around test-and-learn from our client work and research
participants.
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Create an executive report that
keeps stakeholders engaged and
on-side. Be proactive in breaking
down organizational silos by
sharing what you’re learning and
what resources you can share
with counterparts.
Tactical tip

Some retail media platforms require a minimum investment which may eat
significantly into your test budget. This forces conviction in testing an idea, and
might not be such a bad thing. As one respondent said, “Always find out where your
consumer is, and then place some investment dollars that allow you to truly learn
something. Spreading out an inch deep and a mile wide is not going to allow you to
learn anything.”
Put your own biases to the side. One CPG brand we spoke with was skeptical of
TikTok as a channel, believing that their target customer would not be engaging with
food brands there. They ran a small test and saw very strong traffic and conversions
on their DTC site.
Pay close attention to whether you can spend the budget. In some cases, brands
have not been able to spend the allocated budget because of small audience size.
That’s definitely a signal about the potential of the channel for your brand.
If you’re new to test & learn budgets, start with 10% of your advertising budget. It's
an arbitrary but time-tested amount that most brands can afford to lose in
immediate ROI. If a test proves successful, move that future spend into the
business-as-usual budget in the next budget cycle, so that the future test-and-learn
budget is maintained for new and unproven experiments only.
Comparing apples to oranges
Each platform has strengths and weaknesses in serving different stages of the buying
journey, or in terms of the customer avatar. The key for brands is to understand the “Job
to be done” of each channel, relative to their brand or product objectives.
As one of our research participants posited:
“Brands need to understand the role of each of the platforms, and their strengths and
weaknesses. For example, Amazon is the platform where you go to invest when you want
high reach and awareness. Instacart is somewhere where you go when you want to drive
more immediate returns. Walmart is somewhere where you go when you need to drive
incrementality with new buyers, given their reach in the US.”
This view aligns with our marketing funnel allocation philosophy. Retailers may have
different shopper demographics, and they have specific mechanisms for reaching those
shoppers through ad types. This diversity may initially be overwhelming, but it does
create fertile ground for a great variety of approaches if a brand is willing to use different
ad types across retailers.
And the majority of brands are willing to do this. According to Insider Intelligence,
nearly 88% of brands have used at least three or more retail media networks.
But one challenge in working with multiple retail media networks is impossible to ignore:
that definitions of key metrics are not standard across retailers.
Insider Intelligence, Retail Media Networks Perception Benchmark, March 2022
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Tactical tip
While these metrics are incredibly useful to perform a deep dive into your results of the
specific platform, the main data used for channel comparison should consist of the core
digital advertising KPIs based on the stage of the funnel: impressions for awareness,
clicks for consideration, and orders for the purchase and loyalty stages of the funnel.
2. Standardize internal reporting to accommodate differentials. If we are a Seller on
Amazon and we have two campaigns running, one being a Sponsored Products
campaign and the other one being a Sponsored Display campaign, we need to take into
account that Sponsored Products campaigns have a 7-day attribution window for
Sellers, while Sponsored Display campaigns have a standard 14-day attribution window.
This means that we need to wait until the longest attribution window has closed (that of
the Sponsored Display campaign) before comparing the performance between the two
campaigns.
*Please note that for Walmart we are listing the current characteristics, but the platform has
announced it will be switching to a 2nd price auction later in 2022.
“Search gives us some language that we believe is common to these platforms. But when
you scratch below the surface, they are not equal.“ Research participant
Our comparison chart of ad calls by the retailer shows that each channel calculates key
metrics differently, as well as having different attribution windows. The outcome is that
results across channels can be impossible to compare like-for-like.
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Try to look at results over a
longer timeframe. Learnings
can’t be gained in weeks, in
no small part due to the
attribution windows of most
ad campaigns.
What can brands do to combat this?
There are two main solutions that can be of help to
overcome this challenge and achieve solid and accurate
reporting across different retail media platforms.
1. Focus on universal KPIs. Each platform has a
different set of metrics being available: for example, on
Amazon DSP you can track the percentage of Subscribe
& Save orders deriving from your advertising efforts,
whereas this is not possible with Amazon PPC
campaigns.

The Amazon Maturity Matrix: 6 factors that drive results on Amazon. Many of the
drivers of success on Amazon are internal, organizational factors. The Amazon
Maturity Matrix is a framework that helps brands to measure where they are on their
Amazon journey, from the inside out. (Bobsled)
Measure what matters: selecting the right advertising KPIs for Instacart
advertising. A framework for prioritizing KPIs around the main objectives of growth
and profitability. (Bobsled)
SHEARED: Shedding your coat of corporate conformity in the age of eCommerce.
A roadmap for ecommerce and digital practitioners to advocate for change within
their organizations. (FirstMovr)
Retail Media Network 2022 Perception Report. Insider Intelligence’s first
benchmarking report of retail media networks. (Insider Intelligence)
History repeats itself
Besides the retail media moment we are in now, there are corollaries in other areas of
the media industry.
Jared Belsky, the co-founder of Acadia and the former CEO of 360i, has seen budget
allocation play out over the last two decades across different media landscapes. The
industry went from media by medium (TV vs. Radio) to Media by Publisher (google vs.
CNN), eventually to a vastly aggregated landscape where the top publishers like Google
and The Trade Desk command the greatest share of media inventory.
Today, the retail media industry is far from consolidated. While Amazon has the lion’s
share of media spend, we anticipate many more retailers to launch ad platforms in the
coming years. There will be many more advertising opportunities to navigate before
there are less. While we anticipate technology catching up to manage the more arduous
aspects of allocating budgets across retailers, there is no substitute for strategy and
insight that is developed through years of pattern recognition. Roll up your sleeves, and
embrace the opportunity to shape the future.
Related work
We would like to thank the ecommerce and digital leaders who gave their time and
experience so generously, as interviewees and readers of early drafts. Thanks also to
our ad-tech partner Pacvue for providing data points.
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About Bobsled, an Acadia Company
Bobsled is a digital marketing agency with years of proven results and experience in
helping brands scale on Amazon, Walmart, and Instacart. With hundreds of brands
successfully managed on these retail marketplaces and millions of dollars in monthly ad
spend under management, every action taken is carefully calculated to achieve one
goal: maximizing clients’ return on their marketplace investment.
We focus on providing clients with the four essential components of a successful
marketplace strategy: operational excellence, brand protection, organic marketing, and
paid advertising.
In 2022, we became part of Acadia, a next-generation digital agency serving mid-market
brands. The partnership gives our clients access to best-in-class SEO, paid media,
social media, analytics, and web development experts.
To learn more about our services, you can visit us at www.bobsledmarketing.com
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