As consumer expectations evolve faster than most brands can adapt, retail leaders have arrived at a critical inflection point: stay trapped in siloed media strategies or bring together the shopper journey into something measurable, scalable and built for the omnichannel age.
Shoppers expect more than a transaction; they demand immersive, instantaneous experiences where brand, content and commerce flow seamlessly. In this environment, offsite media – search, social and display advertising – must evolve from being simply a cost centre for impressions into a performance engine that powers smarter commerce.
According to Brandon Nutter and Joshua Gebhardt, co-founders of industry-leading marketing tech platform Ampd, understanding how your offsite media is driving real retail outcomes is essential for brands that want to compete in the modern advertising landscape.
Sky-high expectations
“Consumers are wanting a fast, seamless, delightful shopper journey,” Nutter explains. “They’re hanging out on social media and seeing products as they’re scrolling. And the expectation is that, as soon as they see it, they want to be able to click and buy, and don’t want to have to go through three or four steps in order to do that.”
Understanding and solving that need is vital, since any friction in that journey can have damaging, long-term consequences. “You can now lose that shopper, not just on that transaction, but for life,” says Nutter.
To align a brand with the fast-moving, fluid mindset of today’s shopper, advertising needs to keep pace with the speed at which people are consuming content, while enabling instant purchases along the way. What’s more, connecting that first spark of attention to the final conversion has to happen fast, otherwise brand trust and reputation goes down the drain.
The most successful companies in the world don’t just rely on having the best product; they have a superior go-to-market strategy, best-in-class advertising and a flawless customer experience to go with it.
“You don’t show the same shopper the same ten ads in two weeks. You make it so that they’re seeing new value props while you’re mixing up the creative. Not only that, you want to get the right creative and the right advertisements for the right audience,” says Nutter. “That’s where it starts to resonate.”
Spending wisely
So in a world where customer expectations are sky-high but marketing budgets are shrinking, how do brands determine where and how to allocate their investments, while giving consumers the experience they want?
“It’s no longer just a game of reach, impressions and eyeballs,” Gebhardt says. “While these metrics are important, “What if you knew exactly where people are buying, and how to turn browsers into buyers more effectively?”
A large consumer packaged goods brand might have 100 creatives across Meta Platforms and TikTok, but will have to wait six to eight months before they know which creatives are actually working. “By that time, your shopper is long gone, and the insight of how the experience resonated, with them,” Nutter says.
What if you knew exactly where people are buying, and how to turn browsers into buyers more effectively?
With a solution like Ampd, brands are able to clearly pinpoint which creatives are working with target audiences and amplify them, and remove budgets from media that has become wasted spend and delivered lower performance. “Ultimately, you’re able to retain and grow market share and at the same time have a really delightful shopper experience. This hasn’t been really done in such a transparently measurable way before,” explains Nutter.
According to Gebhardt, success here often comes about from close collaboration between the marketing and commerce or account teams, and – importantly – having the right technology in place to power the connection of offsite media to retail outcomes in real-time.
“You can actually start to say, ‘Let’s not waste money on these 30 creatives, because they’re not resonating with our customers that way. It’s wasted ad dollars,” Gebhardt says. “If you can understand which customer cohort is buying which product with which advertisement on which retailer, then – even if you have a small budget – it’s easy to double down on what’s actually working.”
Breaking down walls
Walled gardens are a major hurdle in today’s media landscape that can limit the effectiveness of offsite media. WIth giants like Meta restricting data access and hindering cross-platform measurement, brands often struggle to track campaign success, which can create blind spots that ultimately impact shopper journeys and conversion performance.
“What we’ve seen is that it’s been hard for brands and agencies to really scale advertising across these walled gardens,” says Nutter.
With Ampd, brands are able to connect offsite media demand to trusted retail destinations directly. Through connections between leading ad publishers like Meta, Google and Tiktok, and retailers like Amazon and Walmart, Ampd allows brands to supercharge conversion by leading high-intent shoppers to where they’re most likely to complete a purchase.
“If that walled garden comes down, you’re then serving your customer better and also making the best use of that budget,” Gebhardt says.
For example, case studies of A/B testing by Ampd customers showed twice the ‘add to cart’ success rate on Meta when ads sent shoppers directly to Amazon. Creatives with an ‘Available at Amazon’ call to action had a 2.3% click-through rate and a 16.3% ‘add to cart’ rate, compared with a 1.6% click-through rate and 8.4% ‘add to cart’ rate for ads without the same CTA.
To make the journey even more seamless for customers, Ampd also offers the ability to deep-link – ie sending shoppers from social to a specific page within a mobile app where they can quickly make a purchase. Testing of Ampd’s deep-linked ad solution from Meta to Amazon, which compared the same creative and budgets but with different landing experiences, resulted in 15.7 times higher ‘add to cart’ rates and 5.1 times higher conversion rates.
Building your brand
A never-ending challenge for many organisations continues to be how to divide budgets between brand and performance marketing. One method is focused on long-term awareness and trust, while the other favours immediate, measurable results – each with their own distinct priorities or differing approaches to measurement.
The hope, for Ampd’s founders, is a future where brand-building and performance marketing are one and the same. “As you’re building your brand, you’re going to understand which creative, which audiences and which messaging is going to be the best, and what better way to measure that than short-term and long-term sales?” says Nutter.
This real-time feedback loop can also drive more innovation, particularly when it comes to testing and iterating on future ad campaigns, as well as cementing long-term customer relationships.
Ampd’s platform also uses AI to power real-time attribution, journey mapping and performance optimisation, helping to streamline shopper pathways and improve retail outcomes across channels.
“The days of Mad Men are a thing of the past,” says Gebhardt. “You’re getting the people to tell you what they resonate with, and it’s helping inform your brand. It might even inform the next products you develop. So it’s not just a marketing tool, but a brand-building tool.”
Lifelong customers
The key to future-proof retail success lies in convergence and integration – from data pipelines, budget alignment and the various marketing factions themselves.
As Nutter sums up: “All marketing is going to be the same. It’s about making sure to get to the customer where they are at the right time, the right place and with the right product. That could happen through onsite retail or social. But either way, you need to have the opportunity to connect with your customer.
“We don’t really see the walled gardens. We see a collapsed shopping experience and a convergence of data that informs action. We just happen to be the technology and the vehicle to make this a reality.”
In the era of social commerce and AI, brands that can enrich their offsite media will be able to spend smarter by removing the guesswork from scattered clicks and impressions. Only when you streamline the shopper experience will you truly be able to optimise at speed and build stronger customer lifetime value.
A sidebar with Ampd
Meet the team pushing brands to rethink how they approach retail media advertising, Ampd’s co-founders: Joshua Gebhardt, CEO, and Brandon Nutter, CTO
BN: We’re trying to solve the issue of connecting the fragmented world of digital advertising, particularly the ‘walled gardens’. With Ampd, we enable marketers to measure and optimise ads across platforms like Amazon, Walmart, and social media. As consumer journeys become more complex, it’s crucial to help brands understand which ads are working and optimise them in real time, all while providing a seamless path to purchase.
JG: It’s hard because brands are managing customer interactions across so many different platforms – social, retail and direct – and each one operates in its own silo. The challenge is how to measure and optimise performance across all those different touchpoints. Ampd helps by breaking down those silos and allowing brands to track and optimise ads across multiple platforms in real time.
JG: What makes Ampd different is our ability to connect the walled gardens. We bridge the gap between social platforms and retail, which allows brands to track and optimise ads across both in real time. Unlike other platforms, Ampd offers the ability to measure retailer effectiveness immediately and allocate budgets more efficiently, helping brands spend where it truly matters.
BN: CMOs need to break out of silos and look at a brand holistically, as opposed to giving separate factions responsibility for commerce, media or brand-building. At the end of the day, you’re trying to move pallets and give a great experience for customers, and you need to work together.
JG: Consumers don’t live in those silos, they just move in and out, and around the internet. They want to shop and understand what they want to buy wherever they’re hanging out. They want the easiest path possible, and to do that you need to bridge those silos together and work as one unit. Though it’s easier said than done.
JG: Everything starts and ends with a shopper. What I would encourage brands to do is look at your Instagram or Tiktok feed and put your shopper hat on. Look at the ads, see what the experience is. If you’re not able to buy immediately, tell me you’re not frustrated as a shopper. The reason why we optimise, why we try to allocate budget, is really to provide a great experience. You’d be amazed by how many brands forget about that whole advertising-shopper experience.
BN: Looking ahead, we’re focused on expanding Ampd’s capabilities across more retail and media publishers. The goal is to continue innovating with AI, enabling even more personalised and efficient advertising. As retail media networks grow, we believe the future will be about unifying brand and retail budgets, allowing for a seamless approach to digital advertising that encompasses social, retail and in-store.
Transform your approach to retail media with Ampd.
As consumer expectations evolve faster than most brands can adapt, retail leaders have arrived at a critical inflection point: stay trapped in siloed media strategies or bring together the shopper journey into something measurable, scalable and built for the omnichannel age.
Shoppers expect more than a transaction; they demand immersive, instantaneous experiences where brand, content and commerce flow seamlessly. In this environment, offsite media – search, social and display advertising – must evolve from being simply a cost centre for impressions into a performance engine that powers smarter commerce.
According to Brandon Nutter and Joshua Gebhardt, co-founders of industry-leading marketing tech platform Ampd, understanding how your offsite media is driving real retail outcomes is essential for brands that want to compete in the modern advertising landscape.
