Retail media across Amazon, Walmart, Instacart and the networks behind them.
We plan and run retail media for product brands: Amazon Ads, Walmart Connect, Instacart Ads, and other retailer networks such as Target's Roundel and Kroger Precision Marketing where your products are stocked.
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Retail media is advertising sold by a retailer, on its own site and app and increasingly off it, using its shopper data and measured against its own sales. Theory Road sells on Amazon through its own Professional Seller accounts with Brand Registry, so we treat retail media as part of marketplace operations, not a separate media line. Ads cannot fix a listing that is out of stock, losing the buy box or missing content, so we plan spend together with the retail basics and judge every network on incremental sales and margin, not the retailer's own ROAS.
Questions this page answers
- Retail media agency for a CPG or product brand
- How does Walmart Connect advertising work
- Instacart Ads for grocery and beverage brands
- Onsite vs offsite retail media
- What is closed-loop measurement in retail media
- How to split budget between Amazon, Walmart and other retail media networks
Where Retail Media pays off, and where it stalls.
Retail media networks sell ads using a retailer's shopper data. Onsite placements are the familiar ones: sponsored products in search results, sponsored brand banners and display on product and category pages, inside the retailer's site and app. Offsite placements use the retailer's audiences to buy ads elsewhere, on social, streaming TV and the open web, and measure them against the retailer's sales. Some networks also sell in-store screens. Amazon Ads is the largest and most self-serve. Walmart Connect covers sponsored search and display on Walmart plus offsite options. Instacart Ads places brands in grocery search and carts across many retailers. Target's Roundel, Kroger Precision Marketing and a growing list of other retailers run their own networks, with access rules and minimums that vary.
Where brands go wrong is treating each network as a separate budget with its own dashboard. Spend follows whichever account manager called last. Every retailer reports its own ROAS on its own attribution rules, so the numbers are not comparable and each takes credit for sales that would have happened anyway, often from shoppers already searching the brand name. Ads run on products that are out of stock, suppressed or losing the buy box. And nobody connects retail media to the rest of the plan, so a Walmart campaign and a Meta campaign chase the same shopper with no shared view.
We start with retail readiness: stock, pricing, content, reviews and buy box status at each retailer, because those decide whether ads can convert. Then we split budget by role. Branded defense stays efficient, non-branded category search is where new customers come from, and offsite and display are tested with clear holdouts. Closed-loop reports from each retailer are read for new-to-brand buyers and incremental sales rather than headline ROAS, and we compare retailers on the same terms, including total sales impact, so budget moves to where each dollar adds the most.
Feeds it
- Product catalog and content
- Retailer inventory and pricing
- Retailer shopper audiences
- First-party customer data
It feeds
- Sponsored search and display
- Offsite retailer audience campaigns
- Closed-loop sales reports
- New-to-brand results
- Cross-retailer scoreboard
Every connection is built on your accounts and documented, so the data survives any change of vendor.
Retail media advertising, scoped to the result.
Amazon Ads
Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display managed for margin and total sales, coordinated with our Amazon PPC and DSP work so structure and reporting stay consistent.
Walmart Connect
Sponsored search and display for Walmart Marketplace sellers and suppliers, keyword and item structure, bids, and coordination with Walmart listing content and stock.
Instacart and grocery networks
Instacart Ads for grocery, beverage and household brands, with product and keyword targeting, promotions and reporting by retailer where available.
Roundel, Kroger and other networks
Evaluation and buying on other retailer networks where you are stocked, working through each network's self-serve tools or managed teams as their access rules require.
Onsite and offsite planning
Budget split by role across sponsored search, display, offsite audiences and streaming TV, with frequency and overlap checks against your other paid media.
Closed-loop measurement
Reading each retailer's sales-linked reports for new-to-brand, halo and incremental sales, with holdout tests where networks support them and one cross-retailer scoreboard.
Where Retail Media setups break.
The problems we are most often hired to fix, in the order they tend to cost money.
Advertising on broken listings
Spend on items that are out of stock, suppressed, missing content or losing the buy box is wasted. Fix retail readiness first, and pause ads automatically when stock runs low.
Comparing ROAS across retailers
Each network uses its own attribution windows and rules. Headline ROAS is not comparable between them and flatters branded spend. Compare new-to-brand and incremental sales instead.
Paying for your own brand searches
Branded keywords report great returns because shoppers were already looking for you. Protect the brand where competitors bid on it, but judge growth on non-branded search and new customers.
Offsite spend with no holdout
Offsite retail media uses the retailer's data to buy ads elsewhere. Without a test, it is easy to pay twice for shoppers your own social and search campaigns already reach.
Retail Media, wired into the rest of the business.
Amazon Ads
Sponsored ads, reporting and new-to-brand metrics on Amazon.
Walmart Connect
Sponsored search, display and offsite campaigns tied to Walmart sales.
Instacart Ads
Sponsored product ads and promotions across Instacart retailers.
Roundel
Target's retail media network for brands whose products Target sells.
Kroger Precision Marketing
Kroger's media network, using its shopper data for onsite and offsite ads.
Amazon Marketing Cloud
Clean room analysis of Amazon ad exposure and purchase paths.
Looker Studio
Spend, sales and new-to-brand results across retailers in one view.
From audit to running it.
Audit.
We review stock, content, pricing and buy box status at each retailer, plus current retail media spend, structure and reporting, then set roles and targets by network.
Build.
We restructure campaigns by role, set branded and non-branded budgets, add stock and margin rules, and plan offsite tests with holdouts.
Connect.
Retailer reports, sales data and your other paid media feed one weekly scoreboard, with new-to-brand and incremental results beside spend.
Run or hand off.
We run the networks for you each month, working alongside your sales and category teams, or build the system and hand it off with training.
A good fit
- Product brands selling on Amazon, Walmart or through grocery and mass retailers that want retail media planned as one budget.
- CPG, food and beverage brands stocked at Instacart retailers, Kroger, Target or other networks.
- Brands whose retail team and marketing team need one set of numbers for retail ad spend.
- Sellers with healthy stock, content and pricing who are ready to grow beyond branded search.
Probably not a fit
- Brands not yet stocked at a retailer need distribution first; our US retail and distribution work covers that path.
- If your listings are out of stock, suppressed or losing the buy box, fix operations before adding spend.
- If you need an official partner badge from a specific retail network, hire one; we are independent.
Pricing, plainly.
Retail media is billed by each network: Amazon, Walmart and Instacart largely through self-serve consoles, and other networks through self-serve tools or managed programs that may carry minimum commitments. Those minimums and fees change and vary by network, so we confirm them before recommending where to spend rather than quoting them here. Our work starts with a fixed-scope audit of retail readiness and current retail media across your networks. Ongoing management is a monthly fee scoped to the number of networks and spend, month to month after an initial term. We do not take a percentage of retail sales and we do not mark up media.
Retail Media by business type.
- CPG brandsA CPG marketing agency for consumer packaged goods brands: Amazon 1P and 3P, Walmart, Target Plus, Instacart and retail media tied to velocity at shelf.
- Food and beverage brandsMarketing agency for food and beverage brands: Shopify sites built for reorders, Amazon and channel pricing, Klaviyo flows, review-site coverage and compliance.
- Supplement brandsA supplement marketing agency running Amazon and Shopify as one system: compliant claims, TIC testing, subscriptions, creators and paid media that hold margin.
- Beauty and skincare brandsA skincare marketing agency for beauty brands selling on Amazon, TikTok Shop and Shopify: creator content, MoCRA-aware claims, sampling and replenishment.
- Pet product brandsA pet product marketing agency for brands selling on Amazon, Chewy and Shopify: autoship, compliant pet food and supplement claims, and ads pet parents trust.
- Home and kitchen brandsHome goods marketing and Amazon agency work for home and kitchen brands: listings, bundles, Vine launches, Wayfair and Target Plus, Shopify and Q4 planning.
Reading on Retail Media.
- E-commerce · Takeaway
Amazon ACOS is ad spend divided by ad-attributed sales, and TACOS is ad spend divided by total sales, including organic.
E-commerce · 9 min read
Amazon ACOS vs TACOS: What a Good ACOS Is and How to Read Both.
ACOS tells you whether your ads pay for themselves. TACOS tells you whether the business is getting healthier. Here is how we set targets from margin and read the two numbers together on our own seller accounts.
Read - Paid Media · Takeaway
Sponsored Brands is a search ad that puts your logo, headline and several products or a video at the top of Amazon results, while Sponsored Display is an audience and product-page ad that follows shoppers on and off Amazon.
Paid Media · 10 min read
Amazon Sponsored Brands vs Sponsored Display: Where Each Fits.
Sponsored Brands wins the shelf at the top of search. Sponsored Display follows shoppers across product pages and off Amazon. Here is how each works, what it costs to run, and the order we fund them in.
Read - E-commerce · Takeaway
Amazon Marketing Cloud is a clean room where an advertiser writes SQL against event-level Amazon ad and conversion data and gets back only aggregated results that pass privacy thresholds.
E-commerce · 11 min read
Amazon Marketing Cloud: What It Is and the Queries Worth Running.
Amazon Marketing Cloud lets a brand ask its own questions of event-level Amazon ad and purchase data. It is powerful and easy to misuse. Here is how it works, the queries that pay, and how to tell if you are ready.
Read
Hiring help with Retail Media.
- What is a retail media network?
- It is an advertising business run by a retailer, selling ads on its own site and app and often offsite, using its shopper data and measuring results against its own sales. Amazon Ads, Walmart Connect, Instacart Ads, Target's Roundel and Kroger Precision Marketing are examples.
- What is the difference between onsite and offsite retail media?
- Onsite ads run inside the retailer's site or app, mostly sponsored products in search results and display on product and category pages. Offsite ads use the retailer's shopper audiences to buy placements on other sites, social platforms or streaming TV, and report the retailer sales that followed. Onsite sits closer to the purchase; offsite needs stronger testing.
- What does closed-loop measurement mean?
- The retailer connects ad exposure or clicks to purchases in its own sales data, online and, for some retailers, in stores through loyalty programs. That is more direct than most media measurement, but each retailer still grades its own ads, so we look at new-to-brand and incremental sales and run holdouts where possible.
- How does this relate to your Amazon and Walmart marketplace work?
- Retail media sits on top of marketplace operations. Our Amazon PPC, Amazon account management and Walmart Marketplace work covers listings, stock, pricing and the buy box, which decide whether ads convert. This page covers planning and measuring ad spend across all the retailers where you sell.
- Should we spend on Walmart or Instacart if Amazon is working?
- Often yes, when your products are stocked and competitive there, because those shoppers do not all shop on Amazon. We start with small, structured campaigns on each network, compare new-to-brand and incremental sales on the same terms and move budget toward the networks that add the most.
- Do we need to be a 1P vendor to use retail media?
- Not always. Amazon Ads and Walmart Connect are open to marketplace sellers as well as suppliers, subject to each program's eligibility rules. Other networks mainly serve brands whose products the retailer stocks, and some work through managed teams rather than self-serve tools.
Let’s get Retail Media working for you.
A short note on where the business is and where it needs to go. A senior partner replies within one business day.