Five Steps To Full-Funnel Retail Media Measurement

Last updated: December 20, 2025

NOTE – The content of today’s post is taken from Skai’s Full-Funnel Retail Media Formula report. Download and read the full report today.

Achieving full-funnel retail media success requires more than just optimizing campaigns for specific metrics. A full-funnel strategy demands a measurement approach that captures the entire consumer journey—from initial awareness to post-purchase loyalty. 

But while solid measurement is incredibly important, it remains one of the toughest tasks. In fact, in our recent 2025 State of Retail Media report, difficulty proving investment incrementality is the most critical challenge to retail media investing. According to Mastercard/Forrester 2024, 65% of marketing leaders reported difficulty determining how to spend on RMNs to maximize ROI.

The following are five critical changes that marketing organizations need to embrace to realign their measurement approach for full-funnel retail media. These principles serve as a guide, helping brands create custom frameworks that align with their business goals and foster long-term growth.

Why is there no “silver bullet” for full-funnel retail media measurement?

• Because retailer ecosystems and business goals vary widely, measurement must be designed to fit your specific context.
• Tailor frameworks to your brand and retailers.
• Custom measurement beats templates: define business outcomes, pick metrics by funnel stage, and balance granular campaign signals with holistic behavior and brand health. Build a framework that can evolve as your product mix, retailer partners, and audiences change.

The notion that there is a single, universal methodology that works for every brand in full-funnel retail media is a misconception. Every organization must build its own approach, shaped by its product mix, market position, and customer base. This goes beyond choosing the right tools—it involves crafting a measurement strategy uniquely tailored to the brand’s business objectives and adaptable as those needs evolve.

Additionally, success in full-funnel measurement depends on balancing granular data with overall behavior data. Granular data, like ad performance or specific audience segment insights, is crucial for optimizing campaigns at a tactical level. However, this data must be paired with high-level behavior data, such as brand lift or total program success, to ensure both micro-optimizations and broader strategic goals are achieved.

By moving away from off-the-shelf solutions, brands can build adaptable measurement frameworks that grow alongside their marketing programs and future challenges.

Action items:

• Evaluate your brand’s unique needs to build a custom measurement approach.
• Balance granular data (e.g., ad performance) with overall behavior data (e.g., brand lift) for a holistic perspective.
• Work with a technology partner that allows for flexibility and customization in their measurement solution 

Why is incrementality considered the gold standard for full-funnel retail media measurement?

• Retail media happens in closed environments, so you need testing to separate true lift from what would have occurred organically.
• Prove true lift, not just attributed sales.
• Incrementality testing estimates the true lift from retail media by comparing exposed vs. control audiences, reducing over-crediting from organic sales and last-touch bias. It works inside retailer walled gardens and remains useful as cookies fade, supporting smarter budget allocation.

Incrementality has emerged as the gold standard for retail media measurement, largely due to the opaque nature of consumer behavior behind retailer walls. Traditional measurement methods often fall short in this space, but incrementality testing helps marketers determine the true lift driven by their media efforts in these closed environments. According to HBS 2024, experimental approaches are central to estimating incremental impact—and reusing learnings from past tests can strengthen lift estimation in complex marketing environments.

Retail media presents unique challenges—many ad impressions go unseen, and countless conversions happen organically without marketing touches. Incrementality isolates which campaigns genuinely drive additional sales, providing the clarity needed to assess the real impact of ad spend. A key consideration here is the debate between view-through vs. click-through attribution, especially when ads are served close to the point of sale on product pages or through branded search terms. The question of how many conversions would have occurred organically versus how many are truly incremental is always present. Testing these scenarios is difficult, as most retailers don’t offer native solutions for incrementality measurement, particularly for on-site ads.

Another crucial aspect is understanding the offline impact of on-site ad impressions, which is often overlooked. Incrementality not only helps provide a clear view of how retail media efforts influence hidden consumer behaviors but also future-proofs measurement strategies, as it doesn’t rely on cookies for attribution. For decision-makers in SVP and C-Suite roles, incrementality remains a vital metric to truly assess the effectiveness and ROI of their retail media investments.

Action items:

• Implement incrementality testing to measure the real impact of your retail media campaigns.
• Isolate campaign-specific contributions to avoid over-attribution in closed retail environments.
• Use these insights to optimize retail media strategies and refine budget allocation.

How do you merge fragmented data for a complete, future-proof measurement picture?

• Retail media performance signals live in multiple systems, so you need a harmonized data approach to evaluate the full journey.
• Break silos to build a unified view.
• To see full-funnel performance, unify campaign metrics with retailer clean-room outputs, first-party customer data, and digital shelf signals in a consistent schema. This reduces blind spots, supports privacy-compliant analysis, and lets you onboard new retail media networks without rebuilding reporting every time.

One of the most pressing challenges of retail media measurement is fragmented data. Campaign data, retailer backend data (e.g., Amazon Marketing Cloud), first-party data, and digital shelf analytics often exist in silos. To obtain a comprehensive view of full-funnel performance, these disparate datasets must be harmonized into a single, actionable measurement framework. According to the IAB/MRC Retail Media Measurement Guidelines (Jan 2024), strong measurement depends on consistent data collection, processing, and quality controls—making data harmonization a foundational requirement, not a “nice to have.”

Integrating fragmented data is also crucial for future-proofing your measurement strategy. With data privacy regulations tightening and new retail media networks emerging, brands need flexible measurement systems that can adapt to future changes. When data systems are set up to handle the merging of new sources, measurement becomes not only more accurate but also sustainable in the long term. When your workflows span multiple walled gardens and retailers, an omnichannel marketing platform can support cross-channel governance and unified reporting standards alongside retail-specific measurement needs.

Action items:

• Merge retailer backend data, like AMC, with first-party and campaign data for a unified view.
• Build a flexible system that can adapt to evolving data sources and privacy regulations.
• Ensure your data infrastructure is robust enough to evolve alongside new technologies and market needs.

What funnel-specific metrics should you use at every stage of retail media?

• Because each funnel stage has different intent, KPIs must change to match what “success” actually means in that moment.Use different KPIs for each funnel stage.
• Match KPIs to intent: optimize TOFU for reach and engagement, MOFU for consideration signals like add-to-cart and product-page depth, and BOFU for efficiency and revenue outcomes like ROAS and cost per conversion. Stage-appropriate metrics prevent misaligned goals and bad optimizations.

To succeed with full-funnel retail media, brands must move beyond blanket metrics applied across all stages of the funnel. For example, holding top-of-funnel (TOFU) awareness campaigns to bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) conversion metrics will lead to misaligned goals and poor optimization. Each stage of the funnel demands its own unique metrics, reflecting the distinct role it plays in the customer journey. According to NielsenIQ 2024, brands want timelier and more precise retail media measurement—reinforcing the need to align metrics and reporting to the specific decisions marketers must make at each stage.

At the top of the funnel, success is measured by metrics like reach, awareness, and engagement. In the middle of the funnel (MOFU), metrics should reflect consideration and intent, such as add-to-cart rates or time spent on product pages. Finally, at the bottom of the funnel, the focus shifts to conversion-driven metrics like ROAS, cost-per-conversion, and overall revenue impact.

Tailoring metrics to each stage ensures campaigns are evaluated fairly and optimized effectively, leading to improved performance across the consumer journey.

Action items:

• Align funnel stages with appropriate metrics: TOFU (awareness), MOFU (consideration), BOFU (conversions).
• Set clear goals for each campaign based on the specific funnel stage it targets.
• Regularly assess and refine funnel performance based on the metrics tied to each stage.

What’s the right measurement cadence: continual testing or campaign-level evaluation?

• To improve performance now and planning later, you need both in-flight learning and structured retrospectives.
• Balance real-time learning with strategic retrospectives.
• Continual testing keeps in-flight campaigns efficient through rapid tweaks to creative, bids, and targeting, while campaign-level evaluation explains what worked and why across the whole funnel. Running both creates a learning loop: fast optimization today and better planning and benchmarks tomorrow.

Measuring full-funnel success requires balancing ongoing optimization and detailed post-campaign evaluation. The best marketers strike a balance between continual, real-time test-and-learn strategies to optimize campaigns in flight and in-depth, campaign-level assessments to get smarter over time. Both approaches are critical to ensuring short-term agility and long-term success.

Continual testing allows brands to make real-time adjustments to creative, targeting, or bidding strategies, maximizing immediate campaign performance. In contrast, campaign-level evaluation provides a broader, strategic perspective on how well a campaign performed holistically and informs future initiatives.

Maintaining this balance between real-time optimization and post-campaign insights helps brands stay agile while also refining long-term strategies.

Action items:

• Implement a real-time test-and-learn approach for ongoing optimization.
• Conduct post-campaign evaluations to extract deeper insights for long-term strategy.
• Balance continual testing with strategic campaign assessments to ensure long-term growth.

Why does full-funnel retail media measurement require a team solution?

• Because measurement spans media execution, data engineering, analytics, and business outcomes, it only works when teams align on definitions and decisions.Make measurement a shared, cross-functional system.
• Full-funnel measurement needs cross-functional alignment: media teams define tactics, analytics and data teams unify sources, and business leaders set outcome priorities. When stakeholders agree on standards, testing plans, and reporting cadence, insights become actionable—turning retail media measurement into decisions that compound over time.

Mastering full-funnel retail media measurement is not about finding a universal solution but rather developing a customized approach that aligns with your brand’s unique goals and market dynamics. By focusing on building adaptable measurement frameworks, implementing incrementality testing, and merging fragmented data, brands can gain a clear and accurate understanding of their retail media performance. Tailoring metrics to each stage of the funnel and balancing real-time testing with strategic evaluations ensures that both short-term wins and long-term growth are achieved.

As retail media continues to evolve, staying ahead requires a proactive and flexible measurement strategy. By embracing these five critical steps, marketing organizations can not only prove the real impact of their investments but also drive smarter decision-making and sustained success. With the right approach, brands can transform their retail media efforts into powerful engines for growth, consistently delivering value throughout the entire consumer journey.

NOTE – The content of today’s post is taken from Skai’s Full-Funnel Retail Media Formula report. Download and read the full report today.