Mastering Full-Funnel Retail Media with Skai

Find Out How to Drive Retail Media Growth with Skai

Joshua Dreller

Sr. Director, Content Marketing @ Skai

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Summary

To master full-funnel retail media, businesses need a partner like Skai that offers innovation, performance focus, and flexibility. With over nearly 20 years of ad tech expertise, Skai integrates advanced automation, bidding intelligence, and analytics into a seamless retail media strategy. Success stories from brands like Haleon, Kellogg’s, and Michaels highlight how Skai’s platform delivers measurable growth, optimizes ad spend, and adapts to complex needs, ensuring effective full-funnel strategies for any brand or agency.

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.

If you want to successfully implement a full-funnel retail media strategy, you need a partner who understands the complexities of today’s landscape and has the foresight to prepare for future challenges. According to IAB 2025, retail media is expected to continue growing at a double-digit rate—raising the bar for always-on optimization, measurement, and cross-funnel execution.

Mastering the options of ad formats, placements, and networks isn’t just about having the right tools — it’s about having a platform that can flexibly integrate these elements into a cohesive plan. Skai is uniquely positioned to be that partner:

  • Legacy of innovation: over 18 years of building groundbreaking technology for advertisers, with an advanced approach to retail media (in addition to search and social).
  • Performance at the core: A relentless focus on growth and measurable outcomes.
  • Flexibility for any need: Accommodating your objectives with capabilities that put you in control.

Legacy of innovation

With over 18 years of experience building ad tech, Skai has consistently stayed ahead of the curve. We took an advanced approach with retail media, applying the automation, bidding intelligence, creative/asset management, and powerful analytics tools we developed for paid search and social advertising, ensuring our platform evolves with the industry. Our continuous focus on innovation means you have the most advanced tools at your fingertips, designed to meet the unique needs of full-funnel retail media.

Performance at the core

Performance is our number one priority. For two decades, we’ve been helping brands and agencies grow, ensuring that our platform is designed to drive results no matter the complexity of full-funnel retail media. We understand that the ultimate goal is growth, and our platform is built to optimize every aspect of your retail media strategy to deliver measurable outcomes.

Flexibility for any need

Skai’s platform is purpose-built to handle any full-funnel retail media approach. With over 100 retail media networks and dozens of integrations with popular industry tools and data solutions, we provide the flexibility needed to execute your preferred strategy. We recognize that every brand and agency is different, and our omnichannel platform is designed to accommodate every desired objective, ensuring that any marketer from any category and region can achieve their goals with Skai. According to Nielsen 2025, U.S. retail media is expected to grow much faster than the overall ad market in 2025—making scalable workflow and cross-funnel coordination a practical requirement, not a “nice to have.”

Definition: Full-funnel retail media is a marketing approach that uses retailer and marketplace media to reach shoppers across awareness, consideration, and conversion—coordinating formats, placements, and measurement so upper-funnel demand creation and lower-funnel sales activation work together as one system.

Micro-answer: Retail media that covers the entire journey.

 

How can you realize success with Skai?

  • Real success comes from repeatable full-funnel execution.
  • These examples show how automation, consolidation, and flexible control help teams scale retail media programs while protecting efficiency—so growth, ROAS, and new-to-brand outcomes improve together across formats, placements, and networks.

Skai’s commitment to adaptability, performance, and flexibility is demonstrated through our clients’ success stories. These case studies illustrate how mastering each element of full-funnel retail media leads to significant results.

Scaling Full-Funnel Success with Workflow Automation. Haleon, a global leader in consumer health, aimed to grow its multivitamin brand Centrum’s presence on Amazon in Mexico. Partnering with Publicis LeOne, they faced the challenge of efficiently managing a complex full-funnel strategy across Amazon DSP and always-on search campaigns.

Using Skai’s Advanced Automated Actions, the team automated the setup and optimization of campaigns, allowing them to scale their efforts without sacrificing performance. As a result, Haleon saw a 7% growth in order volume and a 156% increase in new-to-brand orders while reducing cost-per-order by more than 5%. According to McKinsey 2025, commerce media is reshaping how brands buy and optimize media—making integrated planning, closed-loop signals, and scalable operating models central to performance across the funnel.

Streamlining multi-platform operations. Vishvos and Happy Egg faced challenges managing separate budgets and platforms for their retail media advertising. By consolidating all their efforts under Skai, they streamlined their operations, achieving a 30% increase in revenue and a 10% increase in ROAS. This case highlights the importance of the integration of ad formats, placements, and networks to drive growth.

Customizable solutions for large-scale operations. A Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company needed more control over its retail media advertising than its external agency could provide. Transitioning to in-house management with Skai’s Expert Services, they leveraged tools like Budget Navigator and Competitive Insights, resulting in a 40% increase in ROAS and a 90% boost in attributed sales. This case underscores how each component of a full-funnel strategy can align with large-scale operational needs.

Optimizing performance across platforms. Kellogg’s required optimization across multiple retail platforms to enhance ad performance. Utilizing Skai’s comprehensive suite of tools, they gained data-driven insights that led to significant ROI and improvements in overall performance metrics. This example demonstrates the power of using every ad format and placement to maximize the impact of full-funnel marketing.

Effective ad spend management. In a highly competitive digital advertising environment, Domain faced high costs per acquisition. Implementing Skai’s powerful optimization insights and smart bidding tools reduced their acquisition cost by 84%. This success story highlights how mastering every aspect of your retail media approach can lead to more efficient and effective spending.

Driving growth despite budget constraints. Managing the Michaels account, Camelot needed to significantly lift ROAS despite stringent budget constraints. By applying Skai’s Budget Navigator and Custom Metrics, they achieved a 150% increase in ROAS. This case demonstrates that every component of your retail media can yield impressive results even with limited resources.

Is it time to think about full-funnel?

  • If you want durable growth, you need full-funnel coverage.
  • A full-funnel retail media strategy connects demand creation and demand capture—helping teams influence shoppers earlier, convert more efficiently later, and use consistent measurement to decide which formats, placements, and optimizations earn incremental budget across the journey.

A full-funnel retail media strategy is essential for brands looking to drive growth and efficiency in today’s competitive landscape. By engaging shoppers at every stage of their journey—from awareness to conversion—marketers can build stronger connections, influence purchase decisions, and ultimately boost sales. This holistic approach not only maximizes reach but also ensures that every marketing dollar is optimized, offering brands a distinct advantage in crowded marketplaces.

At Skai, we bring decades of expertise to full-funnel retail media, offering a platform that prioritizes innovation, performance, and flexibility. Our advanced technology helps brands navigate the complexities of retail media networks, automate workflows, and drive measurable outcomes. From sophisticated bidding intelligence to seamless integrations, Skai empowers marketers with the tools they need to execute successful strategies, regardless of the brand’s size, category, or objectives. According to Nielsen 2025, many marketers report retail media’s growing importance—reinforcing why independent measurement and consistent attribution approaches matter when you’re investing across multiple networks and funnel stages.

We’d love to show you how Skai can elevate your retail media efforts. Whether you’re refining your current strategy or building a full-funnel approach from the ground up, our team is here to help. Let’s connect and explore how we can support your goals and drive impactful results together.

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.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How do I implement a full-funnel retail media strategy?

Start by mapping your shopper journey into awareness, consideration, and conversion goals. Then align ad formats and placements to each stage, define KPIs per stage (reach, engagement, ROAS, new-to-brand), and set a measurement plan that connects upper-funnel signals to sales. Finally, operationalize with automation and consistent naming, budgeting, and reporting.

Why isn’t my full-funnel retail media strategy working?

Common issues include treating all stages like lower-funnel campaigns, using one KPI to judge everything, and spreading budgets thin across too many networks or placements without a testing plan. Another frequent problem is weak measurement—if you can’t connect awareness and consideration activity to incremental outcomes, you’ll over-optimize for last-click signals and underinvest in demand creation.

Full-funnel retail media vs lower-funnel retail media: Which is better?

Lower-funnel retail media is best when you need immediate sales efficiency and already have strong demand. Full-funnel retail media is better when you need to grow new customers, expand consideration, and build longer-term sales momentum. In practice, most brands benefit from combining both: use lower-funnel tactics to capture demand while funding upper-funnel activity to create future demand.

How should I measure success across the full funnel?

Use stage-specific KPIs: reach and qualified impressions for awareness, engagement or detail-page actions for consideration, and ROAS, sales, and new-to-brand metrics for conversion. Add incrementality testing where possible to confirm lift beyond baseline demand. The goal is a single story that explains how earlier-stage investment contributes to downstream outcomes—not a collection of disconnected dashboards.

What’s new with retail media in 2025?

In 2025, retail media continues to expand across more networks, more formats, and more offsite inventory—while measurement expectations rise. Brands are prioritizing standardization, independent measurement, and operational efficiency to manage fragmentation. At the same time, automation and AI-supported workflows are becoming more important for scaling optimizations and maintaining performance across complex, always-on programs.

Glossary

Full-Funnel Retail Media: A retail media approach that coordinates awareness, consideration, and conversion tactics together—so upper-funnel demand creation and lower-funnel sales activation reinforce each other across formats, placements, and measurement.
Retail Media Network: A retailer’s advertising ecosystem that offers access to shopper audiences and inventory; a core channel layer within full-funnel retail media because it can influence discovery and conversion using retailer first-party signals.
ROAS: Return on ad spend; a conversion-stage efficiency metric that becomes more meaningful in a full-funnel program when paired with earlier-stage KPIs and incrementality checks to avoid over-optimizing to last-click outcomes.
New-to-Brand: A performance metric indicating customer acquisition; it connects directly to full-funnel retail media because upper-funnel reach and consideration tactics often increase the pool of first-time shoppers who later convert through lower-funnel campaigns.

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