Retail media is no longer confined to the point of purchase. It is rapidly expanding upstream into streaming TV, social platforms, and discovery environments where demand is created long before a shopper searches.
As a result, full funnel marketing has become a requirement, not just a strategy. Yet while brands increase investment in Connected TV (CTV) and video, performance remains inconsistent. Some campaigns drive measurable lift across the funnel, while others generate reach with little impact on sales.
The difference is not the format. It is the system behind it.
Video has become a primary engine of discovery in retail media. But without a way to connect exposure to downstream actions, it remains disconnected from revenue. This is where demand-side platforms (DSPs) play a critical role.
In practice, DSP platforms enable teams to move from broad video exposure to audience targeting, controlled frequency, and measurable outcomes such as branded search lift, product detail page traffic, and new-to-brand sales.
In this guide, we break down how leading teams execute full funnel retail media strategies using Amazon DSP and Connected TV—connecting audience signals, sequencing campaigns, and proving incremental impact on sales.
Why Connected TV Is No Longer Optional in Retail Media
The shift toward streaming is not new. What’s changed is how quickly it is reshaping media investment and shopper behavior.
eMarketer projected that CTV advertising would grow three times faster than search, signaling a structural change in how brands reach consumers. As time spent in streaming environments increases, more purchase decisions are influenced before a shopper reaches a retailer.
For retail media, this redefines growth. It is no longer limited to capturing existing demand. It now needs to create demand earlier in the shopper journey.
This is especially critical for brands with longer consideration cycles, where brands that influence shoppers before they search are more likely to win the eventual click, conversion, and repeat purchase.
Connected TV helps close this gap. It enables brands to reach high-value audiences in streaming environments while maintaining a direct connection to retail outcomes.
Without it, full funnel marketing strategies remain incomplete. Brands can optimize conversion, but they cannot control where demand originates.
The Role of Video in Full-Funnel Retail Media
Video does not just expand the funnel. It changes how each stage of the funnel performs.
Instead of relying only on high-intent moments, brands can influence consideration earlier and improve downstream conversion efficiency. For retail media teams, this has a direct implication: video is no longer just an awareness tactic. It is a demand input that directly impacts search performance, CPC efficiency, and conversion rates.
When executed effectively, this shows up in three ways:
- Higher conversion rates from on-site search, as shoppers arrive with pre-formed intent
- Greater efficiency from sponsored ads, driven by warmer, more qualified audiences
- Incremental reach beyond retailer environments, expanding the total addressable audience
These gains are strongest when video is paired with downstream search and display activity, allowing teams to compare exposed vs. non-exposed audiences rather than evaluating video in isolation.
Video now sits at the center of a system where discovery, optimization, and measurement are increasingly connected through AI, commerce signals, and full-funnel attribution.
Connected TV and Streaming Video in Full-Funnel Retail Media
Amazon’s streaming TV ads (previously referred to as Sponsored TV) are now positioned as part of a broader streaming and retail media ecosystem. These formats are powered by first-party commerce signals, allowing advertisers to move beyond demographic targeting and instead prioritize audiences based on real shopping behavior.
This enables full-funnel coordination:
- Audiences exposed to streaming video can be retargeted with Sponsored Ads
- Messaging can be sequenced based on shopper behavior
- Performance can be tied to outcomes such as sales, new-to-brand growth, and incrementality
This shifts video from a standalone awareness tactic into a measurable part of a full-funnel retail media system.
Why DSP Is the Activation Layer for Connected TV Media Buying
Streaming TV ads create and influence demand. DSP determines whether that demand converts into measurable outcomes.
Without DSP, video drives awareness and exposure. With DSP, it creates, influences, and converts demand into performance.
Amazon DSP acts as both the activation and media execution layer, connecting audience targeting, programmatic media buying, and full-funnel attribution across streaming and retail media environments.
This is powered by Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), which enables teams to connect exposure data with downstream shopper behavior and build more precise audiences based on how users interact across the funnel.
It enables three core capabilities:
1. Activate retail audiences
DSP utilizes first-party commerce data to build audiences from real shopping signals, such as product views, category browsing, and past purchases. These can be segmented by recency and intent to prioritize high-value shoppers.
2. Orchestrate full-funnel strategy
DSP connects upper-funnel video exposure with lower-funnel retail media. Exposed audiences can be retargeted and sequenced across formats, with suppression logic applied as shoppers move through the funnel.
AMC strengthens this by enabling deeper analysis of how different touchpoints contribute to conversion, helping teams refine sequencing strategies over time.
3. Connect exposure to outcomes
Because DSP operates within Amazon’s owned ecosystem, it links ad exposure to downstream actions such as product detail page visits, conversions, and sales. This makes upper-funnel activity measurable in commercial terms.
AMC extends this capability by providing a privacy-safe environment to analyze user-level event data, enabling measurement of incrementality, path-to-purchase behavior, and cross-format influence.
How Full-Funnel Retail Media Marketing Works in Amazon DSP
Full-funnel retail media works best when signals, activation, media buying, and measurement operate as one connected system.
Within Amazon’s ecosystem, that system looks like this:
- Amazon’s first-party shopping and behavioral signals (browsing, search, and purchase activity) provide the foundation for audience targeting and optimization
- Amazon DSP uses these signals—along with advertiser-defined and AMC-created audiences—to activate campaigns programmatically across streaming TV, online video, display, and off-Amazon inventory, with controls for bidding, frequency, and creative optimization
- Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) enables advertisers to analyze event-level data across touchpoints, build custom audiences, and understand how exposure drives downstream actions across the full customer journey. Together, these capabilities allow teams to move beyond surface-level metrics and evaluate whether upper-funnel investments are driving qualified demand, improving downstream efficiency, and contributing to outcomes such as branded search, detail page engagement, new-to-brand acquisition, and sales.
Without this connected system, upper-funnel channels like streaming TV risk underperformance due to limited audience sequencing, weaker frequency control, and fragmented measurement.
Real-World Impact: Turning Full-Funnel Strategy into Measurable Growth
A leading health and wellness brand partnered with Pacvue to unify its retail media strategy across upper- and lower-funnel tactics. By leveraging Pacvue’s Commerce Operating System to connect audience insights, campaign execution, and performance measurement, the brand was able to optimize spend across channels and drive more efficient outcomes.
The result: a 58% increase in ROAS, demonstrating how aligning upper-funnel investments like DSP and CTV with downstream conversion signals can unlock incremental revenue, not just attributed performance.
How to Plan DSP Campaigns for Connected TV
Streaming TV ads play a primary role in creating and influencing demand earlier in the shopper journey, but they are no longer limited to awareness alone.
Amazon’s streaming TV formats now include interactive capabilities, allowing viewers to engage with brands directly through their devices. While conversion may still occur later in the journey, these formats increasingly bridge the gap between discovery and action.
Planning therefore starts with defining the role of video within the full-funnel strategy.
From there, teams align:
- Audience targeting based on commerce signals
- Creative sequencing across discovery and conversion stages
- Measurement windows that account for delayed conversion behavior
Amazon DSP enables this by connecting exposed audiences to downstream retail activity, allowing teams to track how streaming TV engagement influences search, product detail page visits, and sales.
Common Execution Pattern for Full-Funnel Marketing via Amazon DSP
A typical full-funnel structure looks like this:
- Serve Connected TV to build awareness off-site
- Create audience pools of exposed viewers within DSP
- Retarget those audiences with Sponsored Ads or display placements
- Measure exposed vs. non-exposed groups to evaluate incremental lift and new-to-brand impact
What Role Should Video Play in Full-Funnel Marketing?
Video supports every stage of the funnel, but its role and measurement framework change depending on where it is applied.
A common mistake is optimizing all video against the same KPI.
Misalignment here is one of the biggest sources of wasted spend in retail media video—especially when awareness campaigns are judged on conversion metrics too early.
Awareness campaigns are typically optimized for efficient reach and new-to-brand exposure, while mid- and lower-funnel video should be evaluated against engagement depth, conversion quality, and incremental contribution to sales.
Awareness and Discovery
Success is measured through new-to-brand reach, branded search growth, and increased product detail page visits.
Consideration and Education
Video helps shoppers evaluate products and move toward intent.
Success is measured through product engagement signals such as detail page views and add-to-basket activity.
Demand Capture
Video reinforces intent and supports conversion.
Success is measured through conversion rate, sales, attribution, and incremental lift.
| Role | Channel | Success Signals |
| Awareness and Discovery Video introduces the brand and reaches new audiences who are likely category buyers. | Amazon CTV inventory via Amazon DSP YouTube | New-to-brand reach Growth in branded search Increases in product page visits on Amazon |
| Consideration and Education Video helps shoppers evaluate the product and move from awareness to intent. | Mid-funnel video on YouTube Product storytelling on TikTok Retail display video through Amazon DSP | Product detail page views Add-to-basket activity Improved conversion from later retail ads |
| Demand Capture Video converts existing intent into sales. | Video placements within Amazon search and product pages Sponsored Display or video retargeting via Amazon DSP | Conversion rate Sales Attribution and incremental lift |
Why Video Campaigns Must be Segmented in DSP
Prospecting and retargeting campaigns should be structured separately. Without segmentation, performance metrics blend together, making it difficult to isolate the impact of video on consideration versus conversion.
That usually leads to two problems: prospecting activity gets judged against conversion metrics too early, and retargeting performance gets overstated because it captures demand that was created earlier in the sequence.
Relevance Matters More Than Reach in Audience Targeting
Traditional CTV targeting prioritizes scale through demographics and broad interest segments. This often comes at the expense of relevance.
With DSP, audiences can be built from first-party shopping signals, allowing brands to prioritize high-intent shoppers over broad reach.
A smaller, more relevant audience will consistently outperform a larger, less qualified one. In practice, this often means prioritizing category-intent audiences over broad lifestyle segments, even at the expense of scale.
As campaigns expand across multiple retailers, managing these signals becomes more complex. Platforms like Pacvue help normalize, unify, and activate audience and commerce data across environments, enabling more consistent targeting, measurement, and optimization.
Sequencing Connected TV With Lower-Funnel Retail Media
Full-funnel performance depends on coordination, not channel selection.
The most effective strategies treat video and lower-funnel formats as part of a sequence:
- Connected TV builds awareness
- DSP retargeting reinforces consideration
- Sponsored search captures demand
The structure of this sequence depends on three factors:
- Category: Higher-consideration products require longer journeys
- Purchase cycle: Time between exposure and conversion varies
- Signal density: More shopper signals enable more precise targeting
When sequencing is aligned to these factors, campaigns consistently outperform isolated channel execution.
Budget Allocation and Frequency Management for Connected TV
In most retail media strategies, the majority of budget still sits in conversion-focused formats. It’s common to see a split of roughly 20-30% on upper funnel video with 70-80% allocated to retargeting and sponsored search. Again, this varies depending on category and frequency.
So, how much video is too much?
Three Signs of Video Overload in Full-Funnel Campaigns
Serving videos too frequently to the same audience can cause viewer fatigue and drain budget. Here are three indicators that will tell you when to dial it down:
- Frequency climbing above 7–8 exposures per viewer, across the whole campaign
- Little increase in branded search or product page visits on Amazon
- Lower engagement
However, Amazon DSP enables:
- Frequency caps to prevent overexposure
- Dynamic pacing to balance reach and efficiency
- Budget automation to reallocate spend toward higher-performing audiences
These controls allow video to scale without compromising performance.
Measuring Connected TV: From Last-Click to Full-Funnel Attribution
Traditional measurement frameworks are built around last-click attribution. This approach fails to capture the impact of video, which influences demand earlier in the journey.
Full-funnel strategies require a different measurement approach, because video influences demand before a click ever occurs.
Instead of asking which channel drove the final click, marketers need to understand how much incremental demand video generated.
Incrementality and exposure-based measurement provide a more accurate view of performance by isolating outcomes that would not have occurred without the campaign.
Signals that Show How Video Impacts Downstream Retail Outcomes
Video influence often appears in downstream signals. Here are the obvious ones to monitor:
- rising branded search volume
- improved conversion rates
- stronger performance from sponsored search campaigns during and after video activity
Amazon DSP helps by connecting video exposure with later shopper behavior for full-funnel attribution. This allows marketers to analyse how video campaigns influence search activity, conversion rates and overall retail sales impact across the funnel.
In practice, the question shifts from “Which channel drove the sale?” to “How much incremental demand did video create and where did that demand convert?”
Connecting Video, Full-Funnel Retail Media and Commerce Signals
Even when brands use both DSP and Connected TV, execution often remains fragmented.
Video runs in one environment, sponsored ads in another, and performance data is siloed. This makes sequencing, budgeting, and optimization difficult.
Additional challenges include:
- Advertising products that are out of stock
- Driving traffic to under-optimized product pages
- Lacking visibility into real-time performance signals
This is where commerce platforms like Pacvue play a role.
Pacvue acts as the orchestration layer across DSP, streaming TV, and retail media, connecting media signals with commerce signals to enable real-time, full-funnel optimization.
Key capabilities include:
- Unified activation across DSP, Connected TV, and retail media
- Commerce-driven decisioning using inventory, sales, and Buy Box signals
- Standardized measurement across formats and retailers
DSP activates media. Pacvue orchestrates that media against real-world commerce signals—ensuring campaigns are aligned to demand, availability, and performance in real time.
Six Solvable Problems Brands Face With Connected TV
- Connected TV runs in isolation from retail media, making it difficult to coordinate DSP, Sponsored Ads, and onsite placements around a unified commerce goal.
- Video investment is optimized for reach, not revenue, with limited connection to downstream signals like sales, inventory, or Buy Box ownership.
- Teams lack a clear way to activate commerce data in video, resulting in targeting and budgeting decisions that aren’t informed by real shopper behavior.
- Measurement is fragmented across formats and platforms, preventing a consistent view of performance or true incrementality.
- Insights arrive too late to influence in-flight decisions, limiting the ability to optimize Connected TV while campaigns are live.
- Scaling Connected TV feels risky, because brands can’t confidently prove what’s working or justify increased spend.
Video Performance Relies on System Execution
Connected TV drives discovery and shapes demand. DSP connects that influence to measurable outcomes through targeting, sequencing, and attribution.
The most effective strategies treat video as part of a connected execution model, where signals, activation, and measurement work together to drive growth.
Explore how leading teams are activating full-funnel retail media strategies with Connected TV and DSP.
