Mumbai, Oct 13: A majority of Indian advertisers now see retail media as more than a sales-closing tool. A new playbook from Amazon Ads, Marketing + Media Alliance (MMA) India and WPP Media finds that 59% of surveyed advertisers view it as a full-funnel solution. The same study found that most advertisers have yet to connect their marketing efforts end to end.
Full-funnel gap
About 82% of advertisers surveyed are not yet fully executing full-funnel marketing. Maturity does not rise in a straight line with spending. Among advertisers spending more than Rs 200 crore a year on digital advertising, 14% described their full-funnel execution as unsuccessful or not attempted. The figure was 4% for those spending Rs 50-100 crore.
Measurement a key barrier
Some 67% of respondents named the lack of unified measurement as a barrier, and 69% said they want unified cross-channel attribution. The playbook cites WPP Media’s Touchpoint India study. It found the number of touchpoints driving 80% of a purchase decision in non-food consumer packaged goods rose from 12 in 2018 to 21 in 2024. Over the same period, the influence of the top 15 touchpoints fell from 85% to 68%.
Retail media’s widening role
Of the advertisers surveyed, 47% see retail media as increasingly useful for awareness and consideration, and 12% use it across awareness, consideration and conversion. Another 25% still treat it mainly as a lower-funnel sales channel. WPP Media’s econometric modelling found e-commerce was the largest contributor to both volume sales and brand KPIs across consumer packaged goods categories. For brands with significant commerce contributions to both sales and media spending, it estimated impacts of:
10-12% on brand awareness
18-20% on consideration
20-25% on offline sales
Spending plans
About 55% of advertisers plan to raise retail media spending in 2027. That compares with 80% planning higher spending on video and on social or creator marketing.
Sairam Ranganathan, head of commerce at WPP Media India, said overall ad spending is growing at around 8-10% while retail media is growing at 25-30%. He said marketing and sales budgets, once treated separately, are increasingly converging. FMCG, mobile handsets and electronics are seeing stronger growth, along with white goods.
“Marketers have treated brand and performance as separate conversations,” Ranganathan said in the playbook. He pointed to ad-to-cart features on JioHotstar and Amazon Prime Video, and to QR codes on connected TV, as ways of shortening the path from ad exposure to purchase.
The report does not conclude that smaller advertisers are more effective than larger ones. It does challenge the assumption that bigger budgets automatically bring more mature full-funnel execution.