1. Introduction: Awareness Where the Purchase Happens
Many teams describe retail media as a performance channel. Dashboards open with ROAS, ACoS and conversion rate. Budgets concentrate where results look direct and easy to attribute.
Within this logic, awareness can look like a luxury. If marketplaces sit close to the bottom of the funnel, upper-funnel activity on those same platforms can seem unnecessary.
In practice, the opposite often holds true. Awareness in retail media shapes preference at the point where shoppers make a choice. It influences the moment when someone scrolls a category page, types a generic query or lands on a homepage during a peak event and decides which brands even enter the consideration set.
This article focuses on awareness within retail media. It looks at what awareness means in a marketplace environment, why it matters for brands at different maturity levels, which formats usually play an awareness role, how success can be measured and what results brands can realistically expect. It also opens the path for follow-up pieces on consideration and conversion.
2. What Awareness Means in Retail Media
In classical media planning, awareness usually refers to reach and impact at scale through channels such as TV, online video or out-of-home. The aim is broad recognition among a large group of people, often far from the point of purchase.
Retail media awareness sits closer to the shelf. It focuses on visibility where products are browsed, compared and purchased. The key question becomes less “Who knows the brand?” and more “Which brands feel present and relevant when a shopper looks at a category or search result?”
Awareness in retail media has a few specific characteristics. It remains contextual, because it appears inside a category, search query or shopping mission. It is shoppable by design, because formats sit one click away from product detail pages, brand stores or curated collections. It is also data-led, because planning and targeting use first-party signals such as search behaviour, past purchases or browsing patterns.
This type of awareness does not replace traditional brand channels. Instead, it complements them and closes the gap between brand exposure and retail execution.
3. Why Awareness Matters for Brands on Marketplaces
Awareness on retail platforms often remains underused, not because it fails to work, but because teams misread its role. Several structural reasons make it important.
3.1 Competing at the Category Level
Most marketplaces feel crowded. For many shoppers, the starting point is a generic query such as “wireless headphones” or “vitamin C serum”. In those moments, category-level visibility decides which brands enter the consideration set.
Awareness formats help brands appear before a specific product or competitor wins attention. They build familiarity with the brand’s presence in the category, shape expectations and make later clicks on Sponsored Products or organic results more likely.
3.2 Supporting Launches and Portfolio Change
New products often need visibility that goes beyond keyword bids. Awareness placements around relevant categories, seasonal events or themed pages give launches a chance to stand out for shoppers who are not yet searching for them by name.
The same logic applies when a brand wants to reposition a range, highlight a new formula or push a different price tier. Without an awareness layer, portfolio strategy can change on paper but remain almost invisible on the shelf.
3.3 Defending Space During Peak Moments
Peak events such as retail festivals, category weeks or seasonal promotions trigger strong shifts in traffic and competition. Awareness inventory on homepages, event hubs or curated collections plays a similar role to front-of-store displays in physical retail.
Brands that use these surfaces in a deliberate way can signal leadership, set the tone for the category and guide shoppers into their own ecosystem—such as a brand store or a curated landing page—before competing offers appear. Awareness activity therefore acts as defence as well as offense.
3.4 Feeding the Mid and Lower Funnel
Awareness activity inside retail media also feeds consideration and conversion. Shoppers who see brand campaigns on homepages, banners or video placements are more likely to recognise the brand in search results, click on Sponsored Products or Sponsored Brands, explore the brand store and respond to retargeting or cross-selling later on.
Awareness and performance are connected in this sense. Upper-funnel visibility builds the mental and visual availability that makes lower-funnel spend more efficient.
4. Awareness Formats in Retail Media
Awareness in retail media relies on a mix of on-site and off-site formats. Exact options differ by retailer and market, but several patterns repeat.
4.1 On-Site Awareness
On-site awareness includes formats that live directly inside the marketplace environment. Common examples are homepage placements such as hero banners, content modules or video tiles that greet shoppers when they arrive on the platform. Category and search page takeovers can frame the experience around a brand or theme within a specific segment.
Within search results, Sponsored Brand formats—especially headline-style units and video placements—carry a strong awareness role. They combine branding, product information and a clear path to explore more.
Brand stores and curated landing pages act as destinations. In those spaces, the brand narrative can be controlled more closely than on individual product detail pages. On-site awareness formats often drive traffic into these hubs.
4.2 Off-Site and Cross-Surface Awareness
Many retailers now extend awareness inventory beyond their own site or app. Retail media networks serve display and video placements on publisher sites and apps while still targeting with retailer first-party data. Online video and CTV formats can link back to shoppable destinations on the retailer or to brand-owned environments.
In some ecosystems, in-store digital screens connect to the retail media programme and bring the brand into physical stores while keeping measurement aligned with the digital side. Off-site surfaces allow brands to reach audiences earlier in the journey and then reconnect them with the marketplace when those audiences move closer to purchase.
5. How Awareness Campaigns Behave Differently
Awareness campaigns on retail platforms behave differently from pure conversion activity, both in planning and in performance.
They usually optimise for reach and quality of exposure rather than last-click sales. Impression delivery, reach across a defined audience, viewability and sensible frequency become central. Video formats add metrics such as view-through rate or completion rate.
Clicks still matter, but in a different way. The main purpose is not to drive an immediate order. Instead, awareness aims to ensure that the brand is seen, understood and easy to recall when a shopper becomes ready to choose.
Time horizons differ as well. Awareness investments do not always create a steep sales spike within a few days. Their effect often appears through gradual shifts in branded search volume, brand store traffic, engagement with Sponsored Brands or improved responsiveness to later promotions.
Awareness therefore remains measurable, but expectations and KPIs must match its role in the funnel.
6. Measuring Awareness in Retail Media
Awareness in retail media can be assessed through a mix of classic media metrics and retail-specific signals. A simple way to structure this view uses four layers.
6.1 Delivery and Quality of Exposure
The first layer checks whether the campaign delivers as intended. It covers impressions and reach within the selected audience or category, viewability where relevant, frequency distribution and the share of impressions that appear in key placements such as homepages or category hubs.
This layer confirms that awareness really happens: the brand is visible in the contexts that matter.
6.2 Engagement with Creative and Surfaces
The second layer looks at interaction with the formats themselves. Depending on inventory, this includes click-through rate on banners or tiles, video view-through or completion rate, time spent in brand stores or on curated landing pages and, when available, scroll depth or carousel interaction.
Engagement is not the only objective of awareness, but it provides a signal that creative, message and context work together.
6.3 Retail Behaviour After Exposure
The third layer connects awareness with retail behaviour. Even without full user-level attribution, several indicators can be tracked over time. Examples include changes in branded search volume on the retailer, increases in product detail page views for the featured brand, growth in brand store visits and internal navigation, and interactions with save-for-later lists, wishlists or baskets where those metrics exist.
These shifts suggest that awareness activity does more than generate impressions; it encourages shoppers to explore the brand in greater depth.
6.4 Strategic Position and Long-Term Signals
The final layer considers the brand’s wider position in the category. Relevant signals include evolution of share of voice on generic and branded search terms, changes in organic ranking for key products, uplift in new-to-brand buyers where that metric is available and the resilience of baseline sales after the campaign ends.
Taken together, these signals show whether awareness investments help the brand occupy a stronger position on the digital shelf.
7. What Results Brands Can Realistically Expect
Expectations often decide whether awareness campaigns survive internal reviews. Clear patterns emerge across categories.
7.1 Short- and Medium-Term Effects
In the short term, awareness activity on retail platforms typically delivers higher impressions and reach inside target categories or audiences. Visibility rises on homepages, category hubs and search results. Branded search, store visits and detail page views for the promoted range also tend to increase. Sales may move at the same time, but often in a more modest and distributed way than under a pure conversion push.
Over the medium term, and with sufficient continuity, awareness supports stronger responses to promotions and Sponsored Products. Launches that receive prior exposure usually perform better. Organic ranking and share of voice tend to improve gradually, and the balance between branded and generic traffic often becomes more favourable.
7.2 Long-Term Brand and Category Impact
In the long run, sustained awareness activity supports the perception of the brand as a serious player in the category. Shoppers who repeatedly encounter the brand in relevant contexts start to treat it as a default option. That recognition stabilises baselines and makes the rest of the media mix less vulnerable to short-term changes in bids or competition.
The crucial point is to evaluate awareness using the metrics that correspond to its role, while still tracking how it feeds consideration and conversion.
8. Connecting Awareness with Consideration and Conversion
Awareness in retail media does not operate on its own. It works best as part of a full funnel built on and around marketplaces.
Upper-funnel campaigns inside the retailer environment can introduce the brand and its proposition. Consideration activity—through richer formats, brand stores, comparison tools or educational content—can then guide shoppers through differences within the range. Conversion-focused campaigns, such as Sponsored Products and retargeting, close the loop when intent reaches a decision point.
When awareness becomes a structural component of retail media rather than an optional extra, brands can build coherent journeys inside one ecosystem, supported by the same first-party data and connected measurement.
This article focuses on the first step of that journey. The next pieces explore how retail media can support consideration and conversion, and how the three layers reinforce each other to build both brand equity and commercial performance on marketplaces.
9. Conclusions: Awareness as a Structural Layer in Retail Media
Retail media often receives the label of lower-funnel channel, yet real marketplace behaviour tells a broader story. Shoppers arrive with very different levels of intent. Some type a brand name. Others search for a category. Many browse during peak events without a clear idea of what to buy. In every case, awareness influences which brands feel visible, credible and worth a closer look.
Awareness in retail media does not aim to copy classic reach campaigns inside a new environment. It uses the particular strengths of marketplaces—context, proximity to purchase and first-party data—to give brands a stronger and more consistent presence where decisions happen. When planned in this way, awareness supports launches, defends space at peak moments and feeds lower-funnel activity rather than competing with it.
The most resilient retail media strategies treat awareness as part of the core system. They combine upper-funnel visibility with mid-funnel education and lower-funnel activation, measure impact across several layers and accept that not every meaningful effect will appear in a single ROAS number. In return, brands gain more stable baselines, clearer roles for each tactic and a media mix that remains effective even as competition increases.
As retail media evolves, brands that gain the most from marketplaces will likely be those that see the digital aisle not only as a place to capture demand, but also as a place to build it.
10. Extended FAQ on Awareness in Retail Media
Awareness on marketplaces does not replace other brand channels. It complements them by operating closer to the point of purchase. Traditional channels can make shoppers aware of a brand in general. Retail media awareness ensures that the brand is visible and recognisable in the exact moment when a category is browsed and a product is chosen.
Classic digital awareness often focuses on broad reach, with limited control over the shopping context. Retail media awareness takes place in environments where products are already being searched and compared. It uses retailer first-party data, sits one click away from a product or brand store and can be connected more directly to downstream behaviour such as searches, detail page views and baskets.
On-site, awareness is typically driven by homepage modules, category and event placements, high-impact Sponsored Brand formats and traffic into brand stores or curated landings. Off-site, retail media networks may use display, video and CTV formats targeted with retailer data. In some cases, in-store digital screens connected to the retail media ecosystem also contribute.
Relevant metrics usually fall into four groups: delivery and exposure (impressions, reach, placement distribution, viewability), engagement (CTR, video completion, time in brand stores), retail behaviour after exposure (branded search, store visits, detail page views) and strategic position (share of voice, organic rank, new-to-brand where available). Sales can still be tracked, but they are only one part of the picture.
Larger brands often adopt awareness formats earlier because they have more established budgets and broader objectives. However, smaller or challenger brands can also benefit, especially when entering crowded categories or launching new propositions. For these players, even modest awareness investments targeted precisely at key missions or keywords can help them appear on the same stage as larger competitors.
Short-term signals such as impressions, reach, engagement and store traffic appear quickly, often within days. Changes in branded search, share of voice and organic ranking usually take longer and depend on the intensity and continuity of the activity. In many cases, awareness should be evaluated over several weeks or months, with attention to how it influences mid- and lower-funnel performance rather than only immediate sales.
There is no universal split, because categories and brand situations differ. A common pattern is to secure a solid base of conversion activity on core products, then invest a defined share of the budget in awareness around key categories, launches and events. Over time, the balance can be adjusted based on how awareness affects branded search, store engagement and the efficiency of Sponsored Products and retargeting.
Awareness and Sponsored Ads search work best when they support each other. Awareness placements can introduce the brand and its narrative at category or event level. Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products can then capture the intent generated by that exposure. Tracking shifts in branded search, click behaviour on search ads and performance of generic keywords before and after awareness flights helps to make this connection visible.
Retail Media & Commerce Growth Leader with 8+ years across Amazon and leading marketplaces. I design full-funnel strategy, governance, and measurement—building operating models and developing teams to scale performance across markets. I share practical frameworks and tools for sustainable growth.
