Retail media spend reached $45 billion in 2023, yet most brands enter campaigns with assumptions rather than evidence. They test creative in-flight, burning budget to learn what resonates. The cost of this approach extends beyond wasted impressions—it includes opportunity cost from messages that never launched and competitive advantage ceded to faster learners.
Consumer insights change this equation. When brands understand message–market fit before committing spend, they enter retail media networks with validated creative, optimized targeting, and clear success metrics. The result is higher conversion rates, lower cost per acquisition, and campaigns that compound rather than consume budget.
The Retail Media Precision Problem
Retail media networks promise unprecedented targeting capabilities. Brands can reach shoppers based on purchase history, browsing behavior, and cart composition. This precision creates a paradox: highly specific audience segments demand equally specific messaging, but most brands lack the insights infrastructure to validate messages at that granularity.
Traditional research timelines don’t align with retail media planning cycles. When campaign windows open—Prime Day, holiday shopping, back-to-school—brands need validated creative immediately. Waiting 6-8 weeks for focus group findings means missing the window entirely. This timing mismatch forces teams into two bad options: launch with untested creative or sit out high-value moments.
The financial stakes are substantial. A consumer packaged goods brand spending $2 million on a retail media campaign with 2% conversion rates generates $40 million in attributed sales at a typical $20 average order value. Improving message–market fit to achieve 2.8% conversion—a realistic 40% lift from validated creative—adds $16 million in sales from the same spend. These improvements compound across campaigns, creating sustainable competitive advantages.
What Consumer Insights Reveal About Retail Media Performance
Effective retail media creative answers three questions before shoppers see an ad: What problem does this solve right now? Why should I believe this brand can solve it? What happens if I click versus scroll past? Consumer insights illuminate these questions with specificity that demographic data and purchase history cannot provide.
Consider a pet food brand planning sponsored product ads on Amazon. Demographic targeting identifies dog owners aged 25-45 with household income above $75,000. Purchase history adds dogs weighing 20-50 pounds who buy premium food. These data points enable precise targeting but reveal nothing about message receptivity. Consumer insights uncover that this segment splits into three distinct need states: owners managing allergies, owners seeking weight control, and owners prioritizing ingredient transparency. Each group responds to different claims, proof points, and visual cues.
Research conducted with 847 premium pet food purchasers revealed that allergy-focused shoppers converted 3.2 times more often when creative led with “vet-formulated for sensitive stomachs” versus generic quality claims. Weight-conscious shoppers responded to portion control messaging and calorie transparency. Transparency-focused shoppers wanted ingredient sourcing details and manufacturing standards. Generic “premium quality” messaging underperformed across all three segments, despite being the brand’s default approach.
This pattern repeats across categories. Consumer insights expose the gap between what brands assume drives purchase and what actually influences clicking, adding to cart, and completing checkout. They reveal the language shoppers use to describe needs, the proof points that overcome skepticism, and the friction points that cause abandonment.
Validating Creative Before Campaign Launch
Traditional creative testing follows a linear path: develop concepts, recruit participants, conduct sessions, analyze findings, revise creative, repeat if needed. This process typically requires 4-6 weeks and costs $30,000-$60,000 for meaningful sample sizes. Retail media planning cycles rarely accommodate this timeline.
AI-powered consumer insights compress this timeline to 48-72 hours while expanding sample sizes and depth. Platforms like User Intuition conduct natural conversations with actual category shoppers, exploring message resonance, claim credibility, and creative preferences through adaptive questioning that follows each shopper’s unique perspective.
A beverage brand used this approach to validate retail media creative for a new functional drink launch. They needed to test five message angles across three audience segments before a two-week campaign window opened. Traditional research would have required choosing one message direction and hoping it resonated. Instead, they conducted 180 AI-moderated conversations with target shoppers over three days, testing all message combinations and uncovering unexpected insights.
The research revealed that their lead message—“sustained energy without the crash”—tested poorly with their primary target: parents managing afternoon energy slumps. This audience had tried multiple energy drinks and developed skepticism about crash claims. They responded instead to “functional hydration that doesn’t feel like medicine,” a secondary message the brand nearly cut. This insight redirected $400,000 in retail media spend toward validated creative, resulting in 2.4% conversion rates versus projected 1.6% for the original approach.
The methodology matters here. Effective creative validation requires understanding not just which messages perform better, but why shoppers respond differently. Quantitative testing reveals preference rankings. Qualitative conversations expose the reasoning, associations, and concerns driving those preferences. Retail media optimization demands both.
Audience Segmentation Beyond Demographics
Retail media platforms offer sophisticated targeting: purchase frequency, brand loyalty, price sensitivity, category penetration. These behavioral segments improve upon demographic targeting but still miss the psychological and contextual factors that determine message receptivity.
Consumer insights reveal need-based segments that cut across behavioral patterns. A home goods brand discovered that their “frequent purchasers” segment contained three distinct groups with different drivers: gift givers seeking unique items, home improvers executing projects, and lifestyle shoppers building aesthetic coherence. Each group visited the same product pages but responded to different messages and converted through different pathways.
Gift givers valued presentation and uniqueness, converting best on “conversation-starter” messaging with lifestyle imagery. Home improvers wanted functional proof and compatibility assurance, responding to specification details and installation ease. Lifestyle shoppers sought curation and coordination, converting on “completes the look” messaging with room scenes. The brand’s generic “quality craftsmanship” creative underperformed across all three groups despite strong behavioral targeting.
This segmentation depth enables message customization that behavioral targeting alone cannot achieve. When retail media platforms allow creative variation by audience segment, need-based insights determine which creative serves which group. When platforms limit creative options, insights identify the message approach with broadest appeal or guide budget allocation toward the highest-converting segment.
Research with 1,200 home goods purchasers quantified the impact. Campaigns using need-based message matching achieved 2.9% conversion rates versus 1.8% for behaviorally targeted campaigns with generic creative—a 61% improvement from message optimization alone. Cost per acquisition dropped from $22 to $14, and attributed revenue per impression increased 58%.
Claim Validation and Proof Point Selection
Retail media creative operates in a high-skepticism environment. Shoppers see hundreds of sponsored products daily, most making similar claims. Breaking through requires not just differentiated messaging but credible proof that overcomes default skepticism.
Consumer insights identify which claims shoppers find credible and which proof points overcome doubt. A skincare brand planning retail media for a new anti-aging serum needed to validate claims before committing to creative production. They tested six claim variations and eight proof point approaches with 240 target consumers over 72 hours.
The research revealed that their lead claim—“reduces fine lines in 14 days”—triggered skepticism rather than interest. Shoppers had seen similar timeframe claims from multiple brands and developed doubt about rapid results. They found “visible improvement in skin texture within one month” more credible, despite the longer timeframe. The brand’s assumption that faster results claims would drive more clicks proved incorrect.
Proof point testing revealed similar gaps between brand assumptions and shopper receptivity. The brand planned to lead with clinical study results, assuming scientific validation would overcome skepticism. Consumer insights showed that target shoppers found before-after photos from real users more convincing than study data. They wanted to see results on people who looked like them, not lab reports. This insight redirected creative development toward user-generated content integration rather than clinical study callouts.
The methodology for claim validation requires exploring not just which claims shoppers prefer, but what makes claims credible or suspect. Effective research asks shoppers to explain their reasoning, surfaces the associations and past experiences shaping responses, and identifies the specific language that builds versus erodes trust.
Price Communication and Promotional Messaging
Retail media creative must navigate complex price communication decisions. Should messages lead with price, emphasize value, or avoid price discussion entirely? When running promotions, how should discounts be framed? Consumer insights reveal that these decisions dramatically affect conversion rates and that optimal approaches vary by category, price point, and competitive context.
A grocery brand planning retail media for a premium pasta line faced this challenge. Their product retailed for $4.99 versus $2.49 for category leaders. They debated whether to address price explicitly, emphasize value to justify premium pricing, or focus on quality without price discussion. Consumer insights with 320 category shoppers revealed a nuanced picture.
Shoppers who regularly purchased premium pasta didn’t need price justification—they already understood and accepted the value equation. Leading with price actually reduced conversion by triggering price comparison behavior. These shoppers converted best on quality and ingredient messaging that reinforced their existing beliefs.
Shoppers who typically purchased mainstream brands required explicit value communication. They needed to understand what justified the price premium before considering purchase. For this group, creative that addressed price directly (“$2.50 more for restaurant-quality pasta at home”) converted 2.3 times better than creative that ignored price or used vague value language.
This segmentation insight enabled the brand to create two creative variants: quality-focused messages for existing premium purchasers and value-explicit messages for mainstream buyers considering trade-up. The approach required additional creative production but generated 47% higher conversion rates than single-message campaigns.
Promotional messaging presents similar complexity. Consumer insights reveal that discount framing affects both conversion rates and post-promotion purchase behavior. Research across twelve promotional campaigns found that percentage discounts (“25% off”) generated higher initial conversion than dollar discounts (“$5 off”) for products under $30, but dollar discounts performed better above that threshold. More importantly, shoppers acquired through percentage discount promotions showed 23% lower repeat purchase rates than those acquired through dollar discounts, suggesting different promotional frames attract different customer segments.
Visual Creative and Attention Optimization
Retail media creative competes for attention in crowded visual environments. Sponsored products appear alongside organic results, competitor ads, and platform content. Effective creative must capture attention, communicate value, and drive action—often in formats as small as 160x600 pixels.
Consumer insights reveal which visual approaches break through and which get overlooked. A consumer electronics brand used eye-tracking integrated with qualitative interviews to understand attention patterns for retail media creative. They tested eight visual approaches with 200 target shoppers, measuring both attention capture and message comprehension.
The research revealed that product-only images generated strong initial attention but poor message retention. Shoppers looked at the product but couldn’t recall the key differentiator after viewing. Lifestyle images showing product use generated less immediate attention but stronger message comprehension and purchase intent. The optimal approach used lifestyle imagery with product overlay—capturing attention through context while maintaining product focus.
Color testing revealed category-specific patterns. In categories with established color associations (blue for water, green for organic), breaking color conventions reduced conversion by creating confusion about product category. In categories without strong color norms, distinctive color choices improved attention capture and brand recall.
Text overlay decisions showed similar nuance. Shoppers valued concise benefit statements but found generic quality claims (“premium,” “best”) meaningless. Specific, concrete language (“20-hour battery,” “dishwasher safe”) drove higher conversion. The research also revealed that text placement affected comprehension—shoppers read top-left text first but found bottom-right placement less intrusive and more trustworthy.
Category-Specific Insights for Retail Media
Effective retail media strategies recognize that shopper behavior, message receptivity, and creative effectiveness vary significantly by category. Consumer insights reveal these category-specific patterns, enabling brands to optimize approaches rather than applying generic best practices.
Research across eight consumer categories identified distinct patterns in how shoppers engage with retail media creative:
In consumables categories (food, beverage, personal care), shoppers make rapid decisions based on habit and availability. Retail media creative for these categories converts best when reinforcing existing preferences or introducing new variants to current users. Messaging that requires significant behavior change or education typically underperforms. A beverage brand found that “new flavor” messaging converted 3.4 times better than “better-for-you” positioning, despite strategic emphasis on health benefits.
In considered purchase categories (electronics, home goods, apparel), shoppers conduct extensive research before buying. Retail media creative serves different functions at different journey stages. Early-stage shoppers respond to educational content and comparison tools. Late-stage shoppers need purchase justification and deal validation. A furniture brand improved conversion 67% by segmenting creative based on browsing behavior—educational content for first-time visitors, urgency messaging for returning visitors.
In gift categories, purchase drivers shift from personal preference to recipient consideration. Creative that works for self-purchase often fails for gift-giving. Consumer insights with 450 gift purchasers revealed that presentation, uniqueness, and recipient delight drove decisions more than personal product preference. A kitchenware brand redesigned retail media creative to emphasize gift-worthiness rather than functional benefits, improving conversion rates 41% during holiday periods.
These category patterns interact with brand positioning and competitive context. Consumer insights map these interactions, revealing when to follow category norms and when differentiation creates advantage.
Measurement Framework and Success Metrics
Consumer insights don’t just optimize creative—they establish the measurement framework for evaluating retail media performance. Traditional metrics (impressions, clicks, conversion rates) measure outcomes but don’t explain performance or guide optimization. Insights-driven measurement connects campaign results to shopper psychology and message effectiveness.
A comprehensive measurement framework links three levels: behavioral metrics (what happened), attitudinal metrics (what shoppers thought), and diagnostic metrics (why they responded). Behavioral metrics come from campaign data. Attitudinal and diagnostic metrics require consumer insights.
A personal care brand implemented this framework across twelve retail media campaigns. For each campaign, they tracked standard performance metrics and conducted post-campaign interviews with 100 shoppers who saw ads—50 who converted and 50 who didn’t. These conversations revealed why creative performed above or below expectations and identified optimization opportunities for future campaigns.
One campaign achieved strong click-through rates (3.2% versus 2.1% benchmark) but weak conversion (1.4% versus 1.8% benchmark). Post-campaign insights revealed that creative generated interest through compelling imagery but product pages didn’t deliver on creative promises. Shoppers clicked expecting detailed ingredient information featured in ads but found generic product descriptions. This diagnostic insight guided product page optimization rather than creative revision.
Another campaign underperformed on both metrics. Insights revealed that target shoppers found the featured product benefit unimportant. The brand had assumed “long-lasting fragrance” would drive interest, but shoppers prioritized skin sensitivity over fragrance duration. This finding redirected future campaign messaging toward validated benefits.
The measurement framework also enables return on insight calculation. By connecting insights investment to campaign performance improvement, brands quantify the value of consumer research. The personal care brand calculated that $15,000 invested in pre-campaign insights for a $500,000 retail media campaign generated $140,000 in additional attributed revenue through improved message–market fit—a 9.3x return on insights investment.
Competitive Intelligence Through Consumer Insights
Retail media operates in transparent competitive environments. Shoppers see your ads alongside competitor messages, compare claims, and evaluate relative value. Consumer insights reveal how shoppers perceive competitive creative, which competitor messages resonate, and where opportunities exist for differentiation.
A snack food brand used competitive insights to optimize retail media strategy. They conducted research with 280 category shoppers, showing them retail media creative from their brand and four competitors. Rather than asking which ads shoppers preferred, they explored what each ad communicated, which claims seemed credible, and what questions remained unanswered.
The research revealed that competitors dominated certain message territories effectively. Two competitors owned “healthy snacking” with strong nutritional proof points. One competitor owned “indulgent treat” with appealing food imagery. The brand’s planned “better-tasting healthy snack” positioning fell between established territories without clear differentiation.
Consumer insights identified an unoccupied message space: “satisfying snack that doesn’t derail your day.” Shoppers wanted snacks that provided genuine satiation without excessive calories or sugar crash. No competitor addressed this need directly. The brand pivoted retail media strategy toward this positioning, achieving 2.7% conversion rates versus projected 1.9% for original messaging.
Competitive insights also reveal claim credibility gaps. Shoppers often express skepticism about competitor claims, creating opportunities for brands with stronger proof points. A supplement brand discovered that shoppers doubted competitor purity claims despite prominent “third-party tested” callouts. The brand invested in more transparent testing disclosure and featured testing partner credentials in retail media creative, achieving higher credibility and conversion than competitors with similar testing but less transparent communication.
Seasonal and Occasion-Based Optimization
Retail media performance varies by season, occasion, and shopping context. Consumer insights reveal how shopper needs, message receptivity, and creative preferences shift across these contexts, enabling brands to optimize campaigns beyond demographic and behavioral targeting.
A home improvement brand conducted seasonal research to understand how message priorities changed throughout the year. They interviewed 400 category shoppers across four seasons, exploring project motivations, purchase drivers, and information needs.
Spring shoppers focused on outdoor projects and aesthetic improvement. They responded to transformation messaging (“before and after”) and visual inspiration. Retail media creative emphasizing project outcomes converted 2.4 times better than product-feature creative during spring months.
Summer shoppers prioritized quick projects and maintenance. They valued efficiency and ease over transformation. Creative highlighting installation simplicity and time savings outperformed aesthetic messaging by 68%.
Fall shoppers prepared for winter with weatherization and repair projects. They needed technical information and durability assurance. Detailed specification creative converted best during this period.
Winter shoppers planned for spring while addressing immediate indoor projects. They responded to early-season promotions and planning tools. Creative that combined project inspiration with seasonal discounts achieved highest performance.
These seasonal patterns enabled the brand to create dynamic creative strategies that aligned messaging with shifting shopper priorities. The approach required more creative production but generated 43% higher year-over-year retail media ROI through improved message–market fit across seasons.
Occasion-based optimization follows similar principles. Gift-giving occasions, life events, and category-specific moments (back-to-school, holiday cooking, spring cleaning) create distinct shopper mindsets that require tailored messaging. Consumer insights identify these occasions, reveal how shopper needs shift, and guide creative optimization.
Integration with Broader Marketing Strategy
Retail media doesn’t operate in isolation. Shoppers encounter brand messages across channels before seeing retail media creative. Consumer insights reveal how retail media fits within broader customer journeys and how message consistency versus customization affects performance.
A beauty brand used journey-based research to understand how shoppers moved from awareness to purchase. They conducted longitudinal interviews with 150 target consumers over six weeks, tracking exposure to brand messages across channels and exploring how different touchpoints influenced perception and purchase intent.
The research revealed that shoppers valued message consistency for core brand positioning but expected channel-specific information. They wanted retail media creative to reflect brand values established through social media and content marketing while providing purchase-specific information (pricing, availability, reviews) unique to retail environments.
Shoppers who encountered consistent brand messaging across channels showed 34% higher conversion rates than those exposed to disconnected messages. But shoppers who received retail-specific information (product comparisons, size guidance, usage instructions) converted 52% more often than those who saw replicated social creative in retail environments.
This insight guided integrated campaign development. The brand maintained consistent visual identity and core messaging across channels while customizing information architecture for retail media. Social content built aspiration and education. Retail media provided decision support and purchase facilitation. Email marketing connected the two with personalized product recommendations.
Consumer insights also reveal how retail media affects downstream behavior. Post-purchase interviews with 200 retail media converters showed that shoppers acquired through educational creative demonstrated 28% higher product satisfaction and 41% higher repeat purchase rates than those acquired through promotional creative. This finding quantified the long-term value of different creative approaches and justified investment in higher-quality, insight-driven creative development.
Building Continuous Learning Systems
The most sophisticated retail media strategies treat consumer insights as continuous learning systems rather than discrete research projects. Each campaign generates hypotheses. Each insight study tests those hypotheses and generates new questions. Over time, brands build proprietary understanding of their shoppers that competitors cannot replicate.
A consumer packaged goods company implemented this approach across their retail media program. They established a quarterly insights cadence: pre-campaign research to validate creative, mid-campaign pulse checks to identify optimization opportunities, and post-campaign analysis to extract learnings for future campaigns.
Over two years, this system generated 847 discrete insights about their target shoppers’ retail media responses. They learned which message angles drove awareness versus conversion, how seasonal context affected claim credibility, which visual approaches captured attention in different retail environments, and how promotional framing influenced customer lifetime value.
More importantly, they developed predictive capabilities. By analyzing patterns across campaigns, they could forecast which creative approaches would perform best for new product launches based on category, price point, and competitive context. This predictive capability reduced creative testing requirements and improved first-campaign performance for new products.
The financial impact was substantial. The company’s retail media ROI improved from 3.2x to 5.7x over the two-year period. Cost per acquisition dropped 41% while attributed revenue per impression increased 67%. These improvements came not from increased spend but from systematic application of consumer insights to creative development, audience targeting, and campaign optimization.
Platforms like User Intuition enable this continuous learning approach by reducing insights cycle time from weeks to days and cost per study from tens of thousands to thousands. When insights generation aligns with campaign planning timelines and budgets, continuous learning becomes operationally feasible rather than aspirational.
The Path Forward
Retail media will continue growing as platforms expand capabilities and brands shift spend from traditional advertising. Success in this environment requires more than sophisticated targeting and bid optimization. It demands deep understanding of how shoppers respond to messages, which claims drive conversion, and how creative decisions affect both immediate performance and long-term customer value.
Consumer insights provide this understanding. When brands validate message–market fit before committing spend, they enter retail media networks with confidence rather than assumptions. They test creative approaches that reflect actual shopper priorities rather than internal beliefs. They optimize campaigns based on diagnostic insights rather than surface metrics. They build proprietary knowledge that compounds across campaigns and creates sustainable competitive advantage.
The brands winning in retail media aren’t those with the largest budgets. They’re those with the clearest understanding of their shoppers and the discipline to align every creative decision with validated insights. As retail media becomes more competitive and sophisticated, this insights advantage will separate leaders from followers.
The question facing retail media teams isn’t whether to invest in consumer insights—it’s whether they can afford not to. When competitors validate message–market fit before launching campaigns, brands operating on assumptions face compounding disadvantage. The cost of insights pales beside the cost of campaigns optimized for the wrong messages, targeting the wrong priorities, and burning budget to learn what research could have revealed before spend committed.
Retail media rewards precision. Consumer insights deliver it.