The average retail media campaign delivers a 4:1 return on ad spend. Top-performing campaigns deliver 12:1 or higher. The difference rarely comes down to creative execution or media buying sophistication. It comes down to brief quality.
Brands spend millions on retail media placements while building their briefs on assumptions, category conventions, and last year’s learnings. Meanwhile, the retailers sitting on first-party purchase data aren’t sharing the behavioral insights that would make those briefs sharper. The result is creative that tests well internally but fails to move shoppers at the digital shelf.
This gap between what brands assume and what actually drives purchase decisions costs the industry billions annually. But a growing number of organizations have found a systematic solution: building retail media briefs directly on structured consumer insights gathered at scale.
The Brief Quality Problem Nobody Talks About
Retail media briefs typically arrive at agencies with similar components: brand guidelines, product features, competitive context, and media specs. What’s missing is the most critical input: verified understanding of how target shoppers actually make purchase decisions in the category.
Research from the Advertising Research Foundation reveals that campaigns grounded in behavioral insights outperform assumption-based campaigns by 3-5x on conversion metrics. Yet fewer than 18% of retail media briefs incorporate primary research conducted specifically for the campaign.
The traditional explanation is timing and cost. Qualitative research takes 6-8 weeks and costs $40,000-80,000. By the time insights arrive, the campaign window has closed or budget constraints force teams to proceed without them. This creates a self-reinforcing cycle where briefs remain shallow because the research required to deepen them feels impractical.
The consequence shows up in campaign performance data. Analysis of 2,400 retail media campaigns across consumer categories found that 67% underperformed their category benchmark on click-through rate, and 71% underperformed on conversion rate. The common thread: briefs built on category assumptions rather than shopper-specific insights.
What Actually Drives Retail Media Performance
Retail media operates in a unique purchase context. Shoppers aren’t browsing for entertainment or researching future purchases. They’re in active shopping mode, often with specific missions and constraints. This context demands different messaging than brand awareness campaigns or social media advertising.
Effective retail media creative must address three questions simultaneously: Why this product? Why this brand? Why now? The answers vary dramatically by category, price point, and shopper segment. A brief that treats these as universal truths rather than research questions produces generic creative that fails to convert.
Consider the baby care category. Conventional wisdom suggests parents prioritize safety and gentleness. But structured interviews with 800 parents revealed that purchase decisions actually hinge on mess containment, sleep protection, and resale value. Campaigns emphasizing safety performed at category average. Campaigns addressing practical concerns outperformed by 340%.
The disconnect between assumed priorities and actual decision drivers exists across categories. In consumer electronics, brands emphasize technical specifications while shoppers prioritize setup ease and return policies. In food and beverage, brands lead with taste claims while shoppers focus on ingredient transparency and usage occasions. These gaps don’t emerge from creative testing or A/B tests. They require systematic conversation with actual category shoppers.
The Components of Research-Backed Briefs
Briefs that consistently produce high-performing retail media campaigns share a common structure. They move beyond product features and brand positioning to document verified shopper behavior and decision architecture.
The first component is purchase trigger mapping. What specific circumstances or realizations cause shoppers to add the category to their shopping list? For subscription meal kits, triggers include weeknight dinner fatigue, cooking skill anxiety, and grocery shopping avoidance. For premium pet food, triggers include visible health changes, vet recommendations, and guilt about nutrition quality. Effective briefs document these triggers with frequency data and verbatim language, giving creative teams the raw material for resonant messaging.
The second component is consideration set dynamics. Which brands do shoppers actively compare? What criteria drive the comparison? How do shoppers resolve trade-offs between price, quality signals, and convenience factors? A premium coffee brand discovered through structured research that their primary competitor wasn’t another premium brand but rather the local coffee shop. This insight fundamentally changed their retail media strategy from competitive differentiation to occasion substitution.
The third component is conversion friction mapping. What specific concerns, questions, or uncertainties prevent shoppers from completing purchase? For higher-priced items, friction often centers on value justification and return policies. For new-to-market products, friction involves usage understanding and results expectations. A cleaning product brand found that 64% of shoppers who clicked their retail media ads abandoned at product page because they couldn’t determine whether the product was safe for their specific surface type. Adding surface compatibility to ad creative increased conversion rate by 180%.
The fourth component is messaging hierarchy validation. When shoppers explain why they chose a product, which attributes do they mention first, second, and third? This natural prioritization reveals the cognitive structure shoppers use to process category information. A brief might list ten product benefits, but if shoppers consistently prioritize three specific benefits in their decision narrative, those three deserve prominent placement in retail media creative.
The fifth component is language precision. Shoppers use specific vocabulary to describe category needs, product attributes, and purchase outcomes. A skincare brand discovered that shoppers never used the term “hydration” in natural conversation, instead describing desired outcomes as “not tight,” “comfortable,” and “doesn’t need reapplication.” Switching from marketing language to shopper language increased ad relevance scores by 40% and conversion by 25%.
From Insight to Brief to Creative
The challenge isn’t gathering insights. The challenge is translating insights into brief components that creative teams can execute against. This requires a structured approach to insight synthesis and communication.
Leading organizations use a three-tier insight architecture. Tier one captures strategic insights that shape campaign positioning and primary messaging. These insights answer the fundamental “why this product” question and typically come from understanding category entry points and core purchase motivations. A strategic insight might be: “Shoppers enter the premium chocolate category through gifting occasions before becoming personal consumption buyers.”
Tier two captures tactical insights that inform specific creative elements and calls-to-action. These insights address the “why now” question and often relate to purchase triggers, seasonal patterns, or competitive dynamics. A tactical insight might be: “Shoppers buying premium chocolate for personal consumption make purchase decisions based on cocoa percentage and origin transparency, not brand heritage.”
Tier three captures execution insights that guide copywriting, visual treatment, and offer structure. These insights come from language analysis, friction mapping, and conversion barrier research. An execution insight might be: “Shoppers describe flavor preferences using sensory language (smooth, intense, fruity) rather than technical terms (single-origin, bean-to-bar), and expect packaging to visually communicate flavor profile.”
This tiered structure prevents insight overload while ensuring creative teams have the specific guidance they need at each decision point. A brief might contain 3-4 strategic insights, 8-10 tactical insights, and 15-20 execution insights, each tied to specific research evidence and shopper verbatims.
The Economics of Research-Backed Briefs
Traditional qualitative research costs create a natural barrier to insight-driven briefs. When research requires $60,000 and eight weeks, most retail media campaigns can’t justify the investment. But the economics have fundamentally changed with AI-powered research platforms that deliver qualitative depth at survey speed and cost.
A consumer electronics brand recently conducted structured interviews with 500 category shoppers in 72 hours at 4% of traditional research cost. The insights revealed that shoppers prioritized warranty terms and customer service reputation over technical specifications, directly contradicting the brief assumptions. Updating the brief based on these insights increased campaign ROAS from 5:1 to 14:1, generating $2.8 million in incremental revenue against a $200,000 media spend.
The return on research investment becomes clear when examining campaign performance across brief types. Campaigns built on assumption-based briefs average 4-6:1 ROAS. Campaigns built on research-backed briefs average 10-15:1 ROAS. For a $500,000 retail media campaign, this difference represents $2-4.5 million in incremental revenue. Even at traditional research costs, the ROI justifies the investment. At modern research costs, it becomes negligent not to invest.
The economic case strengthens further when considering campaign iteration cycles. Assumption-based campaigns require multiple rounds of creative testing and optimization to reach acceptable performance. Research-backed campaigns often perform above benchmark from launch, reducing the time and media waste associated with learning through testing. A food and beverage brand calculated that research-backed briefs reduced their time-to-optimal-performance by six weeks, saving $180,000 in media spend and capturing an additional $900,000 in revenue during peak season.
Building a Repeatable Brief Development Process
Organizations that consistently produce high-performing retail media campaigns have systematized their approach to research-backed brief development. They don’t treat insights as optional inputs or one-off investments. They build research into their campaign development workflow.
The process typically begins 4-6 weeks before campaign launch with research scoping. Teams identify the specific decision points where shopper insights would most impact brief quality: purchase triggers, consideration criteria, conversion friction, messaging priorities, or language preferences. This scoping exercise ensures research addresses actual brief gaps rather than general category understanding.
Research execution happens in week 2-3, using platforms that can deliver qualitative insights at scale within 48-72 hours. The research typically involves 200-500 structured interviews with verified category shoppers, covering purchase behavior, decision drivers, brand perceptions, and conversion barriers. The output is a structured insight database with quantified patterns and supporting verbatims.
Insight synthesis happens in week 4, translating research findings into the three-tier brief architecture. Strategic insights shape campaign positioning. Tactical insights inform creative strategy and media targeting. Execution insights guide copywriting and visual treatment. Each insight tier includes specific recommendations with supporting evidence.
Brief development happens in week 5, integrating research insights with brand guidelines, product information, and media specifications. The brief explicitly calls out which components are research-backed versus assumed, and includes shopper verbatims that bring insights to life for creative teams.
Creative development and campaign launch happen in week 6, with the research insights informing every creative decision from headline copy to visual hierarchy to call-to-action framing. Teams often find that research-backed briefs reduce creative iteration cycles because there’s less debate about what will resonate with shoppers.
Measuring Brief Quality Impact
The relationship between brief quality and campaign performance can be measured systematically. Organizations tracking this relationship typically examine three metrics: brief completeness, insight specificity, and performance correlation.
Brief completeness measures whether briefs address all critical decision inputs: purchase triggers, consideration dynamics, conversion friction, messaging hierarchy, and language precision. Analysis of 800 retail media campaigns found that briefs addressing all five components outperformed briefs addressing fewer than three components by 280% on conversion rate.
Insight specificity measures whether briefs contain actionable guidance or generic statements. Specific insights include quantified patterns, verbatim examples, and clear implications for creative decisions. Generic insights use category platitudes and unverified assumptions. Campaigns built on specific insights outperform campaigns built on generic insights by 190% on click-through rate and 240% on conversion rate.
Performance correlation tracks whether campaigns built on research-backed briefs consistently outperform campaigns built on assumption-based briefs. A consumer goods company analyzed 120 retail media campaigns over 18 months and found that research-backed campaigns averaged 12:1 ROAS versus 5:1 for assumption-based campaigns, with the gap widening for new product launches and category entry campaigns.
These metrics create accountability for brief quality and justify continued investment in research infrastructure. When organizations can demonstrate that research-backed briefs consistently deliver 2-3x performance improvement, the business case for systematic insight integration becomes undeniable.
Common Brief Development Mistakes
Even organizations committed to research-backed briefs make predictable mistakes that undermine campaign performance. Understanding these patterns helps teams avoid them.
The first mistake is researching the wrong audience. Briefs often incorporate insights from current customers when the campaign targets category shoppers or competitive brand users. These audiences have different decision drivers, conversion friction, and messaging priorities. A brief built on current customer insights will produce creative that reinforces existing buyers but fails to convert new shoppers. Effective briefs match research audience to campaign targeting with precision.
The second mistake is asking the wrong questions. Many research efforts focus on brand perception, product satisfaction, or purchase frequency when briefs actually need insights about decision triggers, consideration criteria, and conversion barriers. A brief might contain extensive data about brand awareness while lacking any information about what causes shoppers to choose the brand at point of purchase. Research questions must map directly to brief components.
The third mistake is insight overload. Teams conduct comprehensive research but fail to synthesize findings into actionable brief guidance. The brief becomes a research report rather than a creative development tool. Creative teams need curated insights with clear implications, not raw data dumps. A 60-page research readout produces worse creative than a 6-page insight synthesis with specific recommendations.
The fourth mistake is ignoring negative insights. Research often reveals uncomfortable truths: shoppers don’t understand the product, don’t value the primary benefit, or don’t differentiate the brand from competitors. Briefs that omit these findings produce creative that fails to address actual conversion barriers. The most valuable insights are often the ones that challenge existing assumptions and force strategic reconsideration.
The fifth mistake is treating insights as permanent. Shopper behavior evolves with competitive dynamics, economic conditions, and category maturity. A brief built on two-year-old insights may no longer reflect current decision drivers. Leading organizations refresh their shopper insights every 6-12 months and update briefs accordingly. This creates a continuous learning cycle that compounds campaign performance over time.
The Future of Brief Development
The gap between assumption-based and research-backed briefs will only widen as retail media becomes more sophisticated and competitive. Platforms are adding more targeting options, creative formats, and optimization capabilities. But these tools amplify brief quality rather than compensating for it. Better targeting with weak messaging still underperforms.
The organizations winning in retail media are those treating brief development as a strategic capability rather than an administrative task. They’re investing in research infrastructure, training teams on insight synthesis, and measuring the relationship between brief quality and campaign performance. They recognize that the marginal cost of better briefs is minimal compared to the marginal value of improved ROAS.
As AI-powered research platforms make qualitative insights accessible at survey speed and cost, the barrier to research-backed briefs effectively disappears. The question shifts from “can we afford insights” to “can we afford to proceed without them.” When research costs 4% of traditional approaches and delivers results in 72 hours instead of 8 weeks, every retail media campaign should start with structured shopper insights.
The brands that embrace this shift will establish a compounding advantage. Better briefs produce better creative. Better creative generates better performance data. Better performance data enables more sophisticated optimization. This flywheel effect creates separation between organizations that systematically incorporate shopper insights and those that continue building briefs on assumptions and category conventions.
Retail media represents a $130 billion market growing at 25% annually. The brands that figure out how to consistently produce high-performing campaigns will capture disproportionate share of that growth. The foundation isn’t creative talent or media buying sophistication. It’s brief quality. And brief quality starts with structured consumer insights gathered at scale.
For organizations ready to systematically improve their retail media brief development process, platforms like User Intuition enable teams to conduct structured interviews with hundreds of verified category shoppers in 48-72 hours, delivering the qualitative depth required for research-backed briefs at a fraction of traditional cost and timeline. The capability exists. The economics work. The performance difference is measurable. The question is whether organizations will adopt the approach before their competitors do.