Marketing Funnel Archives

In News

The Marketing Funnel Is Being Rewritten. Here’s How Transaction-Based Advertising Is Changing the Game.

October 30, 2026 No Comments

Key Takeaways

Point of Purchase is not merely the endpoint of the funnel, but has now become the critical touchpoint for generating brand demand.
While retail media is limited to retail and consumer packaged goods ecosystems, it is actually part of a bigger trend: commerce media.
Commerce media models give advertisers cross-merchant intelligence and deep consumer intent signals across everyday life experiences — from booking a flight to paying a bill.
To target intent-driven customers, leaders in enterprises will have to go beyond simple media buys and align their digital shelf, search and commerce media spending in retail, finance and travel ecosystems.

Beyond all the jargon, digital advertising is now at a watershed moment: The transactional end of the marketing funnel isn’t simply the endgame; it’s the critical touchpoint where demand is generated, gathered and fulfilled.

For quite some time now, digital marketing has relied upon a well-known separation of responsibilities. Brand awareness has been handled by social media and digital video, search engines facilitated discovery, and trade promotions have been conducted in brick-and-mortar stores. Not anymore.

If you are a corporate executive, brand marketer, or investor operating in the current media environment, grasping this transition will be essential for grasping two inter-related ideas: retail media and commerce media.

Comprehension of retail media from a PoP perspective

Retail media at its most basic level is defined as an advertisement placed in a retailer’s digital or physical property by leveraging their own shoppers’ data at or close to the time of purchase.

Retail media covers anything from branded product searches on Amazon or Walmart and display ads in a mobile application to loyalty email marketing and sophisticated digital signage in brick-and-mortar aisles.

As I have covered in depth in my article on what retail media is and how to be successful with it in 2026, retail media is the digital version of conventional shopper marketing. It’s not that end-cap and aisle displays aren’t around anymore; they’ve become addressable, measurable and biddable.

Retail media sits across three main formats:

Onsite media: Sponsored search and display ads on a retailer’s site or app — the highest-intent digital real estate available.
Offsite media: Ads on programmatic web, connected TV (CTV) or social channels, targeted and measured using the retailer’s first-party purchase data.
In-store digital media: Smart cooler doors, digital shelf screens and self-checkout displays that bridge the digital-physical store divide.

Why is capital pouring into retail media so aggressively? Three forces are driving it:

Closed-loop attribution: Connecting an ad impression directly to a verified receipt eliminates the guesswork of traditional attribution models.
First-party data durability: As third-party cookie signals continue to degrade, verified transaction records remain the gold standard for audience targeting.
Margin expansion for retailers: Retail operates on notoriously thin margins, whereas selling media provides exceptionally high-margin revenue streams.

Nonetheless, brand executives should ignore the headline statistics. Branding investments are highly skewed toward the high-end platforms such as Amazon Ads and Walmart Connect. For success at the point of sale, you need to fix your digital shelf (optimize title, image and review), differentiate between defensive branding investment and offensive category investment and demand normalized incrementality metrics.

Broader Horizons: Expanding into commerce media

Whereas retail media is limited to retail and CPG ecosystems, it is actually a part of a bigger trend in structural shifts: commerce media.

Commerce media takes the notion way beyond the supermarket aisles or the app. It includes any organization that possesses a first-party transaction ledger and constructs advertising infrastructure to capitalize on it.

In the process of creating a strategy for multi-channel growth, it is important for media executives to analyze the operational structure that works best for their product cycle. According to Kontrol Media, it is useful to look into the main types of commerce media network models in order to understand how they work in various industries. The types include:

Retail media networks (RMNs): Powered by SKU-level purchase data within a single retail platform (e.g., Instacart Ads, Walmart Connect).
Financial media networks: Leveraging cross-merchant transaction histories from banks and payment processors to capture wallet-share signals and conquest opportunities (e.g., Chase Media Solutions, PayPal Ads).
Travel and hospitality networks: Monetizing travel itineraries, seat selections and hotel bookings (e.g., Marriott Media Network, United Airlines Kinective Media).
Delivery and rideshare networks: Capitalizing on hyper-local, real-time location and order data (e.g., Uber Advertising, DoorDash Ads).
Marketplace & White-Label Networks: Aggregated multi-seller commerce infrastructure and custom-built enterprise networks for niche verticals.

Where retail media delivers granular, SKU-level conversion precision within one retailer, broader commerce media models give advertisers cross-merchant intelligence and deep consumer intent signals across everyday life experiences — from booking a flight to paying a bill.

Strategic takeaways for business leaders

With changing search behaviors, AI-assisted shopping and new privacy settings that affect traditional tracking technologies, retail and commerce media is no longer optional; it forms the base layer of the contemporary commerce strategy.

For securing market share in today’s world:

Integration of search, AI and retail media: Your product detail page and reviews contribute to both retail algorithms for conversion and AI-powered answer algorithms. Look at SEO, AEO, GEO and retail media at point of purchase as one demand engine.
Category-specificity over network hype: Spend your money on where your category works versus trying to buy every single media network that pops up.
Rigorously audit measurement: Create a standard layer of reporting for all commerce and retail media networks for measuring incremental revenue so that your media spend contributes towards making those additional sales.

With this approach, brands will be able to get their hands on a high-intent audience through connected discovery platforms.

By Al Sefati

Al Sefati is CEO of Clarity Digital Agency and an omnichannel marketing strategist and AI-driven digital transformation consultant. With 20+ years of experience, he helps brands grow through smart strategy, performance marketing, and data.

Edited by Chelsea Brown

Sourced from Entrepreneur

In News

Why The Marketing Funnel Is Dead (And How To Evolve)

May 20, 2024 No Comments

By Anton Lipkanou.

For too long, marketers have clung to the marketing funnel, blissfully unaware (or, in some cases, willfully ignorant) of the reality that today’s consumers follow a buying journey that doesn’t follow a funnel.

The days of casting wide nets with channel-first tactics are over. I believe that chief marketing officers who want their brands to be industry leaders must let go of the archaic strategies that once dominated their playbooks and instead focus their efforts on converting only the best of the best: their superfans.

The Downfall Of Traditional Marketing

Once celebrated for its simplicity, the marketing funnel model now falls short in mapping the intricate, non-linear journey of the modern consumer. It naively views the consumer journey as a straight shot from awareness to purchase, a concept laughably out of sync with the multifaceted, unpredictable nature of today’s consumer.

Despite the growing body of evidence pointing to the funnel’s obsolescence, the marketing world clings to it like a crutch. This reluctance to evolve is an ingrained mindset and a stubborn refusal to acknowledge that the game has changed. But the digital transformation doesn’t care about our comfort zones. Today’s consumers, armed with information and options, don’t just passively drift down a funnel. They’re active players, often sidestepping our best-laid marketing strategies.

In the third quarter of 2023, retail e-commerce sales saw the highest quarterly revenue in United States history—roughly $284 billion. As consumers increasingly turn to digital platforms, it becomes more important to adopt a more nuanced, consumer-centric marketing approach. Those who recognize this shift and move to strategies that engage with the evolving dynamics of consumer interaction can be the ones to capitalize on this historic surge in e-commerce activity.

Modern Marketing Challenges

Paid social media has aggressively expanded its influence past the top of the funnel, dramatically impacting a hallmark marketing metric: the cost per acquisition (CPA). The reliance on CPAs from these platforms has become a double-edged sword. Marketers putting all their eggs in the easy-to-measure paid social CPA basket have watched as costs skyrocket, leading to financial losses.

As we say goodbye to third-party cookies, marketers face a profound shift in data collection. Technology democratization has leveled the playing field, but this seismic shift comes with new challenges. Major digital platforms are increasingly pushing modeled data, which subtly encourages a dependency that could skew marketing decisions by driving reliance on convenient but inaccurate data. Thus, the real challenge for marketers is discerning the truth in a sea of approximations. The key lies in using this data judiciously, complementing it with other organic insights to ensure a grounded approach to understanding consumer behavior.

With a media inflation rate soaring past 5% (registration required), corporations demand efficiency. This can lead to significant compromises, not just in campaign quality but also in consumer engagement. Marketers must innovate and find ways to optimize budgets without sacrificing the long-term vision and engagement that fuel brand growth.

The Superfan Marketing Revolution

Superfan marketing is a strategic shift that prioritizes deep understanding and engagement with the real VIPs of the brand: superfans. In the post-cookie landscape, marketers are being called back to the basics: truly and profoundly understanding their consumers, brand positioning and product-market fit.

Gone are the days when marketers could lean on broad data to attribute impressions across the conversion funnel. Now, the game demands marketing that doesn’t just reach people but persuades them. While this approach demands more focus and effort, I believe it’s the only way a brand can win in this new era of marketing.

Creating A Supercycle

These superfans, the most engaged and loyal customers, are at the heart of this approach. Putting prospective superfans at the forefront of marketing strategies is about investing resources to delve into the depths of what makes them tick. This means understanding their specific needs, preferences and behaviors and then tailoring your messaging and strategies to resonate with their unique consumer DNA. Here’s how:

1. Leverage data to identify and engage potential superfans.

Re-imagine the traditional marketing funnel. Instead of looking at the funnel horizontally by stages, slice the funnel vertically by audience segment and focus only on the superfans. This is not about creating generic customer experiences for anyone who might buy; it’s about crafting personalized journeys that speak directly to the needs and preferences of your superfan segment. The goal here is to create a high-spend, high-value experience to nurture these prospects with such precision and care that they evolve into loyal, high-value customers.

2. Break down the silos between data, media and technology.

Data, media, and technology need to collaborate within your organization to ensure that the data insights inform media planning and technology deployment. But it doesn’t stop there. You must also optimize continuously. Analyze the effectiveness of your strategies and tactics in real time, using data and feedback to refine and adjust your approach.

3. Focus on strategic effectiveness.

Traditional marketing lives by the mantra “every prospect has value,” but this couldn’t be further from the truth. I believe distractors need to be cut from your attention completely. The core middle—the 80% of your customers who provide a decent amount of revenue but are not loyal to your brand—is not worth the resources required to figure them out. To make a real, material difference, focus your marketing only on your superfans.

Now is the moment to evaluate your marketing strategies. By stepping away from the outdated marketing funnel and embracing superfan marketing, savvy CMOs can write the playbook for the future.

Feature Image Credit: GETTY

By Anton Lipkanou.

Follow me on LinkedIn. Check out my website.

Anton Lipkanou is President / Partner at Delve Partners. Read Anton Lipkanou’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

5 Secrets to Creating a Marketing Funnel That Converts

May 24, 2022 No Comments

By David Finkel

Simply the process and help your customers convert.

When it comes to marketing funnels, there are a lot of things to consider. And depending on your product or service, the sales funnel can be rather lengthy — which means that you need to put a lot of time and effort into crafting a sales funnel that keeps your customer engaged, educated, and ultimately ready to convert. So today, I wanted to share with you some tips on how to make the most out of your marketing funnel efforts.

1. Get clear on the goals of the funnel.

Anyone can create a series of emails to send out to your client base, but creating a targeted funnel that will address their pain points and get the intended response is a little more difficult. Begin the process by looking at your intended client and doing a little research. What do they care about? What do they worry about? What other things do they have going on in their lives? What would prevent them from purchasing your product? And what pain points and frustrations are they looking for you to solve. These are the things that you should be talking about in your marketing funnel. And get very clear on your goal. Do you want them to purchase from you? Do you want them to keep purchasing from you down the road? Do you want them to tell their friends about your product?

2. Lay it out visually.

Once you have a good idea of what you want to address and the intended goal, it’s time to lay out the funnel visually. There are some great software options out there that will help you do this. But if all else fails, you can draw it out on a piece of paper or on a whiteboard. Lay out where they enter the funnel (lead capture form, social media, your website, a paid ad, etc) and then where they will go in the journey. This could include SMS messaging, follow up phone calls or visits, webinars, emails, videos, etc. Clearly mark anywhere in the funnel that is considered a “conversion point.” These are the areas that you will want to track to determine whether your funnel is successful or not.

3. Add a little spice.

Now that you have a first draft, go back over the flow and take note of where you plan on going for a logical appeal versus an emotional one. Do you have a good enough mix of the two? Too much logic and you will fail to motivate your clients to act now. Too much emotional appeal and you risk losing your prospect because they won’t have a clear plan of action. The perfect funnel has a mixture of both.

4. Simplify it.

At this point, you might be ready to start writing, but hold off just a little bit longer. You want a well-thought-out funnel that addresses everything you want to address, but you also want to make it as simple as possible for your clients to take the next step. So it’s time to review your funnel with an editing eye. Are there too many hoops to talk to a sales rep? Does the sales message get lost in a sea of emails? Simplify the process, and help your customers convert.

5. Write your funnel.

Now that you have spent some time planning out your funnel with a good mixture of emotional and logical information and you have gone through the editing process, it’s time to start writing. Begin with a draft, and have other team members (or a sales writer) review the copy for edits and clarity. Once you think you are at a good place with the draft, it’s time to launch. Review your numbers often, and make note of any emails that don’t have a good open or click-through rate, and focus on those for future rounds of edits.

Good luck!

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By David Finkel

Author, ‘The Freedom Formula: How to Succeed in Business Without Sacrificing Your Family, Health,