Over the last decade, social media has shifted from a space for friends to a space for shopping. Meta’s own data shows that only 7% of user time is spent viewing friends' content. The other 93%? It's where brands live.
This shift presents an enormous opportunity, and an equally large gap. In a recent webinar with Cleveland Research Council, I walked through what we at Ampd consider the most overlooked opportunity in digital media today: turning social media traffic into retail sales.
Below, I’ve outlined our tactical playbook. Battle-tested with some of the top CPGs in the U.S., this is for brand marketers who are ready to meet their shoppers where they are and finally monetize Meta ads the way they were always meant to be used.
Let’s dive in.
The Shopper Dilemma: where things are broken
Before we get tactical, it’s important to align on one core truth: social media is where shoppers discover, but retail is where they buy.
A recent eMarketer survey found that 67% of users research products on social platforms before making a purchase.
But 2 out of 3 still prefer to complete their purchase at a retailer—Amazon, Walmart, or a favorite local chain—not on your brand’s DTC site.
This is the shopper’s dilemma. As a brand, you’re generating purchase intent on social, but not making it easy for shoppers to complete that purchase where they want to.
Even more telling: our research shows that only 20% of the top 60 CPG brands are actively sending traffic from Meta into retail destinations. The other 80% are either not doing it at all, or doing it poorly.
Challenge 1: Measurement gaps (aka "No data, no dollars")
As Keith Lehman at Colgate-Palmolive bluntly put it: “No data, no dollars.”
Brands want to invest in what they can measure, and most social-to-retail tactics have lacked the transparency and determinism needed to justify the spend.
The three methods we see often:
- Post-flight Lift Studies/MMMs: Too slow to be actionable.
- Direct-to-Cart Tactics: Misleading. Just because an item lands in a cart doesn't mean it belongs there.
- Where-to-Buy Interstitials Using Affiliate Links: Often limited to a 1-day attribution window, and they offer zero clarity into actual sales.
The fix? Build your campaigns with closed-loop attribution and deterministic measurement front and center.
✅ Action Step: Start with Amazon Attribution. It’s available to everyone and gives you visibility into what creative, audiences, and keywords actually convert at scale.
Challenge 2: Internal misalignment
Too often, the teams driving social media (brand or DTC) aren’t aligned with the teams owning retail goals.
The result? Budget silos, misaligned KPIs, and zero incentive to work collaboratively.
We believe in a "both/and" model: Social media doesn’t need to be owned exclusively by brand or retail. With today's targeting tools and vast audience pools, both can coexist—and thrive—under a shared media framework.
✅ Action Step: Pilot a three-month test-and-learn budget with shared KPIs between brand and retail teams. Monitor performance closely, especially mid-funnel engagement and add-to-cart/conversion rates.
Challenge 3: Shopper experience (or lack of control over it)
Let’s talk shopper experience. Right now, most social traffic lands in:
- A browser version of a retailer’s site (where the shopper isn't logged in)
- A cluttered interstitial that adds friction
- A brand site that doesn’t meet the shopper’s expectation of trustworthy purchase experience
The solution? Deep linking.
With deep linking, that same click from Instagram or Facebook lands the shopper directly inside their Amazon or Walmart app, logged in and ready to buy. Our data shows:
15x increase in add-to-cart rates
5x lift in conversion rates
✅ Action Step: Don’t assume your attribution links come with deep linking. Most don’t. Work with your dev team or a tech partner to ensure links resolve into native apps.
Challenge 4: Reporting that matters
Measurement is the foundation, but reporting is how you turn insight into action.
To truly optimize media, you need to connect retail signals (cart adds, conversions, revenue, etc.) to media signals (creative, audience, CPM, etc.) at the most granular level—daily.
✅ Action Step: Build a dashboard or use a tool that pulls both media and retail data into one view. At minimum, export the data and stitch together in Excel or Google Sheets. Bonus points if you automate the process.
Challenge 5: Testing (real testing, not just hunches)
One of the biggest shifts in offsite-to-retail is this: you can’t rely on ad platforms to auto-optimize toward conversions.
That means you need to manually split test everything:
- Creatives
- Audiences
- Destinations (PDP vs brand shelf vs 6-pack bundle)
✅ Action Step: Budget at least $500–$1,000 per variation. Run 2-3 creative tests per campaign, collect stat-sig data, and iterate every 2–4 weeks.
Challenge 6: Retargeting and re-engagement
If you’re driving traffic into retail, you must have a plan to re-engage cart abandoners and PDP viewers. Otherwise, you're paying to get shoppers to the door and letting them walk away.
✅ Action Step: Coordinate with your retail media team to activate DSP or on-site display for retargeting. Treat social traffic as part of your full-funnel strategy, not just top-funnel awareness.
The time to act is now
This isn’t theoretical. It’s tactical. And brands that move fast here are winning.
Challenger brands are already doing this and eating into legacy brand share because they understand how social commerce works in 2025.
You don’t need to overhaul your media mix overnight. But you do need to evolve. Start with small wins. Test a campaign. Connect the dots between social and retail. Prove the impact.
Because social media is no longer just about building awareness, it’s about driving transactions, where your shoppers already are.
Ready to go deeper?
Watch the full webinar from our Cleveland Research Council series to hear this entire playbook with visual walkthroughs, data insights, and more brand examples.
Want to see how Ampd makes this all work in practice? Get a personalized demo and let’s show you what’s possible.
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