How to monetize Meta Ads to drive retail sales

A tactical playbook for performance-focused social commerce

Meta platforms like Facebook and Instagram drive product discovery, but most brands are still missing the opportunity to turn that traffic into retail sales. The issue is not awareness; it is conversion. This playbook explains how to connect Meta Ads to measurable sales outcomes at Amazon, Walmart, and other retailers by solving key challenges around attribution, experience, team alignment, and optimization. It is built for performance marketers looking to close the loop on paid social.

Keep reading if you’re:

• Looking to hit online retail sales goals
• Manage Meta Ads budgets and are being asked to contribute to incremental purchase opportunities
• Think there may be an opportunity to optimize your shopper’s path to purchase

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.

Why Meta Ads alone don’t close the sale

Consumers often see products on Meta, but buy elsewhere. More than 60% research products on social platforms, but the majority complete purchases on retail platforms like Amazon. Brands often fail to guide shoppers through that handoff. The gaps include:

• Traffic routed to brand.com or landing pages without purchase intent
• Lack of conversion tracking at retail destinations
• Internal teams operating in silos across brand, media, and shopper

To unlock growth, social ads need to function as a bridge between discovery and transaction and not create dead ends.

The Ampd method for turning Meta Ads into retail revenue

1. Measure what matters with closed-loop attribution

How: Set up Amazon Attribution or use Ampd’s automation tools to tag Meta campaigns with tracking URLs. This connects impressions and clicks to actual retail conversions. Instead of relying on platform metrics or proxy KPIs, you get ROAS directly tied to your retail partners.

2. Improve the purchase path with deep-linking

How: Use tools like Branch or Ampd's built-in capabilities to create direct deep links from Meta Ads into retail apps or optimized PDPs. Shoppers should land on the exact product in the Amazon or Walmart app, not a mobile web version. This improves add-to-cart rates by up to 15 times and conversion rates by up to 5 times, especially for mobile-first audiences.

3. Align internal teams on a unified pilot

How: Run a 3-month test that brings together shopper marketing, paid social, and ecommerce teams. Agree on key KPIs like retail ROAS, cost-per-new-to-brand customer, and share of voice. Aligning budgets and reporting structures helps reduce internal friction and ensures everyone is optimizing toward the same business outcome.

4. Structure testing with intent

How: Move beyond auto-optimization. Set aside test budgets (typically $500–$1,000 per variant) for different combinations of creative, copy, audiences, and destinations. For example, test lifestyle vs. product-focused creative, different CTAs, and whether sending to Amazon or Walmart drives better results. Real insights come from structured experimentation, not guesswork.

5. Report performance daily across media and retail

How: Connect your Amazon Attribution or retailer data with Meta campaign performance into a unified dashboard. You can do this with Ampd’s reporting tools or lightweight BI setups like Google Sheets or Looker. The goal is to spot winning combinations in real-time rather than waiting weeks to adjust.

6. Retarget based on retail behavior

How: Use engagement data from Amazon or Walmart to build retargeting segments. This includes click-throughs from Meta that didn’t convert or cart abandoners. Run retargeting ads via Amazon DSP or on Meta using custom audiences derived from onsite events. This keeps high-intent shoppers in your funnel.

Results from brands using this approach

Brands using Ampd to connect Meta campaigns with retail sales have seen:

• Up to 6x higher ROAS vs. brand.com strategies
• 50% faster decision-making due to daily visibility
• Higher budget efficiency due to clear attribution to revenue

What you can do this week

Ready to close the loop on Meta spend?

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 us show you what’s possible.

Book a strategy call with Ampd >