Higher advertising budgets do not necessarily lead to stronger full-funnel marketing. A joint playbook by Amazon Ads, MMA India and WPP Media finds that 82% of advertisers have yet to fully integrate their marketing efforts.

Higher advertising expenditure does not always translate into better marketing outcomes. Many of India's major digital advertisers continue to face challenges connecting brand-building investments with measurable business results. This raises an important question for the industry: is full-funnel marketing being held back by limited budgets or by how those budgets are planned and managed?

A joint playbook from Amazon Ads, the Marketing + Media Alliance (MMA) India and WPP Media, titled From Fragmentation to One View: A Marketer's Playbook for Full-Funnel Growth, found that 82% of surveyed advertisers had not yet fully implemented a full-funnel marketing strategy.

The survey was conducted by MMA India in July and August 2026, involving 126 advertising decision-makers. Its findings suggest that higher spending alone does not necessarily result in more mature marketing practices.

Among advertisers spending over Rs 200 crore annually on digital advertising, 14% described their full-funnel execution as unsuccessful or said they had not attempted it. In comparison, only 4% of advertisers spending Rs 50–100 crore reported the same. Although the groups differ in scale and maturity, the results indicate that financial resources alone cannot ensure a well-integrated marketing strategy.

Connecting consumer journeys remains a major challenge

For Sairam Ranganathan, head of commerce at WPP Media India, the key challenge is bringing different stages of the consumer journey together instead of treating each channel and marketing objective independently.

Ranganathan said marketers have traditionally approached brand-building and performance marketing as separate activities. Retail media, however, creates opportunities to connect the two by reaching consumers during early brand exposure as well as when they actively search for and evaluate products.

This approach can help brands link consumer interactions with business outcomes, including sales.

The central issue for advertisers is therefore not just how much they spend, but how effectively their media investments work together.

Measurement gaps continue to limit full-funnel marketing

Measurement remains one of the biggest obstacles to wider full-funnel adoption. According to the playbook, 67% of respondents identified the absence of unified measurement as a barrier, while 69% said they wanted better cross-channel attribution capabilities.

Consumer journeys rarely follow a straightforward path. A shopper might discover a product through a video advertisement, research it on social media, compare options on a marketplace and eventually purchase it online or in a physical store.

Each interaction can influence the final decision. However, campaigns measured primarily through the last click may overlook the contribution of earlier touchpoints in building awareness and purchase intent.

The playbook references WPP Media's Touchpoint India study, which found that the number of touchpoints accounting for 80% of a purchase decision's total influence in the non-food consumer packaged goods category increased from 12 in 2018 to 21 in 2024. During the same period, the influence of the top 15 touchpoints declined from 85% to 68%.

These findings highlight that full-funnel marketing requires more than coordinated media planning. It also calls for better measurement systems and closer collaboration across teams.

Retail media is expanding beyond conversions

The playbook found that 59% of surveyed advertisers viewed retail media as a full-funnel solution. Of these, 47% said the channel was becoming increasingly useful for awareness and consideration, while 12% reported using it across awareness, consideration and conversion.

Meanwhile, 25% continued to see retail media primarily as a lower-funnel channel focused on conversions and sales.

Traditionally, retail media has been associated with sponsored product listings and search advertisements targeting consumers who are close to making a purchase. Its role is now expanding to include commerce signals, video, display advertising and creator-led content that can influence shoppers earlier in their decision-making process.

The objective is to combine broader brand influence with measurable commercial results.

The report also cites WPP Media's econometric modelling across consumer packaged goods categories, which identified e-commerce as the largest contributor to both volume sales and brand KPIs in its analysis. For brands with significant commerce contributions to both sales and media expenditure, the report estimated an impact of 10–12% on brand awareness, 18–20% on consideration and 20–25% on offline sales.

Retail media investment is also expected to increase. The survey found that 55% of advertisers planned to raise spending on the channel in 2027. By comparison, 80% expected to increase their investments in video and social or creator marketing.

Where is retail media's growth coming from?

According to Ranganathan, retail media is benefiting from both the reallocation of existing budgets and additional marketing investments.

While overall advertising expenditure is growing by approximately 8–10%, retail media is expanding at a faster rate of 25–30%.

Marketing and sales budgets, which have traditionally been managed separately, are increasingly converging. This shift is contributing to the channel's growth as brands seek closer connections between advertising activity and commercial performance.

Among the categories witnessing stronger growth are FMCG, mobile handsets and electronics. White goods are also gaining momentum, despite traditionally depending more heavily on mass-media advertising.

Can smaller advertisers achieve stronger full-funnel execution?

The findings challenge the assumption that larger advertising budgets automatically lead to more effective full-funnel marketing. Smaller advertisers may be able to move quickly by experimenting with connected campaigns and adapting their strategies with fewer organisational layers.

Larger brands, meanwhile, often benefit from greater budgets, wider reach and established operating structures. However, coordinating brand, performance, commerce and media teams can become more complicated as organisations grow.

Smaller advertisers face their own challenges, including limited resources and less room for experimentation. The report does not suggest that smaller businesses are inherently more effective; rather, it highlights that spending power alone does not determine marketing maturity.

For advertisers of every size, the priority is to design campaigns around connected consumer journeys instead of running disconnected initiatives across individual channels.

Measurement also needs to reflect the different objectives of each stage. Awareness, consideration, conversion and loyalty require distinct indicators, but their outcomes should be assessed collectively rather than in isolation.

Smaller brands could begin by targeting a clearly defined consumer segment and testing integrated campaigns before scaling up. Larger advertisers may need to focus on bringing fragmented teams, data and measurement systems together.

Commerce is increasingly influencing media planning

Ranganathan describes the emerging landscape as a “connected commerce ecosystem”, in which quick-commerce services and online marketplaces have reduced the distance between advertising exposure and purchase.

He noted that consumers can increasingly move from seeing an advertisement to buying a product because of the growing accessibility of quick-commerce platforms and marketplaces.

Integrations involving JioHotstar and Amazon illustrate this development. On JioHotstar, viewers can interact with advertisements and move towards purchasing products, while the platform also offers add-to-cart capabilities through its integration with Instagram. Similarly, advertisements appearing during Amazon Prime Video content can allow viewers to add products to their carts or explore purchase options.

Connected TV is creating additional opportunities. QR codes embedded in advertisements can direct viewers to quick-commerce services and marketplaces, helping them move from watching content to shopping.

As these capabilities expand, they could reduce friction throughout the consumer journey and strengthen advertisers' confidence in retail media investments.

Retail media offers new opportunities for D2C brands

The shift also has implications for direct-to-consumer (D2C) businesses looking to expand beyond their existing audiences.

Ranganathan explained that D2C brands that have grown through digital channels may eventually reach a point where further growth requires them to attract new consumers and expand their total addressable market.

Retail media can help these businesses connect with new audiences while linking marketing investments to commerce outcomes.

For brands that have traditionally relied on television and digital advertising to build awareness, the channel offers another way to convert brand-building efforts into measurable commercial results.

Ranganathan said the market is moving towards an omnichannel environment in which consumers expect to purchase through a variety of options, including traditional retail, newer commerce channels and D2C platforms.

The broader takeaway from the playbook is that successful full-funnel marketing depends less on the size of an advertising budget and more on how effectively brands connect media channels, consumer touchpoints, measurement systems and commerce experiences.