Say a foodie named Kristen sees an ad for a gourmet pasta brand while binge-watching The Bear. Two weeks later, she spots the same brand at her local grocery store and grabs several boxes.

The sale directly results from the connected TV (CTV) ad, but without a way to tie that exposure to offline purchases, the brand or agency behind it is unable to prove attribution. As a result, marketing budget often gets reallocated, and the very campaigns driving revenue are deprioritized.

Sound familiar? We’re not surprised. Blind spots like these have plagued marketers for years, making some of the best performing channels appear ineffective.

But what if you could draw a direct line from your CTV ad to the cash register?With retail media attribution, you can.

By gathering insight from leading retailers, brands and agencies are now able to deterministically measure the full customer journey and prove return on ad spend (ROAS) for in-store purchases awareness campaigns.

The data is out there, and so are the retail media networks. But getting it right often requires having a programmatic CTV partner like Strategus to forge integrations and make sense of the complexity.

Keep reading to find out how we do just that.

What Is Retail Media Attribution?

Retail media attribution is a measurement solution that connects advertising exposure to in-store and online sales — offering brands a clear view into which campaigns are actually driving purchases.

Unlike traditional attribution methods that rely on clicks, cookies, or probabilistic modeling, retail media attribution provides concrete evidence of campaign effectiveness using real purchase behavior. When a customer uses their loyalty card or provides their phone number at checkout, that transaction gets logged with precise product details — down to the SKU level. By matching this purchase data with campaign exposure logs, marketers can definitively prove which ads drove which sales.

Why Retail Media Attribution Matters for CTV

For top-of-funnel tactics like CTV advertising, this type of attribution solves a critical measurement challenge. Marketers have long struggled to quantify the business outcomes of campaigns aimed at building brand awareness and driving consideration. Retail media attribution changes this by revealing how top-of-funnel ads influence shopping behavior weeks or even months after the initial exposure.

With Retail Media Attribution from Strategus, it’s possible to:

• Track verified sales outcomes from major retailers like Walmart, Target, Kroger, and more.
• Measure new buyers, sales lift, and brand impact even when purchases occur offline.
• Understand campaign performance in real-world environments, not just digital clicks.
• Attribute results across multiple retail ecosystems, rather than only having visibility into a single platform.

The result? The comprehensive attribution that CTV campaigns deserve — backed by the data to prove ROI, optimize spending, and scale what's actually working.

How Does Retail Media Attribution Work?

Retail Media Attribution from Strategus connects your streaming TV campaigns to in-store and online purchases using deterministic loyalty card data from 40+ major retailers — including Kroger, Walmart, Target, Walgreens, and more.

The result? No more guesswork or probabilistic modeling.

Here’s how it works:

1. CTV ad exposure: A viewer sees your connected TV ad on a platform like Fire TV, Roku, or a leading streaming app. Strategus logs the impression and timestamps it (without relying on cookies or invasive tracking).
2. Retail purchase occurs: Days or weeks later, that same viewer makes a purchase at a participating retail store, either online or in person. The transaction is captured via loyalty card swipe, account login, or phone number entry at checkout.
3. Purchase data is logged: The retailer records detailed information about the purchase, including the exact product (down to the SKU), time of transaction, and the anonymized shopper ID. This data is 100% deterministic, based on real transactions.
4. Data is matched behind the scenes: We match the purchase back to the CTV impression using privacy-compliant, deterministic data partnerships — with no personally identifiable information ever passed through. This allows us to identify unique household IDs that were exposed to your ad and subsequently made a purchase of your product.
5. Results Are Delivered in Your Dashboard: Within our reporting dashboard, you’ll see exactly how many conversions occurred, where they happened, and how much revenue was driven.
6. Continuous Optimization: With this concrete, real-time sales data, we gain the intelligence needed to optimize your campaign mid-flight, reallocating budget to the most effective ads, channels, and targeting strategies.

Benefits of Retail Media Attribution From Strategus

While many platforms offer access to individual retail media networks, we take a different approach by providing integrated attribution across an entire ecosystem of retail partners. This delivers several key advantages.

Here’s a quick breakdown from Rachel Dillon, our EVP of Sales and Marketing, followed by a deep-dive on the benefits of our offering.

Retail media: the good, the bad, and the promise of data | Rachel Dillon posted on the topic | LinkedIn

Rachel Dillon

EVP of Sales at Strategus | High-Performance Advertising | Leading Revenue Teams | Sales Strategy & Growth

1y

LinkedIn

If you’re overwhelmed by the state of retail media, you aren’t alone.

The space is growing and changing, with new providers entering the space daily. There’s also a complete lack of congruence and standardization — even when working with major players like Kroger and Amazon.

Despite this, the promise of retail data is undeniable. Not only does it enable more precise targeting than third-party data sources, it can also be used to connect ad exposure directly to sales outcomes.

My team has achieved amazing results by getting deep in the weeds and understanding the nuances of all the different RMNs out there.

That means you don’t have to be an expert. We’re doing the heavy lifting for the brands and agencies we partner with and are really excited about the results we’re seeing.

👇

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Cross-Retailer Visibility

Most shoppers don't limit themselves to a single retailer. With Strategus, you can track how your CTV campaigns influence purchases across wherever your customers shop, from grocery chains to big-box stores to specialty retailers.

Complete Market Coverage

By aggregating data from leading retail media networks, we provide a more complete picture of campaign impact than any single retailer could offer alone. This breadth ensures you're capturing the majority of conversions, not just a subset.

Simplified Reporting

Instead of managing multiple dashboards and reconciling different data formats from various retail partners, we consolidates everything into a single, unified reporting interface. This streamlined approach makes it easier to understand true campaign performance and make data-driven optimizations.

Industry Agnostic

While retail media attribution originated in the CPG space, our broad network of retail partnerships enables measurement across multiple industries — from automotive brands tracking parts purchases to home improvement companies monitoring tool and appliance sales.

Top Retail Media Networks for CTV Attribution

Retail media attribution is only as powerful as the partnerships behind it. That’s why we integrate with the leading retail media networks (RMNs) — connecting your connected TV campaigns to measurable sales outcomes across grocery chains, big-box retailers, and specialty stores.

While many platforms offer access to a single RMN or proprietary ecosystem, we provide vendor-agnostic audience insight across a growing list of retail partners. Here’s a look at the top providers.

• Amazon: As a certified Amazon partner, we offer access to both Amazon’s owned-and-operated inventory (e.g. Prime Video, Fire TV, Amazon Music) and non-Amazon placements. This allows us to provide closed-loop attribution that connects streaming TV impressions to actual purchases — both online and offline.
• Walmart: With 90% of Americans shopping at Walmart annually, it’s a powerhouse in retail data. Through in-platform reporting, the brands and agencies we partner with gain visibility into sales lift, new-to-brand buyers, and unique reach. Measurement includes over 15 performance metrics, including customer lifetime value and sales-impacting events.
• Kroger: Kroger is the largest supermarket chain by revenue, offering deep insight into shopper behavior across 2,700 locations. Strategus enables attribution reporting through Kroger’s loyalty ecosystem, identifying sales activity like lapsed or repeat purchases — even when transactions occur weeks after the initial CTV exposure.
• Costco: With 137 million membership cardholders, Costco’s retail media data unlocks visibility into demographic and purchase-based audiences. The advertisers we partner with benefit from in-platform reporting and attribution across high-value product categories in this closed member environment.
• Albertsons Companies (including Safeway, Vons, Acme, Shaw’s, and more): We use Albertsons' media network to provide in-platform attribution and campaign performance reporting across more than 2,000 grocery stores nationwide. Measurement includes category-level sales and audience insights for verticalized and specialty retail environments.

Want to learn more about our retail media partnerships? Contact us today to learn about our entire retail media ecosystem.

Retail Media Attribution in Action

Want to know what this looks like?

When a national nut brand partnered with us for a three-month CTV campaign, their goal was clear: boost in-store sales and prove the ROI of their media investment. We consolidated purchase data from over 40 participating retailers — including Kroger and Walgreens — thereby tying 66,693 in-store purchases directly to the campaign.

This translated to an estimated $6.3 million in total revenue and a verified 5x return on ad spend (ROAS). Suffice it to say, the campaign was a success. 🥳

Read Case Study →

Get Started With Strategus

Retail media is incredibly valuable when executed properly, which is why at Strategus, we partner with a wide range of retailers to consolidate data from 98% of U.S. shoppers. This insight is then shared in our real-time dashboard, providing access to custom attribution and cross-channel reporting.

But we don’t stop there. Our team of experts also works behind the scenes to optimize campaigns based on the strategies driving business results.

Want to find out what retail media attribution could do for your programmatic ad strategy?

Contact us today to learn more →