Selling your products through retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Sephora, or any other partner is great for distribution. But it gets tricky when it’s time to run ads.

You don’t control the checkout. You don’t get conversion data. And without data, how do you decide how much to spend?

Most brands end up guessing. They either overspend without knowing what’s working, or worse, stop running ads entirely. This article gives you a better way to think about budgeting for Meta ads, even when you don’t own the final sale.

Why ad budgeting feels impossible when you don't own the checkout

We covered this topic in greater detail in our article on How to run Meta ads when you don't own the checkout, but in a nutshell, selling through retailers means you don't own the data of your customers.

If you sell directly on your own website, Meta’s algorithm has everything it needs: page views, add-to-carts, and purchases. These signals help the advertising platform optimize toward the people most likely to buy.

But when you sell through a retailer, those signals disappear.

Let’s say someone clicks your Meta ad, lands on Walmart, and buys the product. There's no pixel, no event, no sale tracked. Meta doesn't know what happened, and neither do you.

So how can you justify ad spend if you can’t prove it’s working?

What most brands do and why it doesn't work

Most retail-first brands try one of three things:

1. They stop spending altogether, because there’s no way to measure ROI

2. They spend a small amount as a test, but can’t scale because performance stays flat

3. They send traffic to a landing page with retailer links, but don’t track the clicks

None of these are long-term strategies. The problem isn’t the product or the distribution strategy. It’s the lack of data.

A smarter approach: budget based on buying intent

If you can’t track conversions, track intent.

Instead of trying to connect the full loop (click → checkout → sale), focus on the last moment you can see: when a user lands on your website and clicks on redirection buttons to retailers (like a "Buy on Walmart" button).

These clicks are strong indicators of purchase intent. No, they’re not final sales — but they show the user is interested enough to leave your site and go to the product page.

This is where Pixamp helps.

We track those high-intent clicks and send them back to Meta as custom events. The algorithm learns. You get feedback. And you can start making smarter budget decisions even if you don’t have full attribution.

Tools and tactics to build a retail-focused ad budget

You don’t need perfect data to build a smart budget. You just need a different mindset. One based on signals instead of sales.

Here’s how to start building your budget when selling through retailers.

1. Work backward from your goals

Let’s say your goal is to drive demand and get your retail partners to reorder inventory. To do that, you want people to land on your product pages and show clear buying intent.

Ask yourself:

• How many “Buy on [Retailer]” clicks would it take to influence sell-through?

• How many ad impressions and link clicks will I need to get there?

• What’s my acceptable cost per signal?

Even without sales data, this helps you frame spend in terms of intent generated, which is a more realistic KPI when selling through retailers.

2. Use purchase intent as your core signal

With Pixamp, every time someone clicks your "Buy on Retailer" buttons, that action is tracked as a high-intent signal.

These signals are sent back to Meta, helping the platform learn who’s most likely to show purchase intent in the future.

By tracking these signals, you can:

• Measure how many people are showing real interest

• Identify your best-performing ads, audiences, and creatives

• Adjust spend toward what drives the most intent

This becomes your proxy for actual conversions and it’s enough to start optimizing.

3. Start small, then scale with feedback

If you’re running ads for a product sold exclusively through retail, don’t start with a massive budget. Instead:

• Run campaigns with clear CTAs driving to your retailer-linked landing pages

• Track how many high-intent clicks you generate (Pixamp does this automatically)

• Evaluate the cost per intent. If you’re paying €2 per “Buy on Barnes&Noble” click and you believe 1 in 5 actually purchases, that’s a €10 estimated CAC

• Scale up based on what looks sustainable

Over time, this process gives you a framework for spending that’s grounded in real user behavior even if you don’t see the final sale.

Wrapping up

Selling through retailers used to mean giving up on smart ad budgeting. No data, no tracking, no way to scale confidently.

But things are changing.

By shifting your mindset from tracking purchases to tracking intent, you can start running Meta ads with purpose (even if you don’t own the checkout.)

Tools like Pixamp help make this possible. We don’t offer a perfect loop, but we give you something real to build on: purchase intent signals that feed Meta’s algorithm and give you visibility where it matters most.

You don’t need to pause your ad spend or wait for perfect attribution.
You just need a smarter way to plan.