How to unlock higher ROI by driving Meta Ads traffic to Retailers
Getting listed on retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Barnes & Noble, or Macy’s is a milestone every brand dreams of. It means credibility, distribution at scale (and so access to millions of shoppers who might never discover you on your own website.)
But here’s the catch: being listed doesn’t guarantee success. Retailers measure your value in one thing → sell-through velocity.
If your products don’t move fast enough, shelf space shrinks, reorder cycles stall, and you’re eventually risking losing the listing you fought so hard to win.
Many brands think the solution is simple: run Meta Ads, drive awareness, and let demand “trickle down” to retailers. But in practice, it rarely works that way. Instead, three major problems show up almost immediately:
Ad spend feels like it disappears into a black hole
Meta campaigns stop optimizing
Retailers don’t see the demand spike
The result? Brands spend thousands on campaigns designed to prove demand, only to end up with frustrated marketing teams, disappointed retail partners, and wasted budgets.
The opportunity you’re (probably) missing
Most marketers still treat retail growth like a separate world from digital advertising. Ad budgets are funneled into “brand.com” while retail sell-through is left to chance.
But this separation is exactly where the opportunity lies.
Shoppers today don’t want extra steps. They’re impatient, privacy-conscious, and increasingly loyal to trusted checkout environments like Amazon or Walmart. They know their shipping details are stored, their returns are simple, and delivery is fast. For them, buying on a retailer is easier and safer than checking out on an unfamiliar brand site.
That’s why more than two-thirds of shoppers prefer to buy from a retailer they already trust instead of buying from your website. For high-intent consumers, being redirected to a retailer page is not a nuisance but a relief.
Yet most Meta campaigns still focus only on clicks, impressions, and engagement at the brand site. They stop short of what matters most: proving actual conversions where the customer prefers to buy.
Think about it:
A click to your landing page means nothing if the shopper bounces.
A pretty engagement metric won’t convince Walmart to restock your product.
Traffic alone won’t keep your spot at Macy’s if shelves don’t empty fast enough.
The opportunity is simple: stop treating Meta Ads and retail sales as separate funnels. If you connect the two, every dollar of ad spend can directly fuel retail demand. You’ll then prove velocity, and strengthen your case for expansion.
Why shoppers choose to buy on Retailers (Amazon, Walmart, Macy’s, & more)
Marketers often underestimate just how much trust and convenience drive modern purchase behavior. It’s not just about your product. It’s about where and how the customer buys it.
When given the choice, today’s consumers overwhelmingly prefer to complete their orders on retailer they already know. Here’s why:
1. Trust in the checkout
For many shoppers, brand websites are an unknown. Will the checkout work smoothly? Is their credit card safe? Will customer service respond if something goes wrong? With Amazon or Walmart, those doubts vanish. Consumers know the checkout process, they’ve used it dozens of times before, and they trust it.
2. Saved details and speed
Amazon’s one-click ordering or Walmart’s pre-saved payment and shipping information dramatically reduces friction. Shoppers can go from “I want this” to “Order confirmed” in seconds. Compare that to entering details manually on a brand site, and it’s easy to see why drop-off rates soar outside of retailers.
3. Broader shopping context
Shoppers aren’t just buying your product. They’re browsing for books, beauty products, supplements, or household items at the same time. If your product lives where they already shop, it benefits from that wider discovery and convenience-driven behavior.
4. Perceived legitimacy
Placement on retailers like Macy’s or Amazon signals credibility. If a shopper is seeing your product for the first time, being listed on a trusted retailer reassures them that your brand is real, vetted, and worth buying from.
5. Seamless returns and delivery
Uncertainty kills purchases. With Amazon Prime or Walmart’s easy return policies, shoppers know exactly what to expect. They trust the process and that peace of mind makes them far more likely to click “buy.”
What this means for brands
If you’re still spending the majority of your Meta budget pushing people only to your website you’re ignoring how your customers actually prefer to shop.
Consumers sometimes want to buy on Amazon, Walmart, Macy’s, or Barnes & Noble. If your ads don’t reflect that reality then you’re creating friction instead of removing it.
For retailers, this also matters. They don’t just want to see your brand listed but they want to see you bring demand to their platform. When you drive traffic directly to their product pages and prove that you can generate sell-through, you’re no longer just a supplier. You become a partner.
Core advantages of driving Meta Ads through Shopify to Retailers
Most marketers assume that sending Meta Ads straight to Amazon or Walmart is the fastest way to prove demand. In reality, this often backfires because you lose all visibility the moment someone clicks through. Meta doesn’t see conversions, optimization breaks, and your ad costs rise.
Pixamp solves this by keeping your website at the center of your funnel even if the final sale happens on a retailer. Here’s why this approach works well:
1. Capture purchase intent before the redirect
When a shopper lands on your Shopify page and clicks “Buy on Amazon” or “Buy on Walmart” that click is a high-intent signal.
Pixamp captures this event and sends it back to Meta as if it were a conversion. Instead of losing the signal you’re feeding the algorithm exactly what it needs to optimize campaigns.
Result: cheaper CPMs, smarter targeting, stronger campaign performance.
2. Prove demand to retailers
Retailers care about velocity. They want partners who can move units fast.
By running Meta Ads that push traffic to the retailer (by going first to your Shopify landing page) you prove two things:
Your community is engaged and responds to campaigns.
You can deliver measurable sell-through to retail partners.
That proof of demand is what keeps your brand listed, reordered, and expanded.
3. Restore Meta’s feedback loop
Without Pixamp, a Meta → Retailer campaign looks like this: click, then silence.
Meta doesn’t know what happened.
With Pixamp, a Meta → Shopify → Retailer campaign becomes a signal-rich journey: click on the button is captured, converted into an event, and sent back to Meta. The algorithm keeps learning and improving.
This means you don’t have to choose between retail growth and Meta efficiency. You get both.
4. Build a compounding system
Every Pixamp event you send back to Meta strengthens your campaign data pool.
Over time, this compounds:
Your campaigns reach higher-intent audiences.
Your creative aligns better with what actually drives retail demand.
Your ad spend stops leaking into a black hole and starts feeding growth.
Instead of splitting "brand.com" and retail campaigns into silos you create a unified system where Meta fuels retail. And where retail proves ROI.
Conclusion
Getting listed on big retailers is a huge milestone. But success isn’t about just being listed. It’s about proving to those retailers that you can generate real demand.
The challenge for most brands is clear. Sending Meta traffic directly to retailers breaks the feedback loop. Meta loses the data it needs to optimize, your costs rise, and retailers don’t see the velocity they expect.
Pixamp changes that by routing Meta traffic through your Shopify page and capturing purchase intent before redirecting to retailers. The missing signal is restored. Your campaigns keep optimizing, your ad spend works harder and retailers see the proof of demand they need to keep reordering.