Retail Media Gold Rush: Is Amazon Overstating Your Baby Brand’s Ad Impact?

In 2025, retail media is no longer an optional line item in baby brand marketing budgets—it's rapidly becoming the largest. Amazon alone is projected to rake in a staggering $69 billion in ad revenue this year, with rivals Walmart Connect and Target’s Roundel in hot pursuit. The premise is irresistible: advertising directly where parents shop, right at the crucial moment they're ready to buy.

But as senior marketers at leading baby brands, such as Caden Lane, increasingly pour budget into these platforms, an uncomfortable reality is emerging. Retail media's promises of pinpoint accuracy and stellar returns might be masking a significant blind spot—one where multiple platforms are claiming credit for the same sales. In essence, your impressive retail media ROI might not reflect incremental growth but instead represent a troubling case of double-counting.

The Attraction—and Risk—of Retail Media for Baby Brands

There's a clear logic behind retail media’s explosive growth in the baby industry. Parents browsing Amazon or shopping on Target.com are often just one click away from purchasing. The immediacy and proximity to purchase decision make these ads particularly effective in theory. But the practicality, as marketers are quickly discovering, is more complex.

Each retail media network operates as a distinct ecosystem. When a customer encounters your ads on Amazon, Walmart, and Target within the same purchasing journey, each platform independently credits itself with the resulting sale. For baby brands already operating on slim margins, this duplication creates a dangerous mirage of marketing efficiency, encouraging budget increases that might not translate into genuine incremental revenue.

The Attribution Crisis Marketers Can’t Ignore

The traditional reliance on platform-native analytics exacerbates this issue. Amazon Advertising, Walmart Connect, and Target’s Roundel naturally incentivize marketers to spend more within their own channels, painting the rosiest possible performance picture. Unfortunately, these siloed views rarely capture the cross-channel reality of modern parenting journeys—from Instagram discovery to Google research and final purchase on Amazon or Walmart.

For baby brands that rely heavily on multi-channel exposure to convert busy parents, the consequence is clear: overstated platform performance leading to budget misallocation, diminished upper-funnel brand investments, and ultimately slower long-term growth.

Why Existing Measurement Approaches Fall Short

Most marketers at baby brands have traditionally relied on last-click models or individual retailer analytics. These methodologies are no longer sufficient because they fail to capture the incremental influence of brand-building efforts and upper-funnel touchpoints. Particularly as retail media stakes rise, marketers require a more nuanced view of channel interactions and incremental sales contributions.

Current tools simply aren't built for this complexity. They can't reliably differentiate between sales driven uniquely by a single platform and sales that multiple platforms falsely attribute to themselves. In short, marketers are flying partially blind—investing heavily but often unsure of exactly what’s driving their real ROI.

A Better Way Forward: Independent Measurement and Incrementality Testing

Leading baby brands recognize that tackling fragmented attribution requires stepping beyond retailer-provided analytics. Forward-looking marketers are turning towards more sophisticated, unbiased measurement solutions like Media Mix Modeling (MMM), incrementality tests, and blended attribution methods. These approaches are capable of providing clear, privacy-safe, and holistic insights into true marketing effectiveness.

By adopting these methodologies, marketers can confidently allocate budgets based on genuine performance rather than inflated platform metrics. They gain a clearer picture of how brand efforts and retailer ads interact across channels, ensuring investments yield real incremental growth.

How Smart Baby Brands Are Already Adapting

Innovative baby brands have already started to recalibrate their measurement strategies using third-party analytics and sophisticated modeling techniques. Without explicitly naming providers, these brands have managed to navigate the complexity of retail media attribution, effectively reallocating budget to areas that demonstrate genuine, measurable growth.

Your Next Move as a Marketer

As retail media continues its meteoric rise, so too does the urgency to resolve attribution challenges. For senior marketers at baby brands, understanding—and addressing—the hidden costs of fragmented attribution is no longer optional. It's imperative for long-term success.

Before you finalize your next retail media investment, pause to reconsider your measurement approach. Ensuring your analytics offer true cross-channel visibility could mean the difference between superficial metrics and substantive growth. The brands who see clearly today will be tomorrow’s industry leaders.