Retail-Media Furball: Amazon, Chewy Ads & Walmart Connect—Are You Counting the Same Pet Sale Three Times?

Retail media is having a moment in the pet care industry. This year alone, Amazon’s retail ad business is projected to help push overall pet category spend to more than $8 billion, with Walmart Connect and Chewy Ads rapidly capturing marketers' attention—and wallets. For senior marketers at major pet retailers and direct-to-consumer brands, retail media’s promise of reaching pet owners exactly when they're ready to buy is compelling. But beneath the surface lies a hidden challenge that's increasingly hard to ignore: overlapping attribution across multiple retail platforms.

The Appeal of Retail Media—And Why It Matters

Retail media’s explosion is easy to understand. Advertising directly to customers while they shop promises highly efficient targeting and immediate sales impact. This is especially appealing in the pet products sector, where routine purchases like pet food and accessories mean frequent buyer interactions and potentially strong lifetime value.

Yet, as marketers at brands such as Pet Supplies Plus are beginning to recognize, there's a catch. Each platform—be it Amazon Advertising, Walmart Connect, or the recently revamped Chewy Ads—operates within its own closed ecosystem. As a result, each is incentivized to maximize its claimed credit for customer purchases, even when multiple platforms contribute to the sale.

The Problem of Overlapping Attribution

Imagine a customer journey that's increasingly common: a pet parent browses chew toys on Amazon, sees an ad later on Walmart’s site, and finally completes their purchase after another prompt from Chewy. In this scenario, it's likely that all three retail platforms will individually credit themselves with this conversion, inflating your apparent ROAS and obscuring true performance.

This issue isn't trivial. Inflated attribution creates distorted perceptions of channel effectiveness, potentially leading brands to overinvest in lower-funnel retail media while unintentionally starving upper-funnel initiatives that build long-term brand equity and awareness.

Why Traditional Analytics Aren’t Helping

The analytics tools provided directly by retail media platforms are designed primarily to validate and amplify their own value. They rarely, if ever, account for cross-channel interactions or provide a holistic view of the customer journey. Relying solely on these tools, marketers risk investing heavily based on misleading metrics.

For pet brands seeking sustainable growth, especially in competitive markets, such blind spots are strategically perilous. They can lead to repeated misallocations of budget, diminishing returns, and overlooked opportunities to genuinely drive incremental revenue.

The Smarter Approach: Independent Measurement and Incrementality Testing

Increasingly, sophisticated marketers are moving beyond platform-specific analytics and adopting measurement approaches designed for clarity and accuracy. Techniques such as Media Mix Modeling (MMM), incrementality testing, and blended attribution are gaining prominence among forward-thinking pet brands.

These methods provide a balanced, objective view of marketing effectiveness across multiple channels, helping brands better understand which platforms drive true incremental growth and how different channels influence one another. Importantly, they offer a privacy-compliant way to measure performance, vital in a tightening data-privacy landscape.

How Leading Pet Brands Are Responding

Without explicitly promoting specific providers, it's clear that top pet marketers are actively pursuing third-party solutions. Independent measurement methodologies are enabling these brands to distinguish genuinely incremental sales from those that platforms might unjustly credit to themselves.

This shift doesn't merely clarify which channels deserve investment—it also positions brands to negotiate more effectively with retail media networks, armed with impartial insights about true channel value and performance.

Your Next Steps as a Pet Marketer

With retail media increasingly absorbing larger portions of your budget, it's crucial to question the metrics provided and demand clarity about what's genuinely driving growth. For senior marketers in the pet sector, recognizing and addressing attribution overlaps isn't just a technical detail—it's a strategic imperative.

As you prepare for your next budget cycle, consider this a call to action: scrutinize your attribution models, explore independent measurement approaches, and ensure your marketing spend aligns with genuine incremental value. In doing so, you'll position your brand not just for short-term wins, but for sustainable, long-term growth.