Why Schaefer

Amazon retail media works differently when it's built on buyer research.

Most agencies treat Amazon as a keyword and bid optimization game. The F&B brands that consistently win on Amazon — building organic rank, accelerating purchase velocity, and compounding shelf performance — are the ones whose campaign structure reflects how their specific buyers actually search, compare, and convert. That requires knowing the buyer before you build the campaign.

Why People Buy, applied to Amazon retail media.

Every Schaefer engagement starts with our proprietary Why People Buy methodology, mapping the motivations behind F&B purchase decisions before a single ad dollar is spent. That research shapes keyword architecture, audience targeting, creative sequencing, and bid strategy in ways a generic Amazon audit never reaches.

Senior strategists. No account handoffs.

Every engagement at Schaefer is led and executed by senior strategists. No junior staff building your campaigns. No account manager relaying questions. The person who built your strategy is the person optimizing your bids on Tuesday morning.

Food and beverage is all we do.

Amazon's F&B buyer behaves differently from the general Amazon shopper. Category-specific search patterns, the connection between purchase velocity and organic rank, the interplay between Subscribe & Save adoption and long-term brand building: these are things a generalist agency learns by trial and error on your budget. We come in knowing them. Why food and beverage exclusively →

Emerging brand to established CPG: same rigor.

We work across the full budget spectrum. Whether you're an emerging DTC brand building Amazon presence for the first time or an established CPG scaling retail media investment across Amazon's full ad suite, the research depth and strategic process are the same. The scope scales. The quality doesn't.

The Difference

What generalist agencies can't replicate.

A generalist agency can run Sponsored Products. They can set bids, pull reports, and optimize for ROAS on whatever category lands in their book of business this quarter. What they can't do is walk into your campaign having spent a decade understanding specifically why F&B buyers choose one product over another on Amazon.

The category knowledge compounds. The buyer psychology frameworks we use were built from first-party F&B research. The result is retail media that isn't just well-executed. It's structurally different from what a generalist builds.

"Food and beverage is all we do, and that vertical focus is the difference."

Amazon Ads · Solution 01

Amazon DSP

Schaefer connects Amazon's first-party shopper audiences to your full-funnel media strategy — using real purchase behavior from Amazon's transaction data, not modeled lookalikes. For F&B brands, that means reaching actual category buyers and lapsed purchasers with display and video across Amazon properties and the open web.

First-party Amazon audience activation: in-market, lifestyle, and purchase-based segments

Lapsed buyer reactivation campaigns built around F&B purchase occasion and seasonality

Cross-channel coordination so DSP spend compounds Sponsored Products performance

Unified measurement connecting DSP impressions to Amazon purchase conversion

Amazon DSP display advertising for F&B brands

Amazon Ads · Solution 04

Streaming TV & Video

Amazon's Streaming TV inventory (Prime Video, Freevee, Fire TV, and third-party networks) gives F&B brands access to a connected TV audience targetable with Amazon's first-party purchase data. Schaefer builds STV campaigns that use F&B buyer research to match creative to occasion, and that connect upper-funnel impressions to lower-funnel purchase outcomes.

Audience strategy built from Amazon purchase data, not demographic proxies

Creative brief grounded in F&B purchase occasion and Why People Buy motivation tiers

Sponsored TV for emerging brands entering CTV without DSP minimum commitments

Attribution connecting STV exposure to on-Amazon and off-Amazon purchase activity

Amazon Streaming TV and Video ads for F&B brands

Amazon Ads · Solution 05

Brand Store

For F&B brands running Sponsored Brands and DSP, a well-architected Brand Store meaningfully improves conversion rates and time-on-brand. Schaefer designs and optimizes Brand Stores to reflect buyer motivations at each stage of the purchase journey, not just list SKUs, turning the landing page into a performance asset.

Store architecture built around buyer motivation tier and purchase occasion, not SKU count

Page and subpage strategy aligned to campaign objectives and audience segments

Copy and content framework grounded in Why People Buy research

Performance tracking from paid media click through Brand Store to purchase conversion

Amazon Attribution & Measurement

From impression to purchase, fully tracked.

Amazon's closed-loop measurement connects ad exposure to verified purchase behavior using Amazon's own transaction data. Schaefer structures every campaign to take full advantage of it — and extends measurement off-Amazon using Amazon Attribution to capture the full picture of how retail media drives purchase velocity.

Verified purchase attribution

Tie ad impressions and clicks directly to on-Amazon and off-Amazon purchase events using Amazon's first-party transaction data. No modeled attribution, no panel estimates.

New-to-brand buyer analysis

Understand whether campaigns are acquiring new Amazon buyers or reinforcing existing ones, critical for F&B brands managing purchase velocity, Subscribe & Save adoption, and buyer lifecycle strategy.

Cross-channel impact reporting

Amazon Attribution connects off-Amazon media (Meta, Google, CTV) to on-Amazon purchase conversion, so your paid media budget allocation reflects actual contribution across every channel.

Bi-weekly strategic reporting

Schaefer delivers bi-weekly performance reports with plain-language interpretation and clear optimization actions. No raw dashboards dropped in your inbox. Analysis with a point of view.

Why This Matters for F&B

The metric that matters most to your Amazon business is purchase velocity.

Amazon's algorithm rewards purchase velocity. The more consistently your product converts, the better its organic rank — and the better its organic rank, the more cost-effective your paid media becomes. It compounds. For F&B brands, that means retail media isn't just a demand generation channel: it's the lever that determines whether you earn and hold the organic placement that makes your whole Amazon business more efficient.

Schaefer builds every campaign and measurement framework around this dynamic: paid media that drives purchase velocity, purchase velocity that builds organic rank, and organic rank that reduces your cost to acquire the next buyer.

See How We Report Results →

The Difference

F&B specialist vs. generalist Amazon agency.

The Amazon agency landscape is crowded with generalists who add F&B to their category list alongside consumer electronics, apparel, and home goods. Here's what the actual difference looks like.

Capability	Schaefer	Generalist Agency
Category expertise	✓ F&B exclusively: buyer psychology, purchase occasion, category dynamics	Multi-category. F&B is one of many verticals
Pre-campaign research	✓ Why People Buy methodology run before strategy is built	Keyword audit and competitor gap analysis
Team structure	✓ Senior strategists only. No junior staff, no handoffs	Account manager + junior analyst structure
Keyword architecture	✓ Built from buyer motivation research, not category defaults	Category keyword tools + competitor mining
Cross-channel coordination	✓ Amazon coordinated with Meta, CTV, Google, retail media	Silo'd to platforms in their managed set
Results guarantee	✓ Measurable lift guaranteed or fees returned	Typically none

✓

The Schaefer Guarantee applies to Amazon retail media.

If we don't deliver measurable performance lift within the agreed window (purchase velocity, ROAS improvement, new-to-brand buyer acquisition, or the metric we agree on at kickoff) we return 100% of agency fees. No argument, no negotiation. We only take on engagements we're confident we can move the needle on.

Who It's For

Built for F&B brands at every stage on Amazon.

Emerging F&B Brands

Building Amazon presence for the first time.

You're launching on Amazon or scaling from a small base. Retail media is the lever that determines whether you build the purchase velocity needed to earn organic rank — or stall at page three indefinitely. Schaefer builds first-Amazon retail media strategies specifically for the DTC or regional brand entering the Amazon ecosystem with buyer research that tells you who you're actually competing for at the digital shelf.

Established CPG Brands

Scaling Amazon investment with more rigor.

You're already on Amazon. You may already be spending meaningfully. The question is whether your campaigns are built on a structural understanding of your F&B buyer or whether they're keyword-optimized without the research layer underneath. Schaefer brings the buyer psychology infrastructure that makes every ad dollar compound into organic rank and long-term category presence.

Multi-Retailer CPG

Running retail media across multiple accounts.

Amazon, Walmart Connect, Kroger Precision Marketing, Instacart: F&B brands operating across multiple retail media networks need campaign strategies that are coherent, not duplicated. Schaefer manages Amazon retail media as part of an integrated multi-retailer strategy with a shared buyer research foundation underneath all of it.

Subscribe & Save Brands

Building recurring revenue on Amazon.

For F&B brands where subscription adoption is a core business objective, retail media strategy has to account for the full buyer lifecycle, not just the first purchase. Schaefer builds acquisition and retention campaigns that treat first-purchase conversion as the start of the customer relationship, not the end of the campaign.

FAQ

Common questions.

01Do you work with Amazon Vendor Central as well as Seller Central?

Yes. We work with both Vendor Central (1P) and Seller Central (3P) accounts. The ad solutions available differ slightly between the two — Sponsored Brands and Stores are available to both, while certain DSP and attribution capabilities vary by account type. We build strategy appropriate to your specific Amazon setup.

02What's the minimum ad spend required to work with Schaefer on Amazon?

We don't have a hard minimum, but Amazon retail media performs best at meaningful spend levels. For Sponsored Products and Brands, we typically recommend a minimum monthly ad spend of $5,000–$8,000 to generate enough data to optimize effectively. Amazon DSP has its own minimums (typically $10,000/month managed). We'll be direct in the initial call if we think your budget isn't at a level where engagement makes sense.

03Do you manage other retail media networks alongside Amazon?

Yes. Many of our clients run retail media across Amazon, Walmart Connect, Kroger Precision Marketing, and Instacart. We manage cross-retailer retail media strategies with a shared buyer research foundation, so your campaigns are coordinated, not siloed across separate agencies.

04We already have Amazon campaigns running. Can you take them over?

Yes, and we do this regularly. We start with a full audit of your existing campaign structure (keyword architecture, audience setup, bid strategy, creative, and measurement), then map what's working, what's structurally weak, and what buyer research would change. The transition is managed to avoid disrupting performance during the handover period.

05What does the Why People Buy research look like in practice for Amazon?

Every engagement starts with a buyer research phase — qualitative interviews with real buyers in your category, segmentation analysis, and motivation mapping. For Amazon specifically, this surfaces the search language buyers actually use, the purchase occasion and use-case context driving conversion, and the competitive set they're choosing between at the digital shelf. That research becomes the structural foundation for keyword architecture, audience targeting, Brand Store design, and creative brief.

06How does the guarantee work for Amazon retail media?

We agree on the specific performance metric upfront — purchase velocity improvement, new-to-brand buyer acquisition rate, ROAS lift, or a combination. The window is typically 90 days from campaign launch. If the agreed metric isn't hit, we return 100% of agency fees. The guarantee is written into the engagement agreement, not just stated verbally.

The only Amazon retail media agency built exclusively for food and beverage.

Most F&B brands on Amazon are leaving significant performance on the table.