In a world where every marketing dollar is expected to pull its weight, upper funnel investments often get side-eyed. After all, if a campaign doesn’t deliver immediate conversions, is it really working?
Short answer: Yes. Longer answer: It absolutely can if you’re measuring it right.
Discovery campaigns, those built to generate awareness and spark interest, play a critical role in the customer journey. When integrated into a full-funnel marketing strategy, they don’t just support performance, they drive it. Advertisers that embrace the upper funnel often see stronger engagement, higher conversion rates, and ultimately better ROI.
The key is knowing what to measure, understanding how to connect the dots across the funnel, and proving meaningful impact on your bottom line.
Let’s break it all down.
Why invest in the upper funnel?
The upper funnel isn’t just about feel-good branding. It’s about building long-term performance. Discovery campaigns introduce your products to new audiences, expand your reach, and drive future demand.
And here’s the ROI truth: When you invest in discovery, you’re increasing more than just visibility. You’re increasing the size and quality of your conversion pipeline. Those who include upper funnel marketing tactics in their media mix consistently see stronger returns across the board. Think:
- Lower acquisition costs by reaching high-potential customers earlier
- Higher conversion rates from shoppers already familiar with your brand
- Increased customer lifetime value through more intentional, brand-led journeys
In fact, advertisers who diversify their strategy with upper funnel campaigns focused on new customer acquisition see, on average, a 35% new customer rate.
Upper funnel marketing isn’t optional—it’s essential. When done right, it amplifies the impact of your entire funnel and drives measurable business outcomes, especially when paired with a smart budgeting strategy.
What metrics matter—and why
To truly prove the ROI of your upper funnel efforts, you need to look beyond surface-level stats and capture the full scope of impact. That means tracking both direct metrics that reflect immediate engagement and secondary metrics that reveal longer-term influence on sales.
1. Immediate (direct) metrics: The starting point
These metrics show how your discovery campaigns are landing with your audience right now:
- Visits: How many people landed on your site after seeing your ad?
- Click-through rate (CTR): Are your creatives cutting through the noise?
- Time spent on site: Are users exploring or bouncing?
- Direct Sales: Did the campaign drive purchases right away?
These KPIs offer a snapshot of immediate performance—but they’re just the starting point. If you stop measuring here, you’re likely underestimating your campaign’s total value.
2. Secondary metrics: The full ROI picture
This is where the broader impact of discovery efforts comes into view. These metrics uncover how upper funnel campaigns influence shopper behavior down the line:
- Assisted conversions: Did the campaign play a key role earlier in a shopper’s path to purchase?
- View-through conversions: Did a shopper convert after seeing (but not clicking) on your ad?
- Incrementality: What sales wouldn’t have happened without your upper funnel campaign?
- Brand lift & engagement: Is awareness growing? Are more people searching for your brand or engaging with it elsewhere?
- Full-funnel journey insights: Are users moving deeper into the funnel—like viewing products, signing up, or returning later?
Together, these metrics tell the full ROI story. Upper funnel campaigns do more than attract attention. They deliver real performance outcomes, from higher conversion rates to stronger retention to long-term business impact.
With Criteo, measuring that impact is easier. Commerce Growth automatically aligns measurement to your campaign goals—whether you’re focused on driving site traffic, acquiring new customers, boosting retention, or maximizing sales—and gives you clear, comprehensive reporting across the funnel. So you get more than just data, you get the right insights to prove meaningful and measurable performance.
Connecting discovery to conversions: How it’s done
Today’s shopper journey is anything but linear. People discover, scroll, compare, abandon, and return, often across multiple channels and devices. That’s why proving the ROI of your discovery efforts requires a full funnel attribution approach that shows how awareness turns into action. Here’s how:
Map the full journey. Use tools that track users across devices and channels, so you can follow them from first impression to final purchase—and everything in between.
Shift your attribution model. Consider moving away from using only last-click and toward data-driven or multi-touch attribution that credits all the touchpoints that matter.
Segment and analyze. Break down performance by audience cohort, campaign type, or creative to uncover what’s truly moving the needle.
Let’s say a shopper sees your upper funnel ad while browsing lifestyle content. They don’t click right away but a few days later, they search your brand, revisit your site, and convert. Without the first touchpoint, that sale might not have happened. With the right measurement in place, you can prove that discovery made the outcome possible.
A smarter way to measure full-funnel impact
At Criteo, we believe measurement should match the complexity of today’s customer journey digital touchpoints. That’s why we help brands and retailers:
- Track the true impact of discovery campaigns across the funnel
- Attribute revenue to every meaningful touchpoint
- Optimize for both short-term wins and long-term growth
Whether you’re focused on acquiring new customers, retaining loyal ones, or retargeting shoppers who’ve shown interest, Commerce Growth gives you the tools to see how each campaign contributes to your overall growth. Our AI-driven technology also ties together insights across the funnel, so you can confidently invest in awareness and know it’s fueling performance down the line.
See how our partners found success:
Represent Clothing scaled its acquisition strategy and saw a +290% increase in high-quality site visitors, along with a 117% lift in first-time buyers driven directly by upper funnel campaigns.
bonprix leveraged video to grow brand awareness, achieving a 45% new user rate, with 20% of total campaign conversions coming from new customers.
Apartments.com saw significant year over year gains through full-funnel optimization—delivering a 158% increase in visit traffic, a 101% boost in reach, and a 41% decrease in cost per visit.
The future is full-funnel
Upper funnel campaigns aren’t just nice to have. They’re essential drivers of performance and revenue. With the right strategy and measurement in place, discovery becomes one of the most powerful tools in your growth playbook. For more about the metrics that define a high performing campaign, check out our post on measuring campaign efficiency.
Ready to prove the ROI of your upper funnel investment? Let’s talk about how Criteo can help you measure more, connect more, and convert more across the entire customer journey.
