Try this today: go to Mercado Libre, Amazon and Walmart and search for your brand. Count how many of the top sponsored results are yours and how many belong to a competitor.
If most aren’t yours, someone is buying the shoppers who had already decided to buy from you. That’s conquesting, and it’s one of the most common sales leaks in the digital channel.
Why retail media keeps gaining weight
Retail media is advertising inside the place where the purchase happens. Its advantage is obvious: the ad appears when the shopper is already searching the category. During peak seasons, competition for those slots skyrockets. During Buen Fin 2025 alone, AMVO documented more than 900,000 ads and 1.3 billion ad impressions (Merca2.0).
In all that noise, sponsored slots inside the marketplace sit closest to the purchase. And almost nobody audits them from the outside.
The 5 measurements in a retail media audit
| Measurement | What it answers |
|---|---|
| Conquesting on your brand | What share of the sponsored results on your brand searches belong to competitors? |
| Sponsored share in the category | What share of paid slots on generic searches does each brand hold? |
| Organic vs. paid gap | Where do you win organically and lose on paid, or the other way around? |
| Ads that waste money | Do you have active ads on out-of-stock SKUs or on listings where a third party holds the Buy Box? |
| Banners and category modules | Who holds the brand placements on category pages and during peak seasons? |
“Ads that waste money” is the one that pays for itself fastest: advertising an out-of-stock SKU, or sending traffic to a listing where a third party gets the sale, is spending so someone else can win.
How to measure without access to your competitors’ accounts
Through systematic observation:
- Build the search list. Your brand and sub-brands, your top three competitors’ brands and 10 to 20 generic category searches.
- Capture at several moments. Morning, afternoon and night, on several days of the week. Ads rotate; a single capture is misleading.
- Log every sponsored slot. Brand, SKU, position and format (product, brand or display).
- Calculate the share. By search and by brand, as a percentage of the observed slots.
- Date and keep the evidence. It’s useful for negotiating with the marketplace and for measuring before and after.
Defense: protect what’s already yours
- Advertise on your brand searches if competitors are on them. It’s usually the cheapest, highest-converting click in the account.
- Automatically pause ads on out-of-stock SKUs. It’s a rule, not a weekly decision.
- Don’t advertise listings where you don’t hold the Buy Box. Win it back first (price, shipping, stock); then invest.
- Improve the listing before raising the bid. A listing with better content and more reviews converts more, and lowers the cost per sale.
Offense: where to go after a competitor’s sales
- Competitor searches with visible weakness: out of stock, low rating or priced high versus yours.
- Generic searches where your paid share is low but your listing converts well.
- Peak seasons: hold budget for the days your competitor tends to run out of stock.
Before going on the offense, check each marketplace’s advertising policies on using third-party brands.
How it connects to the rest of the shelf
Retail media isn’t managed in isolation. What happens in sponsored slots affects your Digital Shelf, your Buy Box and, increasingly, what AI assistants read about your category. A brand that dominates organic, paid and content is the one AI ends up recommending.
In short
If you don’t know who shows up when people search your brand, you’re probably overpaying for the sale or losing it without noticing. An observation-based audit solves it in a few days.
At Balloon we measure conquesting, sponsored share and money-wasting ads on Mercado Libre, Amazon, Walmart and other marketplaces, with dated evidence and a defense and offense plan. Request the assessment.
FAQ
What is conquesting in retail media?
It's buying ads on a competitor's brand searches to capture shoppers who had already decided on that brand. It's allowed on most marketplaces, within their advertising policies.
Should I advertise on my own brand searches if I already rank first organically?
It depends on who else is advertising there. If a competitor holds the sponsored slots above your organic result, defending your brand is usually the best-returning investment in the account.
How do I measure it without access to my competitor's account?
By observation: repeated searches throughout the day and week, logging which brands take each sponsored slot. From that you estimate each brand's sponsored share.