Unlocking higher ROAS in eRetail

Time of India

05-06-2025

HighlightsOmnichannel Intelligence integrates data from various platforms, providing a real-time, unified dashboard that helps marketers understand the entire customer journey and make informed decisions. High Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is achieved not by simply increasing spending, but by leveraging insights from multiple touchpoints to optimize targeting and reduce Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). Brands that implement Omnichannel Intelligence systems can detect subtle behavioral signals indicating purchase intent, allowing for proactive decision-making and swift campaign adjustments in a rapidly changing eRetail environment.
By Shweta Sharma
Today's consumer journey begins on Instagram, detours through reviews on Amazon, price comparisons on Flipkart, and concludes with a Blinkit checkout cart, all within minutes.
Consumers are active across platforms, but the data on those platforms remains siloed. This leaves marketers with an incomplete picture, making campaign tweaks or budget reallocations ineffective, since the overall journey remains a mystery.
Especially in a landscape where speed and personalization are crucial, brands can no longer afford to rely on guesswork. What's needed is real-time, unified intelligence—the kind that enables quick, confident decisions.
That's where
Omnichannel Intelligence
changes the game.
The Pitfalls That Undermine ROAS and How to Avoid Them
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) doesn't increase just by spending more, it grows when decisions are both informed and timely. Platform-specific dashboards offer limited views. For example, a Google Ads dashboard may show a high CTR, but if the actual conversion occurs on Amazon, attribution gets delayed or lost entirely.
Omnichannel Intelligence connects the dots across every digital interaction, offering a complete, bird's-eye view of the customer's journey. With a unified dashboard, marketers can identify performance bottlenecks, double down on high-performing channels, and pivot in real-time, unlocking better targeting and bigger business impact.
However, in 2025, the challenge is no longer just visibility- it's velocity. Brands that can process intent signals and act on them as they happen are the ones who will win. Most current systems rely on lagging data reacting to yesterday's outcomes. But
eRetail
doesn't wait, cart abandonments, product switches, and price comparisons happen in real-time and decisions need to catch up. The next level of ROAS performance will come from streaming analytics, AI-prompted recommendations, and dynamic budget reallocation that happens while the campaign is still live.
What is Omnichannel Intelligence & Why It Matters
Omnichannel Intelligence is an integrated ecosystem that consolidates data from paid media, social, search, CRM, eCommerce, and
qCommerce
platforms into one
AI-powered dashboard
.
This system:
Tracks customer interactions across all touchpointsProvides real-time insights into what's working (and what's not)Enables predictive intelligence for proactive decision-making
It answers key questions:
Which campaign built top-of-funnel awareness?Where did the add-to-cart happen?Which platform drove the final sale?
With this clarity, brands can tailor messaging across audiences, reallocate ad budgets smartly, and assess platform-specific ROI with higher accuracy.
Crucially, it also allows marketers to detect intent acceleration moments—those subtle behavioral cues like repeated product views, rapid price checks, or switching between apps—signaling that a purchase is near. These micro-signals often go unnoticed in traditional dashboards. But capturing and responding to them in real-time is where the real ROAS unlock lies.
Additionally, the rise of retail media networks, ads sold directly by eCommerce platforms, has blurred the lines between media and marketplace. Yet many brand teams still manage these channels in silos, with separate budgets and objectives. This disconnect is fast becoming one of the biggest hidden efficiency drains. Omnichannel Intelligence must evolve into not just a data tool, but a cross-functional decision-making platform that unites marketing, sales, and e-commerce teams in one agile workflow.
How Omnichannel Intelligence Boosts ROAS
High ROAS isn't driven by viral content or media brute force, it comes from understanding every user touchpoint and reacting with precision. When brands can see which platform is driving awareness, consideration, or conversion, they can:
Sharpen targetingReduce Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)Eliminate siloed data workflows
This level of insight enables
multi-touchpoint attribution
, making campaign optimization smarter and more agile.
A new class of platforms now allows brands to automate budget optimization, analyze live ROAS, and orchestrate commerce media—all from a single dashboard.
But here's a word of caution, not all data is good data. As platforms multiply, so does the noise. Many brands are facing data bloat; massive quantities of impressions, clicks, and metrics that lack real meaning. The future of Omnichannel Intelligence will lie in qualitative signal detection systems that can blend behavioral data with sentiment analysis, customer care inputs, and even social listening to interpret not just the customer's actions, but the motivations driving them.
The Future Belongs to the Connected
Today's consumer journey is unpredictable. That's why brands need an omnichannel system that unifies all digital touchpoints. When marketers can monitor the real-time pulse of campaigns across platforms, they can act with agility and accuracy.
The true ROAS unlock happens when human instinct and
data-driven insights
work together. In 2025 and beyond, the edge won't belong to brands that collect more data, it will belong to those who act on the right data, faster than anyone else.
Brands that invest in omnichannel intelligence today aren't just optimizing—they're future-proofing. The winners of tomorrow will be those who act faster, smarter and with complete visibility.
(The author is
CEO of Hakuhodo Data Labs India & Chief Business Officer at AdGlobal 360)