For years, premium video advertising felt out of reach for regional retailers.
Connected TV, YouTube, and high-impact video placements were seen as tools for national brands with deep budgets, large teams, and long planning cycles. Regional chains stuck to familiar channels, assuming video would be too expensive, too complex, or too difficult to measure.
But that assumption is quietly changing.
The Real Barrier Isn’t Budget
Case in point, a regional retailer operating dozens of locations, the challenge wasn’t ambition. Its marketing team wanted to use video to promote weekly offers, especially during high-traffic periods like holidays.
The problem was their abilty to execute execute
Video campaigns traditionally require:
- Custom creative for each promotion
- Long lead times
- Broad targeting with limited local relevance
- Little clarity on whether ads actually drove store sales
Without confidence in ROI, video stayed on the wish list for this marketing team.
What Happens When Video Moves from Brand Messaging To Promotional
The shift came when video stopped being treated as brand based advertising and started being used as a promotional channel.
Instead of telling a brand story, the focus moved to:
- Specific items
- Personalized timely offers by the demographics
- Shop Local relevance
Automated workflows enabled the generation of video creatives directly from promotional data, with updates delivered weekly without manual effort. Targeting was localized by store trade area, and performance could be evaluated store by store.
That’s when results started to look different.
Across locations running promotional video alongside their weekly offers, every store saw sales lift. Average revenue growth landed in the mid-30% range, with some stores significantly outperforming the average.
The takeaway wasn’t that video “worked.”
It was that promotional video worked when treated like promotion, not branding.
Measuring What Matters
What gave the team confidence to scale wasn’t views or completion rates. It was the ability to compare:
- Stores running promotions without video advertising
- Stores running promotions supported with paid video
- Stores with no promotion at all
The difference was clear. Stores supported by paid promotional videos consistently outperformed promo-only stores, while stores without any promotions and advertising lagged behind.
For the first time, video had a measurable role in driving store-level revenue, not just awareness.
A New Way to Compete
National chains may still outspend regional retailers with their big brand marketing budgets, but they don’t automatically out-execute them.
When video is automated, localized, and tied directly to promotions, regional chains gain access to the same high-impact screens without the overhead. Platforms like Amplify make it possible to deploy promotional video at scale, measure sales lift, and adjust quickly based on performance.
The result isn’t bigger budgets.
It’s smarter use of them.
