Commerce Media: Turning retailers into media owners

With today’s advertising and marketing conversations being driven (and indeed generated) by Generative AI and Machine Learning, Gen Z consumers, and shoppable moments, commerce media is increasingly finding itself in the intersection of these Venn diagrams. 

And Statista notes, “Growing at an exponential rate, the market value of the e-commerce industry in India was approximately 22 billion U.S dollars in 2018. This number is estimated to reach 350 billion U.S. dollars by 2030.”

Criteo's just-released “ 2023 Commerce Media Market-Altering Trends” Report with data based on conversations across more than 22,000 advertising clients globally shows that consumers couldn’t care less about channels and retailer data is changing the programmatic paradigm, meaning a new breed of commerce expert is in demand.

Gopa Menon, Digital Head – Mindshare, South Asia, says, “Commerce media is a form of digital advertising that allows brands to reach consumers in various stages of their shopping journey by leveraging data and AI technology. Unlike traditional retail media, which is limited to retailers' platforms, commerce media expands the reach of advertising to a network of publishers across the open internet.”

Taranjeet Singh, Managing Director, Enterprise, APAC, Criteo, observes that the world is moving towards a state of commerce everywhere, where shoppable moments can happen in nearly any environment and at any point.

“Commerce media is the opportunity that comes when you connect consumers, marketers and media owners to drive commerce outcomes and it starts with retail media. Retail media enables retailers to create personalized advertising experiences on their owned digital assets or digital in-store content – effectively making them media owners,” he says.

This opens up retailers to a new revenue stream while attracting brands to boost their visibility on the digital shelf and further attract and retain commerce audiences. What sets a commerce media platform apart from others depends on its scale of commerce data and efficacy of AI technology behind it.

“This means that advertisers can target consumers everywhere they are actively researching, browsing, and buying products. Commerce media also allows non-retail and non-endemic advertisers to leverage commerce data and AI to engage their target audiences more effectively,” elaborates Menon.

Emily Yri, Vice President, International Marketing, Pubmatic, says that as commerce media continues to gather momentum, there are bound to be some challenges along the way. “But as an industry, we’ve seen this before – in the early days of programmatic. There is a lot to be learnt from the programmatic practices of today’s media businesses; working with trusted partners, moving deliberately, and prioritising transparency, stability and compliance will be critical.”

This is why she says that PubMatic’s technology platform is well-positioned to drive the monetisation of commerce media players’ media and data assets, and to simplify media buying for advertisers across multiple commerce media players.

Kartik Khanna, Co-Founder, The Starter Labs [Zoo Media] says that commerce media provides both publishers and advertisers several opportunities, with the key highlight being - the opportunity to connect with audiences throughout their purchase journey, and feed the results and intelligence back to their marketing funnels and create a loop of continuous optimisation.

“To best leverage commerce media, brands should focus on creating high-quality content; optimizing customer experience; collaborating with trusted publishers and creators/influencers,” he says, adding that commerce media relies on partnerships with trusted publishers and influencers who have built a captive audience.

Swati Kardak, Group Account Manager - Media Planning & Buying, SoCheers agrees and says Commerce Media is like a full-funnel strategy where advertisers and publishers can reach out to their audiences at any stage i.e right from discovery to consideration and conversion, using commerce data and intent-based targeting.

“Also, data intelligence, effective targeting, and richer consumer experiences have helped marketers ensure higher ROAS by bringing the consumers closer to the brands. Marketers can target the consumer when they are,” she says.

“Criteo works with over 22,000 marketers and thousands of media owners to deliver richer and seamless consumer experiences with advanced AI algorithms, analyzing data and producing insights from 750 million daily active users, 4 billion product SKUs and 3,500 product categories in real-time,” asserts Singh, concluding, “We recognize the value and power of such collaboration and are committed to helping our partners succeed in the world of commerce.”