Commerce media is no longer limited by a lack of ways to reach shoppers. Retailers offer onsite placements, offsite activation, and in-store media, with data and measurement to prove effectiveness.
The harder question is whether those capabilities work together as one campaign. Too often, the strategy is set in the brief fragments as it moves through planning, creative, multiple activation channels, and reporting, leaving advertisers with a collection of touchpoints rather than a connected customer journey.
That is the central challenge surfaced in “The Commerce Media Connection Gap,” new research from SMG, the IAB, and IAB U.K. Based on responses from 281 commerce media professionals across the U.K., U.S., Europe, and Australia, the report points to an industry that has built considerable capability but has yet to consistently connect it.
Reporting was the area respondents most often identified as least connected (34%), followed by creative, consumer insights, planning, and measurement. Only 14% said multichannel commerce media campaigns are always planned from a single brief, and the same proportion said they always receive unified reporting across channels.
Orchestration starts within networks
The next phase of commerce media must therefore be defined by better orchestration within each retailer’s ecosystem. A shared objective, audience strategy, and creative idea should carry from the brief into activation, measurement, and through to the next planning cycle. The pipes have to connect: store, onsite, and offsite, alongside the teams responsible for planning, creative, activation, and measurement.
In-store makes that challenge tangible. To a shopper, the retailer app, media seen before entering a store, a digital screen, and a shelf display are all part of one experience. Behind the scenes, those touchpoints can involve different teams, technologies, and operating constraints. The research found 47% of respondents see in-store as the channel with the greatest incremental value when connected, while 41% identify it as the hardest channel to connect.
The answer is not simply more in-store media. It is giving in-store media a deliberate role in the wider campaign, supported by connected creative, data, measurement, and store operations. That is what orchestration should achieve: continuity for the advertiser and a coherent experience for the shopper. That’s our north star.
But even if every retailer improves connection within its own ecosystem, advertisers still face another challenge: fragmentation between networks. Planning and measuring activity across multiple retail media networks can mean different definitions, buying routes, reporting approaches, and measurement frameworks.
As Marie-Clare Puffett, senior director, industry development and marketing at IAB Europe, puts it: “Much of the friction buyers describe in commerce media comes down to fragmentation.”
She points to the work required to reconcile different definitions, measurement approaches, and reporting before buyers can even begin to compare like with like across networks.
Partnerships must evolve between retail media networks for the long-term benefit of the industry. Retailers do not need identical technology or identical propositions; their differences are part of their value.
But there is a clear opportunity to collaborate when it removes unnecessary friction for advertisers. At SMG, that thinking sits behind RMX, a retail media exchange built to connect retail media opportunities across networks while allowing retailers to preserve their own customer relationships and propositions.
Build connection into planning
Brands and agencies have work to do, too. Retailers cannot deliver a connected outcome when objectives, budgets, and briefs remain separate across brand, shopper, trade, and media teams. Agencies are well placed to join the dots across retailers, channels, and client priorities, but orchestration has to be built into the planning process rather than added at the end.
Ultimately, both challenges come back to the same test: does connection create commercial proof? When brands were asked what would persuade them to increase commerce media investment, 46% spontaneously pointed to measurable ROI and incremental sales impact.
The next phase is not about adding more disconnected capability. It is about making what already exists work together, within networks and, increasingly, between them, from brief to basket.
—
Sean Crawford is managing director for North America at SMG, where he has led the company’s regional expansion since 2023, including launching WHS Media with WHSmith North America and introducing SMG’s Plan-Apps platform to the market.