The Future Of Commerce Needs A New Media Approach

Marketers Must Demolish Silos And Invest In Commerce-Enabling Technology To Better Serve Shoppers Where They Are

Executive Summary

Every marketer and media owner now realizes that commerce transformation is not optional. The pandemic assured the future of online buying, accelerating this market shift by five years. It also heightened consumer expectations of being able to research and buy in the channels of their choosing.

In September 2021, Criteo commissioned Forrester Consulting to evaluate how advertising strategies are evolving to better serve consumers in every shopping moment. Forrester conducted an online survey with 408 brand marketers and retailers (as media owners) to explore this topic. We found that in pursuit of driving growth and improving customer experience (CX) and loyalty, marketers are ditching disconnected multichannel media approaches for more holistic, audience-first ones. For the purposes of this study, we introduced the term “commerce media” to define this approach.

All respondents have some desire to adopt a digital advertising approach that combines commerce data and intelligence to target consumers throughout the shopping journey and help marketers and media owners drive commerce outcomes.

Key Findings

Marketers are choosing audiences over channels as they strive to be present in every possible shopping moment. As consumers expect to shop anywhere, respondents are prioritizing delivering consistent CX across channels in an effort to drive sales and loyalty.

Marketers and retailers (as media owners) rely on optimized media strategies to better understand shoppers and improve advertising performance. Leaders turn to media as a brand booster, revenue generator, and a way to access insights. These insights enable them to reach and drive better resonance with shoppers across online and offline touchpoints.

A vast and complex media buying landscape hinders marketers’ ability to evolve to a state of holistic media management. Facing a dizzying array of media management platforms and partners, marketers can feel limited in their ability to effectively optimize media performance and delight customers.

Marketers seek to crumble silos and implement a single media management platform to deliver audience-first commerce. As companies future-proof their digital marketing efforts, their number one investment priority is implementing a single platform for commerce media management. Their second priority is focusing on breaking down internal silos and embedding best practices throughout the organization.

Everyone Wins When Choosing Audience Over Channels

Marketers must reorient old advertising approaches through the lens of delivering value to consumers. This means evolving siloed multichannel practices with disconnected investments and isolated messaging, insight, and measurement tools within respective channels. As marketers pursue presence and relevancy in every shopping moment, they must take a more holistic approach to advertising. This requires them to organize data, define success, design holistically, execute with connected technologies, and optimize for outcomes across the customer lifecycle, making these approaches inherently more customer-centric.

In surveying 408 marketers and retailers (as media owners), we found that:

• Marketers and media owners are focused on becoming customer-led to drive growth. Forrester’s research proves that better CX drives better business results. Respondents in this study agree, as marketers’ and retailers’ (as media owners) top priorities are to improve CX (82%), retain customers (80%), and drive online/offline sales (73%).

• To do this, they’re improving brand experience and customer loyalty by delivering consistent shopping experiences across channels. Key to delivering consistent experiences is improving measurement capabilities and access to the right insights. Marketers are focusing on optimizing omnichannel measurement (54%).

• Marketers view media optimization as a way to better understand customers, deliver better experiences, and improve advertising performance across channels. Marketers rely on media to access rich customer insights they previously did not have access to, to use those insights to deliver more relevant offers and messaging, to influence shoppers more effectively, and to improve online and offline sales performance.

• Poor media management has consequences. Marketers and retailers are under pressure to optimize media performance; 62% say media investments that don’t show tangible business results risk getting cut.

Media Strategies Must Evolve To Make The Dream The Reality

The traditional multichannel approach to media management is maladapted to consumers’ heightened expectations and marketers’ business needs. Disjointed multichannel media management breaks the customer experience, is operationally inefficient, and hampers performance. While survey respondents seek to shift to a more holistic approach to managing media, this is far from the reality for most organizations today.

• Too much effort is required to measure and manage overall media performance. From productivity gains to cost savings to revenue increases, media optimization presents great opportunities. Yet, media buying at most organizations is far from optimized today. In fact, 55% of marketers use six or more platforms to buy media, and 51% work through six or more retail media partners to buy media.

• Data deprecation renders old ways of media buying ineffective. Increasing privacy awareness as well as new regulations, the deprecation of key identifiers, and more are forcing marketers to adapt to a new way of advertising.

• Media management is siloed internally. A holistic approach to media management is near impossible when media buying and management is siloed across teams and channels. More than half of respondents agree that their organizations have silos, making it difficult to understand and measure performance across offline and online channels.

Adopt A Holistic Media Management Approach To Deliver Audience-First Commerce

Advertising, when executed effectively, can serve as an engine of commerce with benefits for all three parties that matter in the advertising equation — advertisers, publishers/media companies, and consumers. Effective execution requires choosing audiences over channels and overcoming existing process and technology siloes.

To achieve their goals of improving CX across the shopper journey, we found that:

• Marketers and retailers seek a commerce media approach and platform. Respondents recognize that a holistic approach to media management requires streamlining people, processes, and technology. When answering how their organizations are future-proofing their digital marketing efforts, respondents’ top investment priorities include implementing a single platform to manage all commerce media spend and performance, embedding commerce media strategy and outcomes throughout the organization, and removing channel silos.

• They expect taking a holistic media management approach will give them more business decision-making confidence. Marketers and retailers expect that taking a commerce media approach will help them take advantage of emerging media opportunities, optimize product and pricing strategies, and improve consumers’ omnichannel experiences.

• They seek commerce media partners to help them optimize performance and improve agility. A holistic media management approach requires partners that can help simplify and streamline media buying.

Key Recommendations

It’s critical that marketers take all possible steps to set themselves up for success as they journey toward a more strategic approach to commerce media management.

For brand marketers

Assess your current tech stack for future fit. As the advertising industry faces a wave of forces that are driving the industry toward a more consumer-centric, privacy-first future, ensure your go-forward approaches are set to sustain.

Set yourself up for success by choosing day-to-day performance metrics wisely. Prioritize metrics that are proven leading indicators of higher-level business goals.

For retailers (as media owners)

Ensure you’re investing in the right service and technology. Building and scaling a retail media solution takes investment along several dimensions.

Look across multiple dimensions to create competitive advantage. Retailers will face increasing competition for marketer dollars and should look for ways to broaden and deepen their offerings.

For both

Invest in commerce media as a strategic extension of the brand/retailer relationship. Both parties should treat the opportunity as a long-term one that builds upon an existing foundation.

Appendix A: Methodology

In this study, Forrester conducted an online survey of 408 digital marketing decision-makers at brand and retailer organizations in North America, EMEA, and Asia Pacific to evaluate how advertising strategies are evolving to better serve consumers and optimize business outcomes. The study began in August 2021 and was completed in September 2021.