ORLANDO, FL — The combination of media and commerce promises to eliminate the linear consumer journey and enable marketers to achieve objectives from awareness to conversion within single video experiences.
“The convergence of media and commerce is no longer evolving — they have converged to the point where they are one and the same. Commerce is media,” Matt Wurst, CMO of video community and monetization platform Genuin, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the ANA Masters of Marketing conference in October. “Every impression can convert. The consumer journey, which has long stopped being a linear experience, isn’t really a journey anymore.”
This shift requires marketers to abandon traditional planning frameworks built for separate media channels and sequential consumer paths.
Contextual continuity over consistency
Creating uniform messaging across every channel has become unrealistic given how consumers engage across platforms and environments, requiring focus on contextual relevance rather than channel consistency.
“It’s going to be nearly impossible at this point to create a continuous or consistent message across every channel,” Wurst said. “The opportunity right now for us is to focus more on context — delivering a message in the moment, in a place that is contextually relevant.”
As data access improves and content becomes more targeted, marketers should pursue contextual continuity where each video tells a story that connects with preceding and subsequent content as consumers move across sites, apps, and real-world experiences.
Transcending divisions
Content creators function simultaneously as media, brand, and performance vehicles, making traditional marketing categorizations obsolete for influencer partnerships, Wurst said.
“They are both creator and they are media. They are brand, and they are performance. The divisions that we falsely attribute to content, to creative, to media don’t apply to creators,” Wurst said.
Creators produce naturally engaging content that drives consumption patterns like endless scrolling and explains why 80% of online content consumed today is video, according to Wurst. Their authenticity transcends traditional advertising formats from actors to billboards that dominated marketing 5 to 15 years ago.
AI beyond toolset
Artificial intelligence functions as an ecosystem rather than a discrete tool, helping with creation, amplification, automation, acceleration, and optimization across marketing tasks without replacing human creativity or strategic planning.
“We used to say it’s a tool. It is far beyond any one tool, beyond any one process,” Wurst said. “AI as an umbrella solution is not going to replace creatives. It’s not going to replace media planners and it’s not going to replace processes. It’s going to make all of those better.”
Implementation requires curiosity, continuous learning, and acceptance that mistakes will occur while determining which technologies improve specific tasks from creative execution to reach optimization.
Measurement as pulse
Measurement serves to reveal trends and cadence rather than simply tracking performance metrics, helping marketers understand what content works, where it performs, and how creation methods impact outcomes.
“The purpose of measurement is to make us smarter and help us learn the effectiveness of whatever it is that we’re doing,” Wurst said. “At Genuin, we’re looking at how content performs, where it performs, how it was created. Measurement is the way we understand whether or not what we’re doing is worth it, whether it’s working and how we can make it better.”
