SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Agent-driven transactions that optimize purchases based on price and other factors will disrupt the closed-loop foundation that underpins retail media networks as autonomous systems handle more consumer decisions.
“Keep an eye on transaction data as agentic commerce matures. The more we see agents making transactions and optimizing transactions on things like price, I think the closed loop foundation of retail media networks is going to become noisy,” Marco Steinsieck, managing vp, head of advertising at Sallie, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Beet Retreat San Juan.
This shift elevates audience insights and predictive power as differentiating factors while impressions become increasingly commoditized.
Customer relationships drive network strength
Having led commerce media networks at Staples, Sephora, and now at Sallie, Steinsieck realized that underlying customer relationships form the foundation for network success rather than media placements or transaction data access alone.
“The biggest lesson has been that the strength of the commerce media network is really founded on the underlying customer relationship,” Steinsieck said. “Advertisers are not just buying media placements or access to transaction data. What they’re buying access to is your customer relationships.”
Deep, enduring customer relationships combined with rich signal data enable high-performance network development across diverse industries from office products to beauty to education finance.
Education finance provides unique signals
Sallie operates as “a first-mover in education finance” vertical with differentiated customer relationships spanning entire education experiences, combining financial position data with academic information including enrollment timing, study focus, and institution selection.
“We are with them through their entire education journey. We know about their financial position. We know when they’re starting school, what they’re studying, where they’re going to school,” Steinsieck said. “This unique combination of education and financial signals allows us to predict their future trajectory in a way that no one else can.”
This predictive capability applies to anticipating customer needs and purchasing behaviors with relevance for advertiser targeting.
Offsite activation changes economics
Onsite media ownership enables retention of 90% brand budgets with direct EBITDA impact, while offsite activation involves working media costs ranging from 10-50% depending on performance delivery and return on ad spend.
“For onsite media, you own the property. You keep 90% of the brand budget and essentially drop it to EBITDA,” Steinsieck said. “For offsite, you have working media costs. That margin rate really depends on the performance that you can drive.”
Cross-channel integration improves performance as onsite excels at lower-funnel conversion while offsite drives awareness, consideration, and incremental reach.
High-consideration categories remain durable
Financial services, insurance, and automotive represent high-consideration categories where customers stay involved in decision-making processes, making them more resistant to agentic commerce disruption.
“Keep an eye on more high consideration categories. These are categories where the customer is still going to be in the loop. I think they’re more durable for commerce media,” Steinsieck said.
Data and media require dual excellence
While both media execution and data capabilities prove essential, relative value shifts toward audience insights as impressions become commoditized and transactions potentially follow similar paths.
“Both the media and the data are super important. You need to excel at both to perform,” Steinsieck said. “In terms of relative value, it’s shifting more towards audience and insights. Impressions are commoditized at this point.”
Commerce media emerges as strong complement to retail media as transaction data faces agentic commerce challenges.
“Commerce media in general is poised to continue to emerge to be a strong complement to retail media,” Steinsieck said. “Those audience insights and the predictive power that they bring to advertisers are going to become increasingly important.”
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