EMARKETER’s Sarah Marzano: Commerce Media will Drive One-In-Four-Digital Ad Dollars
Commerce media’s growth is showing no signs of slowing. According to an EMARKETER forecast, that category is on track to account for more than one in every four dollars allocated to digital advertising overall. But for commerce brands, sustaining those gains will require finding new points of differentiation.
“Despite the fact that the channel has grown into such a major force so quickly, it’s a really fragmented landscape made up of players who are at really different stages in terms of their maturity,” Sarah Marzano, vp and principal analyst for Commerce Media at EMARKETER, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at EMARKETER’s Future of Digital event in New York. “The biggest opportunity right now for anyone operating in the commerce media space is differentiation.”
The established go-to-market playbook for commerce media networks is well understood, Marzano said. However, that familiarity is itself becoming a liability for networks that haven’t identified what genuinely sets them apart.
The easy money is gone
Retail media’s next phase requires moving up the funnel, connecting commerce audience data with offsite channels including CTV, social, Google Search, and the open web. Many networks have invested heavily in building those pipes. Whether advertisers will buy through them as intermediaries remains the open question.
“Everyone is sort of in agreement that going full funnel and tapping into brand advertiser budgets is one of the next big areas of opportunity. But what remains to be seen is how that actually comes to fruition,” Marzano said. “What’s yet to be seen is how well commerce media networks are incentivizing advertisers to buy through them as an intermediary.”
Transparency, standardization must evolve
Measurement remains commerce media’s most complicated terrain. Retail is a genuinely distinctive business, and there are defensible reasons why the same KPI might be measured differently across networks. What isn’t defensible is doing so without explaining it.
“What’s less dependable is doing that without including a lot of transparency for your advertisers so that they’re able to understand how their investments are working across a scaled fragmented set of commerce media networks,” Marzano said.
Foundations separate winners from the rest
The commerce media networks most likely to sustain advertiser investment are those investing in unglamorous operational fundamentals — talent, technology, and measurement infrastructure — rather than just strategy and roadmap confidence.
“Commerce media networks are confident in their strategy and their roadmap. They know where they want to go, but they’re a lot less confident when it comes to some of those foundational elements that are going to be crucial in terms of how they get there,” Marzano said.
Commerce media’s growth is showing no signs of slowing. According to an EMARKETER forecast, that category is on track to account for more than one in every four dollars allocated to digital advertising overall. But for commerce brands, sustaining those gains will require finding new points of differentiation.
“Despite the fact that the channel has grown into such a major force so quickly, it’s a really fragmented landscape made up of players who are at really different stages in terms of their maturity,” Sarah Marzano, vp and principal analyst for Commerce Media at EMARKETER, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at EMARKETER’s Future of Digital event in New York. “The biggest opportunity right now for anyone operating in the commerce media space is differentiation.”
The established go-to-market playbook for commerce media networks is well understood, Marzano said. However, that familiarity is itself becoming a liability for networks that haven’t identified what genuinely sets them apart.
The easy money is gone
Retail media’s next phase requires moving up the funnel, connecting commerce audience data with offsite channels including CTV, social, Google Search, and the open web. Many networks have invested heavily in building those pipes. Whether advertisers will buy through them as intermediaries remains the open question.
“Everyone is sort of in agreement that going full funnel and tapping into brand advertiser budgets is one of the next big areas of opportunity. But what remains to be seen is how that actually comes to fruition,” Marzano said. “What’s yet to be seen is how well commerce media networks are incentivizing advertisers to buy through them as an intermediary.”
Transparency, standardization must evolve
Measurement remains commerce media’s most complicated terrain. Retail is a genuinely distinctive business, and there are defensible reasons why the same KPI might be measured differently across networks. What isn’t defensible is doing so without explaining it.
“What’s less dependable is doing that without including a lot of transparency for your advertisers so that they’re able to understand how their investments are working across a scaled fragmented set of commerce media networks,” Marzano said.
Foundations separate winners from the rest
The commerce media networks most likely to sustain advertiser investment are those investing in unglamorous operational fundamentals — talent, technology, and measurement infrastructure — rather than just strategy and roadmap confidence.
“Commerce media networks are confident in their strategy and their roadmap. They know where they want to go, but they’re a lot less confident when it comes to some of those foundational elements that are going to be crucial in terms of how they get there,” Marzano said.
