Commerce Media Takes Off: Transforming the Online Shopping Experience
By Gosia Wajchert, Criteo Managing Director, Middle East, and Africa
The ever-changing landscape of digital marketing has been accelerated by the pandemic, the e-commerce boom, latest privacy regulations with a special focus on first-party data strategies have become a part of the new normal. The challenge lies in keeping up with these trends along with the demands of a sophisticated consumer that expects the utmost personalization and a smooth online experience.
While this might sound daunting, there is still a massive opportunity to create more relevant, trustworthy, and sustainable relationships with the public throughout the realms of the open internet, where most users are browsing and spending.
Digital advertising: Where do we stand?
It’s no secret that digital activity is happening beyond the realms of tech giants. Our research shows that 43% of shoppers are now starting their product search on retail and brand websites, surpassing online marketplaces and search engines.
This consumer behavior is perfectly timed for the ad industry. On one hand, we have advertisers looking for new ways to serve consumers' needs and expectations, while on the other we have media owners looking for new ways to monetize their traffic within new data parameters.
Without a doubt, we are facing a paradigm shift and, in such times, the capability to monetize on media wherever consumers are will define success. This is the underlying truth that will establish ‘Commerce Media’ as the next wave of the new digital advertising ecosystem.
Commerce Media: The What & Why?
At its simplest, Commerce Media connects marketers and media owners to first-party data and to each other to bring richer experiences to consumers while enabling closed-loop measurement.
Interconnected and precise systems between retailers (as new media owners), traditional publishers, and new spaces where consumers might browse enables flawless and shoppable moments that can be replicated. Built on the open internet, this commerce media future exists for all players, operating as the perfect playfield to build strategies and succeed.
Beyond Retargeting: Providing multi-solutions
With the proliferation of media owners, consolidating and managing campaigns will become a big theme. In the next 12 months, 81% of marketers and retailers (as media owners) admit that implementing a single platform to manage all commerce media spending and performance is a top priority.
However, to achieve this we do not only need access to high-quality tech but also the knowledge to make the most out of it. This is our goal with the Criteo Commerce Media Platform; to create a space where marketers and media owners can utilize the world’s largest open commerce dataset for high-performing addressable advertising.
Criteo’s Commerce Media Platform aspires to optimize all that commerce media has to offer by working with a unique combination of data, high-quality media access, and AI to perfect measurement. Through these technological strengths, we can guarantee meaningful bonds with customers across the shopping journey. Best-in-class tech acquisitions, like our recent strategic move with IPONWEB, further widen our reach as the intersection of retail media and performance marketing on the open internet.
Through all this, we have built a strong foundation for our roadmap which includes bringing innovative commerce experiences, from in-game and live-stream media solutions to immersive ads and shoppable videos, to retail storefronts and other spaces across our network. We approach 2023 with a passion to help our clients grow and drive performance across the buyer journey.
