Looking back on the year so far for all things commerce media
Our Commerce Media Matters hosts, Nick Morgan and Paul Blackburn, take a look back on the biggest commerce media moments of 2025 so far.
With Paul moving from publisher world to startup life at Vudoo, he brings insights from both sides of the industry. Nick puts him in the hot seat to unpack what went down on the Croisette during Cannes Lions – from standout creative moments to commerce media’s growing influence on the global stage.
They discuss the year’s big picture trends, laying out what they expect to see from retailers and marketers in the months and years ahead. Again, underpinning these changes is the continued importance of creativity: from the actual content itself to implementing new tools and strategies.
Data, AI, TikTok, and targeting – all the hot topics are in this episode. And they’ll definitely be discussed in every industry event for a while yet.
What you’ll learn from this episode:
Creativity at Cannes and beyond: Creativity is the way to elevate brand messaging in retail and commerce media strategies, which can be unlocked with new tools like AI.
Retail media’s continued rise and evolution: Retail media is no longer a niche for marketers – by extension, commerce media will become a standard “hygiene” factor for campaigns.
Resetting targeting: marketers have access to a wealth of data and tools, but understanding the context in which to target is most important. Overtargeting can actually cause datapoints to conflict.
New roles for agencies: While agencies at large are facing change and challenges, they still play vital roles in executing commerce media strategies.
AI and SEO disruption: AI platforms have fundamentally changed the way consumers search and shop, requiring marketers to adapt by showing up closer to the point of purchase.
Soundbites to listen out for:
Changing expectations
I think the secret for me is to focus on the consumer. You’ve got to give consumers choice and flexibility when it comes to online shopping and eCommerce transactions. They’re looking for choice. I welcome PayPal and TikTok Shop [coming to Australia] because they are changing user expectations.
From search to shop
SEO as we know it and search as we know it is absolutely being disrupted as more and more people converse with their GPT and their own trained models. So the top of the funnel, that search piece, is transferring to being in a GPT. And so brands need to figure out how they can show up and allow that transaction to happen from that environment.
Ads subtracting success
I bought my adidas running shoes and then the ad is following me around for another two weeks – with the same shoes that I’ve already bought. For me, that’s just wasted impressions and a bad use of data.
How to improve targeting
We did a piece of research actually, and discovered that 71% of respondents said real-time signals and context are the top opportunity for commerce this year in Australia.
Agencies’ new role
[Agencies’ objectives are] to serve the client and deliver results…shepherding clients through how to show up creatively in retail media networks…how to use that data to get that closed loop attribution, to get that performance. They’ve got a huge role to play. Their traditional model has been strained, but I think like they do, they always reinvent themselves.
Commerce media shoppable hygiene
We are predicting it’s going to become hygiene to offer a shoppable outcome. It’s just going to become hygiene and the norm.
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