Connecting commerce, improving measurement, and tracking the signals that matter
Over the past few months, we've had the opportunity to attend and participate in some of the retail industry's most influential events, including the Connected Commerce Summit in Chicago and Shoptalk Europe in Barcelona.
While the formats, speakers, and audiences differed, similar themes surfaced across retailers, brands, marketplaces, agencies, and technology providers.
Here’s what we heard on the road.
The fight for discovery is becoming the fight for recommendation
AI-powered shopping assistants were a hot topic at both Connected Commerce and Shoptalk Europe. Shoppers increasingly use tools like ChatGPT and retailer AI assistants to research products. As a result, the way shoppers discover products is moving beyond traditional search engines and retail site navigation.
One attendee summed it up well:
"Historically, it was about being first in search results. Now it's about being the recommendation."
The implications are significant. Brands need to become "consideration ready" long before a shopper enters a purchasing mindset.
How well product content, retailer presence, reviews, and availability are structured will increasingly determine whether AI systems surface a product in the moments that matter.
The PDP is the battleground for visibility. For example, Bosch used signals including Price Compliance and Retail Execution to ensure their retailer pathways were optimized for however a shopper discovered their products across omnicommerce channels. The result was a 23.5% lift in purchase rate.
The shopper journey is fragmented, but expectations aren't
One theme echoed throughout both events: shoppers don't think in channels.
Brands still organize around ecommerce, retail media, social commerce, digital shelf, and marketplaces, but consumers simply move between them.
As discussed during Wayvia's Connected Commerce Summit session below, "the shopper journey is converging faster than organizations are." The result is a growing gap between how shoppers actually move through that journey and how brands build campaigns around it.
View the presentation below:
This is particularly evident in off-site media. Social platforms, creator content, connected TV, and publisher environments are driving purchase consideration, but many brands still struggle to understand what happens after engagement.
That's why the conversation is increasingly shifting from impressions and clicks toward visibility into the entire path to purchase. Shoppable media solutions that connect media exposure to retailer activity help close this gap, creating a clearer view of how discovery turns into conversion.
For example, Purina used shoppable signals including Purchase Intent and Creative-to-Commerce Performance to turn social media into a shopping path and optimize towards conversions. This resulted in a 188% increase in purchases.
Commerce media measurement is growing up
At the Connected Commerce Summit, several speakers noted that ROAS is losing its status as the default north star metric. At Shoptalk Europe, discussions centered around incrementality, household penetration, new-to-brand acquisition, and long-term growth.
The common thread? Brands want to understand outcomes, not just efficiency.
Increasingly, brands are recognizing that the most valuable signals sit between media engagement and final conversion. Shopper intent, retailer preference, product consideration, and purchase readiness provide a richer picture of future performance than traditional campaign metrics alone.
This becomes particularly important as media investments spread across retailer networks, marketplaces, social platforms, and commerce-enabled media environments. The challenge isn't simply measuring performance within individual channels—it's understanding how those channels work together.
Commerce intelligence is increasingly turning into the ‘connective tissue’ between media investments and business outcomes, helping brands understand not only what happened but also why.
For example, Nulo Pet Food challenged their internal assumption that most of their brand traffic should direct towards Amazon. Instead, they wanted to get a clear picture of Retailer Preference, and use these signals to direct shoppers to their retailer of choice. By streamlining the shopping experience for their customers, Nulo grew their mobile shopping share by 44%.
AI is powerful, but human expertise still makes the difference
While AI dominated conversations at both events, there was also a healthy dose of realism. Many organizations are discovering that, to successfully implement AI, significant, skilled human input is still required. Prospecting, market analysis, content strategy, data interpretation, and insight generation all benefit from AI acceleration, but they still require human expertise to guide the process.
Going forward, we believe that successful organizations will use AI not to create new strategies but to expand on existing ones that work.
That distinction matters.
The brands making the most progress are combining automation with strong commercial judgment, high-quality data, and clear business objectives. AI may help identify patterns faster, but humans still determine which patterns matter.
New ways of working with data, such as Wayvia’s Shoppable MCP, help brand teams glean insights faster in the AI data platforms they’re already using. By tapping into the shopper and commerce data that brands already have access to, teams can build strategy and automation that meets the demands of the modern shopper.
The competitive advantage is connection
If there was one theme that united every conversation, it was this: fragmentation remains the biggest obstacle to growth.
Many brands described managing separate retail media platforms, disconnected retailer datasets, siloed ecommerce reporting, and fragmented measurement approaches across markets.
One example discussed at Shoptalk Europe involved brands using retailer media networks in some countries while relying on Where-to-Buy programs in others, creating valuable but disconnected datasets that must eventually be unified internally.
The brands gaining an advantage are the ones building connective infrastructure between these systems.
They're linking media signals to retail outcomes. Connecting shopper behavior to retailer strategy. Bringing together digital shelf intelligence, conversion data, and consumer intent to make smarter decisions.
As we discussed during the Connected Commerce Summit, every shopper interaction creates a signal. The opportunity is turning those signals into strategy.
Hill’s Pet combined shoppable signals including Retailer Preference, Purchase Intent, and Price Sensitivity to build a connected model between their shoppable media campaigns, last-mile delivery platforms, and closed-loop performance reporting. The result was a 75.4% increase in sales.
In summary
The future won't belong to the brands with the most tools, channels, or dashboards. It will belong to the organizations that can connect commerce, media, and retail intelligence into a unified view of how shoppers discover, decide, and buy.
The conversation is evolving quickly. The brands that learn to connect the dots will be the ones best positioned to grow.
To dive deeper, learn how signals like Purchase Intent help inform media planning and optimization through Shoppable Next Generation.