By Helen Johnson, Managing Director, Capture
Here is the uncomfortable truth for marketers: consumers don’t move through their shopping journey according to a channel plan.
They don’t know which team owns social media, who controls retailer investment, or whether the message they see in-store was developed separately from the one they received by email. They simply notice, consider, ignore, revisit and, sometimes, buy. The journey is rarely linear, and it certainly does not pause at the boundary between an onsite placement, a CRM message or a store shelf.
Yet that is often how commerce media is planned. As a bolt-on.
A brand may build a media plan, a shopper plan, an ecommerce plan, and a retailer plan, then ask those teams and partners to make them work alongside one another. Different budgets, briefs, agencies, reporting cycles and commercial priorities can all be legitimate. But consumers see none of that complexity. They only experience the execution in front of them and, ultimately, what matters is whether those interactions build awareness, create consideration and drive conversion.
Why the starting point of commerce planning needs to change
Consumers might first encounter a product through a creator or social post, research it on a retailer site, see it again in a connected TV ad, receive an offer through CRM and make the final decision in-store. None of those moments exist in isolation; each changes what the consumer knows, feels or does next.
When brands plan each interaction separately, they risk treating every moment as another opportunity to say the same thing. The result can be duplicated reach, repetitive messages and activity that competes with itself. It can also be a plan that looks strong in a collection of channel reports but feels disjointed to the people it is supposed to influence.
More commerce media options don’t automatically create more value; sometimes they simply create more ways to interrupt the same person.
The starting point needs to change. Rather than beginning with a list of available channels, touchpoints, retailers or formats, brands should start with the behaviour they need to influence. Who are we trying to reach? What needs to change? Do we need to put the brand on someone’s radar, give them a reason to reconsider, help them choose between options or make the final decision easier?
Those questions create a far better basis for planning than a channel list. They force teams to decide what job each touchpoint needs to do, and just as importantly, where it does not need to appear.
A well-connected commerce plan does not assume that every environment has a fixed role. The traditional distinctions between channels built for awareness, consideration or conversion are becoming less useful as technology allows individual touchpoints to perform multiple jobs. CTV powered by retailer first-party data, for example, can increasingly be used to drive conversion, while in-store media can play an important role in building awareness.
There is no universal formula. The question is not what a channel traditionally does, but what role it needs to play for this consumer, category and commercial objective. Marketers need to be deliberate about the behaviour they want a touchpoint to influence, the creative and message required to do that, and the way success will be measured. If an interaction does not have a clear job, it may simply add noise.
The boundaries between channels are blurring
Crucially, this does not mean every campaign needs one rigid message repeated everywhere. In fact, that is another way brands lose relevance. A consumer researching a new product online needs something different from someone standing in front of the shelf. The strategic idea and distinctive, ‘sticky’ brand assets should remain consistent, but the creative, message, and call to action need to earn their place in the environment where they appear.
For many brands, the principle is already understood. The challenge is putting it into practice, particularly as the boundaries between in-store, online and offsite, and between ATL and BTL media, continue to blur.
Teams do not need to be merged into one large function, but they do need a shared view of the commercial outcome and the consumer behaviour that matters. That means connected briefs, planning cycles that leave room for collaboration and clearer decisions about who owns the journey, not only the individual activation. Without that foundation, even the strongest channel plans will continue to pull in different directions.
Data can help make those choices smarter, but only when it is used to understand the wider journey. Too often, data is applied narrowly to improve targeting inside a single activation. Its greater value is in showing where audiences overlap, which moments create momentum, where interest drops away and how different interactions can work together.
Measurement has to follow the same logic. Performance reports from individual channels are valuable, but they are not proof that the plan worked holistically. Brands need to understand how activity is combined: the reach achieved, the overlap avoided, the sequence of exposure, the contribution of each touchpoint and the incremental outcome created. Otherwise, local optimisation can look like progress while the broader opportunity is missed.
Is yours a channel plan or a consumer plan?
This is where agencies should add the most value. Not by adding yet another layer of activity, but by helping brands create a joined-up view across their teams, retailer partners and media investments. That requires asking harder questions:
- Are we reaching this audience for a reason?
- Are we building on what they have already seen?
- Are we measuring whether that touchpoint did the job we asked it to do?
The strongest brands will not be the ones that appear in the most places; they will be the ones that make a clear choice about what every interaction is there to achieve. That is the difference between a channel plan and a consumer plan.
Commerce media is expanding faster than most organisations’ ability to plan it around the people they are trying to influence. Without a more connected approach, brands risk spending more to reach the same consumers, repeating themselves across touchpoints and mistaking channel performance for meaningful progress.
The opportunity is to plan from the outside in: start with the consumer, the behaviour you need to influence and the business outcome, then decide what job each touchpoint needs to do and which retailer, format, creative and team can best deliver it.
When every interaction has a clear role and is measured against that role, commerce media becomes less of a collection of activity and more of a connected system for growth.
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