By Helen Johnson, Managing Director at Capture
Commerce media has moved far beyond its origins as a tactic for driving conversions.
What started as an effective way to influence purchase decisions at the point of sale has evolved into a sophisticated ecosystem that shapes discovery, consideration, and purchase across the entire consumer journey.
While a wide range of brands have embraced commerce media, there is a significant difference between participating in commerce media and fully unlocking its value; the latest research conducted by my organisation, Capture, suggests that many companies are still falling short.
The Brand Commerce Excellence (BCE) Index is our proprietary framework designed to benchmark commerce media capability across the market. We asked five leading CPG brands to assess themselves against 36 capability factors across five macro areas: Strategy & Governance, Organisation & Talent, Planning & Activation, Data, Measurement & Technology, and Commercial & Value Creation.
What emerged was a consistent theme: commerce media has evolved faster than many organisations’ ability to integrate and operationalise it effectively. As one participant candidly observed, there is “willingness but no strategy”.
The result is that many brands remain focused on short-term performance metrics while overlooking the broader opportunity to build deeper consumer understanding, strengthen brand equity, and create sustainable competitive advantage.
Interestingly, the brands pulling ahead are not necessarily the ones who are investing the most but the ones organising themselves differently. Here are the key findings from the BCE Index and what they mean for brands that want to succeed in commerce media.
Commerce media is more than a conversion channel
Too often, commerce media is positioned as the final step in the consumer journey: a mechanism for closing a sale rather than a strategic capability that can influence growth throughout the path to purchase.
But the most advanced organisations are taking a different approach, instead treating commerce media as a driver for sustained growth. Rather than focusing on the short term, they’re using it to inform brand strategy, generate actionable first-party insight, and create measurable business value across multiple functions.
When used intelligently, commerce media data provides a rich understanding of how consumers navigate consideration, which messages resonate at different stages of the journey, and where competitive switching is taking place. Insights like these have a strategic relevance far beyond any individual campaign.
So, the question brands should be asking is no longer whether commerce media is delivering return on investment. Instead, it’s whether they are fully leveraging commerce media as a source of insight, a driver of brand growth, and a capability that can create long-term commercial advantage.
The BCE Index suggests many organisations recognise this potential but few are capitalising on it. As one participant reflected, “We’ve got the information, but we’re not necessarily using it.”
The problem with bolt-on commerce
Another challenge lies in how commerce media is incorporated into the planning process.
In many organisations, commerce enters the conversation too late. Brand strategies have already been defined, media budgets allocated, and creative developed before commerce media is brought into the mix. This means it becomes an executional layer rather than a strategic input.
The brands that are winning are embedding commerce thinking at the beginning of the planning process, allowing consumer behaviour, shopping dynamics and commercial objectives to shape investment decisions from the outset.
This requires a fundamental shift in mindset, moving away from the assumption that commerce media is simply another channel to activate, and recognising its role as a strategic discipline capable of informing wider business decisions.
That level of organisational honesty can be uncomfortable, but increasingly, it is becoming a prerequisite for growth.
Organisational silos are becoming a growth barrier
Perhaps the most significant challenge highlighted by the BCE Index is organisational fragmentation. In many businesses, the capabilities that underpin commerce media – data, planning, activation, analytics and measurement – sit within separate teams, each operating against different priorities, objectives and success metrics.
Consumers, however, do not experience brands in silos. They move seamlessly between discovery, consideration and purchase, often across multiple touchpoints and platforms within a single journey. When internal teams operate in isolation, the consumer experience inevitably becomes disconnected. And disconnected experiences rarely deliver optimal commercial outcomes.
The shift required here is one of orchestration. Commerce media needs to operate as a system, with planning, activation and measurement aligned around shared commercial objectives to enable growth. The organisations unlocking the most value are the ones building operating models that connect teams, simplify decision-making and create greater accountability for business outcomes.
Increasingly, it’s this ability to orchestrate commerce media as an integrated system that is becoming a defining competitive advantage.
The next phase of commerce media is an organisational challenge
For years, industry conversations around commerce media have centred on platforms, budgets and capabilities. Whilst these conversations remain important, they’re no longer the primary differentiators.
What matters now is organisational readiness. AI-assisted commerce is already reshaping how consumers discover, evaluate and select products. Social commerce continues to blur the boundaries between content, influence and transaction. At the same time, retail media networks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, creating both greater opportunity and greater complexity for brands operating within an increasingly fragmented ecosystem.
The organisations set for future success have clear roadmaps, visions and goals; talent and capability roadmaps; senior buy-in and sponsorship; and an eye on emerging developments.
Without a clear view of the full potential of commerce media and the resource, structure, ambition, senior buy-in and integration to achieve it, brands risk limiting impact, diluting investment, and missing value entirely. What matters now is embedding commerce thinking earlier in the planning process, connecting teams around shared objectives, investing in capability development, and building operating models designed for continuous adaptation.
Many of the brands we spoke to as part of the BCE Index said “the intent is there, but it doesn’t exist yet.” The challenge is turning that ambition into organisational reality.
The next competitive advantage in commerce media will not come from spending more; it will come from organising differently.
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