As every screen becomes shoppable, attribution problems resurface

By Kimeko McCoy • December 17, 2025 •

Ivy Liu

In the latest “every surface becomes shoppable” news, more platforms are inking deals and rolling out shoppable ad formats across the open web. As more media environments become points of purchase, attribution and measurement remain the thorn in the side of commerce execs.

In early December, Pinterest announced a partnership with Walmart that allows Pinterest users to add recipe ingredients straight to their cart on Walmart.com to be picked up or delivered. Around the same time, Albertsons Media Collective, the grocery chain’s retail media network, rolled out similar offsite-to-cart tools. Its new “add-it” technology allows users to add products, recipes, coupons or offers to their Albertsons cart from display, shoppable content, and eventually CTV and social media.

“It’s a convenience play — stickiness, convenience, however you want to see it. It’s the ultimate ‘be where the shopper is when they’re ready to buy, even if they’re not fully checking out’,” said Elizabeth Marsten, vp of commerce media at Tinuiti.

Why the rush offsite?

It’s a push to further close the gap between product discovery and purchase in hopes that shoppers will see and buy within the same ecosystem. Pinterest and Walmart, and Albertsons aren’t outliers. They’re part of a broader push to make offsite media more transactional alongside others like Target’s partnership with OpenAI in November. The move allows people to discover Target products and shop inside of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. There’s also Instacart, which rolled out offsite shoppable display ads and recipes a few years back.

More surfaces are becoming shoppable in part because, at least in the case of retail media networks, ad space is hitting a wall. Or as Mike Feldman, svp of commerce at Flywheel, puts it, “Every nook and cranny of the on-site experience has sponsored brand video to display ads. We have saturated and maximized the heck out of that.”

That leaves offsite, like social and CTV, as the next frontier — thus, shortening the path between discovery and purchase. That also brings sales-based measurement to historically upper-funnel (discovery and awareness) environments, Feldman added.

Attribution remains the thorn

The line between inspiration and transaction is blurring, and marketers are looking to measurement and attribution to determine how to divvy up ad dollars. When it comes to ad networks, whether it be Albertsons or Walmart, marketers are already grappling with confusion around who owns budgets, what dollars to spend, attribution and of course, measurement.

“[Advertisers] are going to want some sort of closed loop measurement solution to find a value in that partnership to understand, should we optimize for recipe placement,” said Darren D’Altorio, svp of paid media at Wpromote.

As more ad platforms strike deals with one another, attribution only gets muddier and harder to track, per the three commerce execs Digiday spoke with for this piece.

Standing competition

To D’Altorio’s point, whichever platform(s) can offer attribution and definitive, closed-loop measurement solutions will be the winner — or at least best poised to compete with the behemoth that is Amazon, which holds a significant advantage with its integrated ecosystem.

The continued confusion isn’t enough to slow down ad spend, however. Emarketer’s latest retail media ad spend forecast predicts U.S. advertisers will shell out $69.33 billion on retail media. That figure is up from $58.79 billion in 2025.

As far as Marsten is concerned, that’s a question to be answered in the future, she said.

“It’s 2027’s problem, honestly, in terms of really it figuring out,” she said.