WTF is connected commerce?

WTF is connected commerce?

Connected commerce is the holy grail of seamless shopping, blending online and offline experiences so shoppers can browse and buy wherever they are. Think of it as a fully integrated ecosystem: tying together everything happening on the retailer’s site or app with the behind-the-scenes data and tech driving transactions, then layering that into the in-store experience right down to the cooler screens and promotional offers.

“Consumer behavior is rapidly evolving towards instant gratification, with a growing trend of ‘click to buy’ compressing the sales funnel and consumer journey,” said Mary Kate Huffman, director of integrated media planning and commerce at creative marketing agency Blue Chip. “Consumers can now convert for the very first impression, making it crucial for brands to be present and capitalize on this behavior. If a brand isn’t out there seizing this opportunity, their competition will undoubtedly beat them to the finish line.”

Got it. So retail media is really a subset of connected commerce?

Exactly. Connected commerce spans the entire shopping journey, from discovery to purchase and everything in between, including ads. Retail media, on the other hand, is just one piece of that puzzle. It focuses on the advertising side of things, whether at the point of purchase or somewhere along the path to it. 

Makes sense. So if connected media is bigger than retail media, why isn’t it spoken about as widely?

Simply put, it boils down to market maturity. Until recently, retailers and brands just weren’t prepared to grapple with connected commerce’s complexity. It demanded strategic shifts, internal realignments and heavy tech investments — changes businesses hesitated to tackle until the opportunity became impossible to ignore. Ironically, retail media is both the catalyst forcing this shift now, and the reason it didn’t happen sooner. 

The catalyst? 

Yes. Connected commerce is booming precisely because marketers are pouring more money into retail media networks — and once they do, they naturally start considering whether they should spend even more. Retailers are responding, albeit slowly, by expanding their commercial offerings beyond traditional retail media networks to include CTV, contextual commerce and richer in-store experiences. True, they’re not always great at selling this broader vision, but many are improving. And even when they fall short, marketers are stepping up themselves, bringing in specialists who can bridge the gap between the advertising side and the merchant side, connecting ad dollars directly to products promoted both in-store and across external media. The money, unsurprisingly, follows.

“New offerings present better ways to reach respective audiences,” said Eric Perko, CEO of independent media agency and consulting firm Apollo Partners. “Highly valuable data is put to good use and buyers are taking notice.”

If retail media networks drive connected commerce growth, how have they also managed to hold it back?

The main culprit is misalignment. Ad teams (retail media networks) and merchant teams (responsible for promoting product lines in-store and through external media like CTV) rarely talk, let alone collaborate effectively. Granted, retailers are still hoovering up ad dollars, but the truth is, they could be doing so much more. For retailers eyeing retail media as their next high-margin growth area, ignoring this internal disconnect is risky. Without fixing it, commerce businesses will stay bogged down by conflicting agendas, inadvertently weakening campaign effectiveness for brands. And the proliferation of retail media networks, each with their own quirks, only amplifies the confusion.

What about brands? 

They’re waking up fast. They’re organizing internally, each in their own way but the broad trend is clear: trade and shopper teams are merging with retail media teams to form connected commerce teams.

“Because retail media dollars are growing, CMOs saw them as media and therefore wanted to control them since they were normally overseen by sales teams,” said Michael Harrison, who leads Winterberry Group’s marketing consulting practice. “But they also realized the only way they could do this is if they reorganized their own teams. Some have already done this while others are finding it harder to make that pivot.”

Despite these challenges, marketers aren’t backing away. According to Winterberry Group, over nine in 10 (92.5%) of the 214 enterprise and middle-market leaders surveyed across the U.S. and U.K. planned to increase their connected commerce spending in 2025 after already ramping up in 2024. Yet significant obstacles remain, from measurement headaches and wasted spend to fragmented retail media networks and inconsistent consumer journey insights. In fact, more than a third (39.3%) of marketers surveyed admitted their organization still lacks a clear, unified view of consumers across retailers.

Does that mean trade marketing dollars are powering connected commerce?

In part, yes, but it’s more nuanced than that. What’s really happening is that CMOs, particularly at CPG brands, are reshaping their teams to better connect ad spending to real consumer behavior. Retailers see themselves as the obvious destination for these dollars — after all, shoppers come to their stores to discover and buy products. Trade dollars definitely play a role here, but they’re just one piece of a much larger puzzle.