The rest of the year is top-of-mind for leaders in marketing and retail, which they expect to be challenging but riddled with opportunities to stand out from competition.

“All anybody wants to talk about are tariffs and AI,” said Joe Laszlo, head of industry insights and engagement for Shoptalk at EMARKETER’s Charting the Future event in New York last week.

Tariffs and AI served as the cornerstones of conversations around consumer demand for value, pressure on performance, and commerce media’s evolution.

Here are just a few of the conversations we heard at the event.

Uncertainty is the only constant

“The art of scenario planning” is a focus for Joe Laszlo, head of industry insights and engagement at Shoptalk. Brands and marketers need to be able to account for various tariff and political scenarios before they pop up.

The retail environment is changing day to day, Laszlo said, creating a difficult landscape for brands and marketers. That creates a need for fine-tuned leadership. For Laszlo, this means execs must enter the second half of the year asking themselves, “what’s in your leadership toolkit these days now that we’re in this world of uncertainty?”

Leadership must find ways to “build empathy” when working with employees that feel burnt out in light of geopolitical instability in order to create teams that can weather these challenges.

Consumers pull back but want more

“People are worried about the economy and looking for value,” said Marnie Kain, vice president and head of brand marketing at Grubhub. The “value equation” as Kain referred to it, goes beyond price to using other tactics like partnerships (akin to the one Grubhub has with Amazon Prime) and personalized discounts to keep customers coming back. “They don’t want to leave money on the table,” Kain said.

Concerns about customers pulling back will continue into H2. Consumers’ tariff-related spending on big ticket items like personal electronics could lead to a pull-back in H2. As a result retailers will be looking at changes in average order price and cutbacks on those big items, according to Diana Ortiz and Joseph Novotny of Consumer Reports.

Commerce media moves further off-site

Commerce media has already extended off-site, into other channels like connected TV (CTV) and social media, but now people are talking more about incorporating it into audio and newsletters, according to Matt Shapo, director of digital audio and video for the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

“We’re trying to focus on DOOH (digital out-of-home), podcasting, and digital audio,” agreed Jason Adamski, director of IAB's media center.

Meanwhile, commerce media advertisers are doubling down on streaming as they lean into the interconnection between retail and CTV, according to Shapo.

Partnerships between these channels is welcome news for retailers. “There seems to be pushback against the walled gardens,” Adamski observed.

The performance mandate

With fewer dollars and more demands, advertisers are keen on proving ROAS.

“Performance matters more than ever right now,” said Carlos Alves, marketing coordinator at DoubleVerify. Marketers are wondering, “how can I get the most with my investment” and are looking for good data to prove success, Alves said.

IRL is so back

Professionals are craving physical presence again—partly because of AI exhaustion.

“In-person events are going to see a huge bump,” predicted Jason Keath, cofounder of Social Fresh, attributing events’ popularity to an ongoing Covid-19 hangover. “There’s a lot of people who are lonely [and they] want to go to events."

But Covid-19 isn’t the only cause for this desire. “AI is increasingly creating a messy, sloppy content space online, so there’s more people investing in podcasts and YouTube and in-person experience,” Keath said.

This was originally featured in the EMARKETER Daily newsletter. For more marketing insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.