Connected TV (CTV) is no longer just a brand awareness play. Advertisers increasingly expect it to deliver measurable sales, customer acquisition, and other business outcomes, especially during the critical holiday shopping season. "TV can be about brand awareness, but it's increasingly about driving a sale or some sort of other outcome," said our analyst Ross Benes, during a recent EMARKETER event.

Commerce media has spent years riding a wave of new advertising dollars. But soon, the industry will need to prepare for a future in which growth comes at someone else's expense. According to EMARKETER's forecast, annual incremental commerce media ad spending will peak at approximately $17 billion in 2027 before declining through 2030. The money isn't drying up. But the pool of new spending that has helped fuel commerce media's expansion is approaching its peak, while more new players are lining up for a piece of it. “The opportunity to simply compete for new spend is getting smaller, and meanwhile, the pressure to generate and create new demands is increasing,” said our analyst Sarah Marzano during a "The Next Era of Commerce Media" presentation held during Advertising Week New York. For commerce media networks, the next opportunity lies in budgets that already have a home. Social media, paid search, and connected TV (CTV) command substantial portions of advertisers' media plans, and winning a share of that spending will require more than offering another way to buy ads on those channels.

AI tools are changing how customers discover small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), and most SMBs know they need to respond. Over a third of SMB marketers report meaningful new traffic from AI tools in the past year, and three-quarters now consider appearing in AI-generated search results a top priority, according to a recent survey by EMARKETER and Semify. "The bigger risk for SMBs is waiting for a single AI visibility metric before getting started," said EMARKETER analyst Kelsey Voss. "There is no accepted standard yet, but the search and business outcomes they already track can show whether incremental changes improve leads, calls, and bookings."

AI is raising the stakes for marketing data quality and connectivity and changing how it’s being used. Here’s how first-party data, outcome-based measurement, interoperability, and AI are reshaping marketing decisions.

TikTok advertising works differently than the platforms it competes with: its impact builds slowly, peaks late, and persists after campaigns end. Combined with TikTok Shop's commerce engine and new event-driven surfaces, the platform rewards advertisers who plan for demand-building rather than instant conversion. This FAQ covers TikTok's ad effectiveness evidence, the ownership-transition trust question, and how to buy the platform well in 2026.

Commerce media is no longer synonymous with retail, as delivery platforms, financial services, and travel companies build sophisticated advertising networks that rival traditional retailers in scale and effectiveness.

Commerce media has planted deep roots in Spanish-speaking Latin America (SPLA). Between 87% and 94% of marketers in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Peru surveyed plan to increase their commerce media investment over the next 12 months, according to new research conducted by EMARKETER for Google.

Attribution can show what happened, but not always what caused it. Incrementality testing is helping marketers distinguish true impact from activity that would have occurred anyway.

As pressure to prove incrementality grows, marketers are rethinking where performance actually happens. The Transaction Moment is gaining attention as a measurable, high-intent opportunity.

60% of US senior decision-makers trust independent incrementality testing most among marketing measurement solutions, 20 points ahead of media mix modeling (40%) and nearly double in-platform reporting (37%), according to a January survey from Haus.

Commerce media spending is projected to surpass $80 billion in the US this year, according to EMARKETER’s forecast, but not every network is winning buyers’ trust equally. “Trust is earned campaign by campaign, and even the earned have to keep earning it," said Rob Rubin, head of EMARKETER Advisory, at EMARKETER’s Ad Buyer Strategies Summit. He shared findings from a new survey of 231 senior ad buyers collectively responsible for more than $8 billion in commerce media spend.

As discovery, validation, and purchase increasingly happen in the same moment on the same screen, global consumer-packaged goods (CPG) brands are confronting fundamental questions about organizational structure, measurement, and retail readiness.

61% of US retail business decision-makers use media mix modeling to measure incrementality, according to December 2025 data from Feedvisor.

On this episode, we examine the challenges and best practices for measuring impact of commerce media advertising. We discuss discuss moving beyond platform-reported metrics, incrementality testing frameworks, clean room strategies, cross-network measurement and building internal capabilities. Arielle Feger, EMARKETER’s Senior Analyst, Media Content hosts Jack Kneuper, Senior Digital Performance Marketing Manager at Perdue Farms and Matt Barresi, President of Digital Commerce and Capabilities at Kimberly-Clark.

On this episode, we explore how leading brands are implementing successful offsite strategies. Focuses include data partnerships and clean rooms, audience targeting off-platform, measuring offsite incrementality, and balancing scale with signal quality. EMARKETER Senior Analyst, Minda Smiley hosts Jason O’Toole, Head of Connected Commerce & Media at Gildan and Ryan Verklin, Paid Media & Retail Media Senior Lead at Bayer.

As retail media networks use different attribution models, it’s becoming harder for advertisers to compare performance across platforms. Incrementality offers a clearer view of which investments are truly driving growth.

While digital in-store retail media remains a small fraction of total retail media spend, the real challenge is integrating digital formats into physical stores thoughtfully to create a cohesive customer experience rather than a fragmented one.

Retail media has reached a point where measurement is table stakes. But what table stakes actually look like is changing fast. With the launch of its latest measurement tool, Kroger Precision Marketing (KPM) is signaling its priorities for retail media measurement: Speed, incrementality, and clearer decision-making.