AI is reshaping how consumers in Canada search, shop, and spend time with media. As digital adoption deepens, brands, publishers, and retailers face the need to adapt to AI-driven discovery and commerce, or risk losing out in a rapidly changing market.

Brands from PepsiCo to Ulta are leaning on wellness framing to nudge cautious consumers to spend.

The next wave of commerce media growth will come from verticals in which first-party data, digital touchpoints, and consumer engagement converge—even as executional risks threaten to slow progress.

Big media acquisitions and streaming integrations will contribute to consolidation in connected TV (CTV) ad spending.

Fintechs, big tech, and payment players are using genAI to redefine finance. To compete, banks must pair strategic genAI investment with hyper-personalization and human support to earn customer trust and loyalty.

Chatbots are AGI stepping stones: DeepMind might release a ChatGPT competitor called Sparrow sometime in 2023. Chatbots are part of a much bolder vision to alter society with artificial general intelligence.

Can a new service help Shopify attract more enterprise retailers? Commerce Components by Shopify allows large retailers to integrate Shopify’s tools and services into their online platforms.

As ecommerce growth slows, Shopify hedges its bets: The ecommerce platform is enhancing its lending services, seller tools, and enterprise solutions as part of its “everything but the kitchen sink” growth strategy.

The pandemic has hit lower-income households especially hard. But its effects are being felt across income brackets, and not always in predictable ways—for instance, upper-income consumers are making the biggest spending cuts.

Even though food and beverage has traditionally been a product category with low digital penetration in the US—we peg the category at 2.8% of all retail ecommerce sales for 2018—online sales are steadily picking up steam.