Beyond Retail: the rise of commerce media

James Chandler (0:00)

Hello, James here. Welcome back to The IAB UK Podcast. This week, we're talking commerce media. That's right, you heard correctly. Retail media is no more at The IAB. Well, it is, but it now sits within this bigger focus that we have around commerce media. And who better than to come and talk to you about it than Denise Breslin, the IAB's brand new commerce media lead, and joining her, David Fieldhouse, who looks after commerce media and innovation at WPP Media. We cover all sorts of ground. As you'd expect, we talk about why we've made this move and this new transition. We talk about things like fragmentation. We of course touch on measurement, and a look at where the UK sits in the global order of things when it comes to commerce media. Spoiler, we're doing pretty well.

Lots to cover. Let's go straight into it.

Denise Breslin (0:49)

Welcome to The IAB UK Podcast.

James Chandler (0:54)

Retail to commerce media then, Denise. Is it just a bit of a name change, a bit of a rebrand, or is this something else going on there at The IAB?

Denise Breslin (1:01)

No, I think there's a real shift.

I think it's almost the second coming, if you like, of retail media. And whilst retail media still remains incredibly important to us at The IAB, and it's not going anywhere. Commerce media just allows us to have a kind of an umbrella title, is how I'm seeing it. And it's the opportunity to go and speak to people who have that first-party data, who have transactional data, who have their own real estate potentially, whether that's in a store or on an aeroplane or in a magazine potentially. Like how do we go and kind of engage with those users and learn from them essentially?

James Chandler (1:38)

Because I guess we thought about it quite a bit. I mean, when we started it years and years ago, it really was about retailers. It was really about grocers actually, more than anything, and they've got lots of FMCG spending money. It does feel like the focus has broadened a lot, both in terms of who's spending in it and the types of businesses we would now count on.

Denise Breslin (1:55)

Well, from my perspective, I think, what says it apart from a traditional publisher, if you like, is from a digital perspective, is the transactional data. So either you've got someone who's on the site because they're coming to buy something and you've got the opportunity to influence that with advertising, or you've got potentially historical transactional data, whether you're owned or licensed, aggregated, whatever it looks like.

And there's real value in that, I think, from an advertiser's perspective. You'll speak to this better than I do, but there's real value in that.

And obviously, then the opportunity around measurement and attribution and ROAS. And so yeah, it's a big conversation. I think this is only getting bigger. Yeah.

James Chandler (2:36)

This is full circle moment for you.

Of course, you helped us build the IAB's retail media proposition way back in 2022 Can you believe it?

David Fieldhouse (2:45)

Yes, I helped somewhat, I would say.

James Chandler (2:47)

But yeah, it inducts us somewhat, say, of where we are now. What's changed, I guess, in the last few years?

David Fieldhouse (2:54)

I don't think anything's changed too much. But for a start at WPP, we use the term commerce. And that covers everything that our teams do. Yeah.

And there's lots of us. You know, there's well over 100 in London alone. Wow.

I think it's about 1800 to 2000 globally. So it's a big department, if you like.

James Chandler (3:19)

It's incredible. You hear on so many sort of, not so much as sort of retail commerce media events, but in the wider industry, people still talk about this as a sort of emerging channel. The number is bonkers.

David Fieldhouse (3:30)

No, yeah, it really isn't.

James Chandler (3:31)

Yeah.

David Fieldhouse (3:32)

We're one of the most advanced practices, I would say, within WPP.

It's interesting because it's new. And so you have a relatively new, you know, if you're comparing to social and things like that. And so we have people from all kinds of different backgrounds and skill sets within that practice. Because it ranges across a variety of different areas. The way we look at it fundamentally is around six shelves. So they're digital, physical, direct, social, connected, and invisible. Tell us more about this. I thought you would ask me about a vehicle. That's the most difficult one to talk about.

Denise Breslin (4:14)

Of course.

David Fieldhouse (4:15)

Yeah, so invisible really is about ambient AI and these sorts of things. You know, where AI is running in the background for transactions and so on. That's very obviously, you know, nascent right now, but we're seeing highest growth rate in that space. So we're doing a lot of work on agentic commerce and so on and so forth.