By Jennifer Sexton, Advertising Week
Commerce media has spent the last few years in expansion mode. New networks have launched at pace, retailers have built out media offerings, and brands have followed the momentum into what has become one of the fastest-growing areas in marketing.
But as the category matures, a different challenge is starting to emerge—one less about growth, and more about what that growth truly delivers.
In an interview with Advertising Week Europe Director Katie Ingram, Ollie Shayer, Senior Director of Global Strategy and Innovation at SMG, described an ecosystem that has rapidly outpaced its own structure. “The industry is growing massively,” he said, calling it “one of the most accelerated parts of the marketing and media mix.”
That acceleration has been accompanied by a surge in participation. “If you look globally, there’s like over 200 commerce media networks,” Shayer noted, pointing not just to retail players but to expansion across sectors including travel, finance, and automotive.
For brands, that growth has fundamentally changed the equation. “Previously they might have had maybe five to six partners,” he said. “By the end of this year, the average brand will work with about 11 to 14 different partners.”
More choice, in theory, should mean more opportunity. In practice, it has introduced a new kind of complexity—one that is forcing brands to ask harder questions about value.
For much of its early growth, commerce media differentiated itself through access. Networks built their propositions around what they could offer: onsite media, offsite extensions, in-store activations, and retailer data.
But as Shayer explained, those differentiators are fading. “That’s becoming more of a table stakes,” he said, as more networks expand into the same channels and capabilities.
What brands are now buying is not the presence of those capabilities, but how well they are delivered.
“Actually what brands want… is moving to more of what we see as the how,” Shayer said. “How do you measure? What type of service do you offer? How easy are you to work with? How insightful can you be with the data that you have?”
It’s a subtle shift, but a significant one. Commerce media is no longer competing on infrastructure. It’s competing on execution.
And that’s where the cracks are beginning to show.
The rapid expansion of the category has not always been matched by the operational depth needed to support it. Many networks have focused on building out the visible parts of their offering—more placements, more channels, more opportunities—without fully addressing how those pieces connect or perform.
“The core barrier is only focusing on the what,” Shayer said. “That isn’t going to allow you to grow going forward.”
Instead, he pointed to a broader set of factors that increasingly determine success. It’s not just about what a network offers externally, but how it functions internally. “Is it becoming a core part of their business?” he asked. “Is it being considered, talked about, discussed at the C-suite level?”
Without that level of integration, growth becomes difficult to sustain. Commerce media requires investment, alignment, and long-term commitment—none of which happen by default.
Shayer drew on his own experience to underscore the point. “One of the things I was very lucky at Boots,” he said, “we had core C-suite backing, which allowed us to grow the business quite quickly because it was a core part of our business agenda.”
That kind of support, he suggested, is often the difference between networks that scale and those that stall.
To help address that gap, SMG used the stage to introduce its Commerce Media Maturity Index, a framework designed to assess where networks stand today and what they need to evolve toward.
The intent is not to create a universal model, but to reflect the reality that commerce media networks are shaped by the businesses they sit within. “It’s not kind of a one size fits all,” Shayer said.
Instead, the framework draws on industry data to map both current capability and future expectations, particularly as the market looks toward 2030. “We’ve taken data from across the industry to look at where is the market currently and where will it be by 2030,” he explained.
What that future points to is a continued evolution of channels, driven by changing consumer behavior and emerging technologies. But while the “what” will continue to shift, the underlying requirements are becoming clearer.
“You’ve got to have the ability to enact over those three different elements,” Shayer said, pointing to channels, data, and execution.
Data, in particular, remains a defining advantage—but only if it is usable. “Having that data in the right structure and being able to utilize it properly is going to be really key,” he said.
At the same time, expectations around insight are rising. “Brands… talk incessantly about being able to really truly understand the effectiveness of the media,” he noted, adding that they are increasingly looking for deeper customer understanding and clearer paths to growth.
For all the discussion of frameworks and future planning, Shayer’s closing point was more direct—and more immediate.
“I think the core thing is don’t chase what you think the market wants,” he said.
In a category moving this quickly, it is easy to build toward perceived demand—to add capabilities because they feel necessary, or because competitors are doing the same. But that approach can dilute what makes a network distinctive in the first place.
“The reality is if it doesn’t fit with who you are… it will make it very difficult for you to be successful,” he said.
In a market where the playing field is increasingly level, that clarity matters more than ever.
Commerce media may still be growing at speed, but its next phase will be defined by something else entirely. Not who can build the most—but who can make it work.
