Commerce Media Trends and Opportunities | Behind the Numbers: Special Edition
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Welcome to a special edition episode of the eMarketer podcast, Behind the Numbers. I'm Marcus. Today, we have a special episode from the eMarketer Summit, Commerce Media Trends 2025, held on May 9th. In this episode, eMarketer Principal Analyst Sarah Marzano and Senior Analyst Max Willings share the key trends and findings from the Summit keynote presentation.

Then Sarah sits down with Lauren Bruschi, Head of Sales and Partnerships for Chase Media Solutions for a special in-depth chat. Enjoy. Hi everyone, I'm Sarah Marzano, a Principal Analyst here at eMarketer where I cover retail and commerce media. In 2025, we're forecasting that ad spending on commerce media is set to reach nearly $70 billion.

While commerce media remains dominated by retail, verticals from other industries are continuing to test the waters, changing the shape of the landscape. So we'll be kicking things off today with our keynote session, Commerce Media Trends in 2025. Afterwards, I'll be joined by Chase Media Solutions' Lauren Gruski, Head of Sales and Partnerships for a special fireside chat. Before we dive in, I'm thrilled to welcome Max Willans, our Senior Analyst covering media and advertising.

Max is freshly back from his parental leave and has graciously agreed to join me today, despite not being given much time to breathe before getting thrown right back into the frenetic waters of digital media. Hi, Max. Hey, Sarah. I am very glad to be back and dive into all the stuff that's been happening. There's a lot to catch up on.

There certainly is. We have no shortage of topics to discuss, and that's why we'll be using key themes from our Commerce Media 2025 Predictions Report, which we published last November as a guide.

Now that we're nearly halfway through the year, I thought it might be fun to see how some of what we were anticipating back in November has held up, where we maybe weren't so on track and what's unfolded that no one could have predicted. I personally prefer to imagine that everything I say is correct and that I'm never, ever wrong about anything, but it is probably better that you're going to keep us honest. So let's go.

All right. Let's start with the lead prediction from our November report, which was that mounting pressure will squeeze the long tail of retail media networks.

So this was really about the idea that despite an influx of new entrants into the retail media landscape over the past few years, the actual shape of ad spend share hasn't meaningfully shifted. We see that Amazon is set to continue comfortably clearing more than three quarters of retail media ad spending through our forecast period, with Walmart coming in a distant second. And that leaves a massively crowded field of remaining retail media networks to compete for what's left.

We know that networks often enjoy an initial wave of pent-up demand from advertisers upon launching. But once that momentum stabilizes, the challenges of succeeding in such a crowded playing field begin to come into focus. And this pressure, for me, is one of the defining themes of the era we're entering into as retail media matures. Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

I love this graphic and it's really struck me how much it's resonated just across the industry ever since we published it. I still see it floating past me when I scroll through LinkedIn. I've seen it in articles here and there. And I think it's powerful because it visualizes something that we all kind of intuitively understand, right? Which is that

all the retailers not named Amazon or Walmart are experiencing retail media in a very different way and essentially they're experiencing it as a very steep uphill climb.

Yeah, that's exactly right, Max. Okay, so what's happened in the past six months? One thing that's obviously top of mind is the massive economic uncertainty that has been stirred up by the looming threat of tariffs. Look, this is definitely, I'll admit, not something we had on our bingo card when we were writing this report. But luckily, our eMarketer forecasting team quickly jumped into action to help model out a few different scenarios which help contextualize the potential impact across the markets that we track.

Yeah, and it's been a really interesting puzzle to think through here as a group, because if you think about it, the really best frame of reference that we have for how retail media would fare in an economic crisis is the pandemic.

But if you think about it for even a little while, you see that it's not a great frame of reference. So that was basically one quick or one supply chain shock plus unemployment that was largely mitigated by pretty substantial government spending and

And it also came at a moment when tens of millions of Americans basically had no choice but to do all of their shopping online. This, on the other hand, is quite different. Here, the sort of worst case scenario is a succession of trade between the two largest economies in the world, plus double digit increase in the price of goods from basically every country on earth.

And it is important to acknowledge that that is one outcome of many, which is why it's great that our forecasting team laid out three different scenarios. So on the one end, you have a limited tariff scenario, which we think will play out largely the way that we expected 2025 to play out before the tariffs were announced.

And then on the other side, you have a full scale implementation of tariffs, which triggers a global recession, spikes inflation, drives retaliatory measures between countries and creates a major shock for both businesses and consumers.

And in that scenario, and even in the medium scenario, retail media would feel that sting pretty acutely. About half of Amazon's top 10,000 sellers are based in China, according to Marketplace Plus, and tens of thousands of others really rely heavily on goods from China to go into the finished products that they sell. But even with all of that said, and even all of that kind of floating around in the air, we do still think that even under that worst case scenario,

retail media would still rise close to 8% under a heavy tariff scenario based on a couple of different factors. The first is that for the two biggest players in retail media, Amazon and Walmart, marketplaces are a key factor in their growth and health. There's an estimated 1.1 million sellers active on Amazon alone, and most of them are small fish, about 58% of them, according to Pentaleap. And that long tail of advertisers

would feel the sting of tariffs really, really acutely, but they also might not have any choice but to keep spending within these marketplaces. Because if you take Amazon and Walmart away from a lot of these smaller independent Chinese sellers, they basically lose their ability to access US consumers.

The second reason is that there's a whole segment of the retail media ecosystem that might actually not be quite as badly affected by Chinese tariffs. To me, a great example of this is grocery, for example.

Yeah, I think that's a great point. It's important to remember that no matter what happens, the impacts here aren't going to play out evenly across categories or verticals. So I think, you know, when you consider high frequency essential categories, which drive a high share of retail media ad spend, you know, something like food and beverage or health and personal care, these may end up feeling less of a pinch here. And then in that same vein, retailers and verticals with strong domestic supply chains, such as in grocery, to your point, are better positioned for resilience.

On the other hand, you know, we'll be closely watching those general merchandise retailers who rely on ad spending from advertisers who are promoting discretionary categories. And of course, those marketplaces that have a high share of international sellers. You know, these are the players that are going to have to take a more strategic approach when it comes to thinking through how to support the advertisers who are facing the biggest impacts.

And something I want to add to this topic, Max, is that while we spend a lot of time in general sort of exploring retail media's growing role as a full funnel advertising solution, I think it's important to remember that its foundation in performance marketing actually positions it well to withstand periods of economic uncertainty.

The performance-driven foundation here may help retail media remain a strategic priority even when marketing budgets tighten. Oh, 100%. We could spend the entire day talking about tariffs and kind of gaming out the possible consequences, but

We should also focus on some stuff that happened within the commerce media world specifically and how it shapes this trend. So to me, one of the biggest updates that happened in the news as it pertains specifically to the long tail of RMNs was the blocking of the Kroger Albertsons merger, which happened in December.

Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up. I feel like so much has happened that it can be really easy to forget that this went down less than six months ago. That merger would have had a huge impact on retail media. For one, the combined entity would have ended up with a store footprint in the range of 5,000, which would make it a presence really on par with Walmart. And we know that retail media advertisers have been quite outspoken about the persistent friction they're encountering when buying across so many disparate platforms.

So a merger would have created a real competitive advantage within the ecosystem as it stands today. Now both retailers will have to find new paths forward. We've seen some noteworthy leadership shuffles at both companies, and Albertsons, for its part, started off the new year strong with the launch of an API that's specifically aimed at easing some of those advertisers' headaches, specifically around measurement.

Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I want to close this out on an optimistic note here. I mean, I think a lot of what we've talked about related to pressure is real and should be acknowledged. But when you think about the cohort of RMNs that fall into our other category, they're

growth prospects essentially are going to trump Amazon's year over year. And there is a lot of momentum that you see as players like Ulta and Best Buy invest heavily in marketplaces, essentially looking to replicate Amazon's success to an extent in activating a longer tail of advertisers.

You also look to things like RTV protocols, which have been updated to extend this retail specific ad formats that could inject a lot of efficiency into buying process.

And then at the end of the day, as frustrated as advertisers say they are when it comes to buying and reporting on retail media, they're still pretty happy with the way that it works. 80% of CPG advertisers said that retail media was at least as effective, if not more, as any other kind of digital media, according to TransUnion and P2PI.

So if we add that all up, Sarah, what do you think? How do we do on this one? So I think, you know, as you said, the pressure here is absolutely real. And in the absence of any sort of meaningful aggregation, scale remains the distinct advantage in the retail media landscape today. But at the same time, as you pointed out, advertiser demand has remained surprisingly resilient and there's genuine innovation happening that I think could really transform things at the margins.

So as we head into the second half of the year, I'll be watching closely to see how the prospect of new tariffs adds more tension to the already fraught process of joint business planning between brands and retailers. We know that retailers are continuing to push for steep increases in retail media ad spend and that the power struggle over budgets is reaching a boiling point. And that was all already happening before tariffs became a potential disruptor to advertisers' planning.

And while performance marketing channels often prove resilient during economic uncertainty, as I noted earlier, I want to be sort of careful to emphasize that that doesn't mean retail media networks are in the clear. If anything, I think the pressure on them to deliver clear, measurable ROI is only going to intensify. Max, what are you going to be watching for in the second half of the year?

So I'm with you. I mean, tariffs are center stage, I think really until further notice, but I am going to try to keep my eyes peeled on any updates that in the race that a bunch of companies are in to make it easier for advertisers to do more kind of open-ish buying of retail media. I think about, you know, Google announcing that a bunch of RMNs were named as data partners in DV360 at its new front earlier this week.

The IAB Tech Lab is continuing to make progress, it seems, on adding retail media to its open RTB spec. And as these continue to evolve, I think it's possible that advertisers are going to start to think about how they buy this media in a really different way. Yeah, those are some fascinating topics. I'll take this moment to mention that later today, I am going to be sitting down with Sean McGahey, who's the head of retail media at Google. So we'll get a chance to dive into some of that a bit deeper.

Great plug. Speaking of buying things in a different way, let's move on to the second prediction we'll discuss today, which was that last mile intermediaries are poised to share or to win commerce media ad share. Last year, we basically bet that delivery platforms like DoorDash or Instacart would carve out a meaningful share of commerce media revenue. The crux of this idea basically was about the unique positioning of this cohort

that we call commerce intermediaries within commerce media. This chart we put on screen here basically lays out how the opportunity these intermediaries have is unique among competitors. But to dive a little bit deeper, I guess

the best way to think about it is these companies have the opportunity to act like retailers and they have a lot of the same advantages where you have high purchase intent, you have high frequency audiences, you've got very granular purchase data, but they also have unique advantages like the ability to incorporate cross merchant purchase behavior,

And, you know, while they have a lot of the advantages that retailers have, they also do not, they are not saddled with a lot of the challenges that retailers hold where they don't have to hold inventory, they don't have to manage it. So what happened? Did we see this take root? So our latest commerce media forecast hasn't been published yet.

when we got the green light to offer up a bit of a sneak peek for this audience. In short, our forecast shows that this prediction is absolutely trending in the right direction. So commerce intermediary ad spending revenue is going to surpass $2 billion this year, and it's set to grow over 50% by 2027, when it will reach more than $3.5 billion in ad spending.

There's a lot of high-level ways we can continue to talk about this, but I feel like it's most instructive perhaps to look at specific companies and some of what they're doing. I think a great candidate for that is DoorDash, so I'll use them to kind of start us off. They've made some interesting moves in the past few months. At ShopTalk in March, they announced a partnership with TopSort, which enables programmatic buying for retail and delivery inventory.

So this partnership is going to open up inventory across smaller regional grocers to advertisers who are already working with DoorDash directly, giving those advertisers an efficient way to scale their spend and also extending that advertiser demand to those smaller participating retailers. And this feels to me like a particularly salient point following our prior conversation about fragmentation and more specifically the programmatic protocols as a potential salve for this issue.

DoorDash also launched post-purchase ad units, which I know we're going to be talking about a little bit later, and they've teamed up with Klarna. That last announcement kicked off a series of very entertaining memes about paying for burritos and installments, but to me it also signals some serious intent to expand into non-consumable categories. And we've already seen how diversifying into new categories has been a crucial growth lever for intermediaries like DoorDash.

Yeah, DoorDash is a perfect example of what we've been talking about. But I feel like Instacart is equally vulnerable

viable as an example, right? So, you know, last month they launched the partnership with Uber Eats where Instacart's ad tech powers ad formats on Uber Eats O&Os because that extends the inventory available to CPG brands that are already working with Instacart. Instacart also rolled out access to ad inventory on caper cards to all advertisers.

I think caper carts are fascinating. It's such a cool and unexpected move, I feel like, in the early days of this space. Basically what it does is it gives advertisers the chance to buy not only across Instacart's digital ecosystem, but also they can show up on premise in the physical stores of retailers that have put these carts in their aisles.

And so in addition to the partnerships and what they're building internally, they've also shown that they have a willingness to buy rather than build, as evidenced by the wind shop acquisition that they made earlier this month.

Yeah, absolutely. And I know we're not getting too deep into in-store retail media during our conversation today because we don't have enough time. But I think to your point, what Instacart is doing with their caper carts is one of the most fascinating sort of elements that's really setting up to transform in-store retail media opportunities. But overall, what's really interesting to me is how these intermediaries are sort of positioning themselves to address and even solve for the key points of friction that are presenting such a challenge for both advertisers and retail media networks.

So Max, on this trend, how would you measure up our prediction so far? - I think it's pointing in the right direction for sure. Basically what you see all across the space is the last milers are building real diverse infrastructure and they're expanding really quickly.

As I mentioned earlier, they have this positioning that gives them a lot of really unique advantages, including being able to flex across verticals, position themselves really as true partners for retailers on a lot of different levels. So I'm excited to see how they continue to leverage those advantages and evolve their business models in response to them. Yeah, me too. And I think building on that,

Another thing I'll be watching for closely is the next evolution of partnerships. So you mentioned the Uber Eats and Instacart team up. I think with the rise of commerce media networks from traditionally non-retail verticals like finance and travel verticals, it's really exciting for someone in our position to sort of imagine what's next.

As a more cohesive omnichannel view of the customer comes into focus, there's so much opportunity for cross-vertical collaboration. So think about companies like Instacart, DoorDash, or Uber being able to target airline passengers when they're mid-flight. These kinds of moments could unlock an entirely new level of high-intent engagement. 100%.

Okay, let's shift to our third prediction, which is the final one we'll discuss today. In it, we said that the race would be on to create new ad inventory as commerce media heats up. So on-site ads still drive the overwhelming majority of commerce media ad spending. But there's a natural limit to how much on-site real estate you can realistically monetize.

Retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Home Depot already show upwards of 20 sponsored product listings per page of search results, according to Pentaleap. Ultimately, retailers have to strike a delicate balance between monetization and user experience.

While other retailers haven't hit the same level of saturation, it stands to reason that the limits of traditional on-site monetization are going to have universal implications. So back in November, we predicted that 2025 would be the year when commerce media players started prioritizing new inventory sources and finding innovative ways to inject new inventory into the existing purchase journey. Yeah, and this was a trend that seemed like it was

heading in the right direction almost immediately, right? I mean, I think back to January when Amazon announced retail media as a service at CES in January. Basically, for those of you that missed that announcement, Amazon now offers its retail media technology to help power the ads that retailers put on their websites.

And at a high level, this is just a logical way of commercializing Amazon's tech and maybe driving more revenue from it. But at a more strategic level, you can see that there's this major incentive where it adds a tremendous amount of onsite ad inventory from retailers that are still building out their own retail media capabilities.

And as Amazon's own retail media business has matured, its growth has started to slow. It's still healthy, but it's not growing the way it was a couple of years ago. And that makes this a timely move to sort of sustain momentum in a novel way.

Yeah, I think what remains to be seen here is how retailers are going to respond to the idea of partnering with a company that hasn't always been known for playing well with others. And I think that tension feels especially relevant in light of some of the moves we just discussed from that cohort of commerce intermediaries who arguably may be better positioned to offer this kind of service. Their business models, as you mentioned, place them squarely outside of direct retail competition, which could make them more appealing as partners.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that as reported by Adweek, I think just about a week ago, Walmart apparently pulled back from launching a similar offering after a period of exploration, which I think really highlights the complexity and competitive nature of this space. Yeah, absolutely. Sticking with Amazon though, I was also really struck by the fact that they are

absolutely excited about Rufus's potential as a surface for advertising, right? So they rolled text ads out in September of last year, but this past February, Amazon announced that it would begin testing shoppable video ads that would appear within AI-generated responses to customer queries.

Yeah, the Rufus example is so interesting. So Amazon's massive e-commerce scale is exactly what's made it such a dominant force in retail media, which, you know, as we just mentioned, is predominantly fueled by spending on on-site ads. But I think if we cast an eye towards retail media's future, it's important to keep in mind that Amazon doesn't have access to the same in-store inventory potential that many other retailers are just beginning to unlock.

In-store, for me, remains one of the biggest untapped opportunities in retail media. And perhaps more importantly, in-store transactions still account for the overwhelming majority share of overall retail sales, which means there's significant attribution potential tied to in-store activities.

And that's something Amazon has less direct access to. Because of all that, I expect we'll continue to see Amazon innovate within its digitally owned and operated ecosystem to compensate, especially finding new ways to create and measure media touch points without that physical footprint.

Yeah, I think that's right. I want to circle back also to another company we've mentioned a couple of times now, which is DoorDash and the post-purchase ad announcements that they had. So post-purchase real estate is something that's actually kind of perked up quite a bit in the last couple of years in retail media. But it has largely been this place where retailers have experimented with non-endemic ads.

Think about things like partnerships with companies like Rocked or Fluent. DoorDash is novel in this way because it focuses on keeping customers within DoorDash's ecosystem. And it does that by encouraging incremental purchases from DoorDash retailers, which can be tacked onto an existing order basically for free. There is an urgency component, which I think is kind of interesting.

Basically, if a customer wants to take advantage of the offer, they have to click within a certain amount of time after the initial order has been placed. To me, this is a really compelling example of the customer purchase journey being shaken up and kind of massaged in a way that

allows advertisers to reach people in a way that they wouldn't have been able to before. Yeah, no, I completely agree. I love the DoorDash example. I think it's such a creative way to serve customers while increasing the utility of that post-purchase real estate, right? That already exists and you have that customer who's really paying attention in that moment. And again, all without pushing users out of the DoorDash ecosystem.

One area that we haven't had much time to dig into yet is the financial players who are putting down roots in the commerce media landscape. Max, I know when we first began tracking the emergence of non-retail verticals in commerce media, one of the first challenges we flagged was the limited scale of digital audiences on these players' owned and operated properties. And we looked toward that potentially making it harder for them to compete with retailers and intermediaries who already have built-in shopper traffic.

But what's exciting this year is that we're sort of starting to see new strategies emerge to overcome that challenge. So just last week, PayPal announced its offside ads product, which leverages transaction data to target customers across the open web. So not just on PayPal's own platform. So this really gives us a glimpse into how these players are working around the scale issue and extending the reach and use case of their own data assets.

Yeah, 100%. I mean, commerce media networks from financial players are, to me, just super tantalizing because of that holistic view that they have of the consumer, right? And so if they can just figure out how to convince consumers that they can and should play a more extensive role in the shopping that they do online, then I think look out. Sarah, I know right after our conversation, you'll be discussing a lot of that potential with Chase Media Solutions.

So what's our score? To me, I think this is right on the money. I think we completely nailed this one. Everybody is racing to unlock more modernization moments. And I think that there's a lot more where this came from. What are you going to be watching for on this front, Sarah?

So I'm going to be waiting for more creative retailer publisher tie-ups to materialize. Albertson has a new head of media and measurement, Liz Roach, who has a strong media background. And I can't stop thinking about something she said in a recent interview. She was discussing the advantages of owned and operated inventory for retailers, and she floated the notion of acquisition potential for incremental digital properties in retail media, essentially bringing offsite ad inventory into a retailer's owned ecosystem. That raises some fascinating possibilities.

As retailers look to scale their media businesses while still being able to close the loop on attribution, all while facing the very real limitations of their existing digital presences, pursuing new sources of inventory via acquisition becomes a really compelling prospect. How about you, Max?

Yeah, I think those are great. I'm going to be looking out for more of these kinds of tie-ups too. I think about a lot of the partnerships that were forged last year, like Best Buy and CNET or Instacart and the New York Times' cooking app as being these perfect examples of publisher and commerce media tie-ups. And I could absolutely see more rolling out as this space keeps evolving.

The other thing I'm going to be watching out for is what this kind of need for inventory does to the content creation plans for a lot of these commerce media hopefuls. So brands and retailers have been on this pendulum for years and years now where they swing back and forth between wanting to make their own content and going to publishers to have them help them make it.

And I feel like with Gen AI having drastically reduced the cost to producing content of a really high quality, I think it's worth asking whether we're going to start seeing that pendulum swing back in the direction of in-house content.

We've only got a few minutes left here, but we should quickly recap how incredibly accurate and clear eyed we were with our predictions. First off, we had the rising pressure on the long tail of retail media networks. I gave us points there. Thanks to more non-retailers jumping on the commerce media van wagon. What do you think? I think you're an easy grader, but I will happily take it.

Thank you. I knew you would. Second, we had the prediction that commerce intermediaries would win share. This looks like a win to me because not just based on the headlines we talked about, but also just our own forecasting data. It looks like that's going to pan out. Absolutely. This one to me felt spot on. And finally, we predicted that there would be a race across commerce media to add new kinds of inventory.

I'm going to give us credit here too. We couldn't have predicted the myriad of ways this would unfold, but I think examples seem to be piling up left and right in support of the notion that tapping into and even creating new ad inventory is top of mind for commerce media networks. All right, that's sadly all the time we have for this conversation today. Thank you so much, Max, for joining me. That was fun. You bet. I look forward to the rest of the sessions today.

Perfect. All right, let's keep the momentum going. Lauren Gruski, Head of Sales and Partnerships at Chase Media Solutions is joining me next. We're going to be diving into how Chase Media Solutions leverages their access to deep consumer spending data to power personalization and improve the customer experience. But first, we're going to cut to a short video from Chase. Lauren, it's such a pleasure to have you with us today. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

I thought I could start off our conversation by asking you to share some of what you're seeing over at Chase in terms of shifting consumer behavior and how that's informing your approach to the Chase Media Solutions offering. Sure, great. Well, first I'll tell a little bit about what Chase Media Solutions is, if that's okay. That would be great, yes. So Chase is the largest consumer bank, the largest business bank, and the number one cardholder platform.

And what that means is that we serve 84 million consumers and 7 million businesses in the US. And so that gives us access to the consumer in a way that we can deliver value for them through curated offers, personalized and relevant offers from our brand and merchant partners. So at the core of what we do, our goal is to continue to deliver value to our customers via Chase offers.

Awesome. Yeah, Max and I were just discussing in our keynote some of the fascinating advantages and attributes from financial players because of your ability to bring in that holistic view of the customer, right? And really fill in some of the white space in the commerce media landscape. Yeah.

Chase Media Solutions officially launched last year. As a newer commerce media player, I'm curious to hear about how you're balancing the pressures from larger networks while also trying to sort of innovate and carve out your niche in the space. Yeah, absolutely. So we're really excited in year one. We've got a ton of momentum. In year one alone, we did $12 billion through Chase offers and consumer spend.

And so we see that our consumers and our cardholders love to activate offers and redeem them at their favorite merchants while discovering new merchants as well. And what we see at Chase is that traditional retail media networks typically have the consumer spend and the behaviors that happen within their own retail walls and within their digital shopping carts.

But what's unique about Chase is that because we are the number one consumer bank and we have the largest amount of cardholders and many of our customers also have their home mortgage loans with us or auto loans, and they've been a part of the Chase family for many, many years. And so that means that we have a holistic view on who that consumer is beyond just the retailer.

we typically see where they're having dinner every night, where they're booking travel. And so we have insights about them that then we are able to deliver relevant personalized messages to them. - Yeah, it's fascinating to think about all the dimensions that you sort of have access to again to inform that sort of holistic view.

Just sort of building on sort of that theme, Max and I talked quite a bit about the competition in the space and smaller networks sort of figuring out how to navigate amid slowing ad spend. So with this in mind, I'm curious how Chase is adapting its strategy and can you talk about

bit about what role measurement plays as well as sort of creating ease of buying for advertisers, which we know is such a hot topic in commerce media. Absolutely. And what I'm hearing you ask is really around efficiency, scale, our ability to close the loop, which is really important as we look to prove out the return on ad spend. And with Chase, it's inherently built into our platform.

Because a consumer is actually purchasing via their Chase card, we can see when an attributed sale takes place. So our merchant partners and brands are only actually paying when a sale and a transaction takes place, which we see as incredibly valuable and that essentially there's no waste in working with us.

In addition to that, we have massive scale. So we're able to identify whether a consumer is a new consumer to that brand. So the offer you give a new consumer may be different than one, then you reward someone for being a loyal consumer and vice versa. If it's a lapsed consumer who you want to win back as a customer of your brand and your products, we're also able to have really attractive offers for them to get re-engaged with a brand as well.

And so we find that given the large scale that we have and the insight that we have about their consumer behavior really enables us to deliver for brands to be the beneficiary of what we deliver to that consumer.

Yeah, no, I'm so glad you brought up the ability to sort of close the loop because I think that's one of the key components that has really been a huge tailwind for commerce media overall. Absolutely. And then being able to position the value add of sort of only having advertisers invest where it's worth.

Absolutely. I think it's going to be so relevant, particularly during times where advertisers might be feeling really pinched and wanting to make sure that their ad spend is being allocated really effectively. Yeah, and it's the responsibility of every platform and every brand marketer to make sure that we're delivering efficiency. And it's not just efficiency for return on ad spend's sake, it's also looking at incrementality.

And so we work with a number of our partners in delivering on incrementality of net new consumers. And I'll share a case study we did with Blue Bottle where we were actually able to drive 53% of incrementality of new customers to their business through Chase offers. And it's directly attributed to our ability to target users and give them offers that are most attractive and valuable to the consumer. Yeah, that's such a great example. And I was going to say when you were speaking earlier, I feel like

personalization has been such a buzzword the entire career that I've spent in the retail and commerce industry. But it's exciting to see it sort of finally moving beyond buzzword into some really meaningful sort of real life examples. We continue to invest in personalization and relevancy. It's one of our

core priorities, but just inherently as to who we are as a platform, we're able to deliver offers, as I said, that may be different depending upon what your preferences are, where you're spending and investing your own dollars. And so I think about that. I want to

example I love to share is around a mom. Like she perhaps may be purchasing pizza once a week for her family, but she doesn't actually eat pizza. What she likes is to go to the spa or to travel to Rome once a year with her best friends. And she has preferences of certain face creams that she likes to use. And so we have all of these insights about her that we're able to then deliver value to each dimension of her life and at each stage of her journey as a consumer,

which we find to be, I find to be very, very exciting. And we as a business find to be very rewarding to the consumer and to our brand partners. - Yeah, no, I think that's such a great example. And it gets me thinking about how the emergence of a player like Chase in the commerce media landscape can't be looked at as something that is simply a threat to other players in the same ecosystem, but rather something that can be a complimentary sort of value add. I see all kinds of opportunities that could

potentially be unlocked for other players in commerce media. Absolutely. I mean, one of the things that we love to do with our brand partners is to give them insights about their consumer segments, things that they may not have known before, or to look at even the share that they're capturing within their own category so that they can appropriately look at the goals they want to create to earn more share of

specific new audiences or continue to invest in those that are loyal to their business relative to their own competitive set as well. Yeah, I love that idea. It gets me very excited as an analyst. So Max and I also just spent some time discussing the importance of new sources of ad inventory that we're seeing emerge across different touch points. So some examples are in-store or post-purchase or other digital formats.

So I'm curious to hear more about how you're approaching that as you think about really being able to scale those touch points. Yeah, that's a really good point. And in addition to our web and mobile properties where consumers can come and access Chase offers and redeem them for cash back, we also have many branches. We have 4,700 branches across the U.S. and 15,000 ATMs.

So we have many offline ways that we can also reach consumers. So you can imagine a world where you go to a Chase ATM and get a QR code to go to the local gas station or potentially the local fast food restaurant and to earn cash back on those purchases as well. So we're continuing to invest and innovate around ways, all the ways that we can add value to our consumers via our merchant and brand partners. And those are just a few. But we're excited to invest

and more of the ways that we'll bring that opportunity to brands. The other thing that I'll mention, which I think is really important, is that Chase is a trusted environment for our consumers. Because we are their financial institution, there's an inherent trust that's built into the relationship and one that we uphold to the highest level of integrity in the industry. And so with that trust, it becomes really important around the environment in which you're introducing brands and special offers to a consumer.

So our brand partners are beneficiaries of that trust that we share with the consumer, whereas sometimes in other environments, that trust has to be built over time. We've built that inside of our platforms. And so that makes me really excited about that additional value that we pass on to our brand partners and the trust that we have with our consumers. Yeah, that's a fascinating angle to bring up is the credibility that you've, as an organization, spent so much time building up.

that advertisers are able to then be the beneficiary of. Yeah, and brand safety is so important. And I think that that's one thing that, you know, as someone in the industry who feels responsible to all of the marketers that we serve every day, that's something that I get really excited about that we've been able to pass on as a benefit of working with us. Yeah, no, absolutely. And then just going back to your point about

all the opportunities that you have to scale your ad inventory and those touch points and all the possibilities there. It gets me thinking about the travel media space, which we're also covering quite closely, and all of the sort of potential collaboration opportunity and opportunity for local businesses. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think, again, because we have insights about the consumer, we can make relevant recommendations. So you can imagine a world where you book a trip

And we're going to give you recommendations around local spots to have dinner or to potentially local spots to take a rental car for the day, day trips. So we're looking at an entire consumer experience across shopping, dining, travel, and everyday purchases that they may make inside of the ecosystem and want to continue to add more value to those consumer experiences.

That's really cool. I think that tees me up well for the next sort of question I wanted to ask, which is that there's a rise of new partnerships and integrations across platforms. So I'm curious to hear sort of your POV on what the key components are for a successful collaboration in the commerce media space and any sort of ideations you have around what Chase might pursue there.

Sure. I think in general, it all goes down to what the marketer's goal is. And so again, we like to look at if we're trying to deliver value to a consumer, what exactly is the segment that we're going to look to deliver that on? And then how can we tailor specific personalized offers at the right time for that consumer as well?

So you may come into our platform and be looking for a specific retailer that is one retailer that you love. And so we're introducing a search functionality where you could actually look and find the retailer's offers that are most valuable to you. And the offer that you get during that experience may be different than one that I get based on my preferences and my consumer spending habits.

So we continue to work with our partners around the segments that they want to reach while also developing products and solutions that are going to make it easy for you to find offers that are most relevant and personalized for you. Yeah, I love that. The idea of bringing in the search functionality is going to be such a great opportunity to reach those customers who maybe already have in mind sort of what they want.

Whether they have a specific brand or retailer in mind, but have that high intent sort of desire. Right, absolutely. Very cool. So we've talked a little bit about the cross-merchant purchase data that gives advertisers deeper insights into consumer behavior, which is something that retailers themselves can't really provide.

They've got the granular insights from what's happening within their own four walls, but they're not sure what's happening outside. So I'd love to hear more about how that data sort of makes the customer journey smoother, right? Having access to it. Well, you could imagine where inside, as I mentioned before, inside of a retailer, they're limited to the consumer spending habits inside of that retailer themselves.

Whereas at Chase, we have the full picture of the consumer and so we're able to have an experience with them relative to everything that we see about their lives. And I think what's also interesting is if we also look at the life stage of which they're in. So if we know that someone is just buying a new home, the experience that we may deliver to them during that time through multiple different products and solutions would be different than if they're going to college.

So those types of life stages are also ways that we're able to specifically market to them multiple products across multiple categories. As I mentioned before, shopping, dining, travel, everyday purchases, those that may be big purchases, especially if it's your first home versus a vacation or a second home. So because we have all of those insights and we've seen the

the, you know, many times a multi-year journey with this consumer, we're also able to have a really relevant experience for them at that life stage. Yeah, no, I think it's such a great point that it's not only that you have access to cross-merchant transaction data for sort of everyday transactions, but you also have access to these sort of bigger life moments and investments that really, again, give you the opportunity to sort of know about what stage that customer is in in their life and what may

might be valuable to them. - Yeah, I also think about the difference of a family that goes on one vacation a year versus those that go on multiple vacations. And so that one vacation for them is a really special moment. And then the way that we get to continue to add value to them, to put cash back in their lives, those are really important things that we're able to leverage, insights that we have about them

that may be different than someone who travels multiple times a year or a business traveler versus a traveler that's traveling for personal reasons. So these are all of the fun ways that as marketers, we get to use those insights to inform how we deliver value to the consumer.

Yeah, very cool. We have such limited time for our conversation, so we're already kind of running up close. So I want to ask you to sort of humor me and sort of look into your crystal ball into the future and tell me about what you see for the future of commerce media in general and what role you see Chase playing within that.

Well, you mentioned earlier, and this is no surprise to many who are listening, is that there's so many media networks, retail media, commerce media networks that are starting to emerge, which is great. And I think there's a lot of value in continuing to look at how we add value to the customers that are in our own retail environments and in every, you know,

all steps of their journey. But what's interesting about Chase is that because we thread together all shopping experiences, all consumer transactions within our 84 million customers, there's a really unique opportunity for us to essentially be the thread that stitches all of this together. So I'm really excited to continue to invest in the overall ecosystem and our role and all tides rising together.

ultimately to deliver greater value to the consumer and more value to the brand partners. I'm also really excited about the work that we're doing with eMarketer. So we'll be launching a new research study with eMarketer in the coming weeks. So make sure that for all of the listeners that you look out for that because we'll be introducing that, which I think will share some really unique insights as well. Yes, no, I think that's going to be great. And it's really fascinating to think about sort of the

the changing shape of this landscape and all the opportunities yeah um that it can unlock um thank you so much for joining me such a pleasure to be here thank you for having us