What Does Commerce Media Mean for CPG Brands?

Commerce media has become a leading strategy in the CPG advertising space. Depending on your niche, you may also know it as “connected commerce.” But what exactly is it?

Simply put, commerce media is a category of digital advertising with the goal of driving commerce engagement. Marketers and media owners do so via the commerce enablement — a.k.a. shoppability — of all types of media.

Why is Commerce Media Emerging?

The pandemic boosted digital grocery platforms by increasing the traffic on retailer sites as a result of decreased physical foot traffic to brick-and-mortar stores. Retail media groups capitalized on this — monetizing their own media and data and directly fostering relationships with their CPG and brand partners — and saw significant growth.

Retail media networks (RMNs) are a defining trend in digital grocery. The retailer’s website became prime real estate for CPG brands, being the point of sale, and capitalized on the retail media networks’ sales data. Digital marketing outcomes had long been unclear for CPG brands, so the prospect of lower-funnel, measurable programs was a game changer. 

As traditional trade marketing strategies turned digital, shopper marketing and ecommerce teams merged to meet industry, tech and consumer behavioral changes. Traditional awareness efforts began incorporating components of commerce, such as shoppability (shoppable landing pages, shoppable links, etc.), bringing us to commerce media as we know it today.

How Does Commerce Media Use Targeting?

Commerce media uses multiple types of data to target consumers. It can use first-party commerce data from retailers and retail media groups. It can also use page-level information from contextual environments to inform high-intent targeting and hyper-targeted strategies. Last, it can be bolstered by intent signals like ad clicks, location, demographics and pages or products viewed.

Because this type of digital advertising can use both first-party and contextual insights, it makes it a prime solution within CPG advertising for the depreciation of the cookie.

How Does Contextual Commerce Fit Into Commerce Media?

Contextual commerce is Chicory’s proprietary application of commerce media. It is one of many commerce media options, including, but not limited to, influencer marketing, video ads, paid search and retail media — on- or off-site.

Contextual commerce allows CPG brands to reach shoppers off-platform, but still in a contextually relevant way.

How Can Chicory Help Meet Commerce Media Goals?

Here at Chicory, the leading contextual commerce platform, we know it’s not enough to embed a shoppable link on a programmatic ad and call it a day — we transform recipe content into commerce media.

We link hyper-relevant ads to commerce capabilities on the most contextually relevant platform for CPG brands: recipes. Our network of recipe publishers and retailers reaches grocery shoppers with hyper-contextual ads and in-recipe commerce solutions. We use page-level ingredient and recipe data to contextually target shoppers. And, with our 60+ retailer integrations connected with our shoppable technology, we help drive purchases and boost lower-funnel KPIs.

If you’re ready to hit your commerce goals, contact us today. From launching a new product to growing category share, our contextual commerce solutions will help your CPG brand reach shoppers in the right context, and at the right moment.