What Is Commerce Media? Definition, How It Works and How Retailers Build a Network (2026)

Last updated: October 2026. Reviewed by Kunal Damgude, Growth and Product Marketing Manager.

Commerce media is advertising that a company runs on its own first-party purchase data, shown on its own sites, apps and physical spaces, and paid for by brands that want to reach those customers. The IAB defines it as "the growing practice of retailers, travel firms, financial institutions, and other companies turning their physical assets, digital properties, first-party data, and proximity to customer journeys into integrated media opportunities." Retail media is its largest and oldest part.

Osmos is a white-label retail media operating system for retailers and marketplaces. Its modular apps for onsite, offsite and in-store ads sit over your existing stack, so you can break your monetisation ceiling faster without rebuilding it.

Retailers built the first commerce media businesses, and the evolution of retail media runs from the first search ads on a product grid to full networks.

What is commerce media?

Commerce media is the ad business a company builds on top of its own transactions: it offers brands placements on its site, app, partner channels and physical spaces, and it targets and measures those ads with the purchase data only it holds. The definition the industry now works from comes from the IAB Commerce Board's July 2025 explainer, Defining Commerce Media and Its Ecosystem, which names retailers, travel firms and financial institutions as the core owners and adds automotive, telecom and B2B companies to the list. What these owners have in common is proximity to a purchase: they know what was bought, booked or paid for, by whom, and in what context. Osmos builds the software side of this for retailers and marketplaces, the apps that turn their pages, audiences and stores into inventory brands can book.

For the owner, the asset is the inventory, and first-party data is the targeting layer that makes that inventory worth more than an ordinary banner slot. A grocery app can show a dairy brand's ad to people who bought milk last week and then report how many of them bought that brand's milk this week. No third-party cookie or modeled audience is involved in either step. That loop, from targeting to a verified sale, is the reason brands pay a premium for commerce media and the reason it matters to the companies that run it. Osmos's role in that loop is the ad serving, the campaign tools brands use and the closed-loop reporting that ties the ad to the sale.

Retailers build commerce media networks for the margin the ad revenue earns. Ad revenue lands on a different line of the profit and loss statement from product margin, and the IAB explainer notes that McKinsey projects operating margins of 50 to 70% for retail media networks. The same IAB document reports that Instacart's ad business grew 10% in 2024 and came close to $1 billion in revenue. Osmos is built so that a retailer can start earning that retail media margin from the stack it already runs.

Commerce media management is the day-to-day running of that ad business: deciding which placements exist, pricing them, onboarding advertisers, approving creative, pacing campaigns, billing and reporting. In most retailers it sits with a head of retail media or a head of monetization, supported by an ad operations team. Osmos supports that work with tools for each of those steps and, where a retailer wants it, with ad operations offered as a service.

Commerce media vs retail media: what is the difference?

Retail media is the part of commerce media that retailers and marketplaces run on their own shopper data; commerce media is the whole category, which also covers travel companies, banks and payment apps, delivery platforms, automotive dealers, telecom providers and B2B platforms that own a transaction. Retail media advertising, in its plainest definition, is advertising placed on a retailer's own site, app and stores, or targeted elsewhere with that retailer's data, and paid for by brands. The IAB treats the two as a whole and its largest part: "Retail media remains the foundational pillar of commerce media and the most established in terms of advertiser adoption and network proliferation." Osmos works in retail media, and retailers and marketplaces run their networks on it.

Source: IAB Commerce Board explainer, July 2025.

The mechanics are the same on both sides of the table. Brands bid in an auction or book fixed placements, the owner targets with first-party audiences, and the result is measured against real transactions. The main difference is that a retail media network has a product catalog: it promotes products a shopper can put in the basket on the same page, so most of its demand comes from brands listed there. A commerce media network outside retail, such as a bank or an airline, has no shelf of products to promote, so its advertisers buy access to an audience defined by spend or travel behavior.

How should a business choose between the two? If it owns a retail transaction surface, a store or an ecommerce catalog it controls, retail media is the most direct way to earn ad revenue, and it is the model Osmos builds for retailers and marketplaces. If its data comes from spend, bookings or orders, as with a bank, a travel company or a delivery app, commerce media is the accurate name for the program. Most retailers take the two in sequence: they start with retail media on owned pages, then extend into offsite and in-store, and take on non-endemic advertisers such as banks, telecom providers and travel brands as the audience proves its value.

What is a commerce media platform and what does it do?

A commerce media platform is the software that turns an owner's first-party commerce data, digital properties and physical spaces into advertising that brands can book and that the owner can measure. It is the connective layer between the data owner, the advertisers, the agencies that buy for them and the measurement that closes the loop between an ad and a sale. Osmos is one such platform, built as a white-label retail media operating system for retailers and marketplaces, and it covers the same core functions as any platform in the category:

• Ad serving and auctions. The ad server decides, in milliseconds, which ad fills which slot on a search results page, category page, product page, app screen or store screen.
• Audience building. Turning purchase history, loyalty signals and browsing behavior into audiences a brand can target, with the owner's data staying under the owner's control.
• Campaign tools for brands. Self-serve tools where a brand or agency sets an objective, an audience, a budget and a bid, then launches without waiting for the owner's team.
• Pricing and yield controls. Floors, buying models, packages and pacing, so the owner earns the most from limited inventory without crowding the shopper.
• Measurement and reporting. Linking ad exposure to purchases online and in store, and reporting results a brand can reconcile with its own numbers.
• Billing and wallets. Taking budgets, drawing them down and invoicing, across hundreds or thousands of advertisers.

On the Osmos platform these functions come as 30+ apps run from one control plane, and a retailer can start with a single app, take on a whole category of apps, or run the full network from it. Licensing the functions this way is the main alternative to building the retail media ad tech stack in house.

What are the features of commerce media platforms?

The core features of commerce media platforms are audience activation on first-party data, ad serving on every channel and closed-loop measurement, with campaign, pricing, privacy and policy controls around them. Osmos groups these features into apps a retailer can switch on one at a time:

• First-party audience activation. Osmos uses the retailer's own shopper data as the targeting layer for onsite, offsite and in-store campaigns, so one audience definition works on every channel.
• Onsite ad serving across formats.Osmos Onsite runs six onsite ad formats from one ad server, across search, category and product pages: Product Ads, Product Display Ads, Video Ads, Display Ads, Custom Ads and Non-endemic Ads.
• Offsite activation.Osmos Offsite runs campaigns on Meta, Google and TikTok from the retailer's own branded seat, with margin controls and closed-loop insights back to the retailer's transaction data.
• In-store inventory.Osmos In-Store turns screens, shelves and analog placements into bookable inventory through its Retail Media CMS, Booking Calendar and Physical Media apps, priced by store, day and time.
• Closed-loop measurement. Closed-loop measurement ties individual ad exposures to actual purchases, online or offline. Brands value it more than any other feature, and Osmos builds it into its onsite and offsite apps.
• Self-serve campaign tools. Interfaces where brands manage campaigns, bids, creative uploads and reporting themselves; on Osmos they carry the retailer's brand.
• Pricing and yield controls. Osmos Onsite supports CPC, CPM, cost-per-day and fixed-tenancy buying, with relevance ranking and retailer-set bid floors in the engine. Bundling placements into premium ad packages is the next lever.
• Privacy-safe data collaboration. Clean rooms let a brand match its customer list against the owner's audiences, or check reported results, without either side handing over raw customer records.
• Shopper-experience controls. Relevance thresholds, frequency caps and catalog rules keep ads useful; Osmos Onsite enforces them by policy across every campaign.

Commerce media network vs platform vs agency: what is the difference?

A commerce media network is the owner's ad business, a commerce media platform is the technology that runs it, and a commerce media agency is the team that plans and buys campaigns, usually for brands. That split is how Osmos explains the terms; the IAB defines the network itself, and adds that "CMNs typically own the transaction, fulfillment, and/or payment of goods and services," which is what separates a commerce media network from a publisher. Osmos is the platform in that picture, and the retailer or marketplace that runs on it owns the network.

A "commerce media network platform" is the platform a network runs on, and the phrase usually comes from a retailer shopping for one. A managed service in commerce media is the option for an owner that wants the revenue before it has hired the team: the provider runs campaign delivery, optimization and advertiser reporting under the owner's name, and the owner keeps the advertiser relationship. Large retailers with several store brands often run one multi-banner retail media network across all of them.

Retailers looking for commerce media services or a list of providers will meet ad tech vendors, data companies and agencies under the same label. A retailer should check which role a provider actually fills, network, platform or agency, and whether one platform can cover onsite, offsite and in-store or the network will need a multi-vendor retail media stack.

How does the commerce media ecosystem work?

The commerce media ecosystem works as a loop: an owner collects first-party purchase data and offers ad placements, brands and their agencies buy those placements, technology providers serve and measure the ads, and every purchase that follows feeds back into the next round of targeting. Osmos sits in the technology layer on the owner's side of that loop, as the system a retailer or marketplace runs its network on.

• Owners (the networks). The supply side: retailers such as Amazon, Walmart and Instacart, marketplaces, delivery apps, travel companies, banks and payment companies such as PayPal, and B2B platforms. They own the audience, the placements and the transaction data.
• Brands. The demand side: endemic brands whose products the owner lists, near-endemic brands in adjacent categories, and non-endemic brands, such as banks, telecom providers or travel firms, that buy access to the owner's audience.
• Agencies. They plan and buy on behalf of brands, often across many networks at once.
• Technology providers. The IAB explainer describes a layer of third-party technology and service providers that supply infrastructure, ad serving and measurement; ad platforms, demand-side platforms, clean rooms and in-store screen systems all sit here.
• Measurement and verification partners. Independent parties that check delivery, viewability and sales results so a brand can confirm them independently of the owner.
• Shoppers. The people whose attention and purchases give the whole system its value, and whose trust limits how many ads an owner can show.

Money flows from brands, through agencies where they are involved, to the owner, which pays its technology providers from the proceeds. Data flows the other way only as targeting and reporting: the brand sees audiences and results, and the owner's customer records stay with the owner. A retailer has to decide which of these roles it fills itself and which it licenses.

Where do commerce media ads appear?

Commerce media ads appear on the owner's own website and app, on third-party channels targeted with the owner's audiences, and in the owner's physical spaces such as stores, branches and airports. The IAB explainer calls these on-site, off-site and in-environment commerce media, and Osmos's channels, onsite, offsite and in-store, map onto them.

Onsite. Search results, category pages, product detail pages, the homepage, checkout and order screens, and the app. A shopper who types a product name into the search bar has already said what they want to buy, and a shopper on a product page is one click from the cart, which makes this the highest-intent inventory a network has and the most contested. Osmos Onsite serves Product Ads, display, video and custom formats on all of it from one ad server.

Offsite. Display, in-app, connected TV, online video, audio, digital out-of-home and in-game: the offsite channels run on properties the owner does not own, targeted with its first-party audiences. With Osmos Offsite the campaigns run from the retailer's own seat, and the retailer keeps the margin and the advertiser relationship when it expands retail media beyond onsite.

In-store.In-store retail media runs on digital screens, digital shelf displays, smart carts, kiosks, checkout screens, in-store audio and QR-code activations, plus analog placements such as end-caps, floor decals and standees. Osmos In-Store prices and targets it by store, day and time.

Commerce media beyond retailers

Commerce media networks also run in non-retail environments: banking and payment apps, travel booking flows, airline and hotel properties, ride-hailing and delivery apps. A bank launching commerce media campaigns starts from card-spend data, offers brands placements inside its app and statements, and measures results against transactions at any merchant. Mark Grether, SVP and GM of PayPal Ads, put the advantage this way to Beet.TV in July 2026: "We truly know who you are because we're leveraging the payment rails." Delivery platforms sit between retail and the rest, running food delivery retail media ads on a catalog of restaurants and stores but with a delivery app's data.

Marketplaces outside traditional retail run the same model. A global employee rewards platform runs its marketplace ad business on Osmos. Its marketplace of individual brands and third-party sellers spans 70+ countries, each a separate storefront where employees redeem points for branded gift cards. Osmos replaced the platform's hand-built workflows with one interface across that multi-country footprint, and the marketplace reached 6x peak ad revenue across 7+ ad formats in 70+ countries. Osmos offers the same setup to other marketplaces through Osmos marketplace media monetization, built around the hidden revenue a marketplace can earn from retail media.

How is commerce media different from traditional advertising channels?

Commerce media differs from traditional advertising channels because it targets shoppers with deterministic first-party purchase data and places ads where people are already shopping or paying, so a brand can check results against real transactions. Grether's description of PayPal's measurement covers the targeting and the proof: "we can do it based on deterministic data as opposed to just proxies or look-alike modeling."

Compared with traditional publisher advertising, the difference is what the inventory is priced on. A news site or video platform earns from attention, priced on estimated audiences and judged on reach, viewability or clicks. A commerce media network earns from proximity to a purchase, and a brand can see whether the people who saw an ad went on to buy. That is also why commerce media holds up as third-party cookies fade: its audiences never depended on them.

The IAB expects the new channel to add to the old ones: "Rather than replacing traditional or digital channels, commerce media enhances them." A brand still builds demand with television and social, and commerce media reaches that demand at the checkout. For a retailer, the practical consequence is pricing: placements that can show sales results can command higher prices than reach-only inventory, which is the case Osmos's closed-loop reporting is built to support.

How does commerce media transform the consumer experience?

Commerce media transforms the consumer experience by making ads relevant to what a person is shopping for, so a sponsored result on a search page or a personalized offer in an app is useful to the shopper who sees it. When targeting draws on what someone actually buys, a coffee drinker sees a new coffee brand, a parent sees a diaper offer at the moment the pack runs out, and a traveller sees a hotel deal for the city already booked. Personalized content and offers built this way read as part of the shop.

The same proximity cuts the other way if the owner overdoes it. Too many ads on a search page push the product a shopper wanted below the fold, and irrelevant ads erode the trust that makes the data valuable. The IAB explainer makes the same point from the network's side: because the shopper is also its customer, a network has its own reason to balance ad revenue against the experience. Osmos Onsite enforces relevance ranking, frequency caps and catalog rules by policy for that reason, so a retailer can grow ad load without degrading search or the wider shopping experience.

How do commerce media networks segment high-value audiences?

Commerce media networks segment high-value audiences by combining purchase frequency, basket composition, category margin and likelihood to buy again. The segments a network typically offers include category buyers, lapsed buyers, frequent buyers, new-to-category shoppers, buyers of a competing brand, and store or region audiences.

High-value segments are the ones whose shoppers carry the highest expected contribution. Contribution-based segments are smaller and less contested, and a network that can explain why a segment is valuable earns a better price for it. Segments built on past spend are easier to build, but they exhaust quickly because every advertiser wants the same top decile. Purchase-intent signals, such as recent searches, items left in a basket or a repeat cycle coming due, sharpen these segments further with behavioral rather than contextual targeting, all drawn from the network's first-party data.

Privacy-safe advertising in commerce media rests on audiences built from first-party data collected with consent, matching on hashed identifiers, and clean rooms where brand and owner data meet without either side seeing the other's records. A retailer comparing providers on privacy should ask where audience data is stored, who can export it, how consent is recorded and how matching works. Connecting a customer data platform to the ad stack is usually the first integration step, because it is where those consent records live.

How do commerce media networks provide scalable reach?

Commerce media networks provide scalable reach through offsite audience extension, which carries the same audiences to social, display and connected TV; in-store placements, which reach shoppers the digital properties never see; and partnerships that place the network's audiences on other publishers' inventory. A retailer needs these channels because its own traffic is finite and its best onsite placements are the most contested. Osmos runs onsite, offsite and in-store from one control plane, so a retailer adding reach extends an existing advertiser relationship.

What do brands expect from a commerce media network before they spend?

Brands need a media kit before they test a network: placements and formats, audience sizes and definitions, a self-serve path for small budgets, and reporting they can reconcile against their own sales data. Networks that build the ad serving but skip one of these struggle to onboard advertisers, and that caps their revenue.

What a brand needs to start. The retailer has to give a new brand a product catalog matched to the brand's items, so campaigns target real inventory, and a minimum spend low enough for a mid-sized brand to test without a procurement cycle. Creative specifications should be published in advance, including which formats assemble automatically from catalog data, as Product Ads do, and which need uploaded assets, as display, video and offsite placements do. The brand also needs a named audience catalog and a measurement definition agreed before launch, covering the attribution window and whether view-through conversions count.

How a campaign runs end to end. From the brand's side the sequence is short: pick an objective, choose an audience, set a budget and bid, supply creative or let the platform assemble it, launch, then read results. From the retailer's side each step is a place a network can lose an advertiser. The objective list has to match outcomes the network can report on, the audience picker has to show reachable size before budget is committed, and the first campaign has to report within days, because the second is approved on the first one's numbers.

How do brands benefit from commerce media participation?

Brands benefit from commerce media participation through proximity to the transaction: a retailer's placement reaches a shopper already in a buying context, on a surface where the purchase can be completed and measured. That gives brands results verified against real sales, targeting based on purchase behavior, and incrementality that can be tested with holdouts on the same property, which most media cannot offer. Brands need these benefits stated plainly in the retailer's media kit so that their managers can justify the budget internally.

How are leading commerce media platforms supporting advertisers?

Leading commerce media platforms support advertisers with self-serve tools that run one campaign across onsite, offsite and in-store, and with managed services for brands too small to staff their own campaigns. Brands increasingly want one plan across those channels, and a network that gives them a shared audience and combined reporting earns more of their budget than a network that hands them a separate interface for each channel. Osmos lets the retailer offer this through its own branded self-serve tools, and its Guaranteed Outcomes service runs torso and tail advertisers across Meta, Google and TikTok, managed to outcomes, so smaller brands can buy without the retailer adding ad operations headcount.

How is commerce media measured, online and offline?

Commerce media is measured by linking ad exposure to purchases recorded by the owner, online through logged-in sessions and order data, and offline through loyalty identifiers or payment data matched at the checkout. The core metrics are return on ad spend (ROAS), incremental ROAS, attributed sales, new-to-brand purchases, meaning shoppers buying the advertiser's brand for the first time, and share of category.

IAB Europe's Commerce (incl. Retail) Media Measurement Standards V2.1 add "a formal definition of incrementality, with approved methodologies specified" and state that "a 30-day lookback window is the default for reporting." A brand comparing several networks, which is how most brands now buy, needs exactly this kind of shared rule, so a retailer that reports to a recognized standard removes a reason for the brand to discount its numbers. Non-retail owners with payment data can measure across merchants: "We can show after someone was exposed to a CTV campaign, what happened at any merchant," Grether told Beet.TV, describing measurement built on payment data.

Transparency in measurement and reporting is improving: attribution windows and view-through rules are now stated before launch, clean rooms let a brand check reported results against its own data, and incrementality testing with holdout groups is moving from an occasional study to a standing practice. Brand safety and verification work alongside it: the owner reviews creative before it goes live, keeps category and competitor exclusions, and lets independent verification partners check delivery and viewability.

For the owner, measuring commerce media revenue means a different set of numbers: ad revenue as a share of gross merchandise value, fill rate and yield per placement or per store, active advertisers, and how many of them renew. Osmos reports closed-loop results on onsite and offsite campaigns, pairs in-store screen plays with store-level point-of-sale data, and scopes lift studies through Osmos Measurement. Brands read those results against an agreed attribution and measurement method, from attribution windows to incrementality design, and compare them with ROAS benchmarks by platform and ad format.

How big is commerce media in 2026?

US commerce media earned $63.4 billion in ad revenue in 2025, up 18% on the year, according to the IAB and PwC's measured Full Year 2025 report, and forecasts put the US market above $100 billion by 2028 and above $142 billion by 2030. Forecasts and measured actuals use different scopes and methods.

Commerce media grew 18% in 2025 while US internet advertising as a whole grew 13.9%, so it is taking share from other channels, and the measured growth makes it a real opportunity for owners. The IAB forecasts also show where the room is: retail media dominates, while travel and financial services media are still small next to it, which is why the next wave of networks comes from banks, payment apps, airlines and delivery platforms.

The trends shaping commerce media through 2026 are more non-retail owners launching networks, common measurement standards such as IAB Europe's V2.1 replacing each network's own definitions, and AI shopping agents that research and buy on a shopper's behalf. Agentic commerce is still early, but if an AI agent reads a search results page on a shopper's behalf, networks will need placements and data products that inform the agent's choice, and multi-agentic AI orchestration, systems that coordinate many AI agents, is where that work starts. That shift is part of the future of retail media, in which retailers become media networks.

How does a retailer or publisher get started with a commerce media network?

A retailer or publisher gets started with a commerce media network by mapping the inventory and data it already owns and launching onsite placements first, then widening the network step by step. Osmos's apps sit over the systems a retailer already runs, so the network can go live without rebuilding the site, the app or the data warehouse.

1. Map inventory and data. List every surface that can carry an ad (search, category and product pages, homepage, app screens), every audience the first-party data supports, and every physical space with screens or shelf space.
2. Choose how to build. Build in house, as some marketplaces do when they build their own ad platform, license a platform, or partner with a managed service.
3. Launch onsite first. Product Ads on search and category pages usually earn first, because the brands are already listed and the creative assembles from the catalog. Display, video and custom formats follow.
4. Open the network to advertisers. Self-serve tools for the long tail, a sales team for the largest brands, and a plan for non-endemic advertisers.
5. Agree measurement before the first campaign. Attribution window, view-through rules and the reports each brand will receive.
6. Extend offsite and in-store. Carry the same audiences to social and connected TV, and turn store screens and shelves into bookable inventory.
7. Manage yield. Floors, packages and pacing raise revenue per placement, and they are the main levers for improving yield on commerce media inventory once demand is in place.

How do publishers monetize with commerce media networks?

Publishers monetize with commerce media networks by carrying a network's audiences on their pages, which is the main way a publisher without its own checkout earns from commerce media. For a publisher or marketplace integrating commerce media into existing digital properties, the technical work is a product or content feed, ad slots placed in the page templates, an event feed for purchases, and an audience connection to the data platform. A 2026 commerce media technology stack usually adds an ad server with auction logic, a clean room, connections to offsite demand-side platforms, an in-store screen system and billing.

Retailers and marketplaces that want to see how a network runs on Osmos can explore the Osmos platform or request a demo.

Frequently asked questions

Is commerce media only for large retailers?

No. Mid-sized retailers, specialist chains and marketplaces with a loyal customer base often hold sharper niche data than the largest networks, and brands in their categories value it for that reason. The practical constraints are advertiser demand and ad operations capacity, which is why a modular start, one channel or one app at a time, suits smaller networks better than a full build.

What is commerce content, and is it the same as commerce media?

No. Commerce content is editorial or video content that recommends products and earns from affiliate links or shoppable placements, such as a publisher's gift guide or a creator's product review. Commerce media is an owner's ad business built on its own transaction data. A publisher can run both, but only the owner of the checkout or payment holds the purchase data that defines commerce media.

Who owns commerce media inside a retailer?

Usually a head of retail media or head of monetization with profit and loss responsibility for ad revenue, working alongside category, commercial and marketing teams. Job descriptions for the role differ mainly in where it reports: into the commercial function, where ad revenue is tied to supplier negotiations, or into marketing or ecommerce, where it sits closer to the customer experience. Either works if the role controls inventory, pricing and advertiser relationships.

How should a retailer shortlist a commerce media platform?

Start from the channels the network needs in the next two years, then check each platform for onsite, offsite and in-store coverage, white-label self-serve tools, closed-loop reporting the retailer controls, the buying models it supports, and how much of the existing stack it can sit on. Ask for a named customer in a similar vertical and for its go-live timeline, and check which of the platform's features are live today and which are announced.

Sources

1. IAB Commerce Board, Defining Commerce Media and Its Ecosystem, July 2025.
2. IAB and PwC, Internet Advertising Revenue Report, Full Year 2025, April 2026.
3. LiveRamp, Commerce Media Forecast (EMARKETER analyst report).
4. PPC Land, WPP Media sees AI as advertising's $1.3 trillion growth engine in 2026, June 2026.
5. Beet.TV, PayPal Ads Bets on Transaction Data to Solve Commerce Media's Measurement Problem, 14 July 2026.
6. IAB Europe, Commerce (incl. Retail) Media Measurement Standards V2.1.