Retail & commerce
Commerce media
Commerce media is advertising sold by any business with transaction or shopper data, such as retailers, delivery apps, travel sites, payment companies and banks, not only traditional retailers.
Commerce media extends the idea of retail media beyond shops. Any company that sees what people buy, book or pay for can sell advertising based on that data: food delivery and ride-hailing apps, travel booking sites, marketplaces, payment networks, card issuers and banks.
Examples include Uber's ads business, Instacart, DoorDash, Booking platforms, PayPal's ads business and banks such as JPMorgan Chase's media solutions. They offer on-platform ads, off-platform targeting using their data (often through clean rooms), and closed-loop measurement tied to transactions.
The term also reflects a broader shift: First-party data about purchases has become very valuable as signal loss reduces other signals. Commerce media raises specific privacy questions, especially when financial transaction data is involved, and must respect consent and sector rules. Buyers should ask about incrementality, measurement methodology and data provenance.
Think of it like this
Commerce media is like every business that hands you a receipt realising the receipt tells advertisers a lot, and opening its own advertising shop.
An example
A food-delivery app in Colombia sells sponsored listings to restaurants and off-app ads to a beverage brand targeting people who ordered pizza in the past month, measuring uplift in drink orders.
Related terms
Retail media
Retail media is advertising sold by retailers, on their own websites, apps and stores or elsewhere using their shopper data, letting brands reach customers close to the point of purchase.
Retail media network (RMN)
A retail media network (RMN) is a retailer's advertising business, including its ad inventory, shopper data, ad technology and sales team, that sells ads to brands on and off the retailer's properties.
Closed-loop measurement
Closed-loop measurement links ad exposure directly to actual sales data for the same people, typically within a retailer or data owner, showing whether ads led to purchases.
First-party data
First-party data is information a company collects directly from its own customers or audience, such as purchases, sign-ups, app use and site behaviour, through its own channels.
Data clean room
A data clean room is a secure environment where companies combine and analyse their customer data together, getting aggregated insights or audiences without exposing each other's raw personal data.
Sources: IAB: retail media