Commerce Media 2025: Halftime Highlights

Our Commerce Media Matters hosts, Nick Morgan and Paul Blackburn, take a look back on the biggest commerce media moments of 2025 so far.

With Paul moving from publisher world to startup life at Vudoo, he brings insights from both sides of the industry. Nick puts him in the hot seat to unpack what went down on the Croisette during Cannes Lions –  from standout creative moments to commerce media’s growing influence on the global stage.

They discuss the year’s big picture trends, laying out what they expect to see from retailers and marketers in the months and years ahead. Again, underpinning these changes is the continued importance of creativity: from the actual content itself to implementing new tools and strategies.

Data, AI, TikTok, and targeting – all the hot topics are in this episode. And they’ll definitely be discussed in every industry event for a while yet.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

• Creativity at Cannes and beyond: Creativity is the way to elevate brand messaging in retail and commerce media strategies, which can be unlocked with new tools like AI.
• Retail media’s continued rise and evolution: Retail media is no longer a niche for marketers – by extension, commerce media will become a standard “hygiene” factor for campaigns.
• Resetting targeting: marketers have access to a wealth of data and tools, but understanding the context in which to target is most important. Overtargeting can actually cause datapoints to conflict.
• New roles for agencies: While agencies at large are facing change and challenges, they still play vital roles in executing commerce media strategies.
• AI and SEO disruption: AI platforms have fundamentally changed the way consumers search and shop, requiring marketers to adapt by showing up closer to the point of purchase.

About the hosts:

• Nick Morgan: Nick is an entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in digital marketing and eCommerce. He founded Vudoo in 2018, a platform that enables in-stream content commerce across articles, videos, and images. Nick's work transforms every ad impression into a potential shop front, offering a seamless eCommerce experience.

• Paul Blackburn: Paul is a digital media innovator with over 20 years of experience. At News Corp Australia, he launched the "Intent Connect" data platform and led innovation in shoppable video and the "Total Commerce" framework. Now as Chief Growth Officer at Vudoo, he helps brands, publishers, and agencies unlock new ways to monetise content through immersive, commerce-enabled experiences.
  
  

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