Commerce Media Matters

In this episode of Commerce Media Matters, Bill Fisher from eMarketer joins Nick Morgan and Paul Blackburn to unpack what the data is really telling us about media, commerce, and consumer behaviour.From the rise of AI-generated content to the growing importance of trust and quality, Bill shares a grounded, data-led perspective on where the industry is heading and what’s overhyped versus underestimated. The conversation explores shifting consumer behaviours, the evolution of video and connected TV, YouTube’s untapped potential, and how commerce media is expanding beyond conversion into full-funnel influence.If you’re trying to separate signal from noise in a rapidly evolving landscape, this episode brings clarity — backed by real data.What you’ll learn from this episode:Why trust and quality are becoming the new competitive edgeAs AI floods the ecosystem with synthetic content, both consumers and marketers are questioning authenticity, brand safety, and credibility — making trusted environments more valuable than ever.The reality behind AI hype in commerce and mediaAI is incredibly powerful when it comes to efficiency, speed, and optimisation, but does it inherently build brand equity or consumer trust? And what percentage of transactions is it actually forecast to drive?How consumer behaviour is becoming more fragmented and omnichannelShoppers are discovering products constantly, with 70% discovering new products at least weekly, and 23% researching five or more times before buying — spanning multiple touchpoints across digital and physical environments.Why traditional media still matters more than we thinkDespite digital growth, traditional channels like TV, radio, and in-store continue to play a critical role — with surprising data showing even younger audiences trust traditional media highly.The rise of connected TV (CTV) as a commerce opportunityCTV is rapidly overtaking traditional TV and even mobile video in time spent, creating new opportunities for both brand storytelling and direct commerce actions.Why YouTube may be one of the most underutilised platformsDespite being the largest media platform globally, YouTube is under-monetised relative to time spent, creating a major opportunity for advertisers.How commerce media is evolving beyond conversionRetail and commerce media are moving up the funnel, blending awareness, consideration, and transaction into a more integrated, measurable ecosystem.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.Subscribe & Leave a Review:If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to Commerce Media Matters and leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform!

In this episode, Andreas Reiffen, Founder and CEO of Pentaleap, joins Commerce Media Matters to unpack the structural tensions shaping the next phase of retail media. From the fragmentation of retail media networks and the limits of walled gardens, to the challenge of unlocking real media budgets, Andreas offers a grounded view on what is really holding the category back. He also explores why measurement remains one of the industry’s biggest unresolved issues, what programmatic retail media could unlock, and how AI agents may reshape — but not replace — the retail and commerce ecosystem.What you’ll learn from this episode:Why retail media is growing — but still structurally messy:The category has exploded in recent years, but beneath the hype sits a fragmented ecosystem of competing tech models, disconnected platforms, and retailers all trying to build their own version of a walled garden.The real reason many RMNs struggle to scale:Why the challenge is not just infrastructure or reach, but the fact that many retail media budgets are still coming from trade, not true media investment, making growth harder than headline numbers suggest.Why the future may belong to hybrid and programmatic models:As smaller and mid-tier retailers struggle to go direct at scale, programmatic access, ad networks, and interoperability may become essential to unlocking broader spend across multiple retail environments.Why ROAS is still an unreliable comfort blanket:Andreas shares his candid take on measurement, why publisher-reported returns should always be treated cautiously, and why truly accurate retail media measurement remains difficult, resource-heavy, and often misaligned with industry incentives.What AI and agentic commerce could mean for retail media:A look at the difference between retailer-owned AI experiences and third-party agents and whether these new interfaces are simply another channel or the start of a deeper threat to retail’s ownership of the customer relationship.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. Subscribe & Leave a Review: If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to Commerce Media Matters and leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform!

Ricky Sutton, award-winning journalist turned video AI founder, riffs on AI as the biggest media shift since the internet. He dissects Big Tech monopoly leverage, antitrust and regulation. He explores content licensing, publishers blocking bots, and the move from static websites to conversational, AI-driven commerce and retail media opportunities.

In this episode, hosts Nick Morgan and Paul Blackburn recap a very fast start to the year, jumping on planes and landing in the middle of two of the biggest moments on the commerce calendar: CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas and NRF (National Retail Foundation) in New York.From ad tech decision-makers focused on turning plans into progress, to retailers getting real about agentic commerce, AI interoperability, and what it means to show up as a brand inside LLM-driven discovery, this is a grounded read on what’s hype, what’s happening, and what’s coming next.If you’re planning 2026 strategy, building decks, or trying to connect the dots between retail media, creativity, and the new AI-led shopping front door, this one’s your practical reset.Featuring highlights from:CES (Las Vegas): Ad tech and agency leaders signalling commerce media is now core operating rhythm (not a side quest), plus serious momentum around AI inside platforms, CTV, and consolidation chatter.NRF (New York): Retail at scale, with agentic commerce as the headline, plus a reality-check on trust, privacy, and bot-vs-bot infrastructure.AI, discovery, and brand anxiety: Brands grappling with how to show up inside LLM-led journeys without losing branded experience, differentiation, or the ability to introduce new products.AI commerce getting real: OpenAI’s positioning around brands building experiences inside LLM environments, plus clear signals the rails for LLM-native transactions are being built.Retail media’s next pressure point: Retailers feeling top-of-funnel traffic shifts and pushing harder into offsite/off-network to maintain delivery and outcomes.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.Subscribe & Leave a Review:If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to Commerce Media Matters and leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform!

AI isn’t just a back-office tool anymore. It’s creeping into the front end of shopping, discovery, and decision-making. In this episode, Roger Dunn joins Commerce Media Matters to unpack what happens when agents, answer engines and retail media collide. From generative browsers and “browser wars” to instant checkout, affiliate-style monetisation and TikTok’s role as a commerce front door, Roger cuts through the noise to separate what’s hype from what’s truly changing customer journeys. If you’re trying to work out how AI will reshape commerce in the next 2–3 years (without throwing out everything you already know), this one’s essential listening.What you’ll learn from this episode:AI agents, tempered expectations and real behaviour change: Why AI agents won’t replace all human decision-making any time soon and why we need to temper the hype while still recognising how AI will shorten paths to purchase across both e-commerce and in-store journeys.From blue links to answer engines: How ChatGPT, Atlas, Comet and other AI browsers are changing the search experience; why Google still has enormous power; and how the “browser wars” may reshape who owns the front door to commerce.The new rules of visibility in AEO, GAEO and ACO: Why traditional SEO isn’t enough in an AI-first world and how Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO), Generative AI Engine Optimisation (GAEO) and AI Commerce Optimisation (ACO) will shape how products and brands show up in agents, product cards and instant-checkout flows.Monetisation in an AI world. Ads, affiliates and instant checkout: Why Sam Altman can’t avoid monetisation forever, the likely role of affiliate-style models and transaction-led revenue (think Shopify’s payments business), and what that means for retailers and brands looking to trade inside AI ecosystems.How marketers can stay sane in 2026 and beyond: Practical advice for marketers facing fragmenting channels and expanding remits — including where to over-index experimentation time, where to lean on established playbooks, and why older channels don’t disappear just because new toys arrive.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.Subscribe & Leave a Review:If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to Commerce Media Matters and leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform!

It’s 2026. New budgets. New pressure. New expectations.And before diving headfirst into the chaos, we’re hitting pause with a rewind.In this special episode, hosts Nick Morgan and Paul Blackburn look back at some of the most influential conversations from Commerce Media Matters — the ideas, debates, and perspectives that will matter even more in the year ahead.From the explosive growth of commerce and retail media, to the realities of trust, privacy, and governance, to global shifts in how creativity and commerce collide — this episode is your warm-up lap for 2026.If you’re building decks, shaping strategies, or gearing up for planning conversations, consider this required listening.Featuring highlights from conversations with:Jason Westcott (Global Head of Commerce Solutions, WPP): On the scale and maturity of commerce and retail media, why it’s now core to the media mix, and what needs to change as it continues to grow.Gai Le Roy (CEO, IAB Australia): On trust, privacy, and governance, and why strong frameworks are critical to building confidence and scaling responsibly.Kiri Masters (Journalist and podcaster of Retail Media Breakfast Club): Bringing a global, practical lens to how fast the space is evolving — and why learning, openness, and collaboration still matter.Colin Lewis (Co-founder of Retail Media Works): Challenging the industry on creativity, effectiveness, and differentiation, and why commerce media needs its own language, thinking, and execution.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.Subscribe & Leave a Review:If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to Commerce Media Matters and leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform!

Retail media is booming — but maturity isn’t evenly distributed. Lachlan joins Commerce Media Matters to cut through the hype and grey areas: misaligned incentives, messy data expectations, the “too many screens” problem, offsite extensions, and why we need better briefs, not more buzzwords. From IAB council work to hands-on network builds, he shares a pragmatic view on how retailers, brands, media agencies and tech partners can make retail and commerce media actually work together.What you’ll learn from this episode:First-party data as the real product: How data has become the new currency of media, and why retailers must treat it as an asset that powers smarter targeting, better measurement, and more meaningful customer relationships.Where everyone’s misaligned (and how to fix it): Retailers, brands, and agencies are still figuring out how to work together. From budget confusion to long-standing silos, Lachlan explains why they’ve been operating in different swim lanes, and what needs to change to bring everyone into alignment.Offsite done right: Why retailers can’t rely on onsite media alone and how using offsite channels can extend reach from a small share of e-commerce shoppers to almost their entire audience.Incrementality without the buzzword bingo: Why “incremental” is meaningless without context and why brands need to clarify what kind of Incrementality they’re chasing.Retail media vs. commerce media: Lachlan’s take on the two: retail media goes deeper with product-level insights, while commerce media goes wider, using more data sources for scale, explaining why both are essential to a connected media strategy.The realities of data sharing: Retailers can’t share everything. Understanding what’s commercially sensitive, what can be shared, and where the boundaries lie is key to building stronger partnerships.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.Subscribe & Leave a Review:If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to Commerce Media Matters and leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform!

In this episode of Commerce Media Matters, Nick and Paul sit down with Kelly Wearmouth, a leader in the world of adtech and retail media. Her career has taken her from working with global brands like Unilever and Microsoft to helping shape Amazon’s advertising business. Now, as Managing Director at Mars United Commerce, she’s driving connected commerce and helping brands rethink how they reach consumers. Kelly shares her journey through adtech, insights on the evolving commerce media landscape, and strategies for brands to stay ahead.What you’ll learn from this episode:Convergence from opposite ends: Traditional retailers are evolving in-store screens into broader digital capabilities, while digital-first retailers are expanding into physical environments, merging into one connected ecosystem.Friction is the silent killer: Removing every click, step, and barrier from sampling, browsing, and checkout can turn moments of inspiration into measurable momentum.B2B can be commerce-creative, too: Distributor networks and trade enablement demand new thinking, new training, and new activation layers beyond traditional media.Sensory overload: Too much in-store media risks overwhelming shoppers, and why retailers will need to curate their environments as inventory grows.Connected creative is a work in progress: The industry is still learning how to pull creative consistently across every touchpoint — and to bring contextual relevance to retailer data beyond ROAS.Consolidation is inevitable: As retail media networks fragment, shared infrastructure and marketplace partnerships will streamline access, measurement, and scale.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.Subscribe & Leave a Review:If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to Commerce Media Matters and leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform!

This lively discussion dives into the transformative impact of AI on commerce and creativity. The hosts explore the intriguing concept of agentic shopping and its integration into platforms like ChatGPT. They tackle vital issues around data ownership and the evolving role of retail media in storytelling. With thoughts on premium content's increasing importance and the challenges of copyright, the conversation also reflects on AI-generated video’s creative potential and risks. Trust emerges as a key theme in navigating the AI era.

Nick Morgan and Paul Blackburn welcome strategist, writer, and retail-media advisor Colin Lewis for a rapid-fire tour through creativity in retail media, why “conversion everywhere” should be your mantra, and how AI & LLMs are reshaping search and shoppability. Drawing on decades of experience in strategy, teaching, and marketing leadership, Colin makes the case that innovation is everywhere—and that retail media is its own channel with its own language.What you’ll learn from this episode:Creativity is a mindset, not a media format: True innovation in retail media lies in rethinking how networks are structured, scaled, and sold—not just how ads look on screen.Think like a media company, not a retailer: To scale, retailers must think like media companies: get C-suite buy-in, hire media sales, align trade, ecomm, ops, and stores, and manage change.The Era of Conversion Everywhere:  Shoppable formats reduce the distance from inspiration to purchase across on-site, off-site, and in-store, without sacrificing brand building.AI’s next frontier: LLM optimisation will upend “search” habits; brands need brilliant basics plus new skills to be searchable by LLMs.Mind the Fab Four: Brand, Trade, Shopper, and Digital often operate in silos; retail media forces new ways of working.From co-op to accountable media: Expect trade/coop budgets to fold into retail media with demands for ROAS, incrementality, and closed-loop outcomes.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.Subscribe & Leave a Review:If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to Commerce Media Matters and leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform!