I wrote back in April that the growth rate of commerce media was slowing significantly. IAB’s 2025 Outlook Report projected a 25.1% increase in commerce media ad spend in 2024, which would still be the fastest-growing digital channel, but down 10 percentage points from the previous year. Growth was no longer the story. Maturity was.
Fast forward to a recent panel at the IAB 2025 Connected Commerce Summit, with leaders from Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Boiron, and Once Upon a Farm, and the conversation confirmed what the data had already suggested: commerce media is no longer in its chaotic infancy, but it hasn’t fully grown up either. The question is no longer if commerce media will scale; it’s how well it can scale amid organizational friction, measurement fragmentation, and diverging expectations.
Before the panel began, the moderator polled the event audience of 500 media professionals (advertisers, agencies, publishers, and tech platforms) with a simple question: How mature is your company or your brand partners in commerce media today?
The results were telling:
- 26% said they were “Scaling Up,” with dedicated budgets integrated into broader media strategies.
- 23% were “Gaining Traction” but still lacked buy-in or resources.
- 22% were working on operationalizing repeatable processes.
- Only 17% said they were “Advanced.”, where commerce media is already embedded and outcome-focused.
- And another 17% were just getting started.
That means 83% of the industry is still climbing the maturity curve, a striking contrast to the headlines that portray commerce media as already transformed and turnkey.
Commerce Media Is Not a Monolith
The panel itself echoed the fragmentation reflected in the survey. Coca-Cola’s Katie Neil spoke of a portfolio approach: some brands are speedboats, nimble and experimental, while others are cruise ships that require data rigor, standardized tools, and organizational buy-in to pivot at scale. Nestlé’s Gabi Viljoen said the company had acquired 18 brands in five years, each at different stages of digital maturity, creating what she described as an “amalgamation” of commerce media readiness.
Meanwhile, challenger brands like Once Upon a Farm and Boiron shared stories of scrappiness, leaning into betas, testing unproven tactics, and moving faster than larger competitors burdened by internal validation processes. Their agility is a strategic advantage, but also a reminder: commerce media maturity often has less to do with company size and more to do with internal alignment and risk tolerance. And that’s the real story right now.
Scaling Commerce Media Isn’t Just About Budget, It’s About Organizational Will
If my April article focused on macroeconomic headwinds and market consolidation reasons for the slow down, this panel made clear that the most significant bottlenecks are internal.
Gabi Viljoen joked that she sometimes feels like Nestlé’s “Chief Repetition Officer”, repeating the same case for commerce media over and over to different stakeholders. Boiron’s Sha Atakhanov said her biggest hurdle wasn’t external competition, but internal education: convincing sales teams steeped in old trade models to embrace a new media reality.
This is the untold challenge of commerce media maturity: winning over your own team.
It requires fluency in finance, creativity in storytelling, and a new lexicon that makes commerce media legible to every function – from shopper marketing to brand to IT. It also demands cross-functional structures that very few companies, even large ones, have fully unlocked.
Measurement: The Universal Pain Point
If there was one point of consensus across the panel, it was this: measurement is still broken.
Despite massive investment, panelists agreed that retail media networks still lack standardization. “It’s the Wild West,” said Once Upon a Farm’s Jennifer Leen Berglund. Coca-Cola’s Neil echoed the need for unified, privacy-safe metrics that allow apples-to-apples optimization. Nestlé’s Viljoen called for better data mobility, simply to help justify internal investment decisions.
This lack of interoperability isn’t just an inconvenience; it’s a strategic liability. If brands can’t isolate ROI across networks, they can’t scale smartly. And if they can’t tell one cohesive story internally, they can’t accelerate investment externally. Standardization isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the foundation for the next chapter.
A Blended Scorecard for a Blended Future
The most compelling framework came when panelists discussed how they balance short-term sales goals with long-term brand building.
Viljoen introduced the concept of a “blended scorecard” that integrates retail metrics (like velocity or ROAS) with brand equity signals (like share of search or penetration). Berglund outlined Once Upon a Farm’s triangulation model: connecting campaign-level data with category growth and loyalty metrics to tell a holistic story.
This is where commerce media needs to go next: from siloed sales metrics to unified, multi-layered brand performance narratives. That’s what will finally make commerce media resonate with CMOs—not just shopper teams.
From Scaling Up to Growing Up
Commerce media isn’t a rocket ship anymore. It’s a mixed fleet of cruise liners and speedboats, each navigating its own organizational waters. Some are racing ahead. Others are stalled by internal process debt, outdated mindsets, or lack of measurement clarity. The hype cycle may be over, but the real work has just begun.
The brands on this panel aren’t just scaling commerce media. They’re growing it up, slowly, imperfectly, but with intent. And if 83% of industry players are still mid-journey, maybe the most honest metric we can offer is this: we’re past the beginning, but nowhere near the end.