The commerce media advantage belongs to whoever adapts first

By Paul Dahill, Managing Director EMEA Sales at Koddi 

Every commerce media business reaches the same turning point. You’ve built something that works, advertisers are booking in, and revenue is growing. Then you look ahead and realise that your current model won’t be able to handle the next stage of business growth. More packages mean more headcount and more campaigns mean more manual planning. The operational load compounds just as fast as the revenue does.

For example, building a Back to School or Halloween campaign. You need to plan months ahead, decide how to allocate media space and the right audiences, put together go-to-market materials, agree how you’ll report on it, and set expectations with the advertisers who’ll buy it. 

Multiply that by every seasonal moment your business wants to capture, and it’s easy to see why growth and complexity have always felt like the same thing in this industry. Yet, there is an easier way… 

Building smart commerce packages

By understanding where your inventory sits, not where you assume it sits, businesses can predict sell-through over a given time-period and you’ll usually find gaps: pockets of inventory that won’t be sold to capacity. That’s where a new media opportunity lies. 

There’s no value in heavily pitching a homepage as part of a new package, if the system shows it’s already booked out for weeks. Building around what’s genuinely available, rather than what’s always been the flagship placement, is a more informed and fast way to package your media.

Pre-planned seasonal packages will always matter, but the businesses that scale well are the ones that can also move on what’s happening right now. If there’s a sudden spike of interest around a live event or a current news story, it’s important to build a package and get it out to market in a day or two, rather than taking weeks or months.

We’ve seen this play out in the travel industry. Unusually hot UK weather this summer changed consumer behaviour: people started booking hotels closer to home, specifically to make the most of hotel air conditioning. That’s an opportunity for a hotel chain to build an ad product around people living within a certain radius of a property, rather than the usual demographic or previous-customer targeting. It’s a different market from the one they’d normally reach, and it only exists because someone noticed the shift and could act on it quickly.

Let your auction do the work

Commerce media often runs on auction dynamics, whereas most auctions still use a fixed bid floor. Rigid floors leave yield on the table, especially heading into a period like Q4 when market trends shift quickly. Dynamic bid flooring adjusts automatically to what’s happening in the market, so you keep driving yield without losing sight of advertisers’ own goals. We recently worked with a US retail partner which moved to this approach and saw a multi-million dollar uplift in sales as a result. It’s a technical change, but the commercial impact is significant.

In addition to the retailer or media platform, advertisers can also benefit from this shift. Dynamic bids for commerce media can now be delivered through existing buying platforms, whether that’s a DSP or a partner like Skai, The Trade Desk or Google. 

And rather than waiting for the next quarterly business review to hear what’s coming, advertisers can bring ideas and requests to retailers directly. If a retailer is using the right technology, they can quickly respond to an idea or new trend, build the audience and put a package together. Instead of going through the longer planning cycle previously required.

Tapping into commerce media more efficiently

So, how do you get started on taking advantage of this new commerce media opportunity?

For advertisers, I’d suggest:

1: Consult the retailer, then evaluate your buying options.

Reach out to the retail media network directly to explore their preferred booking channels, custom ad formats, and deep first-party data activations. If speed and operational efficiency are your top priorities, ask them if their inventory is accessible via your existing DSP. This allows you to build a direct relationship with the retailer while retaining the convenience of your current buying platform where appropriate.

2: Sharing the idea without waiting. 

If you’re seeing a market trend you want to act on, take it straight to the retailer or platform. With the right technology, they can turn it into a commerce media package quickly, rather than waiting for the next scheduled review.

For retailers or platform owners, I’d suggest:

1: Letting the data show you where to build. 

Use predicted sell-through to find inventory that’s genuinely under-sold, and design new packages around that, not around whatever placement has historically always been the focus.

2: Making the auction adaptive, not fixed. 

Rather than a rigid, fixed bid floor in the auction, use flooring that adjusts automatically to market dynamics (particularly relevant heading into Q4), driving more yield while still meeting advertisers’ goals.

Taken together, these are all versions of the same shift: packaging around real inventory gaps instead of habit, moving at the speed of the market rather than the planning cycle, and letting the auction adjust itself rather than resetting it by hand. Making inventory easier for advertisers to find and book through the platforms they already use closes the loop, so the efficiency works for both sides of the transaction.

Scaling a commerce media business has always meant doing more, but it doesn’t have to mean doing more manually or slowly. The businesses that get this right will be the ones whose systems can spot the opportunity, build the package, and get to market while everyone else is still slowly planning.

Paul Dahill is Managing Director EMEA Sales at Koddi. For more information visit: koddi.com 

  Commerce Media, Koddi, Opinion Piece, Paul Dahill, Thought Leadership