A complete guide to commerce media

In hurry? Here are the three main takeaways from our complete guide to commerce media.

1. Commerce media closes the gap between marketing spend and real revenue: The biggest shift is measurement. Commerce media links campaigns directly to verified transactions, not clicks or impressions. That means you can confidently prove incremental sales lift, repeat purchase, and ROI, including in-store spend—something traditional digital and even retail media struggle to do. For growth teams under pressure to justify every pound, commerce media turns marketing from a cost centre into a commercial performance lever.

2. Value-led incentives (cashback, discounts) win in today’s consumer economy: UK consumers are still spending, but they’re more price-sensitive and value-driven than ever. Cashback, discounts, and loyalty rewards are now central to purchase decisions, especially as disposable income tightens.

3. Privacy-safe, omnichannel growth is a competitive advantage: Unlike cookie-based retargeting, commerce media uses anonymised, consented transaction data, which builds trust while still enabling precise targeting. Crucially, it works across online and physical retail, allowing brands to reactivate lapsed customers, gain market share from competitors, and measure omnichannel impact in one campaign.

Got time to stick around? Let's dive a litter deeper.

Commerce media is reshaping how brands connect marketing spend to real revenue. The post-2025 Autumn Budget landscape is one of impact and opportunity. Retailers who pair operational discipline with bold strategic choices and who recognise that fiscal policy is now an integral part of their commercial planning landscape will thrive, and commerce media is the strategy that can help make this a reality. Read on to discover how.

Retailers who can pivot quickly by leveraging omnichannel models, investing in productivity-enhancing technology, and designing propositions that speak to financially cautious consumers, stand to gain share as the market evolves." Jonathan Bedford, Merchants & Partners Director, Pluxee UK

The digital media landscape is loud, with consumers facing multiple messages every day as they interact with their online ecosystem. In this oversaturated landscape, they’re craving a personalised experience with brands they can trust. They need offers that matter to them, but they also crave anonymity and autonomy. To browse and purchase at a pace that suits them. That’s why 69% of Brits are frustrated by receiving online ads based on their search history (Statista).

This level of data gathering leads to distrust, the feeling that ‘big brother is watching’, which can have negative consequences. Commerce media works differently, linking advertising to verified purchases, a product or brand a consumer actually bought into, not just browsed.

The cost of living remains high, and real household disposable income has been steadily declining since a peak in 2024 (ONS). Perhaps that’s why debit card transactions were 0.5 per cent lower in October 2025 than they were in 2024, but credit card transactions were 4.4 per cent higher in the same period (UK Finance).

UK consumers are still spending, but they’re also choosing a path that adds debt, which is why they’re becoming increasingly value-conscious, with discounts, cashback, and loyalty rewards playing a central role in purchase decisions.

Their money needs to work harder, and they prioritise opportunities to save and earn cashback. This need for the best value makes commerce media, particularly when activated through discount platforms and card-linked offers (CLOs), highly relevant in the current UK economic environment.

What is commerce media?

Commerce media is a form of advertising that uses real purchase and transaction data to target audiences, activate promotions, and measure success. Unlike retargeting ads, commerce media programmes measure results based on sales data rather than clicks or impressions.

Commerce media data lets you measure results in real time, not months later when impressions finally lead to a sale, closing the loop between exposure and outcome.

Commerce media marketing campaigns report on incremental spend, conversion lift, and repeat purchase behaviour, often across both online and in-store channels. There are no what-if’s. Commerce media advertising delivers a return on investment (ROI), enabling you to answer a fundamental question: Did this marketing activity drive a real transaction?

How commerce media differs from traditional digital advertising

We’ve already touched on some elements above, such as the data used to target consumers and the metrics used to measure success.

Traditional digital advertising relies heavily on impressions, clicks, and cookies, with marketers measuring success through a revenue-attribution model rather than direct links to activity and results. This attribution approach to reporting isn’t precise.

While digital advertising remains effective for brand awareness, you’d struggle to prove a direct impact, especially on in-store footfall and purchasing, which are among the objectives of commerce media marketing.

We can sum up two key ways commerce media differs from traditional digital advertising:

The data source: Commerce media uses a transaction-based marketing approach. It’s purchase-based advertising, targeting consumers based on their buying history, loyalty activity and payment behaviour. The data available through a commerce media platform and its partner enables you to target both lapsed customers and customers who purchase from your competitors.
Measurement and KPIs: A commerce media strategy produces valuable and specific data – more specifically, incremental sales measurement. This closed-loop marketing strategy, with a targeted and trackable audience, delivers significantly more value than traditional digital marketing.

When budgets are tight, the cost of doing business is high, and retail confidence is being affected by economic changes, you need your marketing activities to deliver a return on investment. Commerce media stands out from the crowd, particularly to brands seeking accountability, efficiency, and measurable ROI.

What is the difference between retail media and commerce media?

Retail media is another marketing activity to explore, as it differs from commerce media in scope and in the ability to measure results.

What is retail media?

Unlike digital advertising, which targets consumers across multiple social media platforms, retail media runs only on channels owned by the retailer, such as a website, app, or in-store screens. Retail media uses your first-party shopper data and measures performance using on-site metrics and retailer-attributed sales.

Retail media vs. traditional digital advertising: Retail media is more targeted than digital advertising because its marketing activity is data-driven and more measurable. You could argue that digital advertising has a wider reach, but the strategy targets consumers based on browsing history rather than buying behaviour, and it’s much harder to track results.
Retail media vs commerce media: Commerce media expands the reach of retailer-only marketing activities by aggregating purchase or transaction data across multiple retailers, channels, or payment environments to activate campaigns and measure outcomes based on verified transactions, both online and in-store.

In simple terms:

Retail media focuses on where ads run, which is inside a retailer’s ecosystem.
Commerce media focuses on what happens after exposure, ultimately measuring if an activity led to a purchase.

In the UK, this distinction is particularly important because a large share of consumer spending still happens in physical stores. Data from November 2025 reveals that online retail accounted for 28.6% of total UK retail sales (ONS). This figure is higher than last year's, but it shows that in-person shopping remains king across most retail sectors.

Commerce media enables an omnichannel approach, increasing a retailer’s online and in-store sales through a single campaign.

What is an example of a commerce media network?

An example of a commerce media network is a platform that uses aggregated purchase or transaction data to help brands target audiences, activate campaigns, and measure results based on real sales rather than clicks.

Commerce media networks consolidate:

Consumer purchase data from retailers, loyalty programmes, or payment activity.
Activation channels such as digital ads, discount platforms, or card-linked offers.
Measurement tools that attribute campaigns to verified transactions, both online and in-store

A commerce media network would allow a UK supermarket chain to identify frequent grocery shoppers and deliver a targeted cashback offer through CLO or a discounted offer through a discount platform. Using the retailer's unique Merchant ID (MID), transactions through both types of activation channels are measured to determine whether individual shoppers are increasing the number of purchases with that retailer and whether their spending is increasing.

The official terms for these metrics are Average Transaction Frequency (ATF) and Average Transaction Value (ATV), and both are reportable through CLO. This closed-loop model is what differentiates commerce media networks from traditional advertising platforms.

How can I integrate commerce media solutions into my digital marketing strategy?

You can integrate commerce media into your digital marketing strategy by treating it as a performance layer that complements existing channels, rather than a replacement for them.

Start by identifying where you already engage consumers digitally, such as paid media, CRM, loyalty programmes, or retailer partnerships, and then connect those touchpoints to purchase-based activation and measurement.

In the UK, this often means working with discount platforms or partners that support CLOs, such as Pluxee UK, allowing you to activate campaigns via debit, prepaid and contactless card payments.

A typical integration approach takes just four steps:

Using purchase or loyalty data to define high-value audiences
Activating targeted offers through discount platforms or card-linked offers
Running commerce media alongside paid social, search, or retail media
Measuring success based on verified transactions, including in-store spend.

This approach allows UK marketers to maintain reach and awareness while adding a direct line of sight to sales impact, even for offline purchases, which traditional digital advertising alone cannot track.

What are the benefits of using commerce media for e-commerce growth?

There are many benefits to using commerce media for e-commerce growth, as it links marketing activity directly to verified purchase outcomes, helping brands optimise spend and drive more efficient conversions.

Key benefits include:

Improved attribution: You can measure campaigns using real transactions rather than clicks or last-touch models.
Higher conversion rates: Incentives such as cashback or discounts reduce friction at the checkout.
Better audience targeting: Access to past purchase behaviour helps identify high-intent shoppers.
Omnichannel lift: Even e-commerce brands benefit from understanding how digital campaigns influence in-store or cross-channel behaviour.

For UK e-commerce businesses operating in a competitive, value-driven market, commerce media provides a way to grow revenue while maintaining accountability, privacy compliance, and clear ROI measurement. It gives you the flexibility to personalise your campaigns, targeting lapsed or even your competitors' customers.

Post-campaign reviews monitor drop-off as well. Say you ran a card-linked offer on a banking rewards network for six months and reactivated a percentage of lapsed customers. You can monitor how many remained after the cashback incentive ended and those who only spent with you for the cashback, helping you determine whether CLO should be part of your longer-term strategy or a seasonal solution.

What are discount platforms in commerce media?

Discount platforms are consumer-facing or partner-enabled systems that distribute promotions such as cashback, discounts, or rewards. With Pluxee UK, our discount platforms put merchants and retailers in front of over 5,000 clients and their millions of employees. Our discounts Marketplace sits within our Pluxee App, an intuitive, user-friendly app that lets users access discounts quickly and easily.

What are Card-Linked Offers (CLOs) in commerce media?

Card-linked offers are an effective activation method within your commerce media strategy, as they are attached directly to a consumer’s payment card. Once an offer is activated, such as cashback on a purchase, the consumer redeems their reward automatically when they use the eligible card at checkout—online or in-store.

No need to complete a form or wait for weeks, we simply process the cashback automatically.

The UK’s payments ecosystem is perfectly suited to card-linked offers. Debit cards account for the majority of consumer transactions, with contactless payments widely adopted across grocery, convenience, and hospitality. This purchasing behaviour makes CLOs effective not only for e-commerce, but for everyday in-store purchases.

Prepaid card and banking reward programmes open brands up to a closed network of millions of active consumers.

Key characteristics of card-linked offers include:

No coupon codes or manual redemption
Automatic reward fulfilment through cashback, statement credit, or points
Accurate transaction-level tracking.

These features make CLOs among the most reliable activation methods in commerce media, particularly for measuring offline and omnichannel purchases in the UK market.

Measuring performance in commerce media campaigns

Measurement is a defining advantage of commerce media, providing you with reliable data to prove that your campaign delivered incremental sales. Instead of relying on proxies like clicks, you can evaluate your campaigns using transaction-based metrics, including:

Incremental sales lift
Conversion rate based on purchases
Average order value
Frequency and repeat spend.

Card-linked offers enable especially strong measurement because you can tie every redemption to a verified transaction. This data allows for robust control groups, holdout testing, and post-campaign analysis.

Privacy, compliance, and data considerations

Commerce media platforms that use card-linked offers operate within strict privacy and regulatory frameworks. Data is typically anonymised, aggregated, and permissioned through consumer opt-in. So, it’s a fully compliant way to access a rich source of data to power your campaign.

To remain fully compliant, here are a few things you should adhere to:

Compliance with regional regulations such as GDPR and CCPA
Transparent consumer consent
Secure handling of transaction data.

When implemented correctly, commerce media can deliver personalisation and measurement while respecting consumer privacy expectations. It enables you to personalise and target the right people at the right time, without making them feel like they’re being spammed or followed around the internet just for landing on your page.

Why commerce media is the perfect addition to your digital marketing strategy

The results speak for themselves. Here at Pluxee UK, our clients' commerce media campaigns, delivered through CLO, consistently deliver incremental growth.

Here’s a snapshot of some of our case studies:

A six-month CLO campaign for a value UK supermarket chain on a banking rewards programme: Our partnership generated £14.9 million in incremental spend, a 57% increase in ATV, acquired nearly 110,000 new customers, and earned the retailer a 10.4% increase in market share. Better still, 43% of acquired customers returned after the incentivised scheme was completed.
A one-year CLO campaign for a UK casual dining chain on a leading customer loyalty programme: By the end of the scheme, the client earned £2.5 million in incentivised spend, processed 63,000 incentivised transactions, generating 12.5 times higher ROI. The average ATV was £39.70, and the average repeat transaction frequency was 1.3 times higher than non-campaign activity..
A six-month campaign for a UK popular household goods chain: During the first four cycles of the campaign, the retailer acquired 86,000 new clients, spending £9.2 million. Two-thirds of the acquired customers had spent with a competitor brand during the same period in the previous year.

With any marketing campaign, the ability to report on your return on investment is vital. When budgets are tight, you need to put your money where it will work the hardest, make the most impact, and the results above prove that commerce media is a reliable investment that delivers results.

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FAQs

What is commerce media in simple terms? Commerce media is advertising that uses real purchase data to drive and measure sales.

How do card-linked offers work in-store? Once activated, the offer is automatically applied when the linked card is used at checkout.

Are discount platforms part of commerce media? Yes. Discount platforms often act as activation and distribution channels within commerce media.

Can commerce media measure offline sales? Yes. Transaction data enables accurate measurement of in-store purchases.

Who should use commerce media? Brands, retailers, and marketers looking for measurable, performance-driven advertising tied to real revenue.

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