All media is commerce media: introducing The Drum’s new three-part TV series

This week, The Drum launches a new three-part TV series that makes a bigger, more disruptive claim: commerce media is no longer a channel – it is becoming the organizing logic of modern media itself.

All Media Is Commerce Media brings together senior voices from across payments, retail data, media infrastructure, platforms and agencies to explore how intent, outcomes and accountability are reshaping everything from TV and social to creators, gaming and the physical store.

As Nili Klenoff, executive vice-president of commerce media and innovation at Mastercard, puts it early in the series: “Commerce media is exploding. We’re seeing the convergence between retail media and media because brands still have problems to solve and they still need to demonstrate that their marketing activities are delivering ROI.”

From retail media to media logic

The series begins with retail media not because it is new, but because it cracked problems the rest of the industry had been circling for years: attribution, first-party data and closed-loop measurement.

“There aren’t disparate systems any more,” says Cara Pratt, president of global retail and media at Circana. “Discovery, conversion, connection, performance… It all has to come together into one connected, intelligent ecosystem.”

That expectation that media should prove impact is now bleeding into every channel.

Outcomes over optics

For performance platforms, the shift is brutally clear.

“The outcomes era is a really nice encapsulation of what brands have cared about for a long time,” says Chris Riedy, chief revenue officer at Ibotta. “Brands want to be able to show their board, their CFO and their customers that they’re running a profitable business – and that their marketing is driving an actual outcome.”

Meanwhile, the economics of media itself are being quietly rewritten.

“I think the turning point was when people realized that most retailers depend on retail media for profitability,” says Mark Grether, senior vice-president and general manager at PayPal Advertising. “Profitability doesn’t necessarily come from selling goods. It comes from selling advertising.”

Intent is the new currency

Across all three episodes, one word keeps resurfacing: intent.

Not demographics, not reach, but real signals – what people are actively trying to do. “That data retail media networks have is so valuable,” says Taylor Stewart, global head of retail media at TripleLift. “And not just for a brand selling a product, but for any brand trying to engage customers.”

By the end of the series, one conclusion is unavoidable: once media reorganizes itself around intent and outcomes, there is no going back.

Episode one launches on The Drum TV on Wednesday, January 21, as part of Commerce Media Month.