At the IAB’s Connected Commerce Summit in New York, Collin Colburn swapped acronyms for NFL analogies, laying out four principles (patience, simplicity, trust and smart standards) and unveiling new IAB initiatives designed to turn a breakout season into a lasting franchise.
Collin Colburn, VP of commerce and retail media at the IAB
When Collin Colburn, VP of commerce and retail media at the IAB, opened the Connected Commerce Summit in New York, he didn’t start with dashboards or data. He started with football. Specifically, the Pittsburgh Steelers.
It might sound like an odd leap, but the six-time Super Bowl champions offer a surprisingly sharp analogy for a sector trying to turn hype into a sustainable franchise. As Colburn put it: “We’re in week one of a long, grueling season. Growth has outpaced our industry’s maturation and now we need to build for the long haul.”
Commerce media is already a $62bn business in the US and is projected to pass $100bn by 2028. But confidence lags: 72% of marketers in a Skai study rated retail media performance as only “fair or good.” Colburn argued the industry has to follow four Steelers-style principles if it wants to move from hot prospect to enduring dynasty.
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The Steelers have had only three head coaches in 55 years. In a league addicted to churn, they stick to their system.
“Not every campaign is going to be a Super Bowl winner and not every network will be Amazon – and that’s OK,” Colburn said. “The focus has to be on durable, customer-obsessed strategies that compound over time.”
To help, the IAB is releasing a new one-pager on demystifying incrementality, pushing the sector towards outcome-based measurement rather than short-term wins.
Football succeeds because everyone follows the same playbook. Commerce media, meanwhile, too often resembles chaos.
“We need one Rosetta Stone for this industry,” Colburn told the room. “If retail, brand, agency and tech teams can’t even agree on the language, we’ll never march down the field together.”
The IAB’s guide on defining commerce media and its ecosystem is designed to be that shared reference point, reducing the “crowd noise” of competing definitions and taxonomies.
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The Steelers win because their locker room culture is rooted in trust and shared accountability. Commerce media? Not so much.
“63% of our committee members admit they struggle just to get quality data for incrementality measurement,” Colburn revealed. “That’s not good enough. Great teams trust each other and our ecosystem has to as well.”
To push that culture shift, the IAB’s Commerce Center is working on best-practice guides for transparency and mutual accountability, due in 2026.
The Steelers honor tradition but keep pace with a changing game. Commerce media needs the same balance.
“Too often, buyers walk in with custom asks that fragment the system,” Colburn said. “If standards are going to stick, then marketers and agencies need to adopt them as much as retailers do.”
The IAB plans to go “on offense” in 2026 to rally those still “on the sidelines” into adopting measurement standards, so that innovation can thrive on a solid foundation rather than drown in fragmentation.
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Commerce media has had its breakout moment. But Colburn’s message was clear: legacy comes from discipline, not hype.
“Commerce media is no longer a side hustle. It is central to how businesses grow. We’ve had our breakout moment. Now we need to build a legacy.”
Or, as the Steelers chant in Pittsburgh, ‘Here we go!’
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IAB
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) empowers the media and marketing industries to thrive in the digital economy. Its membership comprises more than 700 leading...