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Are AI Influencers The Real Deal?

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By Mike Ruxton

They may be artificial, but their impact is anything but. AI influencers are taking on huge brand deals and reaching millions worldwide.

Artificial intelligence has been consistently making waves in the marketing world – and the influencer sector certainly hasn’t escaped the AI revolution.

You’ve most likely heard about some of the (seedier) scandals involving AI models, virtual adult content creators, sinister deep fakes, and bogus product promotions. And if you haven’t, don’t worry – we’ve already written an entire article about it.

Well, AI influencers are no longer just cheap tricks or potential scams. They’ve officially hit the mainstream, with virtual influencers like Lil Miquela and Laila Khadraa striking up legitimate brand partnerships with the likes of Prada, Puma, and Samsung. There’s a growing business interest in AI-generated influencer campaigns, and it feels like this new sub-sector of the influencer world is gaining momentum.

Far from being a niche or novelty, these virtual creators are taking on incredible lucrative brand deals and reaching millions of people worldwide. While their avatars may be artificial, their impact is anything but.

So what does this all mean for real, human influencers? Is there still a role for creators who aren’t made of pixels, or is the 2025 AI takeover inevitable?

(Source: Financial Times)

What are AI influencers? And Why have they taken off?

AI influencers (also known as virtual influencers) are computer-generated avatars that play a similar role to human influencers. They promote brands, sell products, and connect with audiences online.

Apart from being a shiny new use of AI technology, virtual influencers do offer some interesting benefits for marketers – according to Influencer Marketing Hub, 50% of those who have worked with virtual influencers found the experience to be ‘very positive’.

So what is so appealing about an AI influencer for digital advertisers?

They’re cost-efficient – and easy to scale

Since virtual influencers are generated by a computer, they’re not particularly fussy about payment. They don’t negotiate travel expenses or contract terms, and more importantly, they can rapidly produce content at scale – in multiple languages.

While there may be some costs associated with developing a new avatar (or partnering with an existing AI influencer) it’s likely to be cheaper – and this can be an appealing proposition for cost-conscious brands.

Brands have total control over creative messaging

Brands have complete control over what a virtual influencer says and does.

For example, artificial intelligence Instagram influencers won’t need to adjust a creative message to be more on-brand. Brands don’t need to explain product benefits or technical specifications to them, and they don’t need multiple content amendment rounds.

Marketers can avoid controversy and apply more control

When you’re working with a robot, it’s very difficult to get your brand into hot water. Marketers can dictate exactly what an AI influencer says, controlling everything from brand guidelines to specific language.

There’s no room for unexpected comments or influencer misinterpretations, which might be a big selling point for more cautious advertisers.

Do AI influencers make money? Are these virtual brand ambassadors actually effective?

The jury is still out on this one. While some evidence suggests that AI influencers can drive up to 3% more engagement on platforms like Instagram, other statistics say otherwise.

For instance, data from CreatorIQ states that many AI influencers utilised by global brands just aren’t delivering the same levels of engagement as their human counterparts.

Lil Miquela, a prominent AI influencer mentioned earlier in this blog, posted 7 pieces of content for BMW in 2023. These posts averaged a 0.6% engagement rate – compared to the 3.6% engagement rate achieved by human creators for BMW. In a similar story, Aitana Lopez (a Spanish AI model) has posted for clients like Nike, Fortnite, and Patagonia, delivering an average engagement rate of 2.9% – 1.03% below usual creator benchmarks for these brands.

Now, this isn’t to say that virtual influencers are totally ineffective. In some instances, they can certainly outperform human creators, and there are some respectable engagement rates delivered. But it feels like they’re not quite cutting the social media mustard.

So while these virtual influencers are making headlines, they’re not outperforming their real-life equivalents. Which begs the question – why?

The case for humanity in influencer marketing

Virtual influencers have plenty of similarities with real creators. They’re pictured with different products, they post lifestyle content, and they even respond to comments from their followers.

(Some of which are quite weird, but that’s a topic for another blog post.)

However, they lack the fundamental feature that makes influencer magic. A human personality.

When you really drill down to the core, AI influencers are essentially just virtual billboards, playing the pre-determined brand messages they’ve been programmed to deliver. They can’t reminisce about a recent holiday, excitedly unbox a new product, or express their true thoughts/feelings on a brand.

Now, I’m about to drop a serious buzzword, but it’s relevant. At its very best, influencer marketing is all about authenticity. Businesses partner with creators who can act as effective brand ambassadors because they actually use and enjoy their products. As humans, we can tell when someone is genuinely advocating for a product or service, and when they are, it can immediately shape our buying behaviours.

Virtual influencers, at best, can only imitate what a real influencer does. And personally, I don’t think that’s going to be enough in the long run.

Reflecting on the value of human creators

While I don’t believe virtual influencers can truly dominate the industry, they have given me the opportunity to reflect on why we connect so naturally with human influencers.

Real creators aren’t always perfect, but that’s what makes them so accessible and relatable.

My prediction? 2025 isn’t going to see the influencer world captured by AI creators and their questionable comment sections.

(Seriously, go and look if you don’t believe me.)

In fact, the role of human influencers in marketing is only going to become more crucial in a world grappling with deep fakes, AI-fuelled controversies, and rampant misinformation. Influencers won’t just be viewed as content creators or marketing assets – when used correctly, they’ll provide brands with a real, trustworthy, human face, and provide customers with real, trustworthy, human opinions.

*BUT, before I’m accused of being an AI-hating stick in the mud, I want to emphasise that there are plenty of other ways for artificial intelligence to enhance influencer marketing in 2025. In fact, AI influencers are probably one of the least exciting prospects here.

Instead, AI should be used to analyse online audience behaviours, understand the nuances behind high-performing content, and optimise influencer performance.

The bad news is that there’s a 0% chance of me being able to explain the finer details of AI potential for influencer marketing. The good news is that I don’t have to, because our resident AI genius James Wolman (from our sister agency Braidr) has given this brilliant synopsis:

“Everyone’s worried about AI creating fake influencers, but that’s missing the point. The real power of AI in 2025 won’t be about replacing humans – it’ll be about finally understanding what makes content actually connect with people. With LLMs/agentic AI now able to independently analyse and act on audience behaviour patterns, creators will have smart assistants that can actually help shape their content strategy in real-time. We’re moving past basic follower counts to seeing why some creators build genuine communities while others don’t. That’s the game-changer.”

So there you have it. Strike the delicate balance between relatable human influencers and AI-fuelled data analytics, and you’ll be golden in 2025.

We see incredible results with our clients because we place a strong emphasis on identifying the right influencers to connect with high-value audiences, influence real behaviours, and convert at scale. If you’re keen to leverage the full potential of human influencers in 2025, don’t hesitate to reach out for a chat!

By Mike Ruxton

Sourced from The Drum

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President Says AI Search is Bringing them in Twice as Fast

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BY ALI DONALDSON

Harley Finkelstein offers new details about the explosion of AI search on the e-commerce platform.

AI search is already upending e-commerce. Over the past year, shopping suggestions from popular large language models, such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, have delivered a sizable uptick in site traffic, sales, and new customers. That’s according to Shopify.

The $140 billion e-commerce company reported first quarter results earlier today, and during the conference call, president Harley Finkelstein offered new details about just how transformative AI-powered search has been for the millions of merchants on the platform. AI-driven traffic to Shopify stores has skyrocketed by 8x, compared to the first quarter of last year. Over that same period, orders that originated with AI-powered search have spiked by nearly 13x. LLMs have also been helping companies source new customers.

“New buyer orders from AI searches are actually occurring at nearly 2x the rate of traditional organic search,” said Finkelstein during the earrings call. “These merchants are now discovering new buyers on these agentic services that they may not otherwise have seen.”

More than three-quarters of e-commerce companies have already started rethinking their marketing plans to account for AI search, according to a survey conducted by the financial technology company Mercury last fall. This tide shift has spurned an entirely new industry of generative engine optimization, often abbreviated as GEO. This strategy, which has supplanted its digital forefather search engine optimization: starts with a straightforward question: How do I get this agent to recommend my company?

While startups are still very much in the experimental stage of answering that question, founders have told Inc. that they have found success so far by expanding their digital footprint, so that their name and their company name is included in as much AI training data as possible. In practice, that means blanketing the internet: talking with journalists, going on podcasts, posting on LinkedIn, hosting webinars, publishing case studies, conducting original research, producing highly-specific educational content, and engaging in thought leadership as a founder.

When in doubt, go straight to the source and prompt the LLM itself. “The trick is to ask. Ask Google in AI mode, or ask ChatGPT,” Andy Crestodina, co-founder and chief marketing officer of Orbit Media Studios, a Chicago-based digital agency that focuses on web development and website optimization, told Inc. last year. “Very few people have had a conversation with AI about why it would or wouldn’t recommend them.”

The three-time Inc. 5000 founder says the goal is “about training the AI to believe that you’re the best option.”

Feature image credit: Adobe Stock

BY ALI DONALDSON

Sourced from Inc.

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Publishers Paid The Price For Platform Dependency—You May Be Next

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By Jennifer Schenberg,

This year, newsrooms eliminated hundreds of jobs, including more than 300 at the Washington Post.

A friend of mine still has her job there, for now. When I called her after the layoffs, she didn’t talk about herself. She talked about the colleagues she’d spent decades working alongside, the stories that died with them, and the work they spent years building toward, all gone overnight because Facebook and Google changed the rules.

We’ve been here before. You know this story.

Platforms Always Promise Reach—Dependency Is How They Get You

Publishers and brands have depended on Facebook and Google to deliver their audiences for two decades. Today, publishers are losing up to 90% of their traffic and revenue after AI-driven search and social platforms changed how content reaches audiences. Most publishers didn’t see it coming. The ones that did built direct relationships with their audiences and kept them.

Business Insider felt the impact, seeing organic search traffic drop 55% and laying off 21% of its staff. But People Inc. was able to pivot. It lost 50% of its Google sessions over the last two years, yet it’s still growing 15%. When asked how that is possible, CEO Neil Vogel explained, “We built our own assets. We’re doing all kinds of things to connect directly with advertisers and users. So when Google really fell off a cliff two years ago, we were prepared for it.”

Few understand this dynamic better than Bhargav Patel, who spent his career building the infrastructure for rented reach. Now, he’s building what comes next. He’s the founder and CEO of Genuin, a client of PenVine, and he doesn’t mince words: “The brands that treated digital infrastructure as a future priority woke up one day to find that the platforms they had been ignoring had become the intermediaries standing between them and their own consumers.” He added, “AI is accelerating that dynamic by an order of magnitude. The decisions brands and publishers make about infrastructure in the next 12 to 18 months will not just shape their competitive position. They will determine whether they still own a direct relationship with their audience at all.”

This is a warning every brand should take seriously.

Social gaming company Zynga is a tale of platform dependence gone bad. Remember Farmville? It was the most popular game on Facebook. At its peak, Zynga represented nearly 20% of Facebook’s total revenue. When Facebook restructured its algorithm and payment terms, Zynga’s stock collapsed 75%.

Zynga survived by doing what every brand should consider now: It focused on attracting players to its own destinations. A decade later, Take-Two Interactive acquired them for $12.7 billion.

While Zynga is an extreme example, the issues brands face today are no less urgent. Brands are still renting reach, bound by a landlord’s rules that change without notice, at the mercy of an algorithm that controls the entire engagement experience.

Now, there’s a new landlord: ChatGPT. Different platform, same dependency. For the first time, marketers plan to increase investment in AI platforms like ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews over traditional search advertising. But Sonata Insights analyst Debra Aho Williamson cautions, “Marketers shouldn’t allow the AI platforms to dictate the rules of engagement with consumers. Brands have an important role to play, too.” She believes that when AI gets it wrong, consumers won’t blame the platform. They’ll blame the brand.

Sephora made a bet on ChatGPT. The beauty retailer spent 20 years building 80 million Beauty Insider members into one of retail’s most valuable owned audiences. Yet, they launched an app inside ChatGPT to power discovery. Sephora essentially outsourced the discovery phase of the customer journey to OpenAI. They get a bump in reach, but OpenAI owns the first impression, the data and the customer relationship.

It’s a gamble. Who’s to say the platform won’t eventually use that data to steer those new audiences elsewhere?

Consumers Don’t Trust The Feed, So Why Do Brands Keep Buying In?

It’s a paradox. And McKinsey calls it stark.

With distrust in AI at an all-time high, 74% of consumers say AI makes it harder to trust what they see online. McKinsey partner Kari Alldredge agrees, saying, “I don’t believe that marketers’ budgets have caught up with where consumers’ heads are at.” She says marketers should be “thinking more broadly about the allocation of spend and potentially shifting some of it away from social media.”

The irony: Social media ad revenue hit $117.7 billion in 2025, up 32.6% year over year. This means brands are doubling down on the very environments where consumer trust is at an all-time low. It’s a disconnect that tells you everything about how deep this dependency goes.

What 80% of consumers do trust is the brands they use. That trust wasn’t built on a social platform. It was built through direct engagement.

The Brands That Stopped Paying Rent

There’s a shift underway. Brands are turning static websites and apps into living destinations by offering the same generative experiences platforms use. Consumers can discover products, shop, engage with peers and collaborate with brands. The brand controls the content, the commerce and the conversation.

Take Pacsun, which launched PS Community Hub, a social-driven, AI-personalized platform where content discovery, commerce and creator connection all live inside its own ecosystem. Similarly, TED launched TED Shorts inside its own app, a personalized feed that lets users engage directly within TED’s own ecosystem.

Then there’s iHeartMedia, which launched iHeartRadio Highlights inside its own platform, bringing shows like Elvis Duran on Z100 to life as short-form video experiences. And McClatchy, which turned its static digital properties into living generative video feeds across dozens of its national magazines and local newspapers, including Us Weekly, Life & Style and the Miami Herald.

Some brands are building their own infrastructure. Others are embedding infrastructure to launch and monetize owned experiences at scale.

End Platform Dependency Before The Rules Change Again​

Is this the end of rented reach? Probably not.

After two decades of watching this re-run, I know how it ends. Years of chasing platforms have come at the cost of the one thing you can never get back: a direct relationship with your customer. That’s a steep price to pay.

Before the next budget gets approved, ask yourself one question: If the platform changed the rules tomorrow, what would you have left?​

Feature image credit: Getty

By Jennifer Schenberg,

COUNCIL POST | Membership (fee-based)

Jennifer Schenberg is Chief Storyteller and Narrative Architect at PenVine, a B2B Tech PR agency for category-defining brands. Read Jennifer Schenberg’s full executive profile here.

Find Jennifer Schenberg on LinkedIn. Visit Jennifer’s website.

Sourced from Forbes

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7 iPhone Settings That Secretly Expose Your Data—Fix These Now Before It’s Too Late to Take It Back

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Most people assume their iPhone is protecting them the moment they turn it on. Spoiler: it’s not doing nearly as much as you’d think.

A surprising number of privacy controls sit buried in menus, switched off by default, quietly letting apps, websites, and even Apple itself collect far more than you’d probably be comfortable with.

The good news is that you can fix most of it in under ten minutes. Here’s where to start.

Your Location Is Probably Overshared

Head to Settings, then Privacy and Security, then Location Services. You’ll likely find apps with “Always” access that have absolutely no business knowing where you are around the clock.

Flip most of them to “While Using the App” and turn off “Significant Locations” under System Services. Clear the history while you’re there, too.

Safari Knows More About You Than You’d Expect

Inside Settings, go to Safari and open Privacy and Security. Turn on cross-site tracking prevention, hide your IP address from trackers, and enable the fraudulent website warning.

While you’re in the Safari settings, jump into the Search section and disable live search suggestions.

Every letter you type in that search bar gets sent off before you even hit enter, and turning that off keeps your queries to yourself.

Apps Are Listening, Sometimes Literally

Go to Privacy and Security, then Microphone. Scroll through the list and ask yourself honestly whether each app needs that access.

If the answer isn’t obvious, revoke it. The same logic applies to camera permissions. Neither should be handed out freely.

Flip the Switch on Ad Tracking

Under Privacy and Security, find Tracking and turn off the option that lets apps ask to track you.

Then scroll down to Apple Advertising and switch off personalized ads. Also, check Analytics and Improvements and disable everything in there.

Apple frames data collection as a way to improve services, but you’re under no obligation to contribute.

Websites Shouldn’t Have Permanent Access to Your Hardware

In Safari’s settings, look for Settings for Websites. Configure it so that the camera, microphone, and location access always require a fresh permission prompt.

Websites don’t need ongoing access, and setting this up means nothing will get through without your active approval each time.

Passwords Are Outdated. Here’s What to Use Instead

Whenever a supported app or site offers a passkey, use it. Passkeys are device-specific and cryptographically secured, which means they can’t be phished or stolen the way a password can.

It’s a much smarter login method, and it’s already built into iOS.

Spam Calls Have a Fix You Probably Haven’t Tried

In your Phone settings, look for Call Filtering and enable Ask Reason for Calling. Unknown callers get screened before they reach you.

Over in Messages settings, turn on Filter Unknown Senders so random texts are automatically sorted away. Both features are underused and genuinely helpful.

Old App Permissions Pile Up Fast

Every few months, open Privacy and Security and go through each category, location, microphone, and camera, and check what still has access.

Apps you downloaded once and forgot about can hold onto permissions indefinitely. A quick audit takes five minutes and cuts down on a lot of background data collection you never agreed to in the first place.

By

Herby has a healthy obsession with all things Apple, especially the iPhone. He loves to rip things apart to see how they work. He is responsible for the editorial direction, strategy, and growth of Gotechtor.

Sourced from GOTECHTOR

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The Battle For Brand Attention On Streaming TV

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By Megan Poinski

Commercials have always been a part of the television viewing experience. But on streaming TV, the ads often feel more disruptive, oddly placed and seemingly too long. There seems to be more of an imperative to skip them altogether—either through paying a premium price for a channel, clicking the “skip” button, or walking away as the ad timer counts down. While this makes for a better viewer experience, what about the brands looking to use this space to promote their products—something they’ve always done through TV.

New ways to get products and brands in front of viewers are emerging in the streaming world. Rembrand is a company that uses AI to find areas in streaming entertainment to add product placement to programs—like on billboards in the background of a scene, or on a table in a home. I talked to Rembrand’s CMO Cory Treffiletti about how product placement and other traditional and emerging strategies are good options for the streaming age. An excerpt from our conversation is later in this newsletter.

Until next time.

This is the published version of Forbes’ CMO newsletter, which offers the latest news for chief marketing officers and other messaging-focused leaders. Click here to get it delivered to your inbox every Wednesday.

By Megan Poinski

Sourced from Forbes

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AI apps take aim at major online shopping problem

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By Aparajita Chatterjee

The purpose of online shopping was to make buying easier, a benefit widely used during the pandemic.

So much so that even after physical stores reopened, retailers continued to invest more in developing their digital businesses.

But that convenience has also caused a new problem.

For many consumers, online shopping now means juggling sales, dozens of open tabs, abandoned carts, promo-code hunting, price comparisons, resale checks, brand newsletters, restock alerts, and social-media ads that may or may not show the product they actually want.

And while this may be a headache for consumers, it translates into new opportunities, especially given the emerging scope of artificial intelligence and agentic commerce.

Retailers such as Amazon and Walmart have already successfully integrated AI shopping agents on their sites, and many other vendors are relying on AI-powered product discovery for exposure.

Bridging the gap further are AI startups such as Phia and The Mall, which are built around a simple consumer frustration.

Shoppers have more online options than ever, but finding the right product at the right price from the right brand has become harder to manage.

That shift could have major implications for retailers as the next stage of online shopping may begin with an AI assistant that already knows what a shopper likes.

AI shopping apps, The Mall, try to solve consumer shopping problem

The Mall, a new app founded by Sreya Halder and Ellie Konsker, aims to recreate the shopping mall experience for the internet age.

Instead of making shoppers jump from one brand website to another, The Mall lets users build a personalized feed from their favourite brands.

Shoppers can follow brands, track sales, get alerts about new arrivals or restocked products, and discover similar items from other retailers.

The idea reflects a broader problem in online retail. Consumers may know where they like to shop, but keeping up with every brand’s website, newsletter, sale calendar, drop, and restock can become overwhelming.

The Mall is trying to put those updates in one place.

According to TechCrunch, the app uses large language models and custom models to label products it pulls into its system, allowing users to search for specific items and drops.

When shoppers are ready to buy, the app opens a browser page inside the app and takes them to the brand’s e-commerce site to complete the purchase.

That matters because The Mall is not trying to be another traditional marketplace. It is trying to become a personalized feed of what shoppers actually want to buy.

“We created The Mall to solve our own problem: always forgetting where to shop from and resorting to the same 5 websites. So we made a solution: one app to save brands from anywhere, get updates when they save sales, new arrivals, or restock popular products, and smart filters to easily discover more. And now we’re making it for you,” said The Mall founders Halder and Konsker.

The app is currently available only for iOS and is free to use.

Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, Co-Founders of Phia Kimberly White / Getty Images

Phoebe Gates’ Phia gets celebrity funding

Phia is attacking the shopping problem from a different angle. The AI shopping app, co-founded by Phoebe Gates (Bill Gates’ daughter) and Sophia Kianni in 2025, helps shoppers compare prices and find alternatives, including resale and second hand options.

If a shopper is about to buy a new item, Phia can surface whether the same or a similar product is available for less elsewhere, similar to the travel app Travago.

That gives the app a clear consumer hook at a time when shoppers remain highly price-sensitive.

It also gives Phia a sustainability angle, since resale can steer consumers toward second hand options instead of buying new.

Phia has also grown quickly.

The company posted on its Instagram page that, within a year, it surpassed 1.5 million users, has partnered with over 9,600 retail brands, and raised a $35.5 million Series A round at a $185 million valuation.

The company also announced a new list of celebrity investors, including Khloe Kardashian, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Jessica Alba, Sydney Sweeney, Paris Holton, and Mindy Kaling, among others.

For consumers, the app promises to do some of the work that shoppers already do manually, including comparing prices, checking resale value, and searching for better alternatives.

Both apps currently serve as discovery tools.

AI could change who controls the shopping journey

For years, retailers have fought to win shoppers’ attention through search results, social media ads, loyalty programs, email lists, and marketplaces.

AI could disrupt that model by shifting more decision-making to a layer between the consumer and the retailer.

PwC describes agentic commerce as a new way of shopping powered by AI agents that can act on a user’s behalf. Unlike a basic chatbot, these tools can browse, compare, and, eventually, initiate purchases based on a shopper’s goals, preferences, and limits.

That could significantly change the retail funnel.

A consumer may not need to search “best work bag,” visit five retailer websites, compare prices, check resale sites, read reviews, and wait for a sale. An AI agent could eventually do much of that work before the shopper ever sees a product page.

McKinsey has described agentic commerce as a major shift in which AI agents anticipate consumer needs, navigate shopping options, negotiate deals, and execute transactions in line with human intent.

The firm estimates that by 2030, agentic commerce could account for up to $1 trillion in orchestrated revenue in the U.S. business-to-consumer retail market.

That is why the trend is not limited to startups.

Amazon is also pushing deeper into AI-powered shopping. AWS recently introduced its Agentic Shopping Assistant for retailers, a solution designed to help companies build their own conversational shopping experiences using their own data, catalogues, business rules, and brand voice.

Amazon said Kate Spade is already using the solution to build an AI gift concierge, while other retailers are testing it.

The move shows how quickly AI shopping is moving from a novelty to a competitive retail tool.

Retailers may have to compete for AI attention

The shift could be helpful for consumers, especially those tired of scrolling through endless products or wondering whether they are getting the best deal.

AI shopping apps could help shoppers compare prices faster, discover smaller brands, avoid missing sales, and make more confident purchases. They could also make online shopping feel more personalized and less fragmented.

But for retailers, the rise of AI shopping agents could create new pressure.

If shoppers rely on AI tools to decide what to buy, retailers may have to optimize not only for Google search and social media algorithms, but also for AI recommendations.

It could also change how retailers think about loyalty.

A shopper may still love a brand, but if an AI assistant finds a similar item for less, available faster, or with better resale value, the consumer may choose the alternative.

It does not mean AI shopping apps will replace retailers’ own websites or stores overnight. For example, final transactions at The Mall and Phia are handled by the retailer or seller, not in the app.

But there is still pressure on retailers to adapt to these shifting circumstances. Placer.ai’s retail outlook found that more than 55% of respondents were confident in brick-and-mortar performance in 2026, while only 20% expressed concern.

At the same time, 44% said they expect agentic AI to increase the share of online retail, and 34% said it could drive broader growth across commerce overall.

So AI isn’t driving shoppers away from stores; it’s just helping determine which stores to visit and which retailer gets the final sale.

The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.

By Aparajita Chatterjee

Sourced from SunHerald

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How TikTok Shop is winning over major brands

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By Melissa Daniels

On this week’s episode of the Modern Retail Podcast, co-hosts Gabriela Barkho and Melissa Daniels are joined by Modern Retail’s platforms reporter, Allison Smith, to dig into why TikTok Shop is becoming a more legitimate sales channel in the eyes of bigger brands.

Less than three years old, TikTok Shop now makes up roughly 20% of all social commerce sales, according to data from eMarketer. The rest of the category is dominated by Meta. Last year, the company drove $500 million in sales during the four-day stretch from Black Friday to Cyber Monday.

In response, more established legacy brands and mid-sized companies are popping up on TikTok Shop. Smith reported this March that sales from big-name brands — those with at least $30 million in annual revenue — increased 97% year-over-year on TikTok Shop.

Here’s a rundown of their conversation.

Affiliate and incentives powering acquisition

To help boost their presence on TikTok Shop and get eyes on their products, some brands are launching affiliate networks that use creators to drive sales. Companies like Portland Leather Goods have marshalled hundreds of fans into their affiliate channel and are seeing it drive first-time customer growth.

TikTok Shop has also deliberately courted companies to join by offering co-branded partnerships where it picks up the share of a major discount or free shipping offer. At one point, it had a program called Project Horizon to incentivize agencies to onboard large brands, driving at least $10 million in annual sales on competing platforms. But as the platform matures, such incentives might be less common.

Small versus big brands

Early successes on TikTok Shop often came from digitally-native startups. And their playbook that relied on UGC, live shopping or flash sales may not be a fit for major multinational companies like Samsung, Disney, Ulta and others that are newer to the platform. They may also not be able to post as frequently or authentically as a founder-led brand can, due to the approvals and processes that corporate marketing typically involves.

But those larger companies may have an edge when it comes to price competition. And they also may see more of a halo effect on their other sales channels if they’re showing up in front of TikTok Shop buyers who aren’t quite ready to add to cart.

Discovery and awareness over retention

Despite the success any brands are seeing, the trio discusses how TikTok Shop won’t be for everybody. Companies are still losing margin by selling on a different platform, meaning they have to make sure they can handle a potential hit. There’s also the question of whether TikTok Shop sales could cannibalize the growth they’re seeing in other channels, whether direct-to-consumer or Amazon.

Still, there’s evidence that TikTok Shop is growing at a rate that requires brands to pay attention and determine if it plays a role in their customer journey. EMarketer’s research from December also shows that TikTok Shop sales are poised to surpass $20 billion in 2026 and reach over $30 billion in 2028. The podcast concludes with a discussion on whether it’s a “must-have” or “nice-to-have.” As with many retail choices, the answer depends on the brand’s unique positioning

By Melissa Daniels

Sourced from Modern Retail

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People Don’t Want Ads, So Stop Making Them

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By Adam Salacuse

Before your next media plan, brief or campaign, sit with this question: Does this feel like something people will actually want?

If the honest answer is no—if it feels like an interruption—you’re throwing good money after bad. There’s a reason an entire ecosystem exists to avoid ads. Even the platforms you’re sending your money to know this. It’s why YouTube put a skip button on your ad.

I’ve spent 20-plus years running an experiential marketing agency that has helped brands show up in the real world in ways people actually embrace. And the single biggest shift I’ve seen is that interruptive advertising has stopped working the way it used to.

The data backs it up. Kantar’s Media Reactions 2025 research found that campaigns are seven times more impactful when the audience is receptive. It also found that in-person sponsored events rank as the second most preferred ad environment among consumers. ​

Here’s what you need to hear: The same people skipping your pre-roll ad may stop for a sample, line up for a pop-up and talk about your brand at dinner—unprompted—if you show up in a way that doesn’t feel like you’re targeting them.

The resistance isn’t to brands. It’s to the feeling of being sold to. Here’s what actually works instead.​

Product Sampling: Give Before You Ask

In my experience, no format earns more genuine goodwill per dollar than putting your actual product into someone’s hands. The message is honest in a way most paid media isn’t: Try it. Decide for yourself.

Your customer can’t smell, taste or feel your product through a pre-roll ad. For household, beauty and fragrance brands, nothing converts faster than letting someone experience it on the spot.​

My team deploys sampling bikes, branded carts and street teams to put clients’ products into people’s hands—in the neighbourhoods, at the events and within the moments where their audiences already are.​

For many consumer packaged goods brands, sampling shouldn’t be a support mechanic. It should be the lead.​

Live Event Partnerships: Show Up Where Excitement Lives

The best festival activations don’t feel like marketing—they feel like your brand is part of the culture. When your brand embeds itself inside a moment people already love, it stops being an advertiser and starts being part of the experience. That’s a position your media buy can’t replicate.

At a festival, you can tap into crowds of 15,000-plus people a day who are already primed for discovery. Just make sure you design something that feels native to the festival’s energy, not bolted onto it. A well-executed activation inspires user-generated content, earned media and cultural credibility that compounds long after the event ends​.

​Community Events: Be Useful Before Being Visible

A 5K. A school fundraiser. A local arts program. These work not because your logo is large enough, but because your brand is seen helping make something happen that people actually care about.

When people feel like they’re part of something—even briefly—they start identifying with it. That sense of belonging doesn’t just create customers. It creates advocates.​​

Wild Posting: Make The Street Do The Work

When someone walks past your poster on the way to their coffee shop, it feels more grassroots than a billboard—and completely different from anything online. Wild posting informs without interruption. There’s no algorithm deciding whether your audience sees it; there’s no skip button and no scrolling. People encounter it as part of the city itself—as way to keep up with releases, happenings and culture. It doesn’t feel like advertising. It feels like discovery.

Kantar’s Media Reactions 2025 backs this up—real-world ad environments rank well for consumer receptivity.​

​Guerrilla Marketing And Stunts: Make People Stop

The best advertising surprises and delights, earning far more than attention. Think a sidewalk installation that stops someone mid-commute, a statue takeover that earns a double-take and a photo, or a building projection that turns architecture into a canvas. These aren’t interruptions—they’re moments that actually make people’s day, ones they embrace and share.

My team has planned and executed guerrilla marketing campaigns across every major U.S. city for all types of brands, from CPG to B2B. Done right, it’s the most powerful tactic on this list.​

Delivery Vehicles: Make Your Brand Feel In Demand

Wrap your trucks and vans, and drive them through cities. It makes it look like your brand is delivering products to stores, dispatching employees for service calls or doing installations in homes. When we track brand vehicle impressions, they rack up 20,000-plus impressions per day in big cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles—and none of it registers as advertising. It registers in people’s minds as a brand in demand.​

The brands people know and love didn’t interrupt their way to relevance. They earned it. Before your next brief, ask the only question that matters: Is this a welcome addition to people’s lives? If the answer’s no, start over.

Feature image credit: Getty

By Adam Salacuse

COUNCIL POST | Membership (fee-based)

Adam Salacuse is Founder and CEO of experiential marketing agency ALT TERRAIN. Read Adam Salacuse’s full executive profile here.

Find Adam Salacuse on LinkedIn. Visit Adam’s website.

Sourced from Forbes

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Commerce media is hot. Your strategy is still lukewarm.

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By Fluent, Inc

The case for commerce media has been made. Budgets are shifting, narratives are changing and the industry has largely accepted that retail media in its traditional, Retail Media Network (RMN)-centric form — was only ever part of the story. Commerce media represents a fuller picture: a model that connects brands to consumers across a sprawling, high-intent ecosystem that extends well beyond a retailer’s on-site inventory.

The industry has accepted the premise. The execution is where it gets harder.

For most brands and retailers, the honest answer is not yet. The enthusiasm is real. The execution hasn’t caught up. Commerce media has expanded into environments such as appointment platforms, post-purchase moments, financial services ecosystems, non-endemic contexts — that most strategies weren’t designed to reach. The result is a growing gap between where the opportunity lives and where the investment actually goes.

The map has changed. Most strategies are using an old one.

Commerce media’s defining characteristic is proximity to a purchase decision, to a high-intent moment, to first-party data that makes targeting and measurement genuinely meaningful. That proximity isn’t exclusive to the major RMNs. It exists wherever consumers are actively transacting and that universe is significantly larger than the on-site and off-site inventory most retail media plans are built around.

Ticketing platforms where consumers are locked into a high-intent purchase moment. Travel ecosystems where booking confirmations open a window of active planning behaviour. Appointment-based services where recurring transactions create predictable, addressable audiences. Post-purchase environments where ad exposure connects directly to transaction records. Each of these is an expression of the same underlying insight and each represents an opportunity that a digitally-focused RMN playbook wasn’t built to capture.

The brands and retailers winning in this space recognized early that commerce media wasn’t just an expansion of retail media. It was a different way of thinking about where intent lives, how data activates it and what measurable performance actually looks like across a more complex ecosystem.

Where strong commerce media strategies separate from lukewarm ones

Treating RMNs as the strategy, not the starting point. On-site placements and off-site extensions are table stakes in commerce media, not a competitive advantage. Brands that optimize exclusively within that lane are leaving significant reach and performance on the table in environments where their shoppers are already transacting — and where the competition is considerably thinner.

Selling inventory instead of outcomes. Fragmented channel buys produce fragmented results. Brands and retailers that go to market with disconnected inventory offerings give partners no framework for building integrated plans. The ones building durable partnerships are packaging cohesive, full-funnel solutions and making the measurement case that connects media exposure to real business outcomes across every environment in the mix.

Underinvesting in measurement. Measurement is where commerce media programs lose advertiser trust and budget. According to Skai’s 2025 State of Retail Media report, difficulty proving incrementality is the most common reason brands reduce spend, cited by 36% of respondents. The closer media gets to the moment of purchase — wherever that moment occurs — the clearer the connection between exposure and outcome becomes. Those who can demonstrate true incrementality across environments will win a larger and more defensible share of budgets.

Brands have work to do too

Networks can expand the ecosystem. But a genuinely integrated commerce media strategy only delivers when brands show up with an equally integrated approach.

The most persistent failure is organizational. Spend across commerce media environments typically sits with different teams, different KPIs and different agency relationships. The result is disconnected campaigns that happen to involve the same consumer. Aligning ecommerce, brand, shopper and performance teams around shared objectives isn’t a process improvement, it’s a prerequisite for commerce media to work at all.

The second failure is creative. Media built for one environment doesn’t translate automatically to another. Each context has its own consumer mindset, its own moment in the journey, its own definition of relevance. Brands that treat creative as a transferable asset will underperform in every environment it wasn’t designed for which, in an ecosystem as varied as commerce media, is most of them.

The heat is real. Now build something that can handle it.

Commerce media’s growth story is well established. The next chapter belongs to the brands and retailers that move past recognizing the opportunity and start building strategies genuinely capable of operating inside it.

That doesn’t mean building a commerce media network from scratch. The infrastructure, the data connections, the measurement frameworks these are table stakes that the right network partner brings to the relationship. What brands and retailers need to bring is clarity: on objectives, on audiences, on what measurable performance actually looks like across an ecosystem that extends well beyond the RMN.

Commerce media is hot. The brands that will define this next era aren’t just the ones who felt the heat, they’re the ones who found the right partners to help them thrive in it.

Feature image credit: Shutterstock / Zamrznuti Tonovi

By Fluent, Inc

Sourced from Retail Dive

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Marks & Spencer – Uncovering the value of Facebook ads for customer acquisition

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Sourced from The Drum

The British retailer used custom conversions and a conversion lift test to unlock insights about how efficient Facebook ads are at acquiring new customers, and discovered an 11% lift in incremental purchases by net new customers

THEIR STORY

A byword for quality

Founded in 1884 by Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer, Marks & Spencer (M&S) is a major international British retailer of high-quality food, drink and clothing, with 959 stores across the UK, and a significant online presence.

THEIR GOAL

Insight into new customer purchases

M&S wanted to take advantage of Infectious Media’s status as a Facebook Marketing Partner for Agencies, and its access to the latest measurement research initiatives available to premium members—in this case, a net new customer incrementality test.

THEIR SOLUTION

Evolving Facebook measurement for ads

M&S had already worked with Infectious Media on direct response campaigns. For this experiment, the Facebook Marketing Partner created custom events from M&S’s own data to separate new customers from repeat customers. Then, they partnered with Facebook to run a conversion lift test that used these custom conversions.

Thanks to this net new customer incrementality test, M&S gained better insight into online purchases and was able to determine how many incremental online purchases were made overall, along with additional insight into whether or not the customer was new or repeat. By quantifying the number of new customers, it found that existing customers were a stronger source of new purchases than the brand had previously realised. The test results also showed that its net new customers were in a younger age range, which helped validate its strategy to expand its target audience to attract new customers.

THEIR SUCCESS

Top marks

The lift test results showed a strong overall return on ad spend, helped M&S quantify new customers, and also shed light on a new customer demographic:

– 2.6X return on ad spend

– 1.4% lift in incremental purchases by new customers

– 11% of incremental purchases came from new customers

– 5.1% lift in purchases from existing customers

– 2X higher incremental revenue from existing customers than new customers

“Proving the value of social marketing and how best to measure its true performance is an ongoing topic internally, meaning running a study such as this was crucial and allowed us to demonstrate the impact Facebook can have on customer behaviour—specifically its strength in driving new customers. The results from this beta test have since assisted us to change our strategy and secure budget with the sole focus of driving new customers to M&S.”

~Liv O’Neill Paid Media Manager, M&S

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