Everyone’s got an opinion about commerce media right now.

Some say it’s the future — the next great frontier where every purchase is a data signal and every click is an ad impression waiting to happen.

Some say it’s just programmatic with a prettier dashboard — an expensive way to make old ideas sound new again.

And some will tell you it’s salvation — that retailers becoming media companies is how the open web survives Google’s slow extinction.

They might all be right. And they might all be full of it.

That’s where we come in.

Because here at ADOTAT, our job isn’t to join the hype cycle — it’s to pick up the rock and see what’s crawling underneath.

We talk to the people building it, breaking it, and betting billions on it.

And sometimes, we piss them off. That’s fine. It’s part of the job.

What you’re reading right now — The Commerce Media Wars — is our two-part investigation into a $100 billion illusion that’s reshaping the entire ad industry.

This is Part I: The Pitch — how commerce media became the hottest idea in advertising since “data-driven” stopped meaning anything.

Let’s start with the sales pitch.

Commerce media, we’re told, is the holy grail — a system where you can finally connect every ad dollar to every sale, where attribution isn’t a guess but a gospel.

It’s a nice fantasy. Until you realize that most of what’s being sold isn’t insight — it’s afterglow.

Tom Pachys, CEO of Ex.Co, told me flat out: “This isn’t advertising — it’s monetized checkout data.”
That’s the whole game in one line. We’re no longer in the business of persuading people to buy. We’re in the business of selling proof that they already did.

Riyaad Edo of WPP Media took it further: “Amazon works because it can shape intent in real time. It owns the high-frequency, high-fidelity signals that precede purchase. Everyone else? They’re reselling repackaged settlement truth.”

He’s right. What used to be creativity is now commerce cosplay — spreadsheets dressed as storytelling.

The “closed loop” everyone’s worshipping isn’t closing at all. It’s coiling tighter around logic until common sense suffocates.

Commerce media has become advertising’s new religion — complete with its own rituals, hymns, and high priests.

The ritual is the dashboard.
The hymn is “data-driven.”
And the prayer goes something like this: “Please, let the numbers look good in Q4.”

Every marketing exec I talk to swears they’ve found the truth — the clean, verifiable, spreadsheet-shaped truth of “closed-loop measurement.”

Except the truth, inconveniently, is that the loop doesn’t close.

It sells the illusion of certainty while quietly robbing advertising of its soul.

Then there’s Johan Pålsson at Vudoo, one of the few people who sounds like he’s trying to drag the business back to its senses.
“Commerce media isn’t the monetization of receipts,” he told me. “It’s the redefinition of advertising itself.”

He believes advertising should start earlier — not at the transaction, but at the moment of intent.

“The real opportunity,” he said, “is activating intent the second it sparks — not proving ROI after it’s over.”

I’ll give him this: that idea is seductive.
It’s advertising as telepathy — tapping into curiosity before it becomes consumption.

And maybe he’s right. Or maybe it’s another beautiful illusion — the industry’s way of pretending it still controls human behavior when algorithms and impulse now do.

Skye Frontier of Incremental.com brought up Charlie Munger when we talked about the new measurement economy.

“Show me the incentives,” he said, “and I’ll show you the outcome.”

That’s the thing about commerce media. Retailers swear it’s transparent, but their incentive isn’t truth — it’s throughput.

They make money when advertisers spend, not when campaigns work.

“In every other medium,” Frontier said, “trust came from neutral third parties who didn’t buy or sell ads. Commerce media hasn’t gotten there yet.”

He’s right. The casino is running the audit, and everyone’s acting surprised that the house keeps winning.

Every revolution starts with the promise of simplicity. Then someone adds a login.

Commerce media is now the most complicated thing in marketing — ten dashboards, five clean rooms, three measurement partners, and one compliance officer who cries into their coffee.

Judy Shapiro of EngageSimply called it perfectly: “Adtech’s collapse isn’t coming — it’s already here, disguised as AI.”

Riyaad Edo has his own name for it: “a spreadsheet apocalypse masquerading as innovation.”

They’re both right. Complexity isn’t a bug in the system. It’s the business model.

The more confusing it gets, the more middlemen you need to make it legible.

That’s what this series is about.

Because between the billion-dollar headlines and the Cannes panels, there’s a much uglier story underneath — one about power, control, and what happens when data replaces creativity as the currency of trust.

Some people think commerce media is the savior of the open web.
Others think it’s the final nail in its coffin.

We think it’s time to stop guessing.

Over the next two issues, ADOTAT is going to follow the money, decode the tech, and ask the questions everyone else is too busy selling sponsorships to ask.

We’ll talk to the people building the future — and the ones quietly breaking it.
And if it makes a few executives uncomfortable, good. That’s the job.

This is Part I: The Pitch — how we got here, who’s selling what, and why everyone suddenly wants to be Amazon.
Tomorrow comes Part II: The Reckoning — where the machines start doing the buying, and we find out what happens when the “closed loop” finally closes on us.

Because if no one else will tell the truth about what’s really happening in this industry, we will.
And if that pisses people off — well, that’s kind of the point.

This is the free edition. ADOTAT+ is where we open the black box.

In The Commerce Media Wars: How Everyone With Data Thinks They’re Amazon, we break down:

Because in the end, commerce media isn’t advertising—it’s infrastructure.
Or as Judy Shapiro put it: “The label may be new, but the story isn’t. Commerce media didn’t reinvent advertising—it just reminded us who’s paying for it.”

Dr. Mark Grether, GM of PayPal Ads and the former architect of Uber Ads told us that the future of commerce isn’t about selling things—it’s about monetizing the behavior of selling itself. That’s crazy.

With transaction visibility across 30 million merchants, 400 million consumers, and 25% of global commerce, Grether describes PayPal as “sitting horizontally across the entire buying landscape—seeing what people purchase, where, and in what order.”

Traditional retailers, he explained, “go deep but narrow,” focusing on their own shelves. PayPal, by contrast, “sits across all of them,” offering a panoramic view of how consumers move through the entire commerce ecosystem. “We’re not just a store with ad space,” Grether said. “We’re the ledger that shows how every store performs.”

That horizontal view turns commerce itself into an addressable media layer, shifting focus away from selling goods to selling access to transactional visibility.

Grether thinks the industry has it backward. “Most pitches start with the ad format, then the targeting, then the reporting. We’re flipping it. We start with insight.”

For him, insight is the product—media is simply the activation layer. The pitch begins with what PayPal knows: who’s buying, what they’re buying, when, and in what sequence. Once those signals are mapped, targeting and delivery follow.

Through Honey, PayPal’s browser extension, the company also collects purchase intent—what people are preparing to buy—while PayPal and Venmo capture what they actually spend. “Together, that’s a 360-degree view of what people really do with their money.”

This inversion of the traditional ad model—treating data as an input, not an output—is what Grether believes separates PayPal from the rest of the field.

Asked about what this shift means for brand loyalty, Grether didn’t hesitate. “If the ad works, the business works. Consumers can forgive bad service, but they don’t forgive invisibility.”

It’s a bold admission that redefines value creation. The goal isn’t selling more—it’s monetizing every touchpoint around the sale. “The product isn’t the business anymore,” he said. “The ad inventory is.”

Every checkout, receipt, and offer becomes another monetizable moment—a data-driven micro ad placement disguised as customer engagement.

To Grether, Venmo is one of the most underappreciated media surfaces in existence. What began as a peer-to-peer payment app is now a real-time feed of social intent. “People use Venmo to show their friends what they’re doing,” he said. “Pizza nights, beauty trips, concerts—those behaviors are social signals that tell us what they care about.”

Every emoji becomes data. Every payment becomes an audience segment. “If you’re splitting a pizza tab, that’s a signal Domino’s should already know.”

Together, Venmo, Honey, and PayPal create a commerce graph that merges social, transactional, and behavioral data—a unified layer where the act of buying is as valuable as the product itself.

Grether sees the next evolution as agentic commerce—shopping that happens without shoppers. “We’re bringing the shopping experience to consumers instead of waiting for them to come to us,” he said, describing PayPal’s experiments with AI-driven purchase agents that understand user preferences and act autonomously.

In that world, structured product data will outweigh creative storytelling. “If an AI agent can’t parse your product data, you’re invisible,” he warned. “Clever creative won’t matter if the machine can’t read your inventory.”

It’s a stark prediction: as commerce media becomes increasingly machine-mediated, data integrity replaces brand identity as the key to visibility.

Grether’s playbook reframes the entire definition of commerce media—from “we have ad slots” to “we have the ledger.” The companies that own transaction visibility will soon own advertising itself.

If PayPal’s model succeeds—privacy-safe, DSP-agnostic, globally scalable—commerce media won’t just be a marketing channel anymore. It will be the operating system of the modern economy, where every transaction feeds the next decision, and every dollar spent is another signal waiting to be monetized.

You read the headlines. ADOTAT+ gives you the receipts: who profits, who postures, and where your budget actually performs.

f you’re quoting forecasts, stay free.
If you’re setting budgets—and defending them—upgrade to ADOTAT+