Platforms built for discovery are being recalibrated for transactions. Youth generations demand it, so publishers and brands need to adapt for it, writes Sarah Lawson Johnston, Managing Director of Global Revenue and Partnerships at Vudoo.
Something has changed in how consumers relate to content. The gap between seeing a product and buying it was once accepted as a given. You’d encounter an item in a social feed or a TV show, feel a flicker of interest, and then open a new tab to search and compare. Eventually you’d either buy or forget. But now, this gap is shrinking because a newer generation of consumers increasingly desires a seamless, more convenient path to purchase, if not expects it.
Whilst not yet a universal feature, being able to ‘add to cart’ at the point of consideration, which is particularly important for Gen Z, caters to this emerging behaviour. Adoption varies considerably across platforms and markets, and some publishers and brands are much further along in facilitating this than others.
The generation that expects more
NielsenIQ projects Gen Z’s spending power will reach $12tn by 2030, and this generation is leading the charge in commerce-first media consumption.
Retailers and brands are already using influencer partnerships and shoppable posts to reach this audience directly within digital environments, and social commerce is becoming a central strategy for those looking to engage Gen Z and drive sales.
What’s interesting here is that despite beginning their shopping journeys online and being heavily influenced by social media, Gen Z’s in-store mass merchandise and grocery purchases account for nearly half of their total spending, making them the most genuinely omnichannel generation yet. They are not choosing between digital and physical. They want both, and they want the path between them to be frictionless.
Platforms are being rebuilt around purchase intent
That pressure is now reshaping how the wider ecosystem thinks about commerce. Platforms built for discovery are being recalibrated for transactions. Take Amazon’s recent expansion of its Shop Direct programme, for example: it now supports third-party product feeds, allowing other merchants to display products in its search results or its AI shopping assistant, Rufus.
Shoppers can then either move over to the retailers’ website to buy or have Amazon agentically make the purchase on their behalf and remain within the site.
This is a retail giant extending its commerce infrastructure beyond its own catalogue and into a broader network of merchant relationships. The direction of travel is clear: if purchase intent is present, the transaction should be possible regardless of which site or environment the consumer started in.
Elsewhere, OpenAI launched Instant Checkout in ChatGPT last year, aiming to let consumers complete purchases natively within the platform.
The company has since moved away from that model, with purchases now shifting to retailer apps connected to ChatGPT rather than completing natively within it. ChatGPT is doubling down on its primary focus of becoming a shopping discovery engine, and it is already having a significant influence on intent.
What this means for publishers
For publishers, all of this creates an interesting and somewhat urgent question – If consumers are increasingly used to acting on inspiration at the moment they feel it, what does that mean for the value of editorial content that isn’t capable of enabling a transaction?
Publishers who have traditionally measured success through reach and engagement are now being asked to demonstrate a clearer connection to commercial outcomes.
That doesn’t mean turning every article into a product listing; instead, it means thinking of commerce as a layer that can sit within content, giving readers the option to act when they’re ready – without disrupting the experience for those who aren’t.
Retail media networks face a related challenge. The inventory retailers own directly will only stretch so far; having built strong commerce data and audience intelligence within their own properties, they are now under pressure to extend that capability to publisher environments where their audiences also spend time. Reaching consumers in premium publisher contexts and within streaming environments requires partnerships built on a shared infrastructure for shoppability.
Awareness-only no longer cuts it
For brands, this fundamentally changes the brief. Campaigns that reach audiences in content environments were once evaluated primarily on attention and brand metrics. As shoppability becomes more common in those same environments, brands can begin to expect measurable outcomes from media investments previously considered awareness-only. This is a meaningful step forward, but it depends on the infrastructure being in place to support it.
The common thread running through all of this is that shoppability is now a shared expectation across multiple platforms: Wherever users are.
Publishers and brands need to build for this as these expectations continue to grow. Media that cannot offer a clear path to transaction when a consumer is ready to act in a moment of inspiration will find it harder to justify its role in the mix.