Ayaan Mohamud, Regional Vice President Marketing – APAC, impact.com
Last year, TikTok Shop generated nearly US$19 billion in global sales, just shy of eBay’s US$20.1 billion. That’s a staggering leap for a feature that didn’t even exist two years ago.
It’s a clear sign of how quickly social commerce has matured from an emerging trend to a dominant force. Today, platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have collapsed the traditional customer journey, turning product discovery, influence, and purchase into a single seamless scroll. This shift is transforming how people shop, how creators earn, and how brands connect with their audiences.
The result is massive value for both creators and brands. But another evolution is taking shape – one that extends beyond the feed and deep into retail media.
Retail media has become one of the fastest-growing sectors in advertising. In the wake of the pandemic, retailers have repositioned themselves as media businesses, building powerful ad ecosystems around their digital storefronts. Global retail media spend is forecast to reach US$140 billion this year.
We now live in a world where discovery starts on TikTok and ends at checkout on Amazon.
But while consumers move fluidly between content and commerce, most brands do not. Influencer marketing and retail media are still run in silos, with different teams, KPIs and timelines.
That disconnect is costing real growth.
Creators are changing, and so is their value
Not long ago, working with creators meant paying for a post and measuring likes. But that playbook is fading.
Today’s creators are business operators. They’re launching storefronts, embedding affiliate links, producing long-form reviews and livestreams, and they expect to be paid based on outcomes, not just impressions.
This evolution mirrors how consumers shop. According to research, 42% of consumers now begin product discovery on social or creator-led platforms, using that content as a filter before making a purchase. That shifts creators from being drivers of awareness to active participants in the path-to-purchase journey.
Retail media needs more than ads
Retail media has surged because it sits closest to the point of sale. It offers precision, intent and measurability that traditional advertising can’t match. But what it often lacks is trust.
Most retail media environments are crowded with search listings, display ads and sponsored placements. They’re efficient, but transactional. Creators bring what retail media lacks: context, credibility and persuasion.
When creators are embedded into retail experiences, the effect compounds. Product pages become more informative. Discovery feels personal. Shoppers buy with confidence.
In the US, Best Buy is already showing what this looks like in practice. Its new Creator Program lets influencers build curated storefronts that highlight the tech they actually use, placing trusted voices directly at the point of purchase.
Walmart and Amazon are also leaning into creator-led livestream shopping, borrowing from Asia’s more advanced social commerce playbook. These real-time formats enable creators to demonstrate products, engage audiences directly, and drive instant conversions. It marks a broader shift away from rigid, brand-driven journeys toward more fragmented, creator-led paths
. Earlier this month, Walmart became the first retailer to surpass a $1 trillion market valuation – a milestone driven in part by its ability to anticipate and shape retail trends.
Where Walmart leads, others tend to follow. As discovery continues to shift from search to recommendation, keeping creators close to the point of purchase will become increasingly critical.
Bridging the creator-retail media gap
For most brands, structure is the biggest barrier.
Creator marketing typically sits with social or brand teams, measured on engagement and reach. Retail media is the domain of trade or performance teams, with a focus on ROI and conversion. This internal disconnect fails to reflect how consumers are actually shopping.
Technology hasn’t kept pace either. Managing creator partnerships at scale, tracking their influence on sales, and proving ROI has historically been too hard – until now.
With the right tech in place and a shift in mindset, the gap between creator marketing and retail media is absolutely bridgeable. It starts with three key moves:
Move from placements to partnerships
Creators aren’t ads. They’re collaborators. Long-term relationships built on shared goals and hybrid-performance models deliver better results than one-off campaigns.
Measure the full journey
It’s time to stop chasing vanity metrics. Brands must track how creator content influences everything from discovery to conversion and compensate accordingly.
Integrate content with commerce
Creator content should live where decisions are made: on product pages, within apps, in livestreams, or even in-store. The closer the content is to checkout, the more effective it is.
As creators evolve into media channels and retailers become media owners, it will be brands that bridge the two who will gain far more than those who keep them siloed.
It seems clear that the next big growth opportunity for brands will come from better integration between content and commerce, influence and performance, and creators and retail. Brands that recognise that shift now will be the ones shaping what comes next.