AI could be changing where the shopping journey begins.
At the same time, the rapid growth of retail and commerce media is creating a very different challenge for marketers: complexity.
In Episode 12 of Commerce Media Minute, Shaun looks at what Costco is learning about traffic coming from AI search, why the proliferation of retail media networks is becoming harder for brands and agencies to navigate, and the interesting connection between the two.
Costco is seeing high-converting traffic from AI search
During its latest earnings call, Costco said traffic coming to its website from AI search grew by triple digits for the second quarter in a row.
Even more interesting: Costco CFO Gary Millerchip said AI-search traffic is converting at a higher rate than the other traffic sources Costco tracks.
It’s still early, but it raises an interesting question about where shopping journeys might begin in the future.
Instead of opening a traditional search engine or going directly to a retailer, shoppers can increasingly start with a conversation—describing what they need, asking follow-up questions and narrowing their choices before eventually reaching a retailer.
That could also change the role of product information.
If AI becomes another way consumers discover products, marketers may eventually need to think beyond:
“How do we rank in search?”
and start asking:
“How does our brand show up in the answer?”
Retail media’s growth is creating complexity
While AI could make product discovery simpler for shoppers, retail and commerce media are facing almost the opposite challenge.
There are now more than 200 retail and commerce media networks globally, according to Business Insider’s reporting.
For brands and agencies, that can mean navigating different audience definitions, reporting methodologies, attribution windows and approaches to measurement.
Retail media originally offered a compelling proposition: connect advertising exposure with actual transactions and better understand whether marketing worked.
That promise remains powerful.
But doing it across dozens of networks can become much harder.
After years of adding more networks, more inventory, more data and more ways to reach shoppers, the industry’s next challenge may be:
How do we make all of this easier for marketers to understand?
Shopping gets simpler. Marketing gets harder.
That’s where these two stories connect.
On the consumer side, AI could simplify discovery.
Instead of searching across multiple websites, shoppers may increasingly be able to describe what they’re looking for, have a conversation and receive recommendations.
Behind that increasingly simple experience, however, the marketing ecosystem is becoming more complicated.
More commerce media networks.
More signals.
More measurement systems.
More places where advertising and shopping overlap.
The consumer experience might become easier while the systems marketers use to reach those consumers become harder to navigate.
And that could create another opportunity in commerce media.
Not simply creating more places to advertise—but making the existing ecosystem easier to plan, buy and measure.
The takeaway
If there’s one thing to remember this week, it’s this:
The shopping journey may be getting simpler for consumers, while marketing behind that journey is getting more complicated. The companies that can simplify that complexity could become incredibly important.
Sources & Further Reading
Costco — Q4 2026 Earnings Call
Business Insider — “The $200 billion retail media boom is causing headaches for CMOs”
Digital Commerce 360 — Costco AI traffic and conversion