Boost Q4 Holiday Demand with Commerce Four Actions

Do we honestly believe purchase decisions are linear? In almost every advertiser conversation I’ve had lately, the answer is a clear no. Yet, heading into peak holiday season, so many strategies still treat them that way. Pouring budget exclusively into capturing the last click. 💰 Here’s the reality for this year: consumers spend more cautiously. 🟰 Organic market growth isn't going to carry us across the finish line. So we have to be smarter: create intent early, capture it seamlessly, and protect margins across the full journey. At Google's Rethink Retail event in NYC, Enric Durany (Group Product Manager for Retail Advertiser Experiences) sat down on Decoded to unpack how merchants can adapt. Beyond moving past last-click dependency, winning peak Q4 demand comes down to executing the Commerce Four. Don't let competitors capture the customers you worked hard to attract. Building for the full journey is no longer an experiment—it's how you defend your market share this season. Are your Q4 budgets still heavily tilted toward last-click conversion, or are you actively funding discovery in AI-driven touchpoints? Drop your perspective below, and catch the full Decoded session recording here: https://lnkd.in/p/eACbK596 #RethinkRetail2026 #GoogleCustomerSolutions #FullFunnel

Win the holiday season…in 90 seconds ⏱️ At Rethink Retail 2026, we unpacked how the first AI-powered holiday season is changing consumer behavior. Shoppers aren’t just trying AI; they’re relying on it across Search and YouTube to eliminate the old compromise between speed and confidence. To turn this new curiosity into verified growth, here is how to put the Commerce Four into action: • Product feeds: Enrich your product feed with detailed information and conversational attributes, set up your Brand Profile, and claim Business Agent in Merchant Center. • Data strength: Connect your data sources and maximize signals in Data Manager, upgrade your tag to Google tag gateway, and implement conversion with cart data. • AI campaigns: Adopt Performance Max and AI Max for Search and Shopping, use Demand Gen with feeds, creator partnerships, and checkout links, and set flexible budgets with Smart Bidding and new customer acquisition to unlock profitable growth. • Agentic infrastructure: Evaluate Universal Commerce Protocol for your business and use Google Pay for frictionless payment. Do the Commerce Four today to win the golden quarter. #Rethink2026

Every customer expects a different experience - whether someone is scrolling deals from the couch, or a shopper picking out an outfit in-store. One-size-fits-all marketing can't keep up with any of it. Customer behavior, business rules, performance data: most teams have all three, scattered across tools that don't talk to each other. Xenia connects them - turning that data into more personalized journeys, real experiments, and decisions made in real time, across the tools you already run. The result: fewer missed conversions, recovered revenue, more relevant experiences for every customer. No manual guesswork - just smarter decisions, with a human still approving what goes live. Xenia: the AI marketer for modern commerce. #AIMarketing #Ecommerce #Personalization #MarTech #CustomerExperience #XeniaMartech

A great collection can launch with all the right ingredients, the product, the campaign, the influencer, the excitement. But what happens when the product data isn’t ready? Missing sizes. Incomplete attributes. Missing images. Or only part of the collection making it online. These may seem like small operational issues, but they can directly impact product discovery, customer experience, and ultimately sales. Retail is still full of manual processes where these gaps can happen. AI can help automate and connect product information, reducing errors and making sure the full collection is ready to be discovered. Creating a great collection is important. But making sure customers can find it is what turns your products into sales. #ProductData #FashionRetail #RetailAI #Ecommerce

Thrilled to share this thoughtful piece from my colleague Dave and the team here at Escalent Group - with C Space and Hall & Partners. One of the themes that resonated most with me is that the future of retail won't be defined by technology alone. AI-powered personalization is quickly becoming table stakes. The real differentiator will be how brands connect those capabilities to genuine human needs and create experiences that deepen relationships. A few takeaways that stood out: -The purchase journey is becoming increasingly complex, with consumers seeking validation from reviews, content, communities, and AI tools long before they make a purchase. -Experiential retail continues to grow in importance as brands look to create connection, participation, and loyalty beyond the transaction. -Returns, customer service, and other "post-purchase" moments are increasingly becoming relationship-building opportunities rather than operational processes. -Sustainability matters most when it is paired with practical value for the consumer. As someone who spends a lot of time helping brands understand evolving consumer behavior, I particularly appreciated the reminder that staying close to consumers requires more than tracking transactions and metrics. It means understanding the broader context of how people live, think, choose, and engage with brands. Well worth a read for anyone thinking about the future of retail, sports marketing, and consumer experience. https://lnkd.in/guV8_iKB #Retail #ConsumerInsights #CustomerExperience #BrandStrategy #SportsMarketing #AI #RetailInnovation

Physical stores remain at the heart of the #retail experience, but the way retailers understand and engage shoppers is rapidly evolving. Santhosh Subramaniam explores how #AI and #computervision are helping retailers move beyond transactional data to gain real-time visibility into shopper behavior, deliver more contextual experiences, and build intelligent stores that continuously adapt to customer needs. As consumer expectations for personalization continue to rise, the ability to bridge digital intelligence with in-store experiences will be a key differentiator for retailers looking to drive growth and loyalty. Read more: shortner.infy.com/oWDZ2 #ConsumerNext #RetailAI #CustomerExperience #DigitalTransformation

The State of Ecommerce 2026 is out. And what's clear is that the consumer journey is more complex than ever. → Shoppers have more ways to discover products. → AI is entering the journey without replacing search. → Marketplaces are building their own AI discovery layers. → Assortments keep expanding, but attention doesn't always follow. → And the categories driving growth differ significantly from one market to another. We looked across markets, categories, retailers and shopper journeys to understand what's actually changing. Over the next few weeks, I'll share some more findings here. If you want access to all the data right away, download the State of Ecommerce 2026 report. Link in the comments. I'd love to hear what surprises you most. #StateOfEcommerce #Ecommerce #DigitalCommerce

Too many choices can slow shoppers down. The right comparison can move them closer to buying. Growmerce AI helps shoppers compare products side by side, understand key differences, ask follow-up questions, and get recommendations based on what they actually need. With natural-language filters, product comparison, personalized recommendations, and conversational shopping, product discovery becomes simpler and buying decisions becomes easier. Because better choices create more confident shoppers and more confident shoppers convert better. 👉 Help your customers compare less, decide faster, and buy with confidence. #Growmerce #Ecommerce #AISearch #ProductDiscovery #ConversationalCommerce

The VML Future Shopper Report 2026 is here! A great report to understand where shopper behavior is heading, how to play and where to win next. One finding particularly resonates with me: the linear funnel has dissolved. Consumers now move across search, marketplaces, social, stores and emerging AI platforms throughout their journey. For brands, winning increasingly means connecting those touchpoints rather than optimizing them in isolation. Download the full report here: https://lnkd.in/eG_mNgZ3 #VML #WPP Commerce

AI is changing how people discover products, and I think the bigger conversation now is about what brands need to change behind the scenes to keep up.   I’ll be at Amplify Agentic Commerce Live in London on 22ⁿᵈ September, joining retail and commerce leaders to talk about what this looks like in practice.   If you’re going to be at Amplify, feel free to message me or book a time to meet. It would be good to catch up and talk about what you’re seeing in this space.   #AgenticCommerce #RetailTechnology #AmplifyAgenticCommerceLive