Retail Media in the Age of Voice Commerce
Voice commerce and AI assistants are transforming purchase decisions. Recommendations increasingly come from a dialogue instead of search results. Brands need to ask themselves how they can remain visible when agents are selecting products.
The retail media model that used to work – and its limits
Sponsored products. Display ads. Keyword bidding. In the past, retail media worked because companies could pinpoint the moment when the customer is ready to buy and place ads with a targeted approach. Someone is searching; a brand appears. That was the logic, and it paid off.
For a long time, retail media was about visibility. Whoever was present at the right moment had a good chance of winning the sale.
But this logic is faltering with the rise of AI shopping. The moment when purchase decisions are made is shifting and – more importantly – is increasingly mediated by systems and conversational commerce. Virtual shopping assistants and voice interfaces now stand between users and offerings; they interpret needs and preselect suitable products. This means that visibility is no longer achieved simply by appearing in the search results. Instead, it’s about being present in the answers provided by these AI shopping assistants. And with the advent of voice commerce, this trend is becoming even more pronounced: The shopping assistant that gets asked makes the decision. And it decides which brands will be included in the AI recommendations.
Voice commerce: Now the customer journey speaks
It is becoming more and more unusual for users to enter specific search terms. Instead, they formulate entire questions – using voice or in a dialogue with an AI-powered assistant. With Rufus, Amazon has integrated a shopping assistant into its app and website that can compare products and make recommendations. Zalando advises customers on outfits based on the occasion, fit, and budget. Google increasingly answers product searches directly with AI overviews and provides product recommendations before the user even clicks on a retailer’s website.
Yet voice commerce is just a part of a bigger trend. Growing numbers of customers are having conversations with systems that provide advice, compare offers, and give recommendations. They’re no longer searching exclusively for products. Instead, they describe situations, problems, and desires.
To take a few examples, if you ask about a suitable car seat while you’re driving, are looking for a food processor while you’re cooking, or ask a voice assistant for running shoe recommendations, you don’t expect a list with ten links. You expect a specific answer.
This shift is also changing the role of retail media. Visibility is no longer created by appearing in the search results or on the product page. It’s created when recommendations are provided.
The new conversational commerce: What customers reveal to AI shopping assistants
A customer who speaks shares more information than one who types. “Men’s running shoes, size 10.5” is an intent signal. “I’m running my first half-marathon. My knees sometimes give me problems. My budget’s about 130 dollars,” is a profile – with brand affinity, price acceptance, functional requirements, and emotional uncertainties.
How can these signals be leveraged for retail media? OTTO shows how it’s done. Sabine Jünger, Vice President of OTTO Advertising, says:
“AI-powered shopping experiences such as our voice-controlled AI assistants are shifting the relevant moment. It’s no longer just about being visible on the digital shelves. In a conversation, the context emerges much earlier: What does the individual want to achieve, what have they ruled out, and where do they need certainty? This is exactly the kind of information that retail media will need to pick up on going forward. As a result, the diversity and depth of signals is increasing – which means we can present even more relevant offerings.”
Retail media needs to be reimagined
Any marketer today who is still focusing exclusively on banners, sponsored listings, and conventional keyword targeting is optimizing for a customer journey that is increasingly rare. That doesn’t mean that everything marketers have been doing up until now is wrong. But it’s no longer enough.
In voice commerce, attention operates in a different way. Interruptions don’t work. What does work: providing the right recommendation at the right moment in the conversation. Advertising that feels like an answer and not like a distraction.
For brands, this means one thing: The mechanics of retail media are changing. Which advert appears next to a search result will no longer be the sole decisive factor. Instead, it will come down to which product an AI shopping assistant recommends when someone asks for a solution.
As a consequence, different factors than those that previously applied are becoming more important. Product information needs to be completer and more precise. Characteristics, usage scenarios, and benefits need to be described in a way that AI-powered assistants can understand and incorporate into recommendations. Anyone who is still primarily optimizing for keywords will need to think more about context in the future.
Measuring success is also becoming more complicated. When purchase decisions are already being prepared in a conversation with a virtual shopping assistant, conventional metrics such as clicks or impressions alone are insufficient. Retailers and brands will need to find new ways to evaluate influence and relevance throughout the new customer journey in conversational commerce.
Platforms with strong first-party data have a clear advantage when it comes to AI shopping. Purchase history, preference profiles, and returns behavior are becoming even more valuable because this information helps translate the needs expressed into suitable offerings in real time. Those with access to the relevant data can understand what customers are looking for more precisely, which enables better-targeted recommendations. As a result, context is increasingly emerging as a competitive advantage.
Voice commerce: The questions the industry needs to answer now
The direction is clear. But the details are still uncertain – and they are what ultimately counts.
How will advertising content be identified in conversational flows without compromising trust? Which KPIs will replace click-through rate and ROAS if conversions no longer come from clicks but from continued conversations? And how can companies develop brand messages when their placement can no longer be controlled and they have to be generated dynamically in response to individual statements?
The changes that these questions mark are just the beginning of the transformation of ecommerce. After all, the more AI intervenes in the customer journey, the more important the question of how companies are deploying and scaling these systems intelligently becomes. The technologies alone will not decide who succeeds. Instead, it will come down to the added value that they create for customers. This goes to the very heart of “Scaling Intelligence,” which has been chosen as the motto for this year’s edition of DMEXCO.
Voice commerce: What’s in store for brands and retailers now
Voice commerce and AI shopping assistants are still in their early days. At the same time, platforms are already investing heavily in new forms of product search and shopping assistance.
For brands and retailers, the crucial question is set to be how they will maintain their visibility in these new environments. After all, when recommendations are increasingly provided in response to a conversation with a virtual shopping assistant, the rules of retail media will also have to change.
Retail media, voice commerce, scaling intelligence – these and other topics will be the focus at DMEXCO 2026. Get your ticket now and be there when the industry sets the course for the years ahead.
