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The digital advertising landscape is experiencing a massive shift. For years, Retail Media Networks (RMNs) have been the fastest-growing segment in digital advertising, offering brands direct access to consumers at the exact moment of purchase. However, retail media has historically faced a significant bottleneck: onsite digital real estate is inherently limited. There are only so many sponsored product listings a retailer can display on its homepage or search results pages before the user experience begins to degrade. To overcome this limitation, the industry is moving offsite. Google’s latest update directly addresses this evolution. Brands can now leverage valuable retailer first-party data to run Demand Gen campaigns across YouTube, Google Discover, and Gmail directly through the Commerce Media Suite. This integration represents a major expansion for commerce media, allowing brands to find and convert high-intent shoppers far beyond traditional retail websites while retaining the data-driven targeting and closed-loop measurement that make retail media so lucrative. The Evolution of Commerce Media: Breaking the Onsite Barrier To understand the importance of this integration, it is helpful to look at how retail media has evolved. In its early stages, retail media was primarily “onsite” advertising. Brands paid to have their products featured at the top of a retailer’s search results or highlighted on specific category pages. While highly effective for capturing bottom-of-the-funnel conversions, this model presented two major challenges: scalability and reach. First, onsite advertising is limited by the retailer’s web traffic. Once a retailer has maximized ad placements on its site, there is no more inventory to sell. Second, onsite ads only reach consumers who are already actively shopping on that specific platform. They do not help brands build awareness or capture consumer interest earlier in the buying journey. By moving offsite, commerce media unlocks virtually limitless inventory. Brands can now use a retailer’s rich, transactional first-party data to target audiences across the open web, social media, and major digital platforms. Google’s integration of Demand Gen into the Commerce Media Suite represents a sophisticated leap forward in this offsite expansion, marrying high-value retail data with some of the most engaging and widely used digital surfaces in the world. What is Google’s Commerce Media Suite? Commerce Media Suite is Google’s dedicated infrastructure designed to help retailers scale their advertising businesses and assist brands in collaborating directly with those retailers. It serves as a secure, privacy-safe bridge between retailer audience insights and Google’s massive advertising ecosystem. Through Commerce Media Suite, retailers can package their first-party data—such as past purchase history, loyalty program status, and in-store shopping behaviors—and make it available to brand partners. Brands can then activate these high-value audiences inside Google’s advertising platforms. The suite ensures that data sharing complies with modern privacy standards, keeping sensitive consumer information secure while still providing advertisers with the granular targeting capabilities they need to drive return on ad spend (ROAS). Integrating Demand Gen: Reaching Shoppers Across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail Demand Gen campaigns are designed for today’s visually driven consumer. They allow advertisers to deploy highly visual, immersive ad creatives across Google’s most popular entertainment and discovery feeds. By bringing Demand Gen into the Commerce Media Suite, Google is giving brands the ability to serve visually compelling ads on several key platforms: YouTube and YouTube Shorts: Video is the dominant medium for product discovery. Advertisers can now run video ads, including vertical Shorts formats, targeted directly at audiences known to purchase specific categories at partner retail stores. Google Discover: Positioned on the homepage of the Google app and mobile browser, Discover serves personalized content feeds to hundreds of millions of users daily. This feed is prime real estate for inspiring impulse purchases and introducing new products to relevant consumers. Gmail: Social and Promotion tabs in Gmail provide a direct, personal line of communication to consumers. Combining this placement with retailer-verified audience data makes promotional offers and product launches highly relevant and less intrusive. This integration ensures that instead of waiting for a consumer to visit a grocery or electronics website to show them an ad, a brand can engage that consumer while they are watching a review video on YouTube, catching up on news on Discover, or checking their email. How the Integration Works: From Data to Purchase The technical and operational workflow of activating Demand Gen through Commerce Media Suite is designed to be streamlined and secure for both retailers and brands. Step 1: Data Curation and Sharing The retailer curates specific, privacy-safe audience segments within the Commerce Media Suite. These segments are built using real-world transactional data—for example, “frequent organic grocery buyers” or “consumers who recently purchased a smart home device.” The retailer then shares these segments with selected brand partners within the platform. Step 2: Campaign Configuration The brand design team uploads high-quality, visually engaging assets (such as lifestyle videos, product carousels, or high-resolution images) to their Demand Gen campaign. They select the retailer’s shared audience segments as their primary targeting parameters. Step 3: AI-Powered Delivery and Optimization Once the campaign is live, Google’s advanced machine learning models take over. Google AI analyzes real-time signals to determine the optimal placement, time, and creative format to present to each user within the targeted audience. The AI continuously optimizes delivery to drive maximum conversions, ensuring the ad budget is spent on users most likely to take action. Step 4: Closed-Loop Attribution One of the biggest hurdles in digital advertising has always been connecting online ad views to final purchase decisions, especially when those purchases happen on a third-party retailer’s site or physical store. By integrating Demand Gen with Commerce Media Suite, Google provides closed-loop reporting. The platform matches ad exposure data with the retailer’s sales data, giving brands precise metrics on how many sales—both online and offline—were directly generated by their YouTube, Discover, and Gmail campaigns. The Post-Cookie Advantage: Why First-Party Data is the Ultimate Asset The timing of this integration is highly strategic. As third-party cookies continue to phase out and privacy regulations tighten globally, traditional digital targeting methods are losing their efficacy. Advertisers

The Next Frontier in Retail Media Networks Retail Media Networks (RMNs) have spent the last few years establishing themselves as the third great wave of digital advertising. First came search, then social, and now commerce. Driven by the rapid decline of third-party cookies and the unmatched value of first-party purchase data, retailers have transformed their digital storefronts into high-yield advertising platforms. However, traditional retail media has long faced a structural limitation: it was primarily confined to the retailer’s own digital footprint. Brands could reach consumers while they were actively browsing a retail site, but once those consumers left the online store, the closed-loop targeting and attribution loop was broken. Google is directly addressing this limitation. Through a major update to its Commerce Media Suite, brands can now activate retailer first-party data to run Demand Gen campaigns across Google’s most engaging visual surfaces, including YouTube, Discover, and Gmail. This integration marks a massive shift, moving commerce media past the boundaries of onsite retail environments and placing it directly into the spaces where consumers discover, watch, and interact daily. Understanding Commerce Media Suite and Demand Gen To grasp the significance of this expansion, it helps to understand how Google’s advertising ecosystem is evolving to support retail partnerships. Google’s Commerce Media Suite is a dedicated technology framework designed to help retailers monetize their first-party audience data while giving brand advertisers the tools they need to execute and measure high-impact campaigns. Historically, these efforts focused on search-based or onsite placements. On the other side of the equation is Demand Gen. Launched to succeed Discovery campaigns, Demand Gen is Google’s AI-powered campaign type designed specifically for visual, social-first environments. It leverages highly immersive creative formats—such as YouTube Shorts, YouTube In-Stream, Google Discover feeds, and Gmail—to capture consumer attention when they are open to discovering new products. By integrating Demand Gen into the Commerce Media Suite, Google is bridging the gap between high-intent retail audience data and high-funnel visual storytelling. Advertisers are no longer forced to choose between the scale of social-style video platforms and the precise intent signals of retail purchase histories. Now, they can combine both. How the Integration Works Under the Hood The mechanics of this integration rely on secure, privacy-compliant data sharing and advanced machine learning. The workflow follows a clear, multi-step process that benefits retailers, brands, and consumers alike: 1. Audience Enablement Retailers securely share their valuable first-party audience segments—such as loyalty club members, past purchasers of specific product categories, or lapsed buyers—through the Commerce Media Suite framework. This data sharing is built to comply with modern privacy regulations, ensuring consumer identity is protected throughout the process. 2. Multi-Channel Campaign Activation Brand advertisers select these retailer-defined audiences and use them as the targeting foundation for their Demand Gen campaigns. Instead of relying on broad demographic targeting or legacy interest segments, a brand selling organic pet food can target users who have recently purchased premium pet supplies at a specific retail partner. 3. AI-Driven Creative Optimization Once the campaign is live, Google AI takes over to optimize delivery. It analyzes real-time engagement signals across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail to determine which creative assets (such as a 15-second YouTube Shorts video or an interactive image carousel in Discover) will perform best for each specific user segment. This ensures that the message matches the user’s current mindset and context. 4. Closed-Loop Measurement and Attribution The loop is closed when ad exposures are mapped directly back to transaction data from the retailer. If a consumer views a Demand Gen ad on YouTube and subsequently purchases the advertised item from the retailer’s website or physical store, the system attributes the sale back to the ad. This gives brands clear visibility into how their upper-funnel media spend influences lower-funnel sales outcomes. Key Benefits for Brands and Advertisers This integration provides distinct advantages to brand marketers, particularly those in the consumer packaged goods (CPG), electronics, and apparel sectors where margin pressure and attribution accuracy are paramount. Reaching High-Intent Shoppers at Scale Onsite retail media inventory is naturally limited by the retailer’s web traffic. Once a shopper leaves the store’s site, the brand’s direct line of communication is lost. By opening up Google’s inventory—which reaches billions of monthly active users across YouTube, Gmail, and Discover—brands can engage with highly relevant audiences at scale, wherever they happen to be online. Optimizing for Real Business Outcomes with Google AI Rather than optimizing for vanity metrics like impressions or clicks, Demand Gen campaigns powered by the Commerce Media Suite optimize for conversions, leads, and direct sales. Google’s machine learning models utilize historical performance and real-time signals to ensure that budgets are allocated to the placements and audiences most likely to convert. Simplifying the Advertiser Workflow Operating across multiple retail media networks can be highly fragmented, requiring unique workflows, creative assets, and measurement tools for every retail partner. This integration provides a unified, streamlined framework. Brands can manage their creative assets and audience targeting within a familiar Google environment, drastically reducing operational friction. Advanced Attribution and Measurement One of the persistent pain points of digital marketing is “last-click” bias, which disproportionately credits lower-funnel search ads while ignoring the visual ads that drove initial interest. With this integration, brands can clearly see how visual story formats on YouTube and Discover nurture consumers toward eventual checkout, providing a more accurate understanding of the customer journey. The Strategic Shift in Digital Advertising The introduction of Demand Gen into the Commerce Media Suite represents a crucial step in the evolution of digital marketing. We are moving away from isolated, siloed advertising channels and toward a unified, identity-safe commerce ecosystem. As third-party cookies continue to phase out across various web browsers, the industry’s reliance on first-party data has reached a critical point. Retailers sit on some of the richest first-party datasets in existence: real purchase histories, brand loyalty metrics, and category affinity signals. However, monetization is only truly successful if retailers can offer brands scale. By collaborating with Google, retailers are effectively transforming their business models. They

The landscape of retail advertising is undergoing a massive transformation. For years, retail media networks (RMNs) have been the crown jewel of digital marketing, offering brands direct access to shoppers at the point of sale. However, as the digital ecosystem prepares for a future defined by privacy regulations and the depreciation of third-party cookies, the physical boundaries of retailer-owned websites have become a bottleneck. Brands need greater scale, and retailers want to monetize their highly valuable first-party audience data beyond their own virtual storefronts. Google has addressed this industry-wide challenge with a major upgrade to its advertising ecosystem. By integrating Demand Gen campaigns directly into its Commerce Media Suite, Google is bridging the gap between high-intent retail audience data and the massive reach of its most popular, engaging consumer platforms: YouTube, Google Discover, and Gmail. This milestone update represents a major leap forward for off-site retail media, allowing advertisers to find prospective customers where they spend their leisure time online, while still leveraging the precise targeting power of retailer purchase history. The Evolution of Commerce Media To fully appreciate the significance of this integration, it is important to understand the trajectory of commerce media. Initially, retail media was primarily on-site. Brands purchased sponsored product listings, homepage banners, and display ads directly on e-commerce platforms like Amazon, Walmart, or Target. While highly effective for capturing bottom-of-funnel conversions, on-site retail media has a natural ceiling: it only reaches consumers who are already visiting the retailer’s website with immediate intent to buy. Off-site commerce media breaks through these limitations. It allows brands to use a retailer’s rich, deterministic first-party data—such as past purchase behavior, loyalty program status, and real-time search queries on retail sites—to target users across the broader web. By moving off-site, brands can engage consumers earlier in the buying journey, building brand awareness and shaping consideration before a shopper even arrives at a checkout page. With Google’s new integration, this off-site strategy becomes significantly more powerful. Advertisers are no longer limited to standard programmatic display banners. Instead, they can run visually compelling, high-impact campaigns across Google’s most premium, high-traffic properties. What is Google Commerce Media Suite? Google Commerce Media Suite is a dedicated technology solution designed to help retailers build, manage, and scale their own retail media networks. It provides the infrastructure necessary for retailers to securely share their valuable first-party audience data with brand partners, enabling collaborative advertising campaigns that benefit both parties. Through the Commerce Media Suite, retailers can monetize their digital assets and data footprints, turning their audience insights into a high-margin revenue stream. Brands, in turn, gain access to highly qualified customer segments that they cannot find anywhere else. The addition of Google’s Demand Gen inventory to this suite marks a pivotal moment, transforming how these collaborative campaigns are planned, executed, and measured. Understanding Demand Gen Campaigns Google introduced Demand Gen campaigns to help social and visual-first marketers find and convert consumers through immersive, creative storytelling. Unlike traditional search or shopping ads, which rely heavily on text and product feeds, Demand Gen is built for visual engagement. It operates across several key Google touchpoints: YouTube Shorts: The rapidly growing short-form video feed that captures billions of views daily. YouTube In-Stream and Feed Ads: Highly engaging video placements that reach users while they consume content from their favorite creators. Google Discover: A highly personalized content feed on mobile devices where users go to find inspiration, news, and new interests. Gmail: The promotions and social tabs of one of the world’s most widely used email services, reaching users in a focused environment. By default, Demand Gen campaigns leverage Google AI to optimize targeting, creative assets, and bidding strategies to maximize conversions. By integrating this capability into the Commerce Media Suite, advertisers can now fuel Google’s optimization algorithms with actual retail purchase data, resulting in highly effective, visually stunning ad campaigns. How the Demand Gen and Commerce Media Suite Integration Works The integration of Demand Gen into the Commerce Media Suite creates a seamless workflow that protects user privacy while maximizing ad performance. The process relies on a collaborative, data-secure framework between retailers, brands, and Google’s advertising technology: 1. Secure First-Party Data Activation Retailers upload and segment their consented first-party customer data within the Commerce Media Suite. This data can include loyalty program member lists, frequent purchasers of specific product categories, or users who have demonstrated high-intent actions on the retailer’s app. This data is processed securely to protect consumer privacy. 2. Brand Campaign Creation Brand advertisers gain access to these curated retailer audience segments directly within their campaign creation workflows. They can build Demand Gen campaigns featuring tailored video assets, carousel ads, or single-image creatives that align with the interests of these specific shopper segments. 3. AI-Powered Optimization Once the campaign is live, Google AI takes over to optimize delivery. It analyzes real-time contextual signals across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail to determine the optimal time, placement, and creative format to present to each user. By combining retailer first-party data with Google’s predictive AI, the system serves ads to the shoppers most likely to take action. 4. Closed-Loop Measurement and Attribution One of the most valuable aspects of this integration is the ability to link ad exposure to actual sales outcomes. Because the campaign is tied to the retailer’s data ecosystem, brands can track whether a user who viewed a YouTube Shorts ad or clicked a Discover promotion ultimately purchased the product on the retailer’s website or app. This closed-loop reporting provides unprecedented transparency into return on ad spend (ROAS). Key Benefits for Brands and Retailers The expansion of Commerce Media Suite to support Demand Gen inventory offers a variety of strategic advantages for everyone involved in the digital commerce ecosystem. For Brand Advertisers: Unprecedented Scale with Precision: Brands can scale their reach to millions of users on YouTube and Gmail without sacrificing the targeting precision that only retailer transaction data can provide. Upper and Mid-Funnel Engagement: Instead of competing solely at the point of purchase, brands can capture

Commerce media expands beyond retail sites with Demand Gen integration The retail media landscape is undergoing a massive paradigm shift. For years, Retail Media Networks (RMNs) have been the darlings of the digital advertising world, offering brands direct access to consumers at the digital point of sale. However, traditional onsite retail media has always faced a fundamental constraint: inventory is limited by the amount of traffic a retailer’s own website or app receives. Brands want to target high-intent shoppers even when those shoppers are browsing elsewhere on the web. Google is addressing this limitation by expanding its Commerce Media Suite to support Demand Gen campaigns. This integration allows brands to leverage a retailer’s highly valuable first-party audience data to launch highly visual, AI-driven campaigns across Google’s most popular consumer-facing platforms, including YouTube, Google Discover, and Gmail. By moving beyond traditional onsite placements, this update marks a major milestone in the evolution of offsite commerce media. The Evolution of Commerce Media: Moving Offsite To understand the significance of this update, it is helpful to look at how retail media has evolved over the past decade. The first wave of retail media focused almost exclusively on “onsite” monetization. Retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Target built multi-billion-dollar ad businesses by selling sponsored product listings and banner ads directly on their e-commerce storefronts. While onsite ads are highly effective because they capture shoppers at the very bottom of the purchase funnel, they have built-in limitations: Traffic Caps: Retail sites naturally receive less daily traffic than major social networks, search engines, or video platforms. Funnel Limitations: Onsite ads are excellent for conversion, but they are less effective for mid-funnel consideration and top-of-funnel brand awareness. Ad Fatigue: Overloading e-commerce product detail pages with ads can degrade the user shopping experience. This led to the second wave of retail media: offsite expansion. Through offsite commerce media, retailers act as data providers, allowing brands to use secure, privacy-compliant first-party shopper data to target audiences across the open web and major programmatic platforms. Google’s new integration of Demand Gen into the Commerce Media Suite represents a sophisticated leap forward in this offsite evolution. What is Google Commerce Media Suite? Google’s Commerce Media Suite is a technology framework designed to help retailers scale their advertising businesses and collaborate more effectively with brand partners. It provides a secure environment where retailers can share their rich first-party data—such as past purchase history, loyalty card information, and product interest—without compromising user privacy or violating data protection regulations. By using the Commerce Media Suite, brands can access these highly qualified audience segments to run co-branded or brand-specific campaigns. Up until now, these campaigns were largely restricted to standard programmatic display and search formats. The integration of Demand Gen inventory completely changes the equation by unlocking Google’s most engaging visual surfaces. Unlocking the Power of Demand Gen Campaigns Demand Gen is Google’s visual-first, AI-powered campaign type designed specifically for modern social and video-centric consumer behavior. It was built to help advertisers capture consumer attention during their active discovery phases. Demand Gen campaigns run across a unique set of Google touchpoints that collectively reach billions of active users daily: YouTube and YouTube Shorts As the world’s largest video-sharing platform, YouTube is a primary destination for product research, reviews, and entertainment. YouTube Shorts, Google’s short-form video feed, has seen explosive growth. Demand Gen allows brands to place highly engaging video ads directly within these feeds, capturing the attention of younger, mobile-first shoppers. Google Discover Google Discover is a highly personalized content feed that appears on the homepage of the Google app and on mobile browsers. It curates articles, videos, and products tailored specifically to individual user interests. Placing commerce-focused visual ads here allows brands to intercept consumers who are already in an exploratory, content-consuming mindset. Gmail Gmail remains a staple of daily digital communication. Demand Gen campaigns deliver visually compelling ads to the promotions and social tabs of Gmail, offering a highly personalized, direct-to-inbox experience that feels natural to the user interface. How the Integration Works The integration of Demand Gen into the Commerce Media Suite creates a seamless workflow that benefits retailers, brands, and Google alike. Here is a step-by-step breakdown of how these campaigns function: Step 1: Data Onboarding and Audience Segmentation The retailer begins by onboarding their first-party audience data into the Commerce Media Suite. This data is fully anonymized and categorized into highly valuable audience segments, such as “frequent organic grocery buyers,” “recent electronics purchasers,” or “dorm room decor shoppers.” Step 2: Campaign Activation Brands collaborating with the retailer can access these curated audience segments directly within the Commerce Media Suite interface. Advertisers can then configure their Demand Gen campaigns, uploading rich creative assets including lifestyle imagery, high-definition videos, and YouTube Shorts content. Step 3: Google AI Optimization Once the campaign is live, Google’s advanced machine learning algorithms take over. Google AI analyzes real-time signals across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail to determine the optimal time, placement, and creative format to present to each individual user. The AI optimizes campaign delivery dynamically to drive maximum conversions, sales, and return on ad spend (ROAS) throughout the customer journey. Step 4: Closed-Loop Measurement One of the historical pain points of digital video and social advertising has been attribution. Brands would run beautiful video campaigns but struggle to prove whether those ads actually drove sales at physical or digital retail checkouts. The Commerce Media Suite solves this by connecting ad exposure on Google’s surfaces directly back to the retailer’s purchase data. This closed-loop reporting provides brands with clear visibility into how their digital engagement translates into actual business outcomes. Key Benefits for Brands and Retailers This expansion of the Commerce Media Suite provides distinct advantages for both side of the retail media partnership: For Brands: High-Intent Targeting at Global Scale Brands no longer have to choose between the high-intent targeting of retail media and the massive scale of Google’s visual networks. By marrying the two, brands can reach shoppers who are statistically far more likely to

The digital advertising landscape is undergoing a massive transformation. As third-party cookies phase out and global privacy regulations tighten, enterprise advertisers must find new ways to measure performance, attribute conversions, and target audiences accurately. To solve these challenges, companies are increasingly relying on first-party data, particularly offline conversion events, to feed machine learning algorithms and ad platforms. To streamline this transition, Google has announced a major upgrade to its data infrastructure. The Google Data Manager API has been expanded to support event ingestion across the Google Marketing Platform (GMP). This consolidation represents a significant shift in how enterprise brands, agencies, and ad-tech developers route first-party offline conversions and manage audience matches across Google’s key advertising destinations. With this latest integration, Google is positioning the Data Manager API as the centralized, privacy-safe conduit for all customer data. Below, we explore the technical mechanics of this update, the strategic advantages of unified schemas, the introduction of IP-based matching for Customer Match, and what these changes mean for your marketing workflows. Understanding the Expanded Google Data Manager API Historically, managing offline conversion data within the Google ecosystem was a fragmented process. Advertisers pushing offline data—such as CRM updates, in-store purchases, phone call conversions, or lead status changes—had to build and maintain separate integration pipelines for different platforms. A developer might have had to write distinct codebases to feed conversions into Campaign Manager 360, Search Ads 360, and Google Ads. The updated Data Manager API solves this fragmentation by offering a single, consolidated ingestion layer. Developers can now send offline conversion event data to three critical Google Marketing Platform destinations through a unified interface: Campaign Manager 360 (CM360): Google’s ad server and management system for tracking cross-channel campaigns. Search Ads 360 (SA360): The search management platform used to design, manage, and optimize large-scale search campaigns across various engines. Display & Video 360 (DV360): Google’s demand-side platform (DSP) for programmatic media buying across display, video, audio, and connected TV. By bringing these systems under a single API umbrella, Google simplifies the technical overhead required to build and maintain modern marketing data pipelines. The Power of a Single, Unified Schema For data engineers and marketing technology teams, the introduction of a single schema is the most impactful technical improvement in this release. Previously, sending offline conversions to multiple platforms required mapping data fields to different formats, handling varied authentication protocols, and managing separate API rate limits. The expanded Data Manager API allows advertisers to format their offline conversion data once and route it to multiple destinations simultaneously. A single API call can now securely send conversion signals to Campaign Manager 360, Search Ads 360, and Display & Video 360. This multi-destination routing drastically reduces duplicate data transmission, minimizes the risk of API errors, and ensures that all measurement tools are working with the exact same conversion dataset. Additionally, the API natively supports encrypted user identifiers. Advertisers can safely transmit sensitive customer data—such as email addresses and phone numbers—by hashing them before or during the ingestion process. This ensures compliance with strict data security policies while preserving the ability to match offline actions to online ad exposures. Migrating from Legacy Campaign Manager 360 APIs With this announcement, Google is actively encouraging advertisers currently using the legacy Campaign Manager 360 API for offline conversion uploads to begin their migration to the Data Manager API. The transition is designed to provide greater flexibility, ease of implementation, and long-term support for advanced attribution use cases. Continuing to rely on older, single-purpose APIs introduces technical debt and leaves organizations unprepared for future privacy features. Moving to the Data Manager API ensures your measurement infrastructure is built on Google’s modern privacy-first framework. Advertisers can learn more about configuring their pipelines by visiting the Google Ads Developer documentation, which details the migration steps and payload structures. Upgrading Customer Match with IP-Based Ingestion In tandem with the GMP event ingestion expansion, Google is rolling out an update to Google Ads Customer Match. Advertisers will soon have access to IP-based ingestion support via a newly introduced data block known as the CompositeData field. Traditionally, Customer Match has allowed brands to upload lists of first-party contact information—like emails, phone numbers, and physical mailing addresses—to build custom target audiences across YouTube, Search, Gmail, and the Display Network. The new CompositeData field expands this capability by allowing advertisers to upload customer IP addresses alongside these traditional identifiers. Beginning in Q3 2026, Google will use these IP addresses, combined with corresponding observation timestamps, to improve match rates across Customer Match campaigns. This addition of IP addresses as an identifying signal acts as an extra layer of verification, helping Google’s systems match offline user profiles to active Google accounts with higher precision. How the CompositeData Field Works The CompositeData field acts as a container for advanced identifiers. When configuring your audience uploads, you can pass IP address data linked to specific user events alongside standard contact fields. To maintain user privacy, the API enforces strict protocols regarding how these IP addresses and timestamps are sent and processed. By preparing your CRM schemas to collect and store IP addresses alongside timestamps now, your organization will be ready to leverage the match-rate optimization immediately when it goes live in Q3 2026. Strategic Benefits for Enterprise Advertisers Consolidating your conversion and audience ingestion pipelines under the Data Manager API yields several long-term strategic advantages: 1. Unified Cross-Channel Attribution When different measurement tools receive data from separate pipelines, minor discrepancies in timestamps, deduplication rules, or data formatting can cause major attribution differences. By routing a single, consistent stream of offline events to CM360, SA360, and DV360, you ensure that your programmatic, search, and overall campaign reports remain synchronized. This consistency makes it easier to evaluate cross-channel performance and allocate budgets more accurately. 2. Reduced Engineering Overhead Maintaining separate API integrations for multiple ad platforms is a drain on engineering resources. Whenever an ad platform updates its API version or changes its data requirements, your development team has to adjust multiple codebases. Transitioning to

The retail media landscape is undergoing a massive paradigm shift. For years, Retail Media Networks (RMNs) have been the darlings of the digital advertising world, offering brands a direct line to consumers at the digital point of sale. However, as onsite inventory on e-commerce platforms becomes increasingly crowded and expensive, advertisers are looking for ways to scale their efforts. The solution lies in offsite commerce media—leveraging a retailer’s highly valuable first-party data to reach shoppers across the broader web. Google has taken a significant step forward in this space by expanding its Commerce Media Suite to support Demand Gen campaigns. This new integration allows brands to activate retailer first-party audience data across Google’s most visually engaging, high-reach surfaces, including YouTube, Discover, and Gmail. By bridging the gap between retailer audience intelligence and Google’s massive reach, this update offers a powerful way for brands to drive demand and measure real-world sales outcomes. The Evolution of Commerce Media: Moving Offsite To understand the significance of this integration, it is essential to look at how retail media has evolved. Historically, retail media was confined to “onsite” placements—sponsored product listings, banner ads, and display placements directly on a retailer’s website or mobile app. While onsite retail media is incredibly effective for capturing high-intent shoppers who are already in buying mode, it has inherent limitations in scale. There are only so many search result pages and product detail pages a retailer can monetize before the user experience begins to degrade. Furthermore, onsite ads primarily capture consumers at the very bottom of the marketing funnel. To sustain long-term growth, brands must also influence consumers during the awareness and consideration phases of their shopping journey. This is where offsite retail media comes into play. By utilizing a retailer’s deterministic purchase data to target consumers on external websites, social platforms, and open-web programmatic inventory, brands can engage potential buyers earlier in the customer journey. Google’s latest update accelerates this trend by bringing offsite commerce media directly into its highly engaging Demand Gen ad formats. What is Google Commerce Media Suite? Google Commerce Media Suite is a dedicated technology platform designed to help retailers build, manage, and scale their own retail media networks. It provides the infrastructure necessary for retailers to securely monetize their first-party data and digital real estate, while giving brand advertisers the tools they need to execute and measure highly targeted campaigns. Through this suite, retailers can share their audiences with trusted brand partners in a privacy-safe environment. Brands can then use these audiences to run campaigns that are contextually relevant and highly targeted, ensuring that marketing dollars are spent on the consumers most likely to convert. Understanding Google Demand Gen Campaigns Demand Gen campaigns are designed to help advertisers find and convert consumers using visually rich, multi-format creatives. Operating across YouTube (including Shorts, In-Stream, and Feed), Google Discover, and Gmail, Demand Gen ads reach over three billion monthly active users. Unlike traditional search campaigns that capture existing intent, Demand Gen is built to stimulate new interest. By utilizing immersive video and image assets, these campaigns help brands tell compelling stories and introduce products to consumers while they are browsing their favorite feeds. Combining these visually engaging formats with the precision of retailer first-party data creates a potent combination for modern marketers. How the Demand Gen and Commerce Media Integration Works The integration of Demand Gen into the Commerce Media Suite simplifies a process that was previously fragmented. Here is a step-by-step look at how this collaborative ecosystem operates: Data Sharing: Retailers make their valuable first-party audience data—such as past purchasers, loyalty program members, or frequent category buyers—available through the Commerce Media Suite interface. Campaign Activation: Brand advertisers access these shared retailer audiences directly within their Demand Gen campaign setups. They can then build visually rich ad creatives tailored specifically to these high-value segments. AI-Powered Optimization: Once the campaign is live, Google AI takes over to optimize delivery. The system analyzes real-time signals to show the right creative format to the right user at the optimal time across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail, maximizing conversions and driving sales. Closed-Loop Measurement: Perhaps the most critical step, the integration connects digital engagement with final purchase outcomes. Advertisers can tie their Demand Gen ad exposures directly to actual transaction data from the retailer, offering definitive proof of campaign performance. Key Benefits of the New Integration The expansion of Commerce Media Suite to support Demand Gen inventory offers distinct advantages for both brands and retailers. Here are the primary benefits driving adoption: 1. High-Value Audience Targeting at Scale In an era where third-party cookies are being phased out and privacy regulations are tightening, first-party data is the most valuable asset in digital marketing. Through this integration, brands can leverage deterministic purchase data from retailers to target consumers across Google’s massive global network. This ensures ads are served to highly relevant audiences who have a proven affinity for the brand’s product category. 2. Visually Immersive Storytelling While standard display banners and text ads are useful, they often fail to capture the imagination of modern consumers. Demand Gen campaigns rely on visual storytelling through YouTube Shorts, carousel ads, and high-impact image layouts. This allows brands to showcase their products in action, building emotional connections that drive purchase intent long before a user visits a retail website. 3. AI-Driven Campaign Optimization Google AI is central to the success of Demand Gen. The platform uses machine learning to test different creative combinations, predict customer lifetime value, and bid efficiently for conversions. When paired with high-quality retailer data, Google’s bidding algorithms can find new, highly qualified prospects who mirror the behavior of the retailer’s best customers. 4. Closed-Loop Attribution and Measurable ROI One of the biggest pain points in offsite digital advertising has been attribution. Brands often struggle to prove that an ad shown on an external platform led to a sale on a retailer’s site. The Commerce Media Suite addresses this by connecting digital ad exposure directly to transaction-level data. Advertisers gain full visibility

The digital advertising landscape is undergoing a massive transformation, driven by the rapid rise of retail media networks (RMNs) and the ongoing cookieless transition. Retail media, often dubbed the “third wave” of digital advertising, has traditionally been limited to onsite placements—banner ads, sponsored search results, and featured products on a retailer’s own website or mobile app. However, as these digital storefronts become crowded, brands and retailers are seeking new ways to scale their efforts without compromising the precision of first-party purchase data. Google is addressing this challenge by expanding its Commerce Media Suite to support Demand Gen campaigns. This integration allows brands to leverage a retailer’s highly valuable first-party audience data and run visually rich, AI-powered campaigns across Google’s most popular offsite channels, including YouTube, Google Discover, and Gmail. By bridging the gap between retailer audience insights and Google’s massive visual ecosystem, this update marks a major shift in how commerce media is planned, executed, and measured. The Evolution of Commerce Media: Moving Beyond Onsite Placements To understand the significance of this update, it is essential to look at how retail media has evolved. In its early stages, retail media was highly effective because of its proximity to the point of purchase. Showing a sponsored ad to a user who is actively searching for shampoo on a grocery delivery website yields high conversion rates. However, onsite retail media has two major limitations: scale and funnel depth. First, retail websites do not command the same daily active usage or dwell time as major social networks, video platforms, or search engines. Consumers visit retail sites with specific, transactional intent, leaving when their purchase is complete. Second, onsite placements are primarily bottom-of-the-funnel tactics. They capture existing demand rather than generating new interest or building brand awareness. By moving offsite, commerce media unlocks the upper and middle sections of the marketing funnel. Brands can now use the deterministic purchase data collected by retailers—such as historical purchase frequency, product category affinity, and loyalty program status—to target prospects while they are browsing video content, catching up on news, or managing their emails. This strategy combines the precision of retail media with the reach of traditional digital advertising. What is Google’s Commerce Media Suite? Google’s Commerce Media Suite is a technology framework designed to help retailers build, manage, and scale their own retail media networks. It provides the infrastructure necessary for retailers to securely share their valuable first-party audience data with brand advertisers, without exposing sensitive consumer information or violating privacy regulations. Through the suite, retailers can monetize their digital assets and audience insights, while brands gain access to highly qualified customer segments. Previously, this suite focused primarily on search and display networks. The addition of Demand Gen capabilities changes the dynamic, allowing brands to tell visual stories across Google’s discovery-focused surfaces. Understanding Demand Gen and Its Role in Commerce Demand Gen is Google’s modern, AI-powered campaign type designed to drive action and engagement on highly visual surfaces. It was introduced to replace Discovery campaigns, offering more robust creative options, better audience targeting, and advanced AI optimization. Demand Gen ads run across several key Google environments: YouTube and YouTube Shorts: Engaging video formats that capture user attention in both long-form and short-form feeds. Google Discover: A highly personalized feed on mobile devices that serves news, articles, and videos based on user interests. Gmail: Immersive, interactive promotions served directly in the Social and Promotions tabs of users’ inboxes. Unlike standard search ads, which rely on users typing in specific queries, Demand Gen campaigns focus on visual storytelling. They use high-quality images and video assets to capture attention and spark interest before a user has even actively decided to search for a product. By integrating retail first-party data into this workflow, brands can ensure these highly visual ads are shown to consumers who have a demonstrated history of buying from relevant categories. How the Demand Gen Integration Works The integration of Demand Gen into the Commerce Media Suite establishes a collaborative, closed-loop workflow between retailers, brands, and Google’s advertising technology: 1. Data Collaboration Retailers upload and organize their first-party customer data—such as past purchase behavior, brand affinity, and loyalty tier data—within Google’s secure environment. This data is converted into privacy-compliant audience segments that brands can target. 2. Campaign Activation Brands access these retailer-defined audience segments directly within the Commerce Media Suite interface. From there, they can set up and launch Demand Gen campaigns, choosing budget parameters, targeting criteria, and uploading creative assets such as product images, lifestyle videos, and engaging copy. 3. AI Optimization Once the campaign is live, Google’s advanced machine learning algorithms take over. Google AI analyzes real-time signals across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail to determine which creative assets, placements, and bid strategies are most likely to drive conversions. The algorithm continuously optimizes delivery to reach the consumers most likely to take action. 4. Closed-Loop Measurement One of the biggest pain points in offsite retail media has historically been attribution. When a brand runs an ad on an external site, it can be difficult to prove that the ad directly led to a purchase on a retailer’s digital or physical store. The Commerce Media Suite solves this by linking ad exposure data with the retailer’s actual point-of-sale (POS) and online transaction data, offering clean, closed-loop reporting. Key Benefits for Brands and Retailers This integration provides clear advantages for all parties involved in the digital commerce ecosystem, solving legacy issues of scale, measurement, and targeting accuracy. For Brand Advertisers: Unprecedented Scale with High Relevance: Brands are no longer restricted to the virtual aisles of a retailer’s website. They can reach relevant shoppers at scale across Google’s massive global network, using premium video and image assets. Deterministic Audience Targeting: Instead of relying on broad demographic targeting or decaying third-party cookies, brands can reach consumers based on actual, verified purchase histories provided by the retailer. Full-Funnel Marketing: Brands can use Demand Gen to introduce new products, build brand equity, and nurture leads, all while knowing their ad spend is

The Next Era of Retail Media: Moving Offsite Retail Media Networks (RMNs) have rapidly established themselves as the third wave of digital advertising, following closely in the footsteps of search and social media. Historically, the primary value proposition of retail media was simple: place highly relevant ads in front of consumers at the digital point of sale. Brands could buy sponsored product listings, display banners, and featured search placements directly on retail websites like Walmart, Target, or Amazon. However, onsite retail media inherently suffers from a scaling limitation. A retailer’s web traffic is finite, restricted only to active shoppers looking for specific products at a specific moment. To unlock the next level of growth, retail media must look beyond its own virtual walls. Advertisers need to reach high-intent shoppers where they spend most of their time online—watching videos, browsing curated feeds, and reading emails. Google has stepped in to bridge this gap by expanding its Commerce Media Suite to support Demand Gen campaigns. This integration allows brands to leverage a retailer’s rich, first-party audience data to run highly visual campaigns across YouTube, Google Discover, and Gmail. By combining the precision of retail transactional data with the massive scale of Google’s ecosystem, this development represents a major shift in how commerce media is planned, executed, and measured. Understanding Google’s Commerce Media Suite and Demand Gen To fully appreciate the impact of this update, it is essential to understand the two core components coming together: Google Commerce Media Suite and Demand Gen campaigns. What is Commerce Media Suite? Google’s Commerce Media Suite is a dedicated framework designed to help retailers monetize their digital properties and first-party data while allowing brand partners to scale their advertising efforts. It serves as a bridge, enabling secure data collaboration between retailers and brands. Through this suite, retailers can share valuable audience segments—built from real purchase histories, loyalty program data, and onsite search behaviors—without compromising user privacy or exposing sensitive proprietary data. What are Demand Gen Campaigns? Introduced as the next generation of Discovery ads, Google’s Demand Gen campaigns are visually immersive, AI-powered campaigns designed to capture consumer attention and drive action across Google’s most popular, visually-driven surfaces. Demand Gen placements include: YouTube: Including Shorts, in-stream ads, and the main YouTube home feed. Google Discover: The personalized content feed on mobile devices that reaches hundreds of millions of users daily. Gmail: Social and Promotions tabs where consumers actively look for deals and brand updates. Demand Gen relies heavily on Google’s advanced machine learning algorithms to serve highly creative video and image ads to audiences who are most likely to engage. Historically, these campaigns relied on Google’s native audience signals. Now, the integration with Commerce Media Suite allows these campaigns to be fueled directly by retailer first-party purchase data. How the Integration Works The mechanics of this integration are designed to be seamless for both retailers and brand advertisers, operating through a structured data-sharing and activation workflow. Step 1: Retailer First-Party Data Onboarding Retailers start by making their verified, first-party audience data available within the Commerce Media Suite. This data includes lists of past purchasers, loyalty program members, frequent category buyers, and users who have shown high intent on the retailer’s own website. Because this data is grounded in actual financial transactions, it is vastly more reliable than standard demographic or interest-based targeting. Step 2: Campaign Activation Brand advertisers access these retailer-defined audience segments directly within their Google Ads environment. They can then build Demand Gen campaigns targeting these specific cohorts. For instance, a beauty brand can target users who recently purchased skincare products from a major beauty retailer, displaying rich video ads for a new moisturizer across YouTube Shorts and Google Discover. Step 3: AI-Driven Optimization Once the campaign is live, Google AI takes over to optimize delivery. The system analyzes real-time signals—such as device type, time of day, and content engagement—to determine the optimal placement and creative asset for each user. Google’s algorithms continually refine bidding and targeting to maximize conversions and sales throughout the consumer’s purchase journey. Step 4: Closed-Loop Measurement One of the most significant hurdles in offsite retail media has been attribution. This integration solves that issue by connecting ad exposure on Google’s surfaces directly back to purchase outcomes at the retailer. Advertisers receive detailed reports showing how many users saw an ad on YouTube or Gmail and subsequently completed a purchase on the retailer’s app or website. This closed-loop measurement provides unambiguous proof of return on ad spend (ROAS). Key Benefits for Brands and Retailers The synergy between retail first-party data and Google’s advertising reach offers clear advantages for all parties involved in the digital commerce ecosystem. 1. High-Intent Targeting at Unprecedented Scale Onsite retail ads are highly effective because they capture users at the bottom of the funnel. However, offsite advertising allows brands to engage prospects further up the funnel while maintaining targeting precision. By utilizing actual retail purchase history on platforms like YouTube and Discover, brands can reach consumers who are statistically highly likely to buy, even when they aren’t actively shopping on a retail site. 2. Leverages the Power of Google AI Manual optimization of multi-format visual campaigns can be incredibly complex. Google’s AI handles the heavy lifting by automatically testing different creative combinations, managing bids, and identifying lookalike audiences based on the retailer’s core customer data. This ensures that ad budgets are allocated dynamically to the most profitable placements. 3. Simplified Collaborative Workflows In the past, running offsite retail media campaigns required complex, manual workarounds, including third-party clean rooms, manual data transfers, and disjointed reporting dashboards. The Demand Gen integration within Commerce Media Suite streamlines this process into a single, cohesive framework. This reduces administrative friction and speeds up time-to-market for new campaigns. 4. Authentic Closed-Loop Attribution With privacy regulations making traditional conversion tracking increasingly difficult, closed-loop reporting is incredibly valuable. By tying a consumer’s exposure to a YouTube Short directly to a checkout event on a retailer’s site, brands can justify their marketing investments with concrete,

The digital advertising landscape is undergoing a massive paradigm shift. As third-party cookies deprecate and privacy regulations tighten, first-party data has become the most valuable currency in digital marketing. Retail Media Networks (RMNs) have risen to prominence as a direct result, allowing brands to advertise to consumers directly on retail sites where purchase intent is at its peak. However, retail media has historically faced a major scalability bottleneck: onsite inventory is inherently limited by the amount of organic traffic a retailer’s website receives. To break through this limitation, the industry is moving rapidly toward “offsite” commerce media, extending the power of retailer audience data across the broader open web. Google is accelerating this shift by integrating Demand Gen campaigns directly into its Commerce Media Suite. This update allows brands to utilize retailer first-party audience data to run highly visual, AI-driven campaigns across YouTube, Google Discover, and Gmail, taking retail media far beyond the boundaries of traditional online storefronts. Understanding the Evolution of Commerce Media To fully grasp the significance of this integration, it is important to understand how retail media has evolved. What began as simple digital endcaps and sponsored product listings on e-commerce sites (onsite retail media) has expanded into a sophisticated ecosystem. Onsite advertising is incredibly effective for capturing lower-funnel demand, but it struggles to build brand awareness or capture shoppers who are not actively searching on a specific retail site. Offsite retail media solves this by allowing brands to leverage a retailer’s rich, deterministic purchase data—such as past purchase history, loyalty program status, and real-time shopping cart behavior—and apply it to ad campaigns run on external platforms. By bringing Google’s Demand Gen inventory into the Commerce Media Suite, advertisers can now connect these high-value audiences with some of the internet’s most engaging visual touchpoints. What is Google’s Commerce Media Suite? Google’s Commerce Media Suite is a dedicated technology platform designed to help retailers build, manage, and scale their own retail media networks. It provides the infrastructure necessary for retailers to monetize their digital properties and first-party data safely, while giving brand advertisers the tools they need to plan, execute, and measure collaborative campaigns. Through the platform, retailers can securely share access to their audience segments without compromising consumer privacy. Brands can then activate these segments within their digital marketing campaigns. The addition of Demand Gen capabilities to this suite marks a major milestone, transitioning Commerce Media Suite from a localized retail tool into an expansive omni-channel advertising engine. The Power of Demand Gen Campaigns Demand Gen is one of Google’s most visually immersive and AI-centric campaign formats. Specifically designed for modern, social-first consumers, Demand Gen campaigns serve ads across Google’s most visually engaging, feed-based environments. These placements include: YouTube: Including YouTube Shorts, in-stream ads, and feed placements. Google Discover: The highly personalized content feed on mobile devices that reaches millions of users daily. Gmail: Highly visible, interactive placements right inside users’ inboxes. Historically, Demand Gen was utilized by advertisers looking to drive brand discovery and consideration using their own data or Google’s native audience segments. By integrating this inventory with Commerce Media Suite, brands can now layer retailer first-party data on top of these highly visual ad formats. This means a consumer who regularly buys organic groceries at a specific retail chain could be targeted with a beautifully produced YouTube Shorts video or a visually striking Google Discover ad promoting a new organic snack brand—directly connecting upper-funnel discovery with lower-funnel purchase intent. Key Benefits of the Demand Gen and Commerce Media Integration This integration offers several clear advantages for both brands and retailers, creating a mutually beneficial framework that drives efficiency and return on ad spend (ROAS). 1. Reaching High-Intent Audiences at Scale Onsite retail media is bounded by web traffic. If a retailer gets ten million visitors a month, that is the maximum addressable audience for onsite ads. By moving offsite with Google’s Demand Gen, brands can reach those same high-intent shoppers on platforms they use daily for entertainment, communication, and information gathering. YouTube alone has billions of active users, allowing brands to find their target audiences at a scale previously unimaginable within a retail-only environment. 2. Leveraged Power of Google AI Modern advertising requires continuous optimization, and Google AI does the heavy lifting for Demand Gen campaigns. When a brand launches a campaign using retailer first-party data, Google’s machine learning algorithms analyze real-time performance signals. The system automatically optimizes creative delivery, bidding strategies, and placements to maximize conversions, ensuring that the ad spend is directed toward the users most likely to take action. 3. Closed-Loop Measurement and Attribution One of the biggest pain points in modern advertising is the “attribution black box”—the inability to definitively prove that an ad impression led to a sale. Commerce Media Suite solves this problem by connecting ad exposure on Google’s platforms directly to final checkout transactions at the partner retailer. Advertisers can track whether a user who viewed a YouTube video or clicked a Gmail ad actually purchased the product, whether online or in-store, providing unparalleled transparency into campaign ROI. 4. Simplified Campaign Workflows Historically, running offsite retail media campaigns required complex manual workarounds, custom audience transfers, and fragmented reporting across multiple platforms. The integrated workflow within Commerce Media Suite streamlines the entire process. Retailers can easily make their audiences available, and brands can launch, monitor, and optimize their Demand Gen campaigns from a unified interface, lowering administrative hurdles and reducing the time-to-market for new campaigns. How the Integration Works in Practice Executing a Demand Gen campaign through the Commerce Media Suite is a structured process that prioritizes user privacy, data security, and ease of use: First, the retailer uploads and curates their first-party audience segments within the Commerce Media Suite. These segments are built using deterministic signals like loyalty program interactions, past purchase recency, and brand affinity. To maintain strict consumer privacy, these audiences are anonymized and hashed. Next, the brand advertiser accesses the shared audience segments through their campaign portal. The brand designs visually engaging creative

Commerce media expands beyond retail sites with Demand Gen integration The digital advertising landscape is undergoing one of its most significant structural shifts in a generation. As privacy regulations tighten, platform policies evolve, and third-party cookies steadily deprecate, first-party data has emerged as the ultimate currency for digital marketers. This shift has fueled the astronomical rise of Retail Media Networks (RMNs), which allow brands to advertise to consumers using retailers’ rich, verified purchase data. Until recently, however, the power of retail media was largely confined to “onsite” placements. Brands could successfully target shoppers while they were actively browsing a retailer’s website or mobile app, but reaching those same high-intent consumers across the broader web using retail data remained a complex, fragmented challenge. Google is directly addressing this limitation. By expanding its Commerce Media Suite to support Demand Gen inventory, Google is bridging the gap between high-value retailer audience data and the massive, visually-driven reach of its open-web ecosystem. This integration allows brands to activate retailer first-party data directly within Demand Gen campaigns, running highly engaging ads across YouTube, Google Discover, and Gmail. The Evolution of Commerce Media: From Onsite to Offsite To fully understand the significance of this update, it is helpful to look at how commerce media has evolved. In its early stages, retail media was primarily onsite. Brands paid to have their products featured at the top of search results on e-commerce platforms like Amazon, Walmart, or Target. While highly effective at capturing bottom-of-funnel conversions, onsite advertising has inherent limitations: it relies entirely on the volume of traffic visiting the retailer’s own digital properties. As the market matured, the industry began moving toward “offsite” commerce media. This strategy involves taking the retailer’s first-party audience data—built from real purchase histories, loyalty programs, and shopping behaviors—and using it to target users on external platforms across the web. By integrating Demand Gen campaigns with the Commerce Media Suite, Google is scaling offsite commerce media to an unprecedented level. Advertisers are no longer restricted to static banners on third-party websites. Instead, they can now deliver rich, multi-format visual campaigns to highly relevant audiences on the platforms where consumers spend hours of their leisure time browsing, watching, and discovering content. What is Google Commerce Media Suite? Google Commerce Media Suite is a dedicated advertising technology framework designed to facilitate collaboration between retailers and brands. It provides a secure, privacy-compliant environment where retailers can monetize their valuable first-party data asset, and brands can leverage that data to execute highly effective advertising campaigns. Within this suite, retailers can bundle their audience segments—such as “frequent organic grocery buyers” or “recent consumer electronics upgraders”—and make them available to brand partners. The brand can then purchase advertising space using these precise audience segments, ensuring their ad spend is directed exclusively at consumers who have demonstrated a genuine affinity for their product category. Unlocking Demand Gen for Retail Media Demand Gen is Google’s modern, AI-powered campaign type designed to drive consumer action and engagement across its most visual and immersive surfaces. By replacing the legacy Discovery campaigns, Demand Gen was built specifically for social-first advertisers who rely on compelling visual storytelling to capture attention and spark purchase intent. Demand Gen campaigns run across several key Google touchpoints: YouTube Shorts: The rapidly growing short-form video feed that captures billions of views daily. YouTube Watch Next and Home Feeds: The primary discovery feeds where users find new long-form video content. Google Discover: A highly personalized feed on mobile devices that serves articles, videos, and recommendations tailored to individual user interests. Gmail: The promotions and social tabs where consumers actively look for deals, brand updates, and shopping inspiration. By injecting retailer first-party data into Demand Gen campaigns, brands can serve tailored video and image ads to known retail shoppers exactly when they are browsing their favorite feeds or watching content on YouTube. How the Demand Gen and Commerce Media Suite Integration Works The technical and operational integration between Commerce Media Suite and Demand Gen campaigns is designed to be streamlined, secure, and highly optimized by machine learning. The process can be broken down into four key phases: 1. Data Collaboration and Audience Sharing The process begins with the retailer. Using the secure architecture of the Commerce Media Suite, the retailer curates audience segments based on their first-party data. This can include past purchase history, brand loyalty status, frequency of purchases, or product category interest. The retailer then makes these audience segments accessible to approved brand partners within the shared suite, fully respecting consumer privacy and data regulations. 2. Campaign Activation Once the brand has access to the retailer’s audience segments, they can set up a Demand Gen campaign within their advertising interface. Instead of relying solely on general interest targeting or broad demographics, the brand selects the retailer’s verified audience segments to power their targeting parameters. 3. Google AI Optimization Once the campaign is live, Google’s advanced artificial intelligence takes over. Google AI analyzes real-time signals across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail to determine the optimal creative format, placement, and bidding strategy for each individual user. Because the underlying audience data is highly qualified (based on actual retail behaviors), Google’s machine learning models can find the path of least resistance to drive conversions, maximize return on ad spend (ROAS), and minimize waste. 4. Closed-Loop Measurement and Attribution One of the historical pain points of offsite advertising has been attribution. Brands would run ads on social networks or open-web sites, but linking those ad exposures back to sales on a retailer’s website remained incredibly difficult. This integration solves that problem by connecting ad exposure directly to transaction data. Because the campaign runs through the integrated Commerce Media Suite, brands gain access to loop-closing reporting. They can clearly see how many users who viewed or clicked a Demand Gen ad on YouTube or Gmail went on to complete a purchase on the retailer’s digital platform. This provides unmatched clarity regarding the direct business impact of the creative campaign. The Benefits of This Expansion for