How to scale your commerce media network: From launch to leader

When realizing your commerce media opportunity, launching is, of course, an important milestone. Once the first campaigns are live and generating advertising revenue, networks need to build the capabilities required to support sustained growth.

Many networks begin with a small group of advertisers, a handful of placements, and a team managing campaigns manually. That model can demonstrate the opportunity, but how do you sustain and scale advertiser demand, inventory, and yield without overly increasing complexity?

Fundamentally, scaling requires a different approach to technology, measurement, operations, and commercial strategy. Here’s how commerce media operators can determine where they stand today and where they need to go next to ultimately reach their full potential.

Defining commerce media scale

“Scale” is a huge buzzword, but what does it actually mean for a commerce media network? Scaling a commerce media network means increasing advertising revenue, advertiser participation, and available media opportunities without necessarily increasing operational costs and headcount at the same rate.

A scalable network can support more campaigns, advertisers, and channels through connected technology, automation, repeatable processes, and measurable performance. In this way, revenue growth is important, but only one way to measure success.

If a network generates significant advertising revenue while still relying on fragmented systems, manual workflows, or limited measurement capabilities, the path to growth is limited.

The stages of commerce media network maturity

A 2025 study conducted by Forrester Consulting and commissioned by Koddi evaluated commerce media networks across four areas: strategy and leadership, platforms and technology, measurement and attribution, and integration and operations.

The study identified three maturity stages: nascent, emerging, and trailblazer.

1. Stage 1: Nascent. Nascent networks are still establishing their advertising businesses, operating initial pilots, offering one-off sponsorships, or working with a limited number of advertising partners. These programs can establish early demand and value; however, processes may still be informal, with limited technology or measurement capabilities. To progress, nascent networks need support, standardization, performance metrics, and a roadmap to repeatability.
2. Stage 2: Emerging. Emerging networks have established advertising programs and growing demand. But with multiple formats or surfaces, the challenge can become fragmentation. Different teams may manage inventory, campaigns, data, and measurement independently, or manually. To advance, emerging networks need more centralized planning, self-service capabilities, automation, and reporting that connects advertising investment to business outcomes.
3. Stage 3: Trailblazer. Trailblazer networks operate commerce media as an established business line. They have executive ownership, connected technology, more sophisticated measurement, and the operational capabilities to support growth across advertisers and channels. Rather than scaling primarily through additional headcount, they rely on systems and automation to manage greater complexity. They can also support more diverse advertiser demand, including endemic and non-endemic brands.

How mature are commerce media networks today?

Starting to feel behind? Don’t – a recent Forrester Consulting study found that the overall sector remains relatively early in its development. Only 12% of networks could plan, activate, and measure a single campaign across onsite, offsite, and on-premise media as one connected operation.

The study also identified a gap between perceived and assessed capabilities: 42% of respondents described their commerce media programs as operationalized or advanced, while only 13% met the study’s criteria for advancement across strategy, technology, measurement, and operations.

This confidence-to-capability gap matters because it can prevent operators from recognizing the investments needed to scale. A network that appears successful based on revenue alone may still have substantial opportunities to improve its operating model.

What prevents commerce media networks from scaling? (And how to fix it)

Several challenges consistently limit growth. Here’s how to identify what’s holding your network back and take practical steps to move forward.

1. The problem: Fragmented inventory and channels

When onsite, offsite, and on-premise media operate separately, advertisers may need to plan and measure campaigns through different systems. This makes it harder to manage budgets across channels and demonstrate the combined value of the network. If you’re stuck here, you’re not alone. The Forrester Consulting study found that 40% of respondents cited disconnected inventory as a barrier to growth.

The solution: Connect your advertising infrastructure

Bring ad serving, campaign management, optimization, analytics, and reporting together in a connected system. This reduces the need to manually transfer information between tools and makes it easier to manage budgets and measure performance across channels.

Connected infrastructure also allows networks to introduce new advertising channels and buying methods without rebuilding existing workflows.

2. The problem: Limited measurement

Advertisers want evidence that campaigns produce meaningful results. Clicks and impressions can help explain campaign activity, but they do not always demonstrate whether advertising influenced purchases or generated incremental outcomes. Without credible measurement, advertisers may be reluctant to increase investment.

The solution: Strengthen measurement around business outcomes.

Extend reporting beyond campaign delivery to demonstrate sales, bookings, return on ad spend, and other outcomes tied to advertiser objectives.

Where data and methodology support it, introduce incrementality measurement to help advertisers understand which results their advertising actually caused. Stronger measurement gives advertisers greater confidence to renew campaigns and expand budgets.

3. The problem: Manual operations

Campaign setup, creative approval, reporting, and optimization can become significant operational burdens as demand grows. If each new advertiser requires the same level of manual attention, growth becomes increasingly expensive.

The solution: Automate repeatable work.

Identify workflows that consume the most time, then prioritize automation for campaign setup, pacing, forecasting, reporting, optimization, and routine troubleshooting.

Self-service tools can also reduce the level of hands-on support required for smaller advertisers. Using these tools, advertisers can grow demand without increasing operational costs at the same pace, freeing teams to focus on strategy, advertiser relationships, and more complex challenges.

4. The problem: Organizational misalignment

Commerce media often involves commercial, product, engineering, data, marketing, and operations teams. When responsibilities for inventory, pricing, measurement, and strategy are unclear, decisions slow down and accountability becomes fragmented.

The solution: Align teams around shared objectives and ownership.

Establish clear responsibilities for commercial strategy, technology, measurement, and day-to-day operations. Define how teams make decisions, prioritize investments, and evaluate performance against shared business objectives.

Regularly assess capabilities across these functions to identify gaps and dependencies. Incorporate advertiser feedback to understand which limitations have the greatest impact on the buying experience, then prioritize improvements that directly support your next commercial objective.

5. The problem: Remaining in pilot mode

Early pilots are useful for proving an opportunity. But a network cannot operate indefinitely through one-off sponsorships and informal processes. Scaling requires moving from individual experiments to defined commercial offerings with repeatable execution.

The solution: Standardize your offering and diversify advertiser demand.

Turn successful pilots into repeatable products with defined inventory, pricing, campaign workflows, and measurement standards. Establish a consistent process for onboarding advertisers, launching campaigns, and demonstrating results.

As capabilities mature, expand demand beyond a small group of advertisers or a single buying model. Self-service tools, marketing platforms, and demand-side platforms can help networks reach advertisers with different budgets, campaign objectives, and buying preferences.

This creates a more sustainable business that is less dependent on any single advertiser, channel, or source of demand.

From stalled to scaled: Moving to the next growth stage

Commerce media maturity goes beyond revenue growth – success hinges on how effectively advertisers can measure outcomes, and how easily your business can expand across channels and demand sources.

Moving to the next stage may mean more inventory or ad formats, but often, the greatest opportunities come from connecting existing capabilities, improving measurement, automating operations, and building processes that support sustainable growth.

By identifying and addressing the gaps that matter most, commerce media networks can build a more scalable, profitable business.

To assess your network’s maturity and identify your next steps, download Building Commerce Media Networks by Koddi, a Wiley custom publication.