While neither the largest nor flashiest event on the commerce conference circuit, the intimacy (and longevity) of Path to Purchase Institute’s Live give the event a unique vantage point for tracking the evolution of commerce marketing.
Held Nov. 12-13 in Schaumburg, IL, this year’s event reached back into its roots in point-of-purchase activation, which helped to ground a wide range of emerging industry touchpoints and trends with one common anchor: a renewed commitment to shopper-first strategy.
The on-stage conversations across the two-day conference covered a variety of topics, from retail media, contextual commerce, and omnichannel strategies to loyalty marketing, agentic shopping, and the unique complexities of the bevalc category (alcoholic beverages for the uninitiated). In conjunction with the re-emphasized shopper focus, four key themes emerged.
Data & Insights: The Foundation for Everything
If one topic dominated the event, it was data — not as a buzzword, but as the connective tissue for all modern commerce. Speakers explored data’s role in personalization, segmentation, measurement, and real-time optimization — while acknowledging the gaps in measurement reporting and standardization that remain unresolved.
Brands highlighted practical use cases, such as identifying shopping occasions through retailer data. Mars Snacking is “using the first-party data from Uber Eats or Instacart [for example] to speak to consumers who are potentially planning for family movie night” and get them to “add on our products to build the basket,” said Kelly Spehar, Global Retail Media Strategy Director.
Retailers, too, are pushing data deeper into activation. Chief Marketing Officer Brian Messerschmitt described how Dollar Tree is combining internal insights with shopper profiles from Publicis Groupe’s Epsilon to develop a performance marketing tool that builds new audience segments and delivers targeted ads to drive incremental engagement.
In-Store Retail Media: Putting the Store Back into Omnichannel
There were no dissenters on the topic of in-store retail media. Not only is it poised for growth, but its acceleration is an industry imperative. Brick-and-mortar retail remains critical in every stage of the purchase funnel, and in-store discovery still converts more shoppers than digital activity. Speakers stressed the importance of failing forward and investing in test-and-learns to develop viable in-store retail media tactics — while on the other hand underscoring the need to quickly get beyond the beta phase and build scalable, operational models.
Data plays a critical role here as well, working hand-in-hand with cohesive and integrated omnichannel strategies. “The consumer, more than ever, now has an expectation that you know them — you know what they’re looking for and you’re talking to them,” said Kimberly Garner, Director of Shopper Marketing at The Coca-Cola Co. “[But] don’t think of in-store POS or in-store media on an island. Think about how [to connect it] to your digital, your social, your out-of-home [so] you’re creating a cohesive, 360-degree program that delivers on the expectations of today’s consumer.”
Yet internal alignment, along with the need for more innovative placement and advanced measuring capabilities, is a persistent roadblock for retail media as a whole. Tensions between digital and in-store teams and competing priorities across merchandising and media continue to slow progress.
The best way to advance on the path toward truly connected commerce, speakers agreed, is to gain stakeholder alignment on specific, business-driving KPIs upfront — ahead of annual planning and budgeting. As Ben Galvin, Monster Energy’s Senior Director of Ecommerce & Omnichannel Retail Sales, quipped, “Sometimes it’s not about how effectively you use your own dollars, but other [internal teams’] dollars.”
Value Creation: Winning Wallets by Winning Feelings
Economic pressures continued to shape conversations. With prolonged inflation, tariffs, and shifting household budgets, shoppers are buying fewer discretionary items. According to Kearney Senior Partner Katherine Black, 60% of consumers now purchase less overall on their grocery trips.
Value today isn’t just about savings; it’s about emotion. Speakers asserted that convenience, community, and aspiration increasingly influence shopper behavior. Ryan Draude, Director of Loyalty, CSM & Digital at Ahold Delhaize’s Giant Food, offered up the grocer’s revamped loyalty program as a differentiated value proposition. The Giant Choice Rewards program delivers free product on every shopping trip but also incorporates a health angle (nutritional advice, recipes, and rewards for making healthier choices like getting a flu shot; this shifts shopping beyond a habitual action to create an emotional connection. As several speakers noted, appealing to the aspirations of shoppers can be as powerful as appealing to their wallets.
“We can’t let shopper marketing become a programmatic exercise through retail media networks,” warned Soche Picard, CEO for North America at Arc Worldwide. Picard underscored that point with groundbreaking research identifying how emotional dynamics at the point of purchase can drive both immediate sales and brand loyalty by turning forgettable transactions into meaningful brand moments.
Arc’s research identified four shopping-trip profiles based on the emotional complexities that influence decisions across both retailers and product categories: complex and unrewarding (“Burden”), complex but exciting (“Engaging”), easy but joyless (“Routine”), and both easy and enjoyable (“Pleasant”). The profiles illustrate how emotion underpins retailer preference, loyalty, and spending — and why brands must consider not only what shoppers buy, but how the shopping experience makes them feel.
AI in the Cart: The Agentic Commerce Watershed
Among the multiple AI themes threading their way through the event (including dynamic creative and predictive optimization), agentic search and shopping clearly captured the most attention.
At a time when consumers have been wired for convenience but are rarely willing to pay for it, agentic commerce holds the promise of enabling shoppers to find the right product, get the best price, and save time doing it. More than 60% of consumers plan to use AI for shopping in the next year, Black at Kearney noted. Adoption is accelerating due to economic constraints, which lead consumers to prioritize convenience that won’t add costs, she said.
Routine household and beauty product categories will likely be first to feel an impact from agentic search and shopping, with mass/big-box, dollar, and drug channels following closely behind. “We expect consumer behavior to shift rapidly,” Black said. “Actively testing now is critical.”
For brands, this means ensuring their value proposition and product data are agent-ready. GEO (generative engine optimization) is only the starting point; full agentic commerce optimization (ACO) will require far deeper data hygiene and a more extensive strategy. For retailers, falling behind risks margin erosion, commoditization, smaller baskets, and a shift in both transactions and ad dollars to other commerce options.
Yet in a potentially not-so-surprising twist, multiple speakers identified in-store retail media as the channel least threatened by an agentic future, a relatively safe harbor for retailer revenue and an opportune reset moment for brand–retailer collaboration.
As commerce enters a new era, one message was unmistakable throughout P2PI Live: The future of commerce will not be defined solely by channels, formats, or technologies. Instead, it will be shaped by the integration of data, emotion, physical environments, and AI-powered decision-making. The organizations that navigate this complex intersection successfully will pair operational excellence with a renewed commitment to understanding — and serving — the evolving shopper.
P2PI Live also featured multiple awards programs. Saatchi X Executive Chairman Andy Murray emceed the annual Hall of Fame ceremony, which this year inducted longtime Mars United client and partner Stephen Chriss, VP of Enterprise Omni-Commerce at The Campbell’s Company, along with Dollar General’s Messerschmitt and Sarah Nellson, Sales Director for Target at Ferrero. In his acceptance speech, Chriss stressed the importance of industry recognition in fostering future generations of marketing talent.
That sentiment carried into the next morning, when a panel of past Hall of Fame inductees led by Spark Foundry EVP-Commerce April Carlisle reflected on their own exemplary career paths and shared seasoned insights into the evolving commerce media landscape and cross-ecosystem collaboration.
Also celebrated during the event were P2PI’s 2025 class of “40 Under 40” rising executives, which included Willy Blesener and Tessa Allen from Mars United and Elisia Bielawski of Arc; as well as its Women of Excellence honorees, which featured Mars United’s Victoria Van Dusen and Jill Rourke.
