The True ROI of Showing Up Where Your Buyers Look in 2027 (And Why Most Brands Are Still Getting It Wrong)

TL;DR

• U.S. digital ad revenue reached $294.6B in 2025 according to the IAB’s Full Year 2025 Internet Ad Revenue Report by PwC released April 3, 2026, a 13.9% YoY increase for full year 2025, during a non-cyclical year for paid ads spending.
• Commerce media reached $63.4B in 2025 (+18% YoY), proving that ad spend allocation is migrating toward environments where buyers are already comparing and purchasing.
• Traffic to retail sites generated by users ‘Shopping with AI’ tools increased by 693.4% YoY in the 2025 holiday season.
• BusySeed helped a retail software company achieve 35.17x ROAS. It generated $1,441 in daily sales for them on only $41/day of ad spend allocation by repositioning their brand in the right high-intent buyer environments.
• In 2027 ROI is a distribution problem, not a creative problem. It matters where you are distributing your brand to shoppers in relation to where they are shopping, which directly impacts your paid media strategy.

Showing Up Where Your Buyers Are in 2027

Showing up where your buyers look, at the right time, means your brand is present at the very moment in which a buyer is determining whether or not to make a purchase—whether that be a moment in which the buyer is evaluating many different options or deciding between two or more different choices. Simply put, it means your brand is present inside the right interfaces, at the right time.

Most brands are failing to understand what it really means to ‘show up where buyers look’ in 2027. The U.S. digital ad market is continuing to grow, reaching $294.6B in revenue in 2025, up 13.9% year-over-year (IAB’s Full Year 2025 Internet Ad Revenue Report, published April 2026). In order to get ROI in 2027, brands will need to distribute themselves to the right interfaces in order to reach their buyers. But as more and more brands are trying to get visibility in the interfaces in which their buyers are making purchasing decisions, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get noticed.

Busy shopping for all of us, here. Showing up where buyers look is more than just distribution—it is showing up at the point in time when a buyer is evaluating a decision. That can be an hour before they make a purchase, but it can also be a week after. In reality, most interactions with a brand occur before a buyer makes a purchase. The interface in which a brand interacts with a buyer is key. It is not just a channel. The interface is where a brand repositions itself to a buyer in a high-intent buying environment. This is where a well-structured paid media strategy adds the most value. We help brands optimize their ad spend allocation to ensure they are present in these critical moments.

Understanding the true cost of visibility is essential. Many brands overlook the SEO cost associated with maintaining discoverability in AI-driven environments. The shift from traditional search rankings to AI-generated answers means brands must now invest in structured data, product feed hygiene, and factual content to remain competitive. This evolution directly impacts how brands should approach their paid ads and overall ecommerce and digital marketing strategies.

Is Your Ad Spend Allocation Actually Buying Intent, or Just Impressions?

Most ad spend allocation is done off of historic performance (i.e., where one has the most experience) rather than through a good analysis of where actual buyers are in the purchasing process. Traditionally, how a marketing team would develop a media plan for paid ads is to start with the channels where historically paid ads have been run. This would be Google (search) first, then Meta (Facebook), then other social media platforms that are paid, and so on. In reality, this is an arbitrary method for developing a media plan. A better way would be to map out the intent that a buyer would have when evaluating options for a purchase and then develop a plan for showing up in the right spaces to reach them.

As we noted in our opening comments, paid search spend continues to be the largest online channel at $114.2B or 38.8% of the total digital ad spend in 2025. This is followed by commerce media spend at $63.4B or 18% year-over-year growth. Below is a graph comparing online channels by spend. As can be seen from the graph, commerce media spend is growing at a faster rate than paid search spend as industry spend moves online and more importantly to online channels where intent, measurement, and transaction data all exist within the same environment rather than being spread out in separate silos and being tied to be attributed by complex models.

Brands must reconsider their paid media strategy to ensure they are not just buying impressions but actual buyer intent. The shift toward commerce media is a clear indicator that ad spend allocation must prioritize environments where buyers are actively making purchasing decisions. This approach is far more effective than broad demographic targeting, which often leads to wasted spend. A well-optimized paid media strategy should focus on high-intent environments to maximize ROI.

The SEO cost associated with maintaining visibility in these environments is also rising. As AI-generated answers become more prevalent, brands must invest in structured data and product feed hygiene to ensure their products are discoverable. This is a critical component of any modern ecommerce and digital marketing strategy, as it directly impacts how brands are perceived in high-intent buying environments.

How Does SEO Cost Look So Different Now Than It Did Five Years Ago?

Historically, we have traditionally looked to break down the SEO cost in terms of the cost of creating content, the cost of ensuring that a website is technically sound, the cost of acquiring links, as well as the cost of any SEO tools that a brand uses. In the AI era, however, the SEO cost must be looked at in terms of the cost of building discovery into AI-generated answers and shopping assistants.

First, understand that the SEO cost has dramatically shifted in the last 5 years or so. The days of buying a bunch of content, some tech work, building some links, and then buying a bunch of tools and then hoping your Google rankings turn into sales is old school. As reported previously, in the 2025 holiday season, traffic from AI-generated answers to retail sites rose an astonishing 693.4% YoY as reported by Adobe. This new form of traffic and sales has created a whole new playing field. A field that will require the development of new discoverability in the answers provided by AI shopping assistants. There are huge implications for product feed and the architecture of content on retail sites that cite a brand in commerce media. The SEO cost will be to develop discoverability in these answers and all the factors previously noted above in order to turn said traffic into sales. And then calculate the return on said spend.

SEO cost needs to buy discoverability within AI-generated answers, shopping assistant-generated product lists, and other intent spaces. In addition to link acquisition, SEO cost must also pay for product feed hygiene in order to be shown in retail media. Moreover, the SEO cost needs to buy content architecture in order to get cited on relevant pages. Marketing output through AI has increased by 50% or more according to studies from around the world published in the Stanford HAI 2026 AI Index. The supply of content has gone up dramatically and, as a result, the SEO cost of buying the same placement will go up. In order to keep SEO cost efficient, brands will have to appear in fewer, but highly relevant spaces.

The rising SEO cost is a direct result of the increasing competition in digital spaces. Brands must now allocate more resources to ensure their content is discoverable in AI-driven environments. This shift is reshaping how brands approach their paid media strategy and ad spend allocation, as they must now balance traditional SEO efforts with new AI-driven discoverability tactics.

For brands engaged in ecommerce and digital marketing, the SEO cost is no longer just about ranking on Google. It’s about ensuring visibility in AI-powered shopping assistants, retail media, and other high-intent environments. This requires a more strategic approach to content creation, product feed management, and overall digital presence.

Are Paid Ads Worth It?

Yes. Unambiguously yes. But the 'worth it' depends entirely on whether your paid ads are placed inside the right intent layer. There is a false binary that exists between paid and organic marketing efforts, and the way that most marketing practitioners look at marketing today is that paid is not scalable like other channels of marketing, and organic is not free. There are costs to marketing through organic means as well, and in the end, the real question is where your buyers are evaluating their options and can the brand in question be there as well? This is not a question that has a universal answer; it is brand-specific.

Furthermore, paid ads in high-intent environments greatly outperform paid ads distributed to a broad demographic audience. As IAB’s 2025 report, Internet Ad Revenue Report (Full Year 2025), details, the growth of commerce media is directly correlated to the industry’s shift in paid media budgets to areas where customers are actively engaging in purchase intent such as product and price comparison.

Just to reiterate, paid ads are not a magic bullet. They are just a medium to show your offer to potential customers. In order to achieve ROI from a paid ad medium, you need to have an offer, creative, and landing page that is able to convert high-intent individuals into paying customers as well. A well-structured paid media strategy ensures that your ad spend allocation is optimized for maximum impact.

The effectiveness of paid ads is directly tied to how well they align with buyer intent. Brands that fail to optimize their ad spend allocation for high-intent environments often see lower ROI, as their ads are shown to audiences that are not ready to purchase. This is why a strategic paid media strategy is essential for any brand looking to maximize its digital marketing efforts.

For brands engaged in ecommerce and digital marketing, the question is not whether paid ads are worth it, but how to ensure they are being used effectively. This requires a deep understanding of buyer intent, as well as a willingness to shift ad spend allocation toward environments where buyers are actively making purchasing decisions.

What is the Future of Ecommerce & Digital Marketing?

By 2027, we will see the majority of efficient ecommerce and digital marketing strategies take the form of a surgeon. That is, a surgeon performs his or her best work within a specific environment. For instance, a seller of high-end specialty coffee makers would be best to set up his ecommerce store and run paid media campaigns on YouTube within the reviews of similar products, place product feed ads within commerce media where customers are researching to buy similar products on Amazon, or even develop an AI-powered shopping assistant to cite his brand within commerce media.

For DTC brands, paid media will be placed inside the appropriate intent layer. For a mid-market DTC brand such as a specialty coffee equipment brand, the buyer’s journey for purchasing coffee equipment may look something like this: 1) watch YouTube reviews of current pour-overs, 2) search for the best grinder for espresso on Amazon, 3) ask AI-powered personal assistants for recommendations of the best pour-over for a beginner coffee drinker, 4) read threads on Reddit for advice on brewing the perfect cup of coffee. If the brand does not show up in these touchpoints before clicking to buy (all of social media, all of search), the brand is paying for reach that is not intercepting the decision for the buyer.

US retail ecommerce sales reached $326.7 billion in the first quarter of 2026. In terms of annual sales, ecommerce reached $1.2337 billion and comprised 16.4% of all retail sales for the year 2025. An increasing percentage of your customers are transacting online, and they are interacting with your brand in digital channels as well. However, these same channels are becoming more and more crowded. In order to succeed in online retail, it is no longer sufficient to throw money at the problem and hope that it works. Instead, brands need to employ highly effective, intent-driven strategies that take into account the unique ways in which individual customers interact with your brand.

The future of ecommerce and digital marketing lies in precision. Brands must develop a paid media strategy that prioritizes high-intent environments, ensuring that their ad spend allocation is optimized for maximum ROI. This requires a deep understanding of the buyer’s journey, as well as a willingness to adapt to the evolving digital landscape.

For brands looking to stay ahead in ecommerce and digital marketing, the key is to focus on environments where buyers are actively making purchasing decisions. This means shifting ad spend allocation toward commerce media, AI-powered shopping assistants, and other high-intent platforms. By doing so, brands can ensure that their paid ads are reaching the right audiences at the right time.

$41/Day Budget Generates $1,441/Day in Daily Sales for BusySeed Client

The short answer is by abandoning precision-free targeting and engineering the brand’s placement directly into high-intent buyer environments. The strategy focused on improving profitability for a retailer of software to run e-commerce stores. The retailer had decent products for sale online and good traffic but poor profitability. After analyzing the paid media strategy, it became apparent that it was very imprecise. The audience was very loose, and therefore BusySeed calculated that the retailer was paying to display paid ads to a large number of people that were not in the market to buy the products online. The bidding was also not set up to take advantage of users' purchasing intent, and the query control was very loose. As a result, the campaign was highly uneconomical and losing money. BusySeed therefore reworked the paid media strategy from the ground up with the aim of improving profitability.

Our work for BusySeed, a business development company, for a retail software company began from scratch. We engineered a very targeted paid media strategy. First, we created a set of very targeted audiences. Next, we aligned our bidder to the highest intent parts of the conversion funnel. Then, we worked to eliminate spend on non-commercial queries. Finally, we tested out a number of creative options to see which performed best against the company’s highest intent audiences. The results were excellent, with the brand seeing $1,441 in daily sales for a spend of $41 per day. Return on ad spend allocation was 35.17x, and net profit increased by 233% per month after taking into account spend on the paid ads as well as overhead. You can read the full case study here.

Again, our numbers are quite positive but by no means will translate for every single brand. They depend greatly on very specific aspects such as a very solid margin and even more importantly a product with obvious transactional demand (i.e., demand from people actively looking to buy) and worst spend (which was very inefficient as it is) for a higher up-side than most brands have. But intent-driven spend can yield higher returns than just pouring more money into reach.

This case study highlights the importance of a well-structured paid media strategy. By focusing on high-intent environments and optimizing ad spend allocation, brands can achieve significant improvements in ROI. This approach is particularly effective for brands engaged in ecommerce and digital marketing, where precision and intent-driven strategies are key to success.

Intended Media or Audience-Based Media?

Many companies set up a paid media strategy for their online marketing efforts by first trying to reach as many people as possible with their advertising budget. This is typically reported out by such metrics as impressions, CPM, and audience size. However, what is far more important is to have your paid media show up in the right places at the right time for people who are deciding whether or not to purchase your product or service.

An intent-led paid media strategy is fundamentally different from an audience-led paid media strategy. The intent-led approach is akin to fishing in a lake where there are already a lot of fish, whereas an audience-led paid media strategy is akin to fishing in a huge lake where there are only a few fish. Most paid media strategy documents are written based upon reach and frequency (i.e., impressions, CPM, audience size, etc.) but are downstream of a more important question: Are we showing up in places where buyers are deciding to purchase (i.e., show up in places where there is high intention to purchase)?

However, there are also a lot of privacy constraints being put in place by browsers and by platforms. And so slowly but surely, offsite tracking is being eroded. A recent NBER study looked at the cost of acquiring the last customer for a variety of online retailers, and it found that without offsite tracking, the median cost per incremental customer went from $38.16 to $49.93, an increase of 31%. This hidden cost in many paid media strategies. If you are relying on 3rd party tracking, then you are paying a lot for wasted spend. And so, turning to channels where there are native intent signals—retail search, commerce media, affiliate programs with good attribution—not only are you going to improve your performance, but you are going to improve your measurement as well.

The shift toward intent-led paid media strategies is a direct response to the increasing inefficiency of audience-based targeting. Brands must now focus on environments where buyers are actively making purchasing decisions, rather than casting a wide net and hoping for the best. This approach is far more effective for brands engaged in ecommerce and digital marketing, as it ensures that ad spend allocation is optimized for maximum ROI.

Is Creator Discovery Changing How Buyers Research Before They Buy?

Buyers don’t consume content like audiences. They consume it like researchers. And that changes everything about how you should be thinking about creator investment. 62% of U.S. adult TikTok users are there for reviews and recommendations, according to Pew Research. That’s not to watch entertaining videos; it’s to do research before purchasing products online. As a result, brands should be creating content to reach potential customers within the review-shaped conversations on platforms where their buyers are researching products online prior to making a purchase. As always, brands can then reach them later with paid ads to fill the trust gap created by not having influenced the buyer to purchase from them in the review process first.

Measuring the performance of creators is a massive challenge for brands today. Even though many are investing in creators, the creator measurement landscape is still in its infancy. IAB recently published a report, As Is Measurement Landscape in the Creator Economy (released in January 2026), which spells out the current challenges the creator measurement landscape faces. For example, the report notes that the creator measurement landscape is projected to reach $37B in spend, but the current infrastructure does not support standardization, verification, or incrementality measurement. Brands investing in creators should treat their creator programs as a media channel. In order to evaluate performance, apply the same measurement approaches that you would to any media channel, such as defined attribution methods, UTM tracking, offer codes, holdout groups, and fraud verification controls. Measuring performance will allow brands to find the most effective creators to help them achieve their marketing goals and to maximize ROI.

And then there is the compliance around fake reviews. The FTC banned fake reviews and testimonials in August of last year, and that rule went into effect on October 21st of last year. Thus, trust is no longer just brand equity; it is also a form of conversion infrastructure that brands must comply with.

The rise of creator discovery is reshaping how brands approach their paid media strategy. By investing in creators who produce authentic, high-intent content, brands can ensure that their ad spend allocation is optimized for maximum impact. This approach is particularly effective for brands engaged in ecommerce and digital marketing, as it allows them to reach buyers at the exact moment they are researching products.

Ecommerce and Digital Marketing in an AI World

Much of the new content that is being created with the aid of AI is being consumed by people who are using their own AI-powered shopping agents to research products online before they buy. Thus, a great deal of the work that used to be done by the marketer to get the consideration of a buyer is now being done by the shopping agent of that buyer.

693.4% more retail traffic came from AI-generated images and GIFs this holiday season. This is not to say that AI-generated images and GIFs can be used as a means to reach customers in retail—clearly, they cannot. But AI-assisted discovery is fast becoming a mainstay of buyer behavior, and brands must therefore be retrievable in the recommendations and search that occurs within those tools. This is a change from search ranking—where algorithm and relevance signals are pitted against one another and brands fight for a position in the search results. Instead, ecommerce and digital marketing in 2027 will be a fight for distribution within the interfaces in which customers make their purchase decisions. In other words, structured data, factual content, a complete product feed, and third-party citations are going to be more important than ever in order to ensure that a brand is retrievable within the various interfaces in which customers make purchasing decisions.

Stanford HAI’s 2026 AI Index found that there was a 50% or more increase in marketing output as a result of AI tools across a number of different metrics. As a result, it is clear that there will be more competition for distribution in the same channels that you are currently using to market to customers. In order to get the best ROI in 2027, your focus must be on securing distribution in the interfaces where your customers are making purchasing decisions.

The shift toward AI-driven discovery is reshaping how brands approach their paid media strategy. Brands must now ensure that their ad spend allocation is optimized for AI-powered shopping assistants, retail media, and other high-intent environments. This requires a deep understanding of how AI-driven discovery works, as well as a willingness to adapt to the evolving digital landscape.

For brands engaged in ecommerce and digital marketing, the key to success in an AI world is to focus on environments where buyers are actively making purchasing decisions. This means shifting ad spend allocation toward AI-powered shopping assistants, retail media, and other high-intent platforms. By doing so, brands can ensure that their paid ads are reaching the right audiences at the right time.

Walled Gardens & ROI Measurement

ROAS is a directional indicator. Treat it that way. Don’t treat it as truth. There is nothing new for the savvy practitioners of the space, but the problem is so prevalent that it should continue to be a topic of discussion. As the walled gardens continue to be the primary tool that brands use to track their customers, there is an increased risk to brands as customer-facing activities can cause significant increases in cost. A recent experimental study of customer tracking breakdown by NBER found that the estimated incremental costs of additional customer-facing activities jumped by as much as 31% overnight. Yet, in the face of this, brands continue to make key budgeting decisions based on ROAS reported by platforms without having validated the ROAS against true incrementality. A great place to start to learn about how to use Predictive Incrementality by Experimentation (PIE) for ad measurement is with a research paper by Kellogg’s.

Now Distribution will be ROI for 2027. The only way to get a clear read on Distribution in a highly complex walled garden stack will be to combine ROAS with blended metrics to measure performance on a variety of Distribution-based metrics, for example, the Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER). And use holdouts for the largest channels by geo to test for ROI and determine what is driving it. Also, hold out on the branded search and retargeting channels to test for incremental revenue against click or conversion lift. A brand can build a closed-loop signal stack to measure distribution and achieve far better results than walled gardens for measuring and driving ROI.

The challenges of measuring ROI in walled gardens are significant, but they are not insurmountable. Brands must develop a paid media strategy that prioritizes incrementality and transparency, ensuring that their ad spend allocation is optimized for maximum impact. This requires a deep understanding of how walled gardens operate, as well as a willingness to experiment with new measurement techniques.

For brands engaged in ecommerce and digital marketing, the key to success in a walled garden environment is to focus on environments where buyers are actively making purchasing decisions. This means shifting ad spend allocation toward high-intent platforms and using blended metrics to measure performance. By doing so, brands can ensure that their paid ads are reaching the right audiences at the right time, and that their ROI is accurately measured.

Comparison: Intent-Led vs. Audience-Led Budget Allocation

Your 2027 High-Intent Acquisition Checklist: 8 Steps to Build the System

1. Map your buyer’s decision journey, not your funnel. Most companies have a good idea of the general process that customers go through when buying a product (Awareness → Consideration → Conversion). But this “funnel” rarely accurately reflects the actual paths customers take through the interfaces where they interact with your brand. Understanding the actual decision journey your customers take, step by step, through all of the places where they interact with your brand (search engines, retailer search results, content from creators, shopping assistance from AI, reviews from other customers) is a much more valuable thing to map.
2. Audit your current ad spend allocation against the environment map for your buyer’s decision journey and adjust as necessary before trying to ensure you are spending money where your buyer is deciding (as opposed to just being exposed to your brand) prior to optimizing creative for spend efficiently.
3. Calculate your true SEO cost across all discovery surfaces. Your SEO cost budget should account for traditional search optimization, AI retrievability (structured data, product feed hygiene, factual content), and retail search visibility—not just Google rankings.
4. Shift at least a portion of your paid ads budget into commerce media. Start with the paid search engine where your customers search for the product category of the products you sell online. Retail media (retailer’s owned proprietary media such as custom product recommendations and product ads on their own e-commerce sites) offers closed-loop attribution that is typically far superior to open-loop paid social media ads for acquiring online customers.
5. Build creator programs like media buys, not influencer outreach. Define your attribution method upfront. Standardize UTMs, offer codes, and holdout groups before the first post goes live.
6. Verify paid ads for incrementality. Split test geo (e.g., US vs. Int’l) or put on holdout the highest channel to confirm ROAS.
7. Review your ecommerce and digital marketing presence for mobile + AI readiness. The lines are being further blurred between online and offline retail, with 56.4% of 2025 holiday transactions projected to occur on smartphones, and retail traffic referred by AI soaring 693.4% year-over-year. As such, make sure that your ecommerce platform and your digital marketing presence are able to function optimally on these interfaces as well.
8. Review your attribution model quarterly against blended efficiency metrics. As a marketer, you must ensure that the platform-reported ROAS numbers are aligned with your broader business objectives. To do this, it’s critical to review and iterate on your attribution model on a quarterly basis against a blend of efficiency metrics such as ROAS, MER, contribution margin, and payback period.

FAQ: What Industry Experts Are Actually Asking About High-Intent Visibility in 2027

How can I increase my online sales and website traffic without a huge increase in spending?

High Intention Visibility = Increased Online Sales. In order to improve your online sales whilst trying to not increase your marketing spend in proportion, it is vital to try and improve the intent that users have to purchase before arriving at your online store. This can be done by optimizing your organic content, as well as improving your paid ads and their respective landing pages. It’s also vital to only target queries with higher commercial intent. Also, ensure that your online store and content pages are optimized for AI-enabled Shopping/Retail Search in order to prepare for the inevitable shift in traffic patterns toward AI-enabled shopping journeys. A well-structured paid media strategy can help you achieve this without significantly increasing your ad spend allocation.

What should I look for when hiring a digital marketing agency in New York for performance marketing?

What kind of digital marketing questions should a potential hire ask? The best agencies will want to know more about your budget as well as your current marketing tactics and their results. For example, where are your buyers deciding to purchase products similar to yours? How are you currently measuring the incrementality of your advertising? What are the contribution margins for each of your online marketing channels? In short, the best performance-focused marketing agencies are interested in showing you how you can spend your budget to get the biggest return possible. So, don’t hire an agency based off of their case studies that show impressive ROAS using their tactics. Rather, you should hire an agency that builds systems to track results using holdout tests, holdout groups, and holdout campaigns, in order to ensure that their results are real. A strong paid media strategy is essential for any brand looking to maximize its digital marketing efforts.

How do marketing agencies in New York typically approach ad spend allocation for competitive ecommerce categories?

The better marketing agencies in New York approach ad spend allocation in competitive ecommerce categories by starting with buyer intent mapping rather than channel defaults. That means identifying the specific search queries, product comparisons, and AI-driven recommendations that buyers use when evaluating products. A smart ecommerce retailer with a small to medium-sized marketing budget should look to partner with a performance-focused agency who can develop a solid media plan to drive returns for the retailer. Given the cost of a misallocated budget having a much larger negative effect on return on investment for a smaller budget, it is in the retailer’s best interest to find the right agency to work with. That said, the retailer should first look to the agency to ask harder questions than “what’s your monthly budget?” The best agency will first look to complete an audience intent mapping exercise to identify where a buyer is deciding to make a purchase and then work to develop a media plan and allocate budget across channels to best meet the intents of the audiences that make purchases from the retailer. For very competitive categories, where the average CPCs for paid search are very high, there is value in spending a portion of the total budget in other commerce media channels, such as retail media, and/or affiliate programs that have strong intent signals.

Is it worth working with the best digital marketing agency in NYC for a smaller ecommerce operation, or only for enterprise brands?

These performance-focused digital marketing agencies create plans, launch campaigns, and continuously monitor and optimize the performance of a client’s online marketing efforts in order to achieve their goals. When it comes to the best digital marketing agency in NYC for a small to medium-sized online store, many of the same strategies can be put to work as are used by the large online retailers. However, because the cost of a misallocation of budget is so much greater on a smaller budget, the greatest value to a small online store will typically come from the audience intent mapping, the setup of the client’s attribution, and the architecture of the paid media plan. And we include here a case study where the client was spending only $41 per day to see a significant increase in ROI. A well-structured paid media strategy is essential for any brand, regardless of size, looking to maximize its digital marketing efforts.

Works Cited

Adobe. "2025 Holiday Season Traffic Report." Adobe Analytics, 2026.

IAB. Full Year 2025 Internet Ad Revenue Report. PwC, April 2026.

IAB. As Is Measurement Landscape in the Creator Economy. January 2026.

National Bureau of Economic Research. "The Cost of Customer Acquisition Without Offsite Tracking." NBER Working Paper, 2025.

Pew Research Center. "A Majority of U.S. TikTok Users Are There for Reviews and Recommendations for Products and Services." Pew Research Center, November 2024.

Stanford HAI. 2026 AI Index Report: Economy. Stanford University, 2026.