News Briefs

Best Buy Canada has chosen Perion Network Ltd. to serve as its exclusive, end-to-end technology partner to programmatically power and monetize its in-store digital signage. 

The collaboration establishes one of the largest SSP-enabled digital out-of-home retail media networks in the Canadian market. It also allows brands to reach high-intent shoppers directly at the physical point of sale.

Highlights of the partnership include:

• Market expansion: The collaboration extends the AI-powered ad platform's footprint in the growing retail media ecosystem by making Best Buy Canada's in-store media into a programmatic-first retail media model.

• Full-stack adoption: Best Buy Canada is deploying Perion's comprehensive suite, which includes ad server, SSP and header bidding technologies. This unified approach replaces siloed infrastructure, and utilizes deep, multi-layer platform integration to increase wallet share and long-term customer retention.

• Yield optimization: Moving away from loop-based digital signage, Perion's dynamic, impression level decisioning engine brings agility to the physical aisle. Advertisers get access to flexible, real-time performance metrics and audience data that were previously exclusive to digital e-commerce channels. 

For brands looking to capture digital-level accountability in the physical environment, this partnership unlocks a massive scale of premium, brand-safe DOOH inventory. 

"Perion provides the technology foundation to help modernize and scale our in-store media offering," said Thierry Hay-Sabourin, SVP, e-commerce, marketplace and marketing at Best Buy Canada, in a media release. "A programmatic-first, loopless model enables more effective, measurable experiences for brands and agencies, while unlocking the valuable advertising moments that our in-store environment offers."

DaVinci Commerce is enhancing its solution for agentic shopping to extend across the entire consumer journey on AI platforms.

Known as DaVinci Agentic BrandStore Enterprise, the platform introduces an AI-powered Content Enrichment Engine to add conversational context to product content, driving precise brand and product discoverability across large language models (LLMs) with added support for GEO (generative engine optimization), ACP (agentic commerce protocol) and UCP (universal commerce protocol).

The Content Enrichment Engine is a core component of DaVinci Commerce's platform. It takes a brand's existing product catalog and enriches every SKU with contextual intelligence drawn from multiple sources simultaneously using a scalable swarm of content agents: 

• Verified customer reviews
• Social conversations from Reddit and YouTube
• Consumer intent signals from GEO platforms 
• Lifestyle content from brand websites 
• And real-time data on what questions consumers are actually asking LLMs. 

The engine uses a RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) and context engineering architecture to keep answers accurate, current and calibrated to specific consumer queries.

The Discovery Problem

The announcement comes as AI platforms cross from novelty into commerce infrastructure. ChatGPT processes 50 million shopping-intent queries every day and has reached 900 million weekly active users, a number that doubled in 12 months. 

Traffic from AI sources to U.S. retail sites grew 393% year over year in Q1 2026, according to Adobe Analytics, and that traffic converts 42% better than non-AI traffic. The change is real and growing, but many brands remain almost entirely undiscoverable.

Product content was written for search engines. Consumers have conversations with LLMs.

When a consumer asks ChatGPT, "I'm going to a friend's wedding this weekend and it might get a little hot, what should I wear?" they are not searching for a product by name. They are describing a need. Most product content is structured for search — not conversations — and optimized for keyword search, not equipped to answer that question. 

Ingredients, technical specs and product names do not map directly to how consumers converse with AI agents. If the product content doesn't match how the question is asked, the brand does not get found.

Brands that submit existing product data directly to ACP or UCP feeds or use only that data to enrich PDP (product detail page) content on their sites, are finding it falls short. Product listings describe what something is. 

They don't capture how it's actually used, what customers say about it, or the conversational context that determines whether an LLM surfaces it in response to a real consumer query. That missing context is why enrichment from the product feed alone doesn't work.

"LLMs are where many consumers start their shopping journeys," Diaz Nesamoney, founder and CEO of DaVinci Commerce, said. "Consumers are on these platforms asking questions about their needs, and brands need to be there from discovery to purchase. To be discoverable requires contextually enriched product content: ACP/UCP/GEO to get you found, and a branded storefront experience to get you chosen. All these together can make first-movers the category leader on these platforms."

Transforming Raw Product Data to Conversation-Ready Metadata

The enriched content has two distinct outputs, which serve two fundamentally different functions. One is discovery layer for ACP, UCP and GEO. The other is an experience layer, which is vectorized, stored for easy retrieval to power the Answer Agent inside the Agentic Storefront. 

Unlike feed submissions, which are constrained by field limits and character caps, the Storefront has access to the full contextual dataset. CRM data, personalization context and proprietary brand content never leave DaVinci's platform. Only answers are shared with the LLM, not the underlying data.

Through the discovery feeds, DaVinci gives an LLM enough context to surface a brand's products via their product discovery tools. Through the Storefront's Answer Agent, DaVinci can answer virtually any question a consumer asks, matching it accurately to products because the full enriched dataset is available, in real time, without the constraints that govern feed submissions.

Support for Multiple LLMs and Chat Interfaces

With the addition of ACP and UCP support, BrandStore experiences can now be made available to LLM platforms like Gemini, Claude and can eventually be integrated into retailer agents like Alexa and Sparky when they support ingestion of enriched product content via UCP.

In addition, BrandStore now supports Website Chat integration via an MCP server that can bring all the Agentic BrandStore experiences and capabilities to a retailer- or brand-owned website or mobile app. This will also enable easy integration with emerging chat interfaces like WhatsApp and Instagram.

Dick's Sporting Goods has partnered with Lids to introduce dedicated Lids shops inside Dick’s stores nationwide. The shops are currently available in 46 Dick’s locations and will be in more than 100 stores by late summer.

The shops expand access to Lids' assortment of licensed headwear while enhancing the Dick’s in-store experience for sports fans. Each Lids shop will feel immersive and include fixtures and merchandising that showcases an extensive assortment of headwear.

"Our athletes are increasingly looking for new ways to rep their favorite teams, their style and the latest trends," David Progar, SVP, licensed, Dick’s, said in a news release. "By partnering with Lids … we'll be able to offer them more choices to meet their needs for sport, lifestyle and fandom."

In addition to product assortment, the companies will collaborate on in-store product training for Dick’s teammates and visual merchandising, according to the release.

Amie Owen, the new chief client officer at Flywheel, brings more than 20 years of experience to the role. She has worked with some of the world's largest brands to navigate retail, shopper marketing, commerce media and retail media. 

She also has played key roles in building and scaling industry-defining commerce capabilities and driving growth across every stage of the commerce journey, per a LinkedIn announcement from the Baltimore-based advertising services agency. 

"As our newly appointed chief client officer, Amie will help brands unlock the full potential of total commerce, bringing together strategy, media, content, operations, insights, activation and measurement to drive measurable business outcomes across the entire ecosystem," Flywheel posted. "As commerce continues to evolve, there are few leaders better positioned to help brands navigate what's next."

Also read: Path to Purchase Institute Announces New Advisory Council to Guide the Future of Commerce Marketing

"What energizes me most about this elevation is the opportunity to help brands unlock growth through our collective commerce offering, sitting under one roof, that will drive Flywheel's end-to-end new commerce offering," Owen posted on LinkedIn. "Total commerce is now at our fingertips: retail strategy, planning, omni media buying, content, retail operations, insights, activation and measurement, all underpinned by our proprietary technology and platform. Our team's ultimate success is to drive measurable business outcomes across our clients' total ecosystems."

Owen is a member of P2PI's Advisory Council, part of a select group of commerce and shopper marketing leaders helping to guide the Institute's strategic direction, contribute to thought leadership and shape member programming.

In 2023, Owen was named to P2PI's 40 Under 40 list.  

Circana has upgraded its AI-enabled Liquid Testing solution. The Chicago-based market research firm's tool now integrates media measurement and campaign experimentation, allowing brands to measure true incremental sales impact using store-level POS data.

Building on a successful in-store launch, Circana's platform now supports continuous experimentation across various media environments. A key breakthrough is its ability to gauge incrementality without turning to dark markets or traditional holdouts.

Key features of the updated Liquid Testing solution include:

• Accurate measurement of media incrementality using real sales data.
• Always-on experimentation across diverse media landscapes.
• Rapid delivery of insights, in a matter of days rather than months.
• A unified self-service platform to optimize campaigns in real time.

The Liquid Testing tool is a key component of Circana's broader software and innovation strategy, in this case creating a single system that provides fast, transparent and actionable outcomes.

"By connecting media and in-store performance in a single, self-serve platform, teams can run experiments continuously, optimize in-flight, and make more confident decisions about where to invest for growth." said Cara Pratt, president, global media and retail at Circana. 

The enhanced platform will roll out in phases, beginning with CPG users in the United States, followed by CPG users in EMEA and select general merchandise users across the U.S., United Kingdom, France and Italy later in 2026.

Also Read: Circana Tool Speeds Purchase-Based Audience Building, Activation

InMarket and Basis are building on their partnership, expanding their efforts to bridge a gap in advertising performance.

American retail media spending is projected to hit nearly $70 billion this year, according to eMarketer, a rate that surpasses both search and social platforms. As a result, media planners face increasing pressure to prove exactly what the ROI is actually driving.

This partnership enhances retail media measurement for users of Basis' automated advertising OS, which now has native access to InMarket's complete suite of outcome measurement tools and exclusive retail media network audiences. Now Basis users can focus on verified visits and purchases directly within their existing workflow.

This expanded agreement transforms existing audience integration into a full-funnel solution where they can track the journey from ad exposure to in-store visits and sales across various retailers and RMNs.  Those incremental sales lift tools will be extended to reach clients in dining, CPG and automotive industries. 

New capabilities for advertisers include:

• Incremental visit and sales life measurement: Basis customers can directly access InMarket's measurement capabilities to measure real-world impact on foot traffic and sales.
• Unique RMN Audiences: RMN-specific audience data from visitation patterns and spending habits are available natively in Basis for better targeting of campaigns.
• Lift optimized audiences: Marketers can deploy InMarket's Lift Optimized Audiences to plan, activate and target known visitors, purchases and look-alikes, driving more measurable growth and maximum efficiency.