Mobile Commerce
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For years, retail media and creator marketing operated in separate lanes. Retail media was rooted in conversion: sponsored listings, paid placements, and keyword bidding aimed at catching consumers mid-funnel. Creator marketing, on the other hand, lived upstream in the awareness and engagement territory, celebrated for its authenticity, storytelling, and influence.
But today, those lanes are merging, and fast. As brands demand more measurable ROI from top-of-funnel channels and creators adopt tools that drive direct conversions, a new hybrid model is emerging: one that blurs the line between content and commerce, influence and intent. It’s not retail media. It’s not creator marketing. It’s both.
In 2025, the path from product discovery to purchase isn’t linear. A shopper might encounter a product through a creator’s TikTok haul, research it on Google, see it again in a retailer storefront, and complete the purchase later that evening on mobile. But here’s the shift: creators are no longer only driving discovery. Thanks to shoppable links, affiliate integrations, and app-to-app tracking, they’re now directly influencing conversions.
A recent study from Shopify found that creators who use commerce links see up to a 200% increase in click-to-purchase conversion rates compared to traditional social ad placements. In short, creators are becoming not just storytellers, but revenue drivers.
At the same time, retail media, historically focused on point-of-sale placements, is stretching upward. Brands want more control and visibility earlier in the buyer journey, and retailers are looking for new inventory beyond their owned and operated sites.
Enter Creator Media: Button’s newest feature, enabling retail media inventory and retail media powered links to be seamlessly integrated into a creators’ campaign creation process.
This isn’t just about sponsored posts. It’s about SKU-level targeting layered into creator campaigns, first-party attribution on influencer traffic, and bid-based systems that allow brands to compete for creator visibility the same way they do for retail ad slots. Retail media will capture 27% of all U.S. digital ad spend by 2027. But the biggest area of growth is expected to come from off-site and partner-based activations, including creator content.
The most forward-thinking marketers are already tapping into this blurred approach. They’re layering performance data on top of creator partnerships. This hybrid model delivers something rare in today’s crowded media landscape: performance with authenticity. And it’s outperforming traditional tactics.
Case in point: Brands leveraging Button’s platform to power creator campaigns in retail media saw conversion rates increase by 230% on Instagram, 175% on Facebook, and 170% on Pinterest. These are performance numbers typically associated with paid media, but delivered through trusted, creator-led experiences.
As the walls between creator marketing and retail media come down, marketers need to rethink their budgets, measurement, and strategy.
At Button, we’ve long believed that the future of performance marketing lives at the intersection of content and commerce. That’s why we’ve built the infrastructure that powers deterministic attribution, seamless deep linking, and real-time optimization, helping brands and creators capture every tap, every journey, and every conversion.
We call this creator media, and it's not just an evolution of creator marketing or an extension of retail media. It's the connective tissue between the two.
As more brands shift to mobile-first, app-driven strategies, the winners will be those who lean into this blurred model, not fight it.
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