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The Non-Linear Customer Journey Reimagined

From Funnel to Influence Map: A 2025 strategic guide to video content, budget allocation, and customer engagement in a multi-touchpoint world.

The End of the Linear Funnel

The traditional marketing funnel —a tidy model of awareness, consideration, and decision—is an obsolete framework. Its primary flaw is assuming a controlled, predictable progression in an era where brands no longer guide consumers through limited touchpoints.

Today's consumer is in control, navigating an ever-expanding network of streaming services, online shops, AI search, and social platforms. This shatters the customer journey into a multitude of unpredictable, non-linear patterns, demanding a more fluid and realistic model.

AdVids Defines: The "Influence Map"

To replace the outdated funnel, we champion a more accurate model: the "influence map." This reimagines the journey not as a sequence, but as a dynamic ecosystem of potential touchpoints, reducing artificial barriers between awareness, consideration, and decision.

It accepts that consumers move fluidly between states, influenced by a web of interactions in no prescribed order. This ensures strategy is planned based on what truly drives influence, allowing for AI-powered customization for each unique journey.

Mapping Video to the Influence Map

The New Discovery Ecosystem

Search is no longer synonymous with a Google search bar. YouTube is the world's second-largest search engine , while 40% of Gen Z now use TikTok as their primary search tool. A modern video strategy is now inseparable from a search strategy.

The "Hero" Video Fallacy

Retailers must abandon creating single, monolithic "hero" videos. A single customer will likely encounter a brand across numerous, unpredictable touchpoints on platforms that reward vastly different content formats (short-form vs. long-form, vertical vs. horizontal).

The "Multimodal" Content System

A single core message must be atomized. Strategy should be built around a central "pillar" piece of content (like a webinar), designed from its inception to be systematically deconstructed into dozens of smaller assets for different platforms.

The New Economics of Attention

In 2025, video is the dominant language of digital commerce, rooted in its unique ability to capture attention, convey complex information, and drive emotional connection.

Video's Share of Internet Traffic

Projected to account for a staggering 82% of all internet traffic by 2025.

Message Retention Power

Viewers retain 95% of a message from video, versus only 10% from text.

Positive Marketing ROI

93% of marketers report a positive ROI from video, the highest figure ever recorded.

Business Adoption Rate

89%

of businesses report using video as a core marketing tool in 2025.

The Primacy of Short-Form

+75%

Increase in global consumption, driven by Gen Z and Millennials. For these demographics, it's a primary tool for product discovery.

The Rise of Live Commerce

15x

Projected market growth, blending entertainment with transaction to boost conversion rates by up to 10 times.

The Resulting Shift in Ad Spend

Consumer attention shifts are causing a commensurate reallocation of advertising budgets. Social video platforms have become the center of gravity for media investment, capturing over half of all US ad spending.

$111 Billion

Projected global spending on short-form digital video advertising alone in 2025.

Video as a Business Intelligence Tool

The value of video extends far beyond marketing; it has evolved into a core business intelligence tool . While analytics were once limited to vanity metrics like views, modern platforms provide granular data and one of the richest sources of first-party customer intelligence.

Precise Watch Time

Drop-Off Points

Heatmap Interactions

Click-Through Rates

When integrated into a Customer Data Platform (CDP) , this data provides profound insights into preferences and intent. For example, analyzing drop-off points in a demo can identify a confusing feature, fueling product innovation and customer service.


Strategic Pillars of an Advanced Video Strategy

Moving from market trends to operational reality. An in-depth framework for building a competitive and scalable video commerce engine for the 2025 retail landscape.

The Four Core Pillars

Execution demands robust capabilities across four foundational pillars that form the video commerce engine.

Production

Personalization

Immersive Experiences

Shoppable Media

The Content Velocity Challenge

An always-on, personalized, omnichannel video strategy creates an immense operational challenge: producing high-volume, quality content without a linear increase in budget or headcount.

This requires a fundamental shift from a bespoke, project-based approach to a scalable, systematized "content factory."

Diagnosing Production Bottlenecks

Before designing solutions, we must accurately diagnose the specific points of friction that prevent scaling. Unaddressed, these lead to slow production, overloaded teams, and stretched budgets.

File Management

Logistical nightmare of managing and transferring massive video files.

Remote Collaboration

Enabling effective real-time collaboration among distributed teams.

Approval Processes

Navigating inefficient, multi-layered approval cycles that delay timelines.

IP Security

Ensuring security of sensitive intellectual property before launch.

Content Archiving

Organizing a continuously expanding library for easy retrieval.

Relentless Pressure

Producing more content with smaller teams, tighter budgets, and condensed schedules.

Solution 1

Repeatable Workflows & Batch Production

The first step is moving away from reinventing the wheel. Systemizing the entire production workflow creates a repeatable process that streamlines operations. Batch production dramatically increases output from a single session.

This requires a shift from project-based thinking to a continuous "content factory" mindset.

Solution 2

Technology-Enabled Collaboration

Modern marketing collaboration software and cloud platforms eliminate friction. Tools like Frame.io streamline approvals, while LucidLink enables real-time editing of massive files, obviating time-consuming transfers.

Solution 3

Strategic Content Repurposing

A "create once, publish forever" philosophy. Pillar content is designed for deconstruction. AI-powered tools like Opus or CapCut can automatically re-edit long-form video into shareable social snippets.

Solution 4

AI-Powered Automation

AI is increasingly integrated to automate repetitive tasks like initial script drafting , simple animations, and transcription. Automated metadata tagging is crucial for scalability, making content archives searchable and intelligent.

The Brand Voice Governance Framework

A significant risk in scaled production is brand dilution. A robust governance framework is essential to ensure brand consistency remains absolute as content velocity increases.

Develop a "Brand OS"

Create a centralized repository of brand assets: pre-approved templates, modular content blocks (intros, outros), and a library of approved visual and audio assets for easy integration.

Implement AI Guardrails

Use advanced prompt engineering to enforce brand tone and voice. Fine-tune customized Large Language Models on your own on-brand content to ensure AI outputs inherently align with your identity.

Human-in-the-Loop Workflows

Automation should augment, not replace, human oversight. Define review checkpoints where brand strategists validate AI outputs before publication, ensuring final quality control.

Perspective: The Rise of the Video Content Strategist

The complexity of a multimodal, omnichannel video strategy gives rise to a new, critical leadership role. This role transcends a traditional producer, requiring a blend of creative storytelling, rigorous data analysis, technical workflow design, and strategic brand governance .

They are the master architect of the "content factory" and the ultimate guardian of the brand voice. For retailers to succeed in 2025, investing in this pivotal strategic role is a human capital imperative just as critical as any investment in technology.


The Personalization Frontier

Balancing One-to-One Engagement with the Practical Realities of the 2025 Retail Environment.

From Buzzword to Expectation

Personalization has transitioned from a marketing buzzword to a fundamental consumer expectation. In the 2025 retail environment, a one-size-fits-all approach is a recipe for disengagement and customer churn.

The promise of AI is to deliver on the long-held vision of hyper-personalization —a "segment-of-one" approach. However, the path is fraught with financial, ethical, and operational barriers that require a pragmatic analysis.

The Consumer-Driven Mandate

This is no longer a desire for a first-name salutation; it's an expectation that brands will understand preferences and anticipate needs.

AI enables this at scale, moving beyond simple demographics to offer hyper-targeted recommendations and dynamic content.

Expect Personalization

71%

of consumers state they expect personalized experiences.

Feel Frustration

76%

express frustration when those expectations are not met.

Commercial Incentive

+40%

increase in average basket size from personalized shopping.

A Reality Check: Five Major Obstacles

Despite the clear mandate, widespread hyper-personalization will not be a reality for most retailers in 2025. Here's why.

The Data Privacy Dilemma

Growing consumer skepticism and a tightening regulatory landscape (GDPR) create tension. Consumers are less willing to share the very information needed to personalize their experiences, posing legal and reputational risks.

Organizational Data Silos

Customer data is often fragmented across disconnected systems (e-commerce, CRM, POS). Few organizations have the unified, high-quality data foundation that is a prerequisite for effective personalization.

The Financial Gap

The technology for real-time, AI-driven personalization is complex and expensive. In a challenging economic climate, many companies lack the financial resources to commit to such a large-scale investment.

The Trust Deficit

Consumers harbor a significant and growing distrust of AI, concerned about biased algorithms and manipulation. Brands must first earn trust by being transparent about how AI is being used before customers will welcome it.

Rapidly Changing Consumers

Consumer behavior evolves at a pace that often outstrips algorithms. Emotional drivers, cultural shifts, and life events mean that predictive models are a constantly moving target, making perfect personalization elusive.

A Pragmatic Path Forward

Given these barriers, an all-or-nothing approach to hyper-personalization is destined for failure. Instead, retailers should adopt a phased, strategic approach based on a clear assessment of their current capabilities.

A maturity model provides a structured framework to benchmark the current state, identify critical gaps, and chart a realistic roadmap for advancement.

The Personalization Maturity Model

A strategic planning instrument to guide investment and organizational focus toward areas that will unlock the next level of personalization effectiveness.

Stage 1: Absent

Culture: Not a priority. Efforts are ad-hoc.

Resources: No dedicated team or budget.

Processes: No testing or shared learnings.

Tech & Data: Data is siloed, basic tools.

Stage 2: Basic

Culture: Acknowledged as valuable, but no formal strategy.

Resources: Small, part-time group, limited budget.

Processes: Basic A/B testing is conducted ad-hoc.

Tech & Data: Rule-based segmentation, data still siloed.

Stage 3: Advanced

Culture: Top-level priority, executive sponsorship.

Resources: Formal, cross-functional team with budget.

Processes: Systematic experimentation process in place.

Tech & Data: CDP is in place, ML is deployed in key areas.

Stage 4: Pioneer

Culture: Embedded in core business strategy and DNA.

Resources: Multiple, empowered teams collaborate.

Processes: Continuous optimization loop is established.

Tech & Data: Data is fully unified, AI-driven one-to-one.

Sample Diagnosis: A Company's Journey

This diagnosis shows a company with advanced technology held back by a developing culture and fewer resources—guiding investment toward organizational development.


Immersive Retail Experiences

A new frontier of customer engagement is emerging through immersive technologies . Augmented Reality (AR) and spatial computing are bridging the digital and physical worlds for unparalleled customer engagement.

Adoption is No Longer a Question, It's a Reality

Investment follows strong consumer demand, as shoppers now prefer and actively seek out retailers offering immersive AR experiences.

Proven Use Cases Driving Business Impact

AR is delivering measurable results across conversion, satisfaction, and operational efficiency.

Virtual Try-On (VTO)

For apparel, eyewear, and cosmetics, Virtual Try-On (VTO) has become a game-changer, boosting purchase confidence and slashing product return rates by as much as 40%.

In-Home Product Visualization

For furniture and appliances, placing true-to-scale 3D models in a customer's own space removes friction and directly drives higher conversion.

In-Store "Phygital" Experiences

AR overlays digital info in physical stores, from smart shelf tags to gamified experiences that increase dwell time and customer engagement.

XR in Retail Media Networks

A critical trend is emerging: immersive XR experiences are becoming premium ad inventory in Retail Media Networks (RMNs).

Retailers now offer brands sponsored XR, like AR mini-games or virtual pop-ups, transforming passive ads into interactive, memorable brand moments.

Brand
Retailer
Customer

Navigating the Implementation Challenges

Success requires overcoming technical hurdles and addressing critical user experience and privacy concerns.

Content Fragmentation

Latency & Bandwidth

User Fatigue

Data Privacy & Ethics

AdVids Perspective: The WebAR-First Imperative

"The greatest barrier to AR adoption was the app download. WebAR removes this friction, running directly in the browser. Success stories from Nike and Pizza Hut prove this model ensures 'easy entry and fast conversion.' The strategic imperative is clear: adopt a WebAR-first approach, optimizing all video and 3D assets for lightweight, fast delivery on the mobile web."

Activating Shoppable Media

Seamlessly connecting inspiration with transaction, shoppable experiences turn content into commerce across social, web, and Connected TV.

Overcoming Scalability Hurdles

Implementing a seamless shoppable video experience presents significant technical and content hurdles that retailers must overcome.

Integration & Compatibility

Connecting front-end video with back-end e-commerce systems and ensuring format compatibility across all devices.

Mobile Optimization

Mitigating slow loading speeds on mobile, where most video is consumed, is critical to prevent user abandonment.

Production Costs

The high cost of creating quality video can be prohibitive, especially when trying to produce a high volume of content.

Quality & Consistency

Maintaining brand consistency and avoiding creative burnout while feeding an always-on content calendar is a major challenge.

The Rise of Shoppable CTV

shoppable Connected TV is evolving from a brand channel into a measurable performance driver.

Innovations like on-screen QR codes allow advertisers to directly attribute sales. Case studies show campaigns can achieve up to a 67% higher return on ad spend (ROAS).

Strategies for a Frictionless Funnel

Success in shoppable media hinges on minimizing friction at every step from discovery to purchase.

Seamless Social Integration

Leverage native checkout on platforms like TikTok and Instagram to reduce cart abandonment and capitalize on impulse buys.

Dynamic Layouts & Playlists

Use in-video carousels and themed playlists to boost product discovery and increase the average basket size beyond single-item videos.

Authentic Creator Collaborations

Partner with trusted influencers whose genuine recommendations build credibility and drive higher engagement and conversion rates.

The Ultimate Fusion: CTV & RMNs

The transformative power is unlocked by fusing the engagement of CTV with the rich, first-party data from Retail Media Networks, creating a powerful "closed-loop" advertising ecosystem.

1. RMN Data Targeting

2. Shoppable CTV Ad

3. Purchase (Online/In-Store)

4. Causal ROI Measurement

This creates definitive proof of performance, turning CTV into a true sales-driving channel.


Measurement, Operations & Implementation

The final part of the strategic framework. We provide the essential tools to translate brilliant strategy into tangible business results, ensuring video investments are both accountable and sustainable.

Robust Data

A solid foundation for meaningful analysis and decision-making.

Clear Mandate

A unified mission to measure what truly matters for business growth.

Pragmatic Plan

A realistic roadmap for implementing strategy and achieving results.

The ROI Mandate

In a climate of tight budgets, demonstrating a clear return on investment is a mandate. This requires a fundamental shift away from simplistic metrics toward a sophisticated framework that proves incrementality and links video engagement to tangible business outcomes.

This section provides a comprehensive guide to modern video measurement, directly addressing the need for advanced metrics to prove ROI.

100% Accountable Focus on True Impact

Moving Beyond Vanity Metrics

The first step is abandoning superficial metrics. A "view" offers no real insight. In 2025, a more nuanced set of metrics is required to gauge content quality and audience interest.

Watch Time: A far better indicator of content quality, revealing how much of a video viewers actually consume.
Completion Rate: Directly measures if your content is compelling enough to hold attention until the end.
Engagement Rate: Likes, comments, and shares signal resonance and potential for organic growth.

The Death of Multi-Touch Attribution

Traditional models like Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA) are obsolete. Their reliance on third-party cookies is crumbling due to privacy regulations. Even when functional, models like last-click are deeply flawed.

The "Lower Funnel Death Spiral"

Last-click overvalues bottom-funnel tactics, causing top-of-funnel, demand-creating activities to be starved of budget. This stagnates new customer acquisition.

The New Gold Standard: Incrementality

Unlike attribution (correlation), incrementality measures true causal impact . It answers the critical question: "How many sales occurred because of this campaign that would not have happened otherwise?" A powerful and widely applicable method for this is geo-matched market testing .

Practical Application: Geo-Testing

A privacy-compliant method using aggregated market-level data. The difference in sales between "test" and "control" groups represents the incremental lift.

Control Markets

No Campaign

Test Markets

Campaign Active

A Unified Measurement Framework

No single method is a silver bullet. A holistic strategy combines multiple methodologies to create a complete picture of performance.

Media Mix Modeling (MMM)

A top-down statistical approach for high-level, strategic budget allocation across all channels, online and offline.

STRATEGIC PLANNING

Incrementality Testing

A bottom-up experimental approach to prove the causal impact and true ROI of specific channels and campaigns.

ROI VALIDATION

Platform Attribution

In-platform analytics (Google, Meta) valuable for near-real-time, tactical optimizations like creative or bidding.

TACTICAL OPTIMIZATION

A Catalyst for Transformation

"The adoption of incrementality is not just an analytical upgrade; it is a powerful catalyst... forcing difficult but necessary conversations about budget allocation. It provides clear evidence to shift investment from capturing existing demand toward creating new demand through compelling video content."

This strategic pivot aligns brand, performance, analytics, and finance teams around the common goal of driving sustainable, profitable growth.


The Future of Customer Insight

The Data Foundation

Integrating Video Analytics into a Unified Customer Profile

A sophisticated measurement framework is only as powerful as the data that feeds it. Discover how integrating granular video insights into a Customer Data Platform transforms marketing and personalization for 2025.

The CDP: Your Central Nervous System

The primary function of a Customer Data Platform is to solve data fragmentation. It connects all systems where customer data resides to create a single, comprehensive, 360-degree view of each customer.

This unified profile becomes the single source of truth for all marketing and customer experience initiatives, ensuring consistency and enabling advanced capabilities.

E-commerce
POS Systems
→ CDP ←
Email
Loyalty

Beyond Standard Metrics

To truly leverage video, retailers must move beyond siloed analytics. The goal is to pipe granular, event-level engagement data directly into the CDP and associate it with individual customer profiles.

Furthermore, the content itself should be tagged with rich metadata (e.g., product category, topic, journey stage), so that a customer's viewing behavior can be used to infer their interests and intent.

Watch Time
Completion %
Drop-off Points
In-video CTAs

Enriching The Customer Profile

The integration of granular video data creates a much richer and more nuanced customer profile than is possible with transactional or browsing data alone, providing deep insights into a customer's mindset and motivations.

High Purchase Intent

A customer watches 90% of a "how-to" video for a high-value product, signaling late-stage consideration.

Values-Driven Segment

A user consistently watches videos on sustainability, allowing for segmentation into an "eco-conscious" audience.

High Lifetime Value

A new customer completes an entire onboarding series, identifying them as a highly engaged user who is likely to have a high lifetime value .

Activating The Enriched Data

A unified profile is only valuable if it drives action. The enriched, video-aware customer profile becomes the engine for a new level of sophisticated, automated marketing.

Powering Hyper-Personalization

This data triggers automated, personalized communication . The customer watching 90% of a how-to video could immediately receive a follow-up email with a special offer for that product.

The system could also dynamically alter the next video that user sees on the website to be a customer testimonial for the same product, guiding them smoothly toward conversion.

Watches Video
Data to CDP
Personalized Email

Creating Sophisticated Segments

Brands can build high-value audience segments for advertising based on video engagement rather than just page views.

An audience of "users who watched >75% of the launch video but did not purchase" is a far more qualified and high-intent segment for retargeting than one based on simple website visitors.

Improving Predictive Analytics

Video viewing patterns are a powerful input for machine learning models. This data can be used to improve the accuracy of lead scoring, churn prediction, and product recommendation engines, allowing for proactive engagement.

The Data Literacy Imperative

In 2025, data literacy will become the single most critical competency for a successful marketing leader. It is the ability to read, understand, question, and communicate with data in a strategic context.

"The essential skill for a leader is to apply critical thinking to these outputs—to question the underlying assumptions of an AI model, to stress-test its conclusions, and to avoid the common trap of using data merely to confirm pre-existing biases."

A data-literate leader translates insights into a compelling narrative that aligns marketing activities with core business outcomes.

Return on Investment

ROI

Customer Acquisition Cost

CAC

Customer Lifetime Value

CLV


An Implementation Roadmap for 2025

A Phased Approach to Innovation

The transformation to a fully realized, AI-powered, unified video commerce strategy is a complex journey. Attempting to implement all capabilities at once is a high-risk approach.

A pragmatic path is a phased implementation, guided by a "crawl, walk, run" framework. This balances ambition with operational reality, ensuring investments generate value at each stage.

The "Crawl, Walk, Run" Philosophy

This strategic framework breaks down a large transformation into a sequence of manageable stages, building momentum through early wins and mitigating risks associated with large-scale change.

Crawl

Months 1-6

Foundational Readiness

Walk

Months 6-18

Strategic Experimentation

Run

Months 18+

Scaled Optimization

Phase 1: Crawl

Foundational Readiness

The primary goal is to establish the non-negotiable data and operational foundation. This phase is about getting the basics right, starting with a comprehensive audit of all customer data sources and technology to identify silos and gaps.

  • Data Unification: Prioritize cleaning and standardizing core customer data into a single source of truth.
  • Baseline Measurement: Establish a clear measurement framework for video engagement and business KPIs to create a performance baseline.
  • Content Repurposing: Systematically repurpose existing long-form content into a library of short-form social videos to build content velocity.

Phase 2: Walk

Strategic Experimentation

With a foundational data layer in place, this phase is about activating data and conducting controlled experiments with new video formats and measurement techniques. This is a phase of learning and validation.

  • CDP Implementation: Implement a Customer Data Platform (CDP) to begin ingesting data and building unified customer profiles.
  • Shoppable Video Pilot: Launch a pilot program on a single, high-impact social channel to test technology and measure consumer response.
  • WebAR Experiment: Launch a WebAR-based virtual try-on experience for a high-volume product category to gain experience with immersive tech.
  • First Incrementality Test: Execute a geo-test to measure the incremental sales lift of a specific video campaign, shifting toward causality-based measurement.

Phase 3: Run

Scaled Optimization

This phase is about scaling successful pilots and integrating advanced AI and automation to drive efficiency and effectiveness across the entire video ecosystem.

  • AI-Powered Personalization: Deploy AI to deliver dynamic video content and product recommendations based on rich, unified customer profiles.
  • Scaled Shoppable Media: Expand shoppable video capabilities across multiple channels, including a scaled program on CTV.
  • Generative AI in Production: Integrate generative AI tools to automate the creation of video variations at scale for different platforms and audience segments.
  • Full Incrementality Measurement: Adopt an incrementality-based model as the primary methodology for strategic budget allocation.

The "Build vs. Buy" Decision Matrix

At each stage, leaders face critical technology acquisition decisions. This weighted matrix provides a structured, data-driven tool to evaluate options beyond simple cost comparisons.

For each potential investment, a team scores each option (Build, Buy, Hybrid) from 1 to 5. The scores are multiplied by the weight to transform a subjective debate into a transparent, strategic analysis.

Criterion Weight Build Score Buy Score Hybrid Score
Strategic Differentiation 15%
Data Sensitivity & Governance 10%
Time-to-Value 10%
Customization Depth 10%
Internal Capabilities & Talent 10%
3-Year Total Cost of Ownership 10%
Integration Complexity 10%
Regulatory Exposure 10%
Performance & Scale Needs 7.5%
Vendor Lock-in & Portability 7.5%
Weighted Total Score 100% SUM SUM SUM

Strategic Imperatives for 2025

The retail landscape of 2025 demands profound transformation. This analysis distills the complex environment into a series of actionable strategic imperatives for leaders.

Unified Commerce Model

Evolve from a fragmented omnichannel approach to a truly unified model, creating a single source of truth for seamless customer experiences.

The "Influence Map"

Abandon the obsolete linear funnel. Adopt a multimodal content system that engages customers at any point in their non-linear journey.

Scalable Video Production

Architect a production engine using repeatable workflows, technology, and intelligent automation to meet the immense challenge of content velocity.

Pragmatic Hyper-Personalization

Approach personalization with realism. Use a phased maturity model to make steady, sustainable progress without overextending resources.

Incrementality Measurement

Move beyond flawed attribution models. Embrace a new mandate for ROI based on incrementality to prove causality, not just correlation.

Culture of Data Literacy

The most advanced tech is useless without the human skill to interpret its outputs. Invest in building the strategic and analytical capabilities of your people.