The Big Shift outlines how a Total Commerce approach can connect media, retail, trade and consumer engagement as shopping journeys become increasingly complex.
BALTIMORE, July 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Flywheel, a leader in commerce and technology solutions and part of the Omnicom (NYSE: OMC) Integrated Media offering, today released The Big Shift: From Managing to Mastering Fragmentation, a new white paper examining how AI-powered search, social commerce, retail media and organizational silos are reshaping the way brands drive growth.
While 80% of consumers (OM Research, Connected Commerce 2024) now take a non-linear path to purchase, many brands still manage media, retail, trade, and shopper marketing through separate teams, budgets, and performance metrics. According to Flywheel, that disconnect leads to wasted media investment, missed sales opportunities, unmeasured promotional impact, and reduced organizational agility.
The report argues that brands must adopt a Total Commerce approach, a business model that unifies consumer discovery, retail activation, media investment, trade planning, and measurement into one operating system focused on business outcomes rather than channel performance.
"The way consumers discover and buy products has fundamentally changed," said Mike Feldman, SVP Commerce at Flywheel. "A shopper might discover a product through a creator, research it through an AI assistant, purchase it through a retailer marketplace and pick it up in-store, all within a few hours. The brands winning today are not treating those moments as separate channels. They are organizing around one connected consumer journey."
The report notes that TikTok generated $33.1 billion in gross merchandise volume in Q1 2026, surpassing eBay and demonstrating how quickly discovery and purchase are converging on a single platform.
The report identifies three forces accelerating the fragmentation challenge:
Consumer discovery has fundamentally changed. Social platforms have become primary discovery engines, with 73% of Gen Z and 67% of Millennials (Salsify, 2025) citing social media as their main source for learning about new products. Nearly half of social media users have also used influencers in their purchase journey.
AI is becoming a new discovery channel. Thirty-six percent of consumers, including 45% of Gen Z and 51% of Millennials (OM Research - GEO Update April 2026) say they have shifted most of their searches from traditional search engines to generative AI platforms.
Retailers have become media companies. Retailers now operate advertising businesses, premium content platforms and closed-loop measurement capabilities that increasingly connect media exposure to purchase behavior.