New Flywheel Study Shows How Brands Can Turn Fragmentation Into Competitive Advantage

A new Flywheel report, “The Big Shift: From Managing to Mastering Fragmentation,” examines how AI-powered search, social commerce, retail media and organizational silos are reshaping how brands drive growth. Based in Baltimore, Flywheel deals in commerce and technology solutions and is part of Ominicom Integrated Media. It is no secret that consumers are discovering, researching and purchasing products across an increasingly fragmented mix of social platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, AI-powered search, retail media networks and physical stores. But many organizations are still structured around disconnected agencies, teams, budgets and channels. The report takes a look at how leading brands are responding by adopting a more integrated “total commerce” approach that connects media, retail, trade and consumer engagement around the full shopping journey. The white paper also tackles emerging trends around AI-powered discovery, social commerce, retailer media platforms and why physical retail remains a critical moment of influence despite rapidly evolving digital behaviors. You May Also Like According to the study, 80 percent of consumers now take a nonlinear path to purchase, and many brands still manage media, retail, trade and shopper marketing through separate teams, budgets and performance metrics. That disconnect leads to wasted media investment, missed sales opportunities, unmeasured promotional impact and reduced organizational agility, Flywheel said. The study 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, senior vice president 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.” Feldman said when he has asked brands what keeps them up at night, they respond, “it is generally around orchestration because things have gotten so fragmented. There’s brand media versus retail media, and they are two different teams, social versus TV are two different teams and creative versus media are two different teams, and all of them have different incentive structures, and get bonused differently.” Feldman said he met with the largest apparel seller on Amazon last week, and it was all around orchestration because they have multiple brands and multiple product categories, but it is just single consumers at the end of the day. “One of the things we’re talking about is retailers are moving from being retailers to being these full media companies. We can track consumers from TV, to what they’re doing in display advertising, to what they’re doing in search, to even what they’re doing on a DTC site versus Amazon. Orchestration happens through better technology,” he said. Flywheel, for example, has been codeveloping technology and their data clean rooms with Amazon for many years. “It enables you to track consumers through multiple touchpoints,” Feldman said. “Anything that ends up driving commerce is not only what we offer but we connect together,” Feldman said. According to the report, TikTok generated $33.1 billion in gross merchandise volume in the first quarter of 2026, surpassing eBay, and demonstrating how quickly discovery and purchase are converging on a single platform. According to the Flywheel report, there are three forces that are accelerating the fragmentation challenge. First is consumer discovery has fundamentally changed. Social platforms have become primary discovery engines, with 73 percent of Gen Z and 67 percent 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. Second, AI is becoming a new discovery channel. Some 36 percent of consumers, including 45 percent of Gen Z and 51 percent of Millennials, say they have shifted most of their searches from traditional search engines to generative AI platforms, according to OM Research — GEO Update. Third, 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. The report emphasizes the continued significance of physical retail, arguing that while discovery increasingly happens across creators, AI, retail, media and connected TV, the shelf remains one of the most critical aspects in the consumer journey — good news for brick-and-mortar retailers. “The physical shelf is still one of the most important moments in commerce, but it is no longer where the consumer journey begins,” said Phil Camarota, chief creative officer at Flywheel. “By the time a shopper reaches a store or product page, they have already been influenced by creators, retail media, reviews, AI recommendations and many other touchpoints. The brands that succeed are creating one connected experience, across all those moments.” The report spotlighted Flywheel client Danone’s “Become a Home’Rista” campaign as an example of “total commerce” in action. Built around the idea that many consumers believed barista-quality coffee required professional expertise, the program connected influencer content, retail media, digital shelf activations and in-store experiences across multiple retailers. The campaign generated 641 million impressions and multibrand halo sales across Danone’s portfolio. Ariel Dalton, head of strategic insights, planning and connected commerce at Danone, said, “We uncovered what we call the ‘barista gap’ and built a campaign that inspires consumers to recreate and elevate the coffeehouse experience at home. The success of this campaign demonstrated the power of pairing a compelling consumer insight with the strength of Danone’s portfolio, to deliver a daily ritual that feels both elevated and unique to the consumer. What began as a pilot in 2025 has evolved into one of our flagship programs, scaling across multiple retail activation nationwide.” Feldman noted, “Fragmentation leaves brands with a simple choice: manage it or master it. Brands that own consumer journeys across channels, orchestrate with retailers around shared outcomes and align internally around one set of goals will create competitive advantage. The brands that master fragmentation will define the next era of commerce.”