When Loyalty Becomes Media And Data Becomes Railroads

Think your customers are loyal? Our data-backed dive suggests otherwise. We sit down with Cardlytics to unpack why non-loyal shoppers often deliver outsized gains and how commerce media—powered by first-party transaction data—can transform media spend into measurable loyalty. From banks to retailers to CPGs, we trace how card-linked offers (CLO) connect incentives to outcomes and deliver immediate consumer value alongside certified incrementality. We explore how category-level visibility changes everything. A shopper who looks loyal in your CRM might be splitting most of their wallet with competitors. With insights drawn from trillions in annual spend, Cardlytics shows how to spot those leaks, build audiences around real switching behavior, and target them with relevant, timely offers. The results are hard to ignore: higher average tickets, more repeat visits, and a proven path to iROAS that stands up to third-party validation. Then we look forward. SKU-level targeting lets a brand drive a specific product through a specific retailer, closing the loop from exposure to receipt. Agentic buying is on the horizon, where AI shopping agents will hunt for value across channels. Cardlytics’ position—integrated with banks, merchants, and identity—acts like rails for this future, enabling offers to flow to both humans and agents in ways that are privacy-safe and performance-driven. Along the way, we dig into the unglamorous but essential work of data hygiene, merchant normalization, and building a modern tech stack that makes these outcomes possible. If you’re rethinking loyalty, measurement, and where your next dollar of growth comes from, you’ll find practical guidance here: focus on non-loyal shoppers, pair CLO with clean identity, validate incrementality, and treat loyalty as a revenue center. Subscribe for more conversations at the edge of data, commerce media, and customer growth, and leave a review to tell us the next question you want answered.