The core argument
Most brands manage channels in silos. The Amazon team doesn't talk to the DTC team doesn't talk to the retail team. Every channel optimizes its own P&L. The result: every channel underperforms what it would achieve as part of a coordinated system. The brands winning in connected commerce stopped treating channels as competing budget lines and started treating them as compounding inputs.
What "connected commerce" actually means
The term gets misused constantly. Let me define it precisely.
Connected commerce is a commercial strategy that maps how each channel influences every other channel — and then builds the organizational structure to capture that influence intentionally.
A TikTok Shop creator video drives 50,000 product views. Some of those consumers buy on TikTok. More go to Amazon to check reviews and buy there. Some Google the brand and end up on brand.com. Some walk into a Sephora and ask about the product they saw on TikTok. Each of those touchpoints is a conversion opportunity. Managed in silos, only the TikTok conversion gets attributed to TikTok. The Amazon lift is invisible to the TikTok team. The DTC conversion is attributed to branded search. The retail sale is attributed to nothing.
Connected commerce makes the full chain visible. And then builds the operating model to optimize the chain, not the individual links.
The O+O framework: online plus offline as one system
O+O — online plus offline — is not a new concept. In China, Alibaba has operated this model for years. In Europe, it's still early. Most brands have the pieces but not the architecture to connect them.
01 — Discovery
TikTok Shop + Social Commerce
Content-driven discovery at the top of funnel. Not primarily a sales channel — primarily a demand generation engine. TikTok awareness flows into Amazon and DTC conversions. Measure the full downstream impact, not just in-app revenue.
02 — Conversion + Scale
Amazon
The conversion engine. Consumers who discover on TikTok, see on Instagram, or experience in-store often buy on Amazon. The brand that owns Amazon for its category owns the conversion layer. This is where most of the revenue compound happens.
03 — Loyalty + Margin
DTC
The retention engine. First purchase on Amazon, second on brand.com — if the brand is smart about capturing the customer relationship. Higher margin, better data, direct relationship. DTC doesn't compete with Amazon; it follows it.
04 — Credibility + Trial
Physical Retail
The showroom. Consumers discover and trial in-store, then buy repeatedly online. Physical presence builds brand authority that compounds across all digital channels. The brands pulling out of retail to "go digital" often find their digital channels weaken without it.
The O+O insight is not that these channels should all exist. It's that they compound on each other when coordinated — and cancel each other out when managed as competitors.
TikTok Shop in Europe: where it is now, where it's going
TikTok Shop launched in the UK in 2021 and is expanding across Europe. In 2024, TikTok Shop reached $33 billion in global GMV — mostly from Southeast Asia, where the content-to-commerce model is fully developed. Europe is still early.
That is the argument for moving now.
The brands that built TikTok organic presence in 2020–2022 didn't pay for the reach they have now. The brands building TikTok Shop creator relationships today are establishing the network before it becomes expensive and competitive. The creator flywheel in Southeast Asia didn't build overnight — it was seeded years before the volume arrived.
For CPG brands in Europe, TikTok Shop is not a primary revenue channel yet. It is a demand generation investment with a long payback period and a first-mover premium that is available right now and won't be available indefinitely.
The brands treating it as a direct-response channel with a ROAS target will be disappointed. The brands treating it as a brand-building and audience-seeding investment will look smart in three years.
The channel silo problem — and why it's structural
The reason most brands don't operate a connected commerce system is not strategic disagreement. It's structural friction.
The Amazon team is measured on Amazon revenue. The DTC team is measured on DTC revenue. The retail team is measured on retail sell-in. Nobody is measured on the cross-channel customer lifetime value that connected commerce is designed to optimize.
When TikTok drives a customer to Amazon, the Amazon team gets the credit. TikTok gets blamed for low ROAS. Investment in TikTok gets cut. The brand loses the demand generation engine. Amazon revenue dips six months later and nobody connects the cause.
This plays out in every large CPG with siloed channel P&Ls. The measurement problem is upstream of the strategy problem. Until a single commercial leader owns the cross-channel P&L, channels will compete for budget instead of compounding for revenue.
What the winning architecture looks like
It's not complicated in principle. It's hard in practice because it requires organizational change.
One data layer across all channels. A single view of customer behavior across Amazon, DTC, TikTok, and retail. This requires investment in data infrastructure — CDPs, clean rooms, first-party data capture at every touchpoint. Without it, connected commerce is a slogan.
One cross-channel P&L owner. Someone accountable for total commercial performance, not channel performance. The hardest organizational change — and the one that unlocks everything else.
Channel-specific tactics, system-level strategy. Each channel gets its own execution plan. Amazon operates differently from TikTok Shop operates differently from DTC. But the strategy — audience acquisition, category positioning, lifetime value architecture — is decided at the system level, not the channel level.
Cross-channel measurement. Attribution models that capture cross-channel influence, not just last-click channel revenue. Amazon Marketing Cloud, combined with first-party DTC data and retail panel data, can build this picture. It requires investment. The insight it generates is not available any other way.
Why European brands have a structural advantage right now
Europe is fragmented in ways that hurt scaled execution — but that fragmentation also creates openings.
The connected commerce model that works in the US runs on scale: massive media budgets, wide distribution, deep Amazon share. European markets are smaller, which means that category-specific connected commerce plays are viable at lower scale. A brand that runs a coherent O+O strategy across DE, UK, and FR can own its category on the AI Shelf, on Amazon EU, and in physical retail simultaneously — with a fraction of the budget required in the US.
The brands moving on this now are drawing the map. The category architecture being built in Europe over the next two to three years will be significantly harder to disrupt once it's set.