GroupM has named Samantha Bukowski to global head of commerce, leading GroupM Nexus Commerce. 

Bukowski will work closely with regional and market leaders at GroupM to implement localized commerce plans as well as across WPP globally. The position was previously held by Andrew Ruegger, who left GroupM in September 2022. 

Bukowski’s new role is an expansion of her previous position as head of global commerce strategy and operations for GroupM’s global commerce function. She joined the network in 2019, leading Wavemaker’s U.S. commerce strategy. 

Bukowski’s appointment comes as the WPP agency consolidates its commerce capability inside GroupM Nexus, the network’s performance marketing platform. 

Previously, Acceleration, Finecast and Xaxis, which make up Nexus, had their own commerce reaches. Now, GroupM’s specialist retail, direct-to-consumer and social commerce functions all sit under GroupM Nexus Commerce and service the network’s agencies and clients more cohesively.

Global e-commerce will make up 19% of global retail sales in 2022, growing to 25% by 2027, according to GroupM’s E-Commerce & Retail Media Forecast. Global retail media is likely to reach $101 billion in 2022—15% higher than the previous year—and will hit $160 billion in annual revenue in the next five years, the report found.

Reorganizing GroupM’s commerce abilities will help it keep pace with the rapidly changing commerce environment as it fields concerns about privacy and generative AI, and bridges the gap between commerce performance and overall client business performance, according to Bukowski.

“We see the future of media moving much more toward a holistic view of performance, where everything is measurable, everything is addressable and everything is performance,” she said. “In order to do that, we needed a commerce capability that was extremely consistent, extremely powerful, but was also very much stitched into everything else that we do as a performance unit and as a brand marketing unit.”

Bukowski likens the evolution of commerce to the introduction of digital marketing, which started as a niche specialty but quickly grew into a lucrative section of the advertising landscape. The ability to connect media impact to business goals will set true agency commerce functions apart from the dabblers, according to Bukowski.  

“We have these business KPIs, and they’re our North Star,” Bukowski said. “In order to make sure that we’re tracking toward those goals, we have to then map those business KPIs to the right media KPI that’s indicative of that.” 

For instance, a brand wanting to increase its market share would closely measure the impact media placements have on new-to-brand sales. But that means more than saying the brand is running extremely efficient media or return on ad spend is really high. 

“We’re taking it a step further to ask, ‘Are we actually moving the business forward in the ways you’re asking us to?’” Bukowski said. “That’s where commerce comes in and says, ‘We’re not just delivering efficient media, we’re delivering effective media that’s pushing the total business forward.’”