Retail: 5 convictions for your customer acquisition
Social commerce turned default reflex, CAC up 60 % in five years, attribution becoming a dealbreaker: five convictions brought back from Tech for Retail.
Key takeaways
- In social commerce, everything hinges on the referrer: 88 % of consumers trust someone they know more than any advertisement.
- Customer acquisition cost had already climbed by about 60 % between 2015 and 2020, and 57 % of French consumers now block ads.
- Attribution has become a dealbreaker when choosing a channel: direct traffic already accounts for about 37 % of visitors.
- A delayed and conditional incentive no longer drives shares. What is needed is an immediate cash reward, with no tiers or expiration date.
- Retail media repeats the logic of social: buying ad space on an audience you do not own. The way out is an owned channel.
Two days on the exhibition floor, a booth, and non-stop conversations with retailers, e-merchants, and agencies. Tech for Retail was where the Retail Mapping by France Digitale and FDJ United Ventures was unveiled, featuring Frak Labs among the startups pushing the sector forward in France. When you hear news like that, you say an enthusiastic yes.
Yet what I took away from the show isn’t in the mapping. It’s in what decision-makers say once they step off stage: their acquisition channels get more expensive every quarter, and they can no longer prove what actually works.
Five convictions came out of it. They are my own, not a market research study, but they hold together.
Is social commerce still a trend?
No. It has become a reflex, and that changes the nature of the question to ask.
Nobody wonders anymore whether consumers discover products on social media. That is settled, even across categories that swore three years ago their customers weren’t there. Consumers discover brands through friends, through long-followed creators, and in private groups where no one is selling anything.
The question has shifted a notch: no longer “where” they discover, but who they trust.
Here, the gap is clear. 88 % of consumers say they trust recommendations from people they know more than any other channel, which is 50 % more than the lowest-ranked formats: display ads, mobile ads, SMS, and sponsored links (Nielsen, Trust in Advertising 2021). On the creator side, the hierarchy has inverted as well: 73 % of 13-39-year-olds trust smaller creators more than major names, and 62 % say they are tired of seeing the same faces (YPulse, Celebrities and Influencers Report).
A brand can therefore be seen everywhere and believed nowhere. This is exactly what happens when you buy reach without considering who delivers the message, a point explored in We are all influencers.
The implication: activate your customers and your communities, not just professional influencers.
Why do brands now demand clear attribution?
Because their current measurement has stopped being a measurement. Over those two days, I did not have a single conversation where the same phrase didn’t come up: “we want to know what actually works, and why.”
Third-party cookie deprecation, browser protections, customer journeys starting on mobile and ending on desktop: last-click has become an accounting convention. It attributes the sale to the last billboard seen along the way, not the person who gave the address.
The largest blind spot is invisible on most dashboards. Direct traffic accounts for about 37 % of visitors to a website, and anything shared on WhatsApp, Slack, Discord, or direct messages arrives without any referrer, every single time. That traffic is unmeasured word-of-mouth, filed under “organic” by default. The mechanics are detailed in Dark social: measuring invisible word-of-mouth.
Hence the disconnect every e-merchant knows well: the “how did you hear about us?” field at checkout never tells the same story as the analytics tool. One says “a friend recommended it,” the other says “direct.”
The implication: attribution has become a dealbreaker when choosing a channel.
Has traditional acquisition hit a ceiling?
Yes, and it is arithmetic. Customer acquisition cost had already climbed by about 60 % between 2015 and 2020 (Paddle, ex-ProfitWell), and nothing since has reversed the trend. In e-commerce, the average blended CAC now hovers around 87 dollars, compared to around 50 in 2019 (LoyaltyLion).
Meanwhile, receptivity is falling. 57 % of French consumers use an ad blocker, 70 % consider online ads too numerous, and 60 % find them too intrusive (mind Media × 366, April 2025). More than half of your target audience has already made up its mind: it will never see your campaigns.
Two trends overlap, and their combination creates the ceiling. Customers now expect an experience that feels relevant to them, and they demand proof before trusting any message.
You cannot counter rising costs with more volume, because volume is precisely what degrades receptivity. It is a vicious circle, accompanied by a quarterly bill. The full breakdown of this mechanism can be found in Customer acquisition is broken.
The implication: bring earned media back into the mix, with its own dedicated budget line, a clear numeric target, and someone whose full-time job it is.
Immediacy has changed the rules of engagement
A less expected conviction, and by far the most operational: delayed incentives no longer work.
A reward that arrives later, with strings attached, valid on a next purchase, in a brand-invented currency, asks the customer to extend credit to a business in exchange for a favor they gave their friends for free. Put that way, it is easy to see why so many loyalty and referral programs stall.
What the user wants comes down to three words: simple, immediate, transparent. They want to know what they get, when, and without having to review terms and conditions. The comparison between mechanics is detailed in Cash, points, or gift cards.
This is the logic we engineered at Frak: the brand sets its CAC upfront, and on a 10 € CAC, 8 € goes to the ambassador customer and 2 € goes to the platform. The customer is paid in cash, the moment the sale is confirmed, with no tiers or expiration date.
The implication: if your reward requires a terms-and-conditions page, it is already too complicated.
Retail media is already looking for an alternative
Retail media exploded because it provided exactly what social was losing: first-party data and immediate proximity to the point of purchase. It was a good answer. It is aging fast.
The mechanics are the same as what brands just fled: buying space on an audience you do not own, from an intermediary that dictates pricing and measurement. And because a retailer’s inventory is mechanically tighter than a social network’s, saturation hits sooner. In France, retail media already accounts for 1,38 billion euros, up 13 % year-on-year, representing 11 % of a 12,4 billion digital advertising market (SRI / UDECAM, Observatoire de l’e-pub). This growth on finite inventory has a name: rising auction bids.
Hence the path that kept resurfacing in hallway conversations: building a recommendation channel where the brand sets its own customer acquisition cost. That is the whole premise of the Recommendation Economy.
The implication: before buying yet another inventory, take stock of what you already own.
What these five convictions have in common
They describe the exact same shift. Retail is looking for channels that are simultaneously credible, measurable, and controlled, and established channels never check more than two.
| Criterion | Paid social | Retail media | Customer recommendation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Audience ownership | Rented | Rented | Owned |
| Customer data | Captured by ad network | Captured by retailer | First-party, owned by you |
| Attribution | Modeled | Partial | Deterministic, link-based |
| Unit cost | Discovered after the fact | Discovered after the fact | Set before the campaign |
| Ceiling | The auction | The inventory | The number of satisfied customers |
A channel that is neither credible, measurable, nor owned is not an acquisition channel. It is a lease with an option to raise the rent.
For the first brands equipped, this shift shows in the numbers: an acquisition cost that is 26 % lower on average, and up to 40 % of sales generated through recommendations. Figures observed on our end, across a small number of brands, to be taken as such.
Yes, everyone will need AI in their lives, that much is clear. But trust, proof, and smart automation matter just as much. Your customers are formidable business drivers, and until now, no one had given them the right tool.
So, how do you plan to tackle your acquisition challenges? Do we open a new channel, or keep optimizing the same ones? Because doing the same thing again while CAC rises every quarter… just saying.
Frequently asked questions
What is social commerce in retail?
Social commerce refers to the discovery and purchase of products initiated from social media platforms, via creators, communities, or peers. It has become the default discovery mode, shifting the challenge from choosing the right media to choosing the right referrer.
How do you measure an acquisition channel without third-party cookies?
By tracking the share itself. A unique recommendation link, assigned to an identified customer, operates without third-party cookies and survives cross-device switching from mobile to desktop. This is essential when direct traffic accounts for about 37 % of visitors and every share in private messaging arrives with no referrer.
Does retail media replace social media advertising?
No, it compounds it. Retail media provides first-party data and proximity to the purchase, but rests on the same premise: renting space on an audience owned by a third party. Because its inventory is tighter, auction saturation hits faster, especially with the French market growing 13 % per year.
Why does an instant reward convert better than a delayed voucher?
Because it removes the credit required from the customer. A voucher conditions the payout on a future purchase with you, shifts the risk onto the person doing the favor, and adds conditions to review. A cash reward paid upon sale validation is understood in one sentence and triggered effortlessly.
I am Virginie Maire, co-founder of Frak Labs, which turns your customers into a scalable, profitable, and authentic acquisition channel. A committed entrepreneur and mother of two, I have navigated between media, social networks, influencer marketing, and e-commerce for 20 years… and I’m still having just as much fun!