The pace of innovation has changed nearly everything in retail. Across a growing number of channels and services, customers expect to be engaged and informed, even entertained, throughout their shopping experience. In fact, they’re actually willing to pay up to a 16% premium for great experiences. Sure, this requires making retail as frictionless as possible, improving internal efficiencies, stocking the right products and delivering them quickly — but that’s not the whole picture.

The digital phenomenon means more shoppers are giving up the opportunity to see a product in person before they buy it. So, that fundamental benefit of in-store shopping is one that retailers and brands must focus on replicating in order to provide a seamless online experience. And it means we’re living through an explosion in demand for great visual media. I expect that in 2030, we’ll look back on this coming decade as the one in which visual media became a conduit for retail success. Let’s explore a few ways visual media is changing the game:

Personalization will pass the eye test

We hear all the time about the emerging role of AI technologies to deliver personalized, context-aware messages and offers to customers through multiple channels. These conversations tend to focus on the products being pushed, the size of the discount, or the location and timing of the message.

While these themes all focus on personalized information, they do so at the expense of personalized appearance. The thing is, this runs antithetical to everything we know about human behavior. Our memories and instincts are built to respond to and retain visual information: our eyes are attracted to color, to people and to distinct designs. As retailers and brands fight to capture a particular customer’s attention, they’ll realize it is just as critical to personalize the underlying image as the text or offer on top of it.

Visual media will look perfect on every device

People are consuming media across more channels and applications than ever before. For that reason, we’ll soon see a mindset change among innovative brands and marketers as they realize that to execute comprehensive one-to-one e-commerce, they need to enable the automatic manipulation of images and videos for delivery across these channels to individual consumers.

To do this, they’ll need to automatically serve the optimal media visual for a given need, based on a variety of contextual data. This will allow them to leverage the version of the specific image that is best positioned to drive conversions through increased relevance.

By this, I mean companies will not only know exactly which image or video to use in a given context, but they will also automatically deliver it at the right size and pixel ratio for a user’s screen and the right orientation for that screen. And as brands further invest in video content, they’ll use intelligent cropping to focus on the subject regardless of text overlay or screen restrictions. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach for serving media to ‘mobile devices,’ the video will perfectly fit each individual device, looking its best without compromising speed of older devices or devices on slow networks.

Hyper-localization will go mainstream

The rise in mobile also means that hyper-local merchandising and marketing strategies will become more efficient and reliable. AI is already helping companies determine which products and offers a local market will respond to, but it also has the power to massively reduce the internal bandwidth needed to communicate those offers.

That’s because text overlay of images across different geographic areas is one of the more complex and time-consuming concepts when it comes to optimizing the delivery of hyperlocal media. Traditionally, this process has been entirely manual. For example, an e-commerce retailer might update their homepage weekly with new product launches or promotions. To do this across geographies, they must manage images across multiple sites with different languages and currencies — all while ensuring the underlying image still appears as desired.

What we’ll see moving forward is that brands will automate this process, with translations and currency changes altering the primary asset in real time. Instead of having to go through each image one by one to change the message, managers will only need to run a copy and promotion compliance check before going live. The time savings and reduction in costly errors will have a huge impact on a brand’s ability to go hyper local in their e-commerce strategy.

Channel relationships will become seamless

Of course, brands aren’t only responsible for managing visual assets on their own platforms. They also need to ensure that their channel partners have access to optimized assets based on their unique requirements. As shoppers research products online and shop in store, whether on their phone or interactive kiosk, both the retailer and brand need to ensure that their assortments are displayed precisely as intended. Since brands serve dozens of original images and videos assets to each channel partner, this is a huge challenge.

We’ll see this addressed primarily through the deployment of advanced product information management (PIM) platforms that automate the product workflow and integrate with AI-enabled digital asset management (DAM) platforms. Together, these systems will ensure visual product information is always optimized and isn’t discarded by the retailer for being misconfigured for its requirements.

Beyond mere compliance, this will also drastically increase efficiency and flexibility. By ensuring assets meet the standards of every channel partner automatically — and in reverse, that retailers are using approved brand assets — it’s far easier and safer to manipulate images for a new purpose. For example, a retailer could remove a certain background and drop in a seasonal underlay for a promotional campaign. This will help them cater more directly to their customers without invalidating the brand standard.  

The visual economy will deliver for smart brands

Ultimately, what we’ll see in 2020 and beyond is that smart retailers will use technology to deliver highly engaging, personalized and timely media to shoppers in the context that best drives conversions. The sheer scale of managing and delivering visual media, and video in particular, is one of the biggest obstacles to the full realization of the visual economy today. But by focusing on the automation of the asset workflow across channels and partners, brands will fully realize the potential of this great opportunity.