Changes in the marketing environment are eroding the efficiency of the performance marketing that underpinned the old growth formula, while the influence of search-engine-driven visibility weakens — shifting how brands grow.
That was the diagnosis offered by Kim Tae-oh, Chief Product Officer at Imweb, a Korean commerce platform, speaking at BrandCon in Seoul. His proposed next growth axis: "deep commerce."
How consumers find brands is changing along two lines:
One figure conveys the scale: creator-related marketing accounted for more than 20% of US online holiday season sales last year.
Which means mentions off your own site play a decisive role in brand visibility. However finely you tune owned channels, discovery increasingly happens elsewhere.
The same structure appears in AI search. Research showing models preferentially search brands they already know is covered in AI Models Search for Familiar Brands 3.2x More Often. Accumulated off-site mentions are what make a brand one the AI knows.
The operational shift is more direct. According to a case cited in the presentation, AI absorbing execution work reduced a conversion rate optimisation team from six people to one.
How you read that number matters. Framed as headcount reduction, it is a cost story. The argument being made was different.
The more execution is automated, the less execution capability differentiates. If anyone can run equivalent A/B tests and page optimisation with the same tools, advantage cannot be built there.
Kim's conclusion is direct. Ultimate competitiveness comes from the data a company holds and from human capability — judgment and ideas.
As AI takes over execution, the logic goes, the value of deciding what to execute rises. That is the basis for the claim that depth is the next growth axis.
Do not diagnose falling performance efficiency as an account-level problem. The reflex when ROAS declines is to adjust creative and bids. If the discovery path itself is relocating, there is a hard ceiling on what account optimisation recovers.
Add off-site mentions to your measurement set. Creator marketing exceeding 20% of holiday sales means it is a channel, not an experiment. For the Korean market picture, see Q3 2026 Influencer Marketing Trends.
Do not transplant the CRO headcount case directly. Six to one is a specific instance, and outcomes vary with organisational size and maturity. The transferable point is shifting the ratio of execution work to judgment work.
Define your data asset concretely. "Our data is our advantage" is a common claim, but writing down what data competitors genuinely cannot obtain usually produces a short list. Lengthening that list is the practical starting point for deep commerce.
A concept presented by Imweb CPO Kim Tae-oh at BrandCon: as performance marketing efficiency falls and search visibility weakens, the next growth axis comes from depth — proprietary data and human judgment and ideas.
Through increasingly sophisticated AI queries and the growing influence of UGC and creator channels. Creator-related marketing exceeded 20% of US online holiday season sales last year.
A case cited in the presentation saw a conversion rate optimisation team shrink from six people to one as AI absorbed execution work. As execution automates, execution capability itself stops being a differentiator.
From the data a company holds and from human capability — evaluation and ideas. As AI takes over execution, the value of deciding what to execute increases.
To apply what you just read to your own site, start with a free audit of where things are now.
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