Beyond the Walled Gardens: Best Practices for Growth Marketers to Unlock More Value with Genuin Communities

By Matt Wurst, Chief Marketing Officer at Genuin

For years, growth marketers have been locked in a rinse-and-repeat cycle: plan, spend, optimize (hopefully), repeat.

But let’s be real — when most of that focus and activity happens inside the same few walled gardens, you’re essentially optimizing within constraints that someone else built.

What if there was another way?

A way to transact beyond traditional retail and commerce media networks while still benefiting from the high-intent, engaged audiences they attract? A way to break free from the same old ad placements and unlock richer consumer connections, better content synergies, and more measurable value?

By integrating Genuin’s vertical video-powered community placements / sponsorships into their strategies, marketers can extend their brand’s presence across a growing ecosystem of brand-safe owned-and-operated destinations — places consumers trust, where they are already engaging, creating, and converting. The opportunity isn’t just bigger budgets. It’s better outcomes. Let’s talk about why.

1. Expanding the Media Plan Beyond the Usual Suspects

Retail media networks and commerce media platforms have exploded in recent years, with brands funneling billions into these high-intent environments. But there’s a gap: most of these dollars go toward standard ads; display, search, sponsored products not community-driven engagement. Effective, but boring. If we wanted to stay here the whole online ad ecosystem would still be run by text ads.

We’re helping marketers flip the script by embedding interactive, scrollable, shoppable video communities inside brand-owned ecosystems. Think partnership activation, not just media buy. Community sponsorship means 100% SOV in front of the most engaged viewers in the right moment to inspire purchase, drive top-of-mind preference, or discover your brand for the first time, associated with the topic, category, or genre you choose.

The result? A new layer of media inventory that’s always on, consumer-led, and conversion-friendly — not just ad placements, but an immersive shopping experience.

For growth marketers — from media buyers to partnership teams — this means:

• More Places to Play: Retailers, CPG brands, publishers, and entertainment networks are using Genuin to build their own video-powered community hubs. These are high-attention, contextual environments where consumers interact with content, creators, and brands — all within an owned channel.
• Less Fragmentation, More Control: One of Commerce Media’s biggest hurdles for buyers today is fragmentation — the need to plan and buy from each mini walled garden, each with its own reps, specs, pricing, and unique value. But what if one buy could smash those walls, inserting your brand across tens or hundreds of relevant properties? With Genuin, you give us your target customer profile, and we can match your ad or sponsored community with all of the relevant retailers that consumer is spending time on. In one buy. On one IO. With one contact and one consistent, standard set of specs.
• New Paths to Conversion: New solutions creates an authentic, interactive, shoppable experience, optimized for stickyness. . Unlike static display ads, these placements feel organic — giving buyers a new way to capture attention and drive action without forcing consumers to leave their journey.

2. Buying Into Communities, Not Just Impressions

One of the biggest shifts in digital media? The move toward community-driven commerce. Consumers trust recommendations from peers and creators far more than traditional ads, and Genuin facilitates that engagement at scale.

By transacting within Genuin environments, brand marketers and advertisers can:

• Tap Into Engaged Communities: These aren’t passive scrollers — they’re actively watching, commenting, creating, and shopping. Campaigns placed inside these communities benefit from the built-in credibility of organic engagement.
• Leverage Powerful, Unique Insights: When consumer interact with these communities, you gain valuable planning insights. This zero-party consumer data reveals which retailers they prefer to buy your products from, what search terms led them to your community, and what they commented — providing sentiment analysis and highlighting what they love (or dislike) most about your product. It also helps you understand what matters most to your in-the-moment buyers and more.
• Align with Creator-Generated Content: Traditional influencer marketing requires extensive negotiations, contracts, and platform fees. Genuin communities remove those barriers by embedding brand-friendly creator content directly inside retail, brand, and media properties. Your dollars go further, and your content lands where it matters most.
• Go Beyond the Ads: While media buyers have not typically overseen sponsorship and partnership budgets, Genuin communities bring together sponsored community access opportunities with high-value, high-impact vertical video ad products.

3. Measuring What Actually Moves the Needle

Media buyers are under pressure to prove ROI — not just in reach and impressions but in engagement, conversions, and brand impact. Genuin’s platform makes that easier with:

• In-Community Attribution — Understand which content drives clicks, views, saves, and purchases without relying on third-party tracking.
• Real-time, Deterministic Consumer Insights — Since video communities are built for ongoing engagement, performance data is constantly flowing in, allowing for adaptive, always-on media strategies.
• Retargeting Without Walled Garden Limitations — Instead of being trapped by rising CPMs on major platforms, you can re-engage community members with high-intent, personalized content within the same environment where they already interact with your brand.

The Future of Media Buying: Less Guesswork, More Growth

The way forward isn’t about abandoning social media or retail media networks — it’s about expanding beyond them.

Planners, buyers, strategists, marketing, and product leaders who include Genuin communities in their plans aren’t just buying ads; they’re buying into relationships, conversations, and commerce-driven content ecosystems. They’re meeting consumers where they’re engaged and in control, rather than competing for fleeting attention inside cluttered feeds.

So, what’s the play?

If you’re a growth marketer looking to:

• Expand beyond traditional retail media and social ads to more impactful video formats.
• Drive engagement that directly leads to outcomes in a measurable way.
• Capture first-party insights without walled-garden restrictions
• Activate community-powered, shoppable video in brand-safe spaces

It’s time to add Genuin to your media plan.

Want to see it in action? Let’s chat.