Published 22 January 2024

8 min read

From augmented reality (AR)-powered squad shopping and recipe-suggesting smart carts to artificial intelligence (AI)-created (designed, narrated and fact-checked) virtual worlds, speakers from megabrands including Amazon, L’Oréal, Pinterest and Walmart gathered at CES 2024 (Las Vegas, January 9-12) to chart the best emerging retail and media tech to watch in 2024. We dissect the key trends and talking points.

Walmart: Squad Shopping, AI Home Replenishment & Ultra-Scalable Exit Tech

Instacart’s Recipe-Suggesting Shopping Carts

Pinterest’s Keyword Visibility Makes Users Feel Seen

L’Oréal’s Diagnostic AI Assistant Apes Beauty Advisers

Obsess’s Personalised & Dynamic Next-Gen Brandiverses

The WSJ’s AI-Created Virtual Sustainable Horizons

American retail giant Walmart’s keynote revealed a host of technological innovations across its physical estate and digital presence, ranging from an AI-powered in-home replenishment service and ultra-scalable smart exit tech to its new Shop with Friends app feature marrying AR with AI.

American retail giant Walmart’s keynote revealed a host of technological innovations across its physical estate and digital presence, ranging from an AI-powered in-home replenishment service and ultra-scalable smart exit tech to its new Shop with Friends app feature marrying AR with AI.

Summary

Walmart: Squad Shopping, AI Home Replenishment & Ultra-Scalable Exit Tech

American retail giant Walmart’s keynote revealed a host of technological innovations across its physical estate and digital presence, ranging from an AI-powered in-home replenishment service and ultra-scalable smart exit tech to its new Shop with Friends app feature marrying AR with AI.

Instacart’s Recipe-Suggesting Shopping Carts

Easing grocery shoppers’ mental load by helping novice cooks broaden their horizons and meal planning, as well as letting foodies break out of their recipe routine rut (while continuing to consume their favourite ingredients), American food delivery platform Instacart debuted the new AI-powered capabilities of its smart Caper Carts.

Pinterest’s Keyword Visibility Makes Users Feel Seen

Focusing on how to make social media users feel seen – specifically by giving them a sense of self-discovery – Pinterest revealed its new AI-driven sharing of users’ keywords (the words Pinterest uses to describe the images they click on) with them.

L’Oréal’s Diagnostic AI Assistant Apes Beauty Advisers

Iterating its previous diagnostic tools, such as 2020’s Skin Genius, French beauty giant L’Oréal described how its new AI assistant provides a template for beauty and wellness brands to digitally occupy a problem-solving role akin to a beauty adviser (see The Evolution of AR Try-On in Beauty Retail’s Digi Revolution).

Obsess’s Personalised & Dynamic Next-Gen Brandiverses

Neha Singh, chief executive of US-based experiential e-commerce platform Obsess, detailed the next chapter of metaverse-lite brandiverses – discovery-based non-communal branded virtual environments – which can deliver 61% longer session times and 26% higher average order values than regular e-commerce sites (Obsess, 2024).

The WSJ’s AI-Created Virtual Sustainable Horizons

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) discussed how its new generative-AI-created virtual world, made by its custom content studio The Trust, evolves journalistic storytelling while demonstrating to clients how to execute sustainability-centric communications. Intriguingly, given mistrust around AI’s reliability, the tech was used to fact-check the stories told within the world.

CES 2024 - Retail & Media Tech

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?

Topics

Want to see the full report?

Offering access to over 350 consumer and cross-industry reports annually, Stylus Membership is your window to tomorrow’s most exciting opportunities.

We already arm more than 500 of the world’s most forward-thinking brands and agencies with the creative insights they need to make transformative business decisions.

We’d love to do the same for you.

Book a demo with us today to discover more.

Want to see the full report?

Offering access to over 350 consumer and cross-industry reports annually, Stylus Membership is your window to tomorrow’s most exciting opportunities.

We already arm more than 500 of the world’s most forward-thinking brands and agencies with the creative insights they need to make transformative business decisions.

We’d love to do the same for you.

Book a demo with us today to discover more.

2025: Retail & Brand Comms

2025: Retail & Brand Comms

2025: Retail & Brand Comms

2025: Retail & Brand Comms

2025: Retail & Brand Comms

Further leaps in new-wave artificial intelligence (AI) (unlocking connections which are practical, hyper-personal and/or creatively seductive), continued economic anxieties and a resurging desire for more socialised brand experiences – online and off – will drive 2025’s biggest brand engagement movements. We decode...

1 / 10