The Digital Commerce Daily — May 17, 2026

The Digital Commerce Daily — May 17, 2026 Your 8-minute briefing on ecommerce, social commerce, and digital marketing. In today's episode: • A $30M Series A into an AI-powered social marketing OS signals that brands are willing to pay serious money to centralise and automate their social commerce operations. • Meta projecting $240 billion in ad revenue for 2026 is a landmark number that redraws the map for every performance marketer allocating budget this year. • Vessi's director of D2C reveals how the footwear brand is using data to make faster operational bets and lift conversion — a practical DTC growth playbook in a high-CAC environment. Fun fact: Amazon's 'Buy Box' — the default purchase button on a product page — is won by third-party sellers, not Amazon itself, roughly 82% of the time, yet most shoppers assume they're buying directly from Amazon. This means billions of dollars in annual sales flow through independent merchants while Amazon collects a fulfillment and referral fee without ever touching the inventory. Hosted by Marco and Klara.