Where to Buy and Shoppable Media Software in 2026: A Buyer's Overview of the Market
Where to Buy software has no category of its own on Gartner or G2, so buyers have to self-assemble the picture from several different sources. This overview puts together what both the websites publish about this, where to buy the software segment, who the main vendors are, what is changing, and what to ask before you buy.
A market without a single name
Where to Buy software connects a brand's product pages, ads, videos, emails and social content to the retailers that stock its products. It then analyses and reports back on what shoppers did next. Brands that sell through multiretail rather than direct to consumer (DTC) rely on it to turn interest into a sale they can measure.
Analysts have not yet coined a label for this. Gartner splits the segment between two markets, Shoppable Media and Digital Shelf Analytics. G2, on the other hand, files the same vendors under four categories at once: E-Commerce Analytics, Multichannel Retail, Social Commerce Platforms and Store Locator.
The practical result is that no single grid or quadrant ranks these vendors against each other. G2's automated "alternatives" lists for them include Mixpanel, SOCi and Yext, which solve different problems. Hence, a shortlist has to be built by capability, not by category page.
How Gartner covers the segment
Gartner has no Magic Quadrant for this space. Its coverage comes in two parts.
Digital Shelf Analytics. Gartner defines this market as softwares and applications that give brands and manufacturers data from the third-party digital channels where their products are sold. Its latest Market Guide for Digital Shelf Analytics was published on 18 May 2026. The guide advises buyers to weigh three things: the breadth of channels covered, the depth of insight, and integration capabilities. Gartner says it selects vendors that cover multiple marketplaces and retailers and sell a product rather than a service.
Shoppable Media. This is a Gartner Peer Insights market with 12 listed products, and it is thinly reviewed. The most-reviewed product, Videowise, has 15 ratings. ChannelSight holds 4.0 from 2 ratings, PriceSpider 4.0 from 1, and MikMak has none yet. Those counts are too small to separate vendors.
Gartner's clearest contribution here is its buying criteria, not a ranking. Channel breadth, insight depth and integration are the right three questions for Where to Buy as well as for digital shelf tools.
What G2 users say
G2 has more reviews, and the three best-known vendors score almost the same overall: 4.5 to 4.6 out of 5. The sub-scores and the reviewer mix show more.
G2 measure (score out of 10 unless noted)
Three patterns are worth a buyer's attention.
- Setup and administration. ChannelSight leads on ease of setup and ease of admin. One enterprise reviewer in 2026 reported rollouts across several countries in two to three weeks.
- Support. MikMak and Wayvia both score 9.2. Our 7.9 comes from 12 ratings, most of them from 2022, and we take it seriously. Reviews from 2026 describe the team as responsive and proactive.
- Self-service. Reviewers of MikMak and Wayvia often ask for more of it. They mention raising tickets to add products, change retailers or create campaign links.
Sample sizes are small throughout. Some sub-scores rest on 5 or 6 responses, so treat gaps of a few tenths as noise.
The main vendors
Three vendors appear on most shortlists. They overlap on Where to Buy and shoppable media, and differ in ownership, home market and emphasis.
MikMak and PriceSpider are sometimes confused, but they are separate companies. MikMak is now part of SPINS, a US retail data provider. PriceSpider trades as Wayvia.
Gartner's Shoppable Media listing also includes SmartCommerce, Shoppable, Bazaarvoice, Firework and Videowise. The last three focus on reviews and shoppable video rather than retailer routing.
What is changing
Two shifts in the past 15 months matter to anyone signing a multi-year contract.
- Consolidation. SPINS acquired MikMak on 14 January 2026 to join online media data with in-store sales data. SPINS's retailer relationships are mostly regional US grocery and natural products chains. Brands outside that footprint should ask how the roadmap serves them.
- Agentic commerce. Shoppers now research and compare products inside AI assistants. Wayvia launched an MCP offering alongside its rebrand. ChannelSight offers an MCP Server, AgentReady scoring and a multi-retailer AI Shopping Assistant. G2 has added agentic AI feature fields to these vendors' profiles, though none has enough reviews to score yet.
What to ask before you buy
Gartner's three criteria translate into specific questions for this segment. We have added three more that the G2 reviews suggest.
- Channel breadth. How big is your retail network? Which retailers are connected in each market you sell in, and how many report sales data back? Reviewers of every vendor note that coverage varies by country.
- Insight depth. Is reporting limited to clicks, or does it show basket contents and revenue at the retailer?
- Integration. How does the data reach your analytics, media and BI tools? Ask if an API is available and if the data can be integrated with GA4 specifically.
- Self-service. Can your team add products, swap retailers and create campaign links without raising a ticket?
- Time to live. How long does a multi-country rollout take, and who does the work?
- AI readiness. Can AI shopping agents read your live catalogue, price and availability, and route a shopper to a retailer?
Our view is that the platform should cover the whole path: discovery, retailer hand-off and digital shelf. That is how ChannelSight is built. If you want to test it against your own retailer list, book a demo.
Sources
Ratings and review counts were read on 30 September 2026 and will change.
- Gartner: Market Guide for Digital Shelf Analytics, 18 May 2026
- Gartner Peer Insights: Digital Shelf Analytics
- Gartner Peer Insights: Shoppable Media
- Gartner's vendor selection criteria, as quoted by eClerx
- G2: ChannelSight vs MikMak
- G2: ChannelSight vs Shoppable Where to Buy (Wayvia)
- MikMak: SPINS acquires MikMak
- AdExchanger: SPINS moves into media with MikMak acquisition
- MrWeb: New name for PriceSpider
- ChannelSight
- Where To Buy Software and Shoppable Media Guide
