What if shoppers could ‘Buy Now, Anywhere’? Now they can. CJ clients now have access to firmly, an agentic commerce platform that brings embedded checkout capabilities to publishers and advertisers.

Embedded checkout represents an exciting step forward for commerce. It lets our industry move beyond traditional click-and-redirect models and enables transactions right at the point of discovery. Here's what this means for you and how it fits into the broader changes happening in digital commerce.

A New Layer of Opportunity

Retail discovery is fundamentally fragmenting. The old model—where shoppers started at Google, clicked through to a publisher's article, then landed on a brand's product page—is breaking down. AI-powered search tools are answering questions without sending traffic anywhere. TikTok Shop and Instagram are turning social feeds into storefronts where purchases happen in-app.

That shift is why this moment matters. That shift is creating new territory for everyone. Publishers are finding audiences engaging with content in more places than ever—social feeds, AI assistants, messaging apps, voice interfaces. Advertisers are discovering customers in moments they never had access to before: mid-scroll recommendations, conversational product searches, contextual suggestions that feel native to wherever someone happens to be.

It’s a fragmentation of the journey, but it's expansionary if advertisers and publishers find better ways to drive more purchases. Mobile-first discovery, agentic shopping experiences, and distributed commerce models aren't replacing the old affiliate playbook—they're opening up parallel paths that didn't exist five years ago. What's needed now isn't just a better tool—it's infrastructure that can work across all these environments at once, meeting people in the growing number of moments that blend content, conversation, and commerce in ways that don't look like traditional "shopping" at all. More moments mean more opportunities for sales, commissions, and profit.

The click-and-redirect model has scaled affiliate commerce for decades, and it's not going away. Sending qualified traffic to merchant sites still works well, especially for considered purchases, when shoppers want to browse complete catalogs, compare options, and explore brand experiences.

Think about it: a shopper reading a publisher's gift guide on their phone probably doesn't want to leave that article to visit five different merchant sites. Someone browsing product recommendations might be ready to buy right now rather than clicking through to navigate a full website. A viewer who sees a product on their TV faces real friction when trying to complete a purchase on a different device.

Embedded commerce can span AI chatbots, social, publisher pages, within ads, in SMS and messaging apps, CTV, and even some marketplaces. It complements your existing dotcom strategy by enabling transactions in moments and channels where redirects create too much friction.

How firmly Works

As part of the CJ network, firmly enables CJ advertisers and publishers to capitalize on new revenue streams. When users hit a transaction button, an overlay appears on the screen depicting the page from the advertiser’s website. The content and images are directly from the site, ensuring a strong positive consumer experience, and the overlay format makes it easy for publishers to implement.

Here’s an example from the pages of USA Today:

Want to see this in action? Check out the live example of embedded checkout in the wild here and experience how firmly turns discovery moments into instant, on-page transactions.

The solution is fully privacy- and PCI-compliant.

The Strategic Opportunity for Advertisers

firmly gives retailers the opportunity to drive more sales from new purchase occasions while retaining control of the customer experience and first-party data.

If you are an advertiser, embedded checkout opens up distribution in environments that work alongside your existing affiliate channels. In the first CJ programs on firmly, we’re seeing some individual publishers drive 20-40% more transactions and sales.

Driving traffic to your site is still critical for building brand experiences, showcasing your whole catalog, and supporting those longer purchase journeys. Embedded checkout extends your reach into situations where sending people to your full site creates unnecessary friction.

• Capture high-intent moments in new environments. Editorial contexts, social discovery, and mobile content experiences are full of purchase intent. But shoppers in those moments often don't want to navigate to a full merchant site. Embedded checkout converts intent that might otherwise disappear. You're not replacing site traffic—you're capturing transactions that wouldn't have happened through traditional paths.
• Optimize by context and device. Mobile users finding products in content often convert better without redirects. Desktop users researching complex purchases might still prefer visiting your full site. Embedded checkout gives you the flexibility to meet different shoppers where they are, rather than forcing every transaction through the same funnel.
• Maintain control as the merchant of record. Whether transactions happen on your site or through embedded checkout in publisher environments, you own the customer relationship and transaction data. It's your checkout experience, made available wherever it makes sense.
• Improve attribution across distributed discovery. As shoppers discover your products through social, content, and emerging channels, tracking the path from discovery to purchase gets messy. When transactions can happen right in the discovery environment, attribution becomes much clearer, especially in privacy-constrained and cross-device journeys.

This creates a more complete distribution strategy. Embedded checkout captures quick, mobile, and impulse transactions in distributed discovery environments.

The Strategic Opportunity for Publishers

More revenue from new ways to monetize your content. It’s hard to find fault in that!

If you're a publisher, embedded checkout opens revenue streams that sit right alongside your existing affiliate earnings. It creates new opportunities to monetize many types of content and user behaviors:

• Transaction-ready content environments. Your gift guides, product roundups, and editorial recommendations can now convert directly without sending users away. This doesn't replace the value of driving deeper site visits for considered purchases—it captures quick, impulse, and mobile transactions that might not survive a redirect.
• Build first-party purchase data assets. When transactions happen on your properties, you gain visibility into what your audiences actually buy, not just what they click. This data becomes strategic, informing your editorial decisions, enabling more thoughtful recommendations, and creating audience segments that command premium rates.
• Expand your addressable inventory. Some content contexts work better for embedded transactions; others work better for traditional referrals. You can now optimize based on content type, user behavior, and device. Mobile gift guides might convert better with embedded checkout. Deep product reviews might still work best by driving to merchant sites for full browsing.
• Monetize transactions without becoming a retailer. You capture transaction value while merchants handle all the operations—inventory, fulfillment, and customer service. It's a new revenue stream without the infrastructure burden of actual retail.

Your traditional affiliate revenue continues. Embedded checkout just adds new opportunities on top of it.

The Bigger Picture

Embedded checkout is still in its infancy, but we see big business opportunities here. As product discovery fragments across social platforms, content environments, mobile experiences, and emerging channels, high-intent moments are multiplying across new surfaces. Capturing those moments requires infrastructure that supports transactions wherever discovery happens—not instead of driving site traffic, but in addition to it.

The affiliate channel has always been about connecting shoppers with products at high-intent moments. That fundamental value doesn't change. But those moments are expanding beyond merchant websites into editorial environments, social platforms, and distributed discovery experiences. Having the infrastructure to monetize both traditional redirects and embedded transactions means you can address more opportunities. Together, they give you more ways to capture value across an increasingly complex discovery landscape.

Getting Started

For Advertisers

Getting started with firmly couldn't be simpler. Zero engineering work is required on your end—no developer resources, no technical lift, no disruption to your current operations. Onboarding typically takes anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks, depending on your commerce platform, and there are no additional fees. firmly integrates with most commerce platforms, including homegrown solutions, so you can start capturing embedded transactions quickly without changing your existing infrastructure.

For Publishers

Adding embedded checkout to your site is simple. You embed a simple script—no complex integration, no technical expertise required. You can be up and running in minimal time, immediately unlocking new revenue opportunities alongside your existing affiliate earnings. firmly.ai operates on a performance-based model with a small monthly SaaS fee that's offset by transaction commissions, so you only pay as you earn. The solution is fully privacy- and PCI-compliant, giving you and your audience complete peace of mind.

Ready to implement firmly? Talk to our CJ Platform Partnerships and Solutions team 👉🏽 platforrmpartnerships@cj.com