Where Commerce Meets Narrative: Introducing Personalized Media in Grid

Arushi Khosla
Arushi Khosla
Bloomreach's Personalized Media in Grid feature to transform search experiences

Imagine that a shopper lands on your lighting category page, scrolling through chandeliers from $800 to $8,000. They’re intrigued, but uncertain. What size fits a 12-foot ceiling? Crystal or glass? Without answers, they move on.

Now imagine a different journey. After the first row of products, a guide appears: “How To Choose the Right Chandelier for Your Space.” Two rows later, a seasonal promotion highlights your bestsellers. The customer feels informed, confident, and ready to buy.

That’s the experience made possible by Bloomreach’s Personalized Media in Grid feature.

The Problem: Product Grids Weren’t Built for Storytelling

Search and category pages were designed for precision and performance — purely transactional surfaces with little space for context, education, or brand storytelling.

If you wanted to add a buying guide, promotional module, or campaign tile between products, you faced a choice: build custom integrations for each use case, or skip it and lose momentum.

That trade-off shows up in performance:

  • Premium and luxury brands struggle to defend their prices without educating shoppers on materials, fit, or craft
  • Promo-driven brands can’t put timely offers where shoppers make decisions
  • Merchandisers lose speed when minor updates depend on engineering sprints, and they also lose control over the visual layer of the site

The result? Missed revenue, fragmented storytelling, and a customer experience that feels transactional when it should feel curated.

The Solution: Your Grid, But Smarter 

Personalized Media in Grid lets merchandisers place rich, story-driven content — images, HTML, video, buying guides, offers — inside product results on search and category pages.

Once connected through the Discovery API, teams can configure and manage placements without ongoing developer work. The capability unifies targeting, scheduling, testing, and measurement, turning static grids into dynamic surfaces for narrative commerce.

  • Place with precision: Choose specific grid slots (e.g., after product 6 or 14) or define placement logic that matches the journey
  • Target intelligently: Deliver content by query or category and (when connected) by Bloomreach Engagement segments for audience-level relevance
  • Preview and schedule: Review experiences before launch and automate timing for campaigns and promotions
  • A/B test and measure: Compare variants, track engagement, and attribute impact on conversions, so you can treat your grid like performance media

Under the hood, the Discovery API returns product and content objects in a single ranked response, so relevance and narrative render as one coherent experience, without detours or overlays that break flow.

Why This Matters

Personalized Media in Grid gives brands narrative control within product discovery — where content, context, and conversion finally operate on the same surface.

By bringing education and promotion directly into the grid, Bloomreach unifies merchandising, personalization, and measurement. Brands can justify premium pricing, accelerate campaign speed, and make every placement accountable.

Other approaches treat products and content as separate surfaces. We bring them together at scale — this means you won’t need to create 100 rules to target 100 queries (and you can apply global rules as well), and you can easily preview the experience across the dashboard. 

With Personalized Media in Grid, you get a feature powered by the same intelligence that drives search ranking and personalization.

What This Unlocks for Retailers 

Luxury and Premium Retail: Educate To Elevate

High-consideration products deserve context. Insert craftsmanship stories, sizing guides, or material explainers between results to turn uncertainty into confidence — and browsers into buyers.

Seasonal and Promotional Retail: Campaigns That Keep Pace 

Bring Black Friday, gifting, or limited-edition drops directly into product discovery. Schedule, swap, and measure promotions in real time so every campaign meets the moment.

Multi-Brand and Category Retailers: Cross-Merch With Intention 

Show the ecosystem, not just the SKU. Pair recipes beside cookware, skincare routines with cosmetics, or travel gear with apparel. Turn browsing into basket-building. 

Heritage Brands: Keep the Story in Sight

For brands built on legacy or purpose, product discovery is an opportunity to reinforce identity. Surface sustainability notes, brand values, or design inspiration alongside products for brand fidelity.

Everyday Retail: Always-on Guidance

Some context should never clock out. Keep care tips, fit guides, or post-purchase advice visible year-round, making education a constant part of the product discovery process.

Narrative Powered by Relevance 

Your grid is your busiest storefront. Now, it’s also your most expressive.

With our Personalized Media in Grid feature, merchandisers can finally blend creativity with performance, education, inspiration, and conversion in one continuous flow.

Explore how Bloomreach connects discovery, personalization, storytelling, and conversation to build the next generation of shoppable storytelling. Read the documentation, view the inspiration library for a quick start, and request a demo to see it in action.

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Arushi Khosla

Senior Product Marketing Manager, Discovery & Clarity at Bloomreach

Arushi is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Bloomreach, where she helps brands reimagine how people find, feel, and fall in love with products online. She sits at the intersection of storytelling and AI, translating technology into intuitive, measurable, and deeply human shopping experiences. Her work focuses on turning product search into narrative commerce.

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