How Indy Agencies Can Help Their E-Commerce Clients Succeed in 2026

The new year is just around the corner, and for advertising and social media agencies, that means planning for Q1 2026 while navigating the busiest months for their e-commerce clients.

Here are five tips to get your e-commerce clients ready.

1. Shift Your Reporting from Vanity to Value

Agencies need to eliminate silos and demonstrate how performance directly impacts business growth. What does that mean in practice? Stop reporting channel-by-channel and show the full impact your media plan has on your clients. Provide your clients with materials that can be easily shared with their non-marketer internal stakeholders, like the CFO. Understanding the full measurement picture for each client and demonstrating a clear impact on business growth will go a long way this year.

Take the remainder of Q4 to organize, update reporting models, and ask your partners about measurement. Snapchat works with third-party measurement partners like Triple Whale to help our clients understand impact, so you can kick off Q1 with value at the forefront of everything you do.

2. Optimize the Chat Feed

In 2026, agencies need to consider the power of brands communicating directly with their audiences. Consumers expect more 1:1 interactions with brands - they want personalization and they expect relevance. Snapchat recently conducted research that revealed 86% of social media users in the U.S. are open to getting messages from brands on apps like Snapchat, Messenger, and others ¹ - a signal that chat has become a space for meaningful engagement.

Exploring Snapchat’s Sponsored Snaps is one way to tackle this on behalf of your clients - take it from Wendy’s.

3. Bulk Up Creative Libraries with Creators

Prep your e-commerce clients to bulk up their creative libraries with creator UGC. In 2026, personalization isn't a "nice-to-have," it's a baseline expectation. Consumers want a bespoke journey from discovery to purchase - they want ads that feel platform-native and speak directly to them. To deliver this, you need a robust creative library for the algorithm to pull from so it can curate that personalized journey. Leveraging creators and UGC is one way to accelerate your content library build out. Identify the creators who will speak directly to your clients’ audiences, and build UGC into your media plans, like beauty brand Laneige did.

Longtime advertiser, Steve Madden, worked with January Digital, a full-funnel marketing agency, to acquire new customers this year, resulting in $7 incremental ROAS, triple the initial target ² and 24% lower cost per click ³.

4. Become an Expert on First-Party Data

We’ve been having this conversation for more than five years, but it remains critical - agencies who can help their clients activate their own customer data (first-party) are invaluable partners. Focus on building strategies that encourage users to opt-in in exchange for personalized content, exclusive offers, or loyalty rewards. This not only builds trust, but also gives you a sustainable foundation for smarter, more effective campaigns that don't rely on intrusive tracking. And, don't isolate this work to the channels you manage on behalf of your clients. These strategies are relevant across web, lifecycle marketing, field marketing, and more. Get to know every customer touchpoint so you can add big-picture value.

5. Embrace Immersive Experiences to Bridge the Gap

Agencies that can ideate and recommend augmented reality (AR) strategies into client campaigns - creating everything from virtual try-on Lenses to interactive showrooms - can unlock brand and performance success for their clients in 2026. It takes a lot for e-commerce brands to cut through the clutter, especially in crowded industry segments. I hear so many founders and marketers say things like “if they could just try it, I know they’d love it.” With the evolution of AI and AR, that’s becoming much more possible at scale. On Snapchat, audiences can "try on" products before they buy them with Lenses - this not only makes the buying experience interactive, but it can create delight, ease, and purchasing confidence.

Rituals, a beauty brand based in the Netherlands, leveraged an AR Lens to launch its “Dream Collection” earlier this year to reach Snapchatters, resulting in 25.4M AR Lens impressions ⁴.

The agencies that thrive next year will be the ones that understand these shifts, embrace new technology, and build strategies that are as nimble as the market itself. It’s about being bold, being smart, and being a true partner to your clients.