Why Amazon is Trying to Downplay its Retail Media Dominance

Summary

Next in Media: Why Amazon is Trying to Downplay its Retail Media Dominance – Detailed Summary

Release Date: December 3, 2024

In this insightful episode of Next in Media, host Mike Shield engages in a compelling conversation with Zach Raschutti, Head of Retail Media at Kepler. The discussion navigates the evolving landscape of retail media, delving into the shifting dynamics of major shopping events, Amazon's strategic maneuvers, the balance between branding and performance marketing, and the future trajectories of retail media partnerships. Below is a comprehensive summary of the key points, discussions, insights, and conclusions drawn from their conversation.

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1. Extended Black Friday Shopping Season

[01:07] The episode kicks off amidst the bustling period of Cyber Monday, with Mike acknowledging the hectic nature of these shopping events for retail media professionals. Zach shares his observations on the elongated Black Friday shopping season:

“A lot of the optimization and kind of shifting gears is happening in real time in and around the event.” [02:26]

Zach highlights that the traditional focus on Black Friday and Cyber Monday has shifted to a more extended two-week period. Brands are now approaching this season as a marathon rather than a sprint, with sales activities spreading out over a longer timeframe. This strategic shift stems from retailers initiating sales weeks in advance, thereby diluting the impact of single-day events like Cyber Monday.

2. Retail Media Advertising Strategies During Extended Sales

[03:00] The conversation transitions to the strategies brands employ in retail media advertising during these extended sales periods. Zach explains that while top-of-funnel marketing campaigns are typically launched six to eight weeks ahead to build consumer awareness, optimization and adjustments occur in real time to respond to ongoing sales performance.

“For endemic brands, it's the on-site advertising, the off-site programmatic piece that extends off of the retail media network.” [02:26]

Brands are increasingly focusing on both on-site and off-site advertising to influence in-store sales. The dynamic nature of these campaigns necessitates continual adjustments based on real-time data and sales trends.

3. The Push for Off-Platform Retail Media

[03:23] A significant portion of the discussion centers on the burgeoning trend of pushing retail media advertising off proprietary platforms to open web environments and social media. Mike queries whether this shift is towards more open channels like the open web or platforms like social media.

Zach responds by emphasizing the challenges brands face when navigating off-platform advertising:

“A lot of retail media networks have done a really good job of selling media to non-media experts...” [04:02]

He points out that many retail media networks market their offerings to brands that may not have deep expertise in media planning, leading to less strategic or effective off-platform advertising. This often results in suboptimal results, as brands may not fully grasp metrics like viewability or the nuances of programmatic advertising outside their native platforms.

4. Amazon’s Dominance in Retail Media

[05:29] The conversation pivots to Amazon’s significant role in the retail media landscape. Zach attributes Amazon's dominance to its substantial investment in ad technology, which surpasses other leading networks like Walmart. This investment has enabled Amazon to offer robust self-service measurement solutions, making it a formidable platform for both endemic and non-endemic advertisers.

“Amazon has invested, you know, alongside Walmart and some of the other leading networks by far the most in their actual ad tech.” [05:47]

Mike probes whether other retail media networks can compete with Amazon's sophisticated ad tech stack. Zach remains optimistic, citing examples like The Trade Desk, which illustrate that alternative platforms can match Amazon's capabilities through strategic build or buy approaches. However, he emphasizes that success in retail media extends beyond technology to encompass unique owned media and comprehensive integration of various marketing components.

5. Branding vs. Performance Marketing

[12:35] A critical discussion emerges around the balance between branding and performance marketing within retail media. Mike expresses concern that the immediacy and transactional nature of retail media might overshadow long-term branding efforts.

Zach counters this by asserting that strong branding is essential for sustained performance:

“Brands are realizing that you need to have a strong differentiated brand in order to drive lower funnel success.” [12:35]

He warns against an overreliance on performance-oriented media, which can erode profit margins and diminish brand value if not balanced with strategic branding initiatives. Zach advocates for a holistic approach where branding and performance marketing are integrated to support each other, ensuring both immediate sales and long-term brand loyalty.

6. Amazon’s Strategic Focus Beyond Retail Media

[11:05] Mike brings up Amazon’s recent appearances at events like Unboxed, noting that Amazon seems to be downplaying its retail media dominance in favor of broader demand generation and full-funnel marketing strategies. Zach interprets this as Amazon seeking new avenues for growth through media partnerships, particularly in areas like live sports and streaming services.

“They see a lot of their opportunity is a lot of the media partnerships that they've invested most of their money.” [11:21]

He explains that Amazon is channeling investments into areas that can leverage top-of-funnel advertising, such as live sports and Twitch, to drive brand awareness and complement their robust retail media offerings.

7. Shoppable TV vs. TV Attribution

[13:36] The topic of Shoppable TV arises, with Mike questioning Amazon's advancements in making TV ads directly shoppable. Zach clarifies that Amazon is currently more focused on TV attribution — measuring the impact of TV ads on sales and branded searches — rather than enabling direct purchases from TV ads.

“Everyone wants Shoppable TV to be a thing... we've run several campaigns around Shoppable TV and we've seen that they're more memorable.” [14:08]

While direct shopping via TV ads hasn’t fully materialized, Zach notes that incorporating interactive elements into TV advertising can enhance ad recall and consumer engagement, thereby reinforcing brand presence.

8. The Future of Retail Media Partnerships

[17:48] Looking ahead, Mike inquires about the potential outlets for off-platform retail media, specifically pondering whether the open web or social media holds more promise. Zach is optimistic about social media, citing the emerging integrations between social platforms and retail media networks.

“The bigger opportunity that we see is in social media, frankly, the connection and the pipes.” [17:48]

He anticipates that partnerships between retailers and social platforms will become increasingly pivotal, enabling seamless attribution reporting and measurement optimization. This integration is expected to enhance campaign effectiveness by bridging the gap between social engagement and retail performance.

9. Navigating the Holiday Shopping Period

[19:44] As the discussion nears its conclusion, Mike shifts focus to the remaining holiday shopping period. Zach outlines that while much of the activity occurs before Black Friday, significant shopping continues through late December, particularly between December 26th and New Year's.

“There's a lot of efficient customer acquisition that could happen in that last week.” [19:44]

He highlights opportunities in last-minute gifting and efficient customer acquisition strategies, suggesting that brands can capitalize on the tail end of the holiday season to drive additional sales and solidify customer relationships.

10. Organizational Shifts Within Brands

[09:36] Zach touches upon the internal challenges brands face in adapting to the retail media landscape. Traditional organizational structures are often disrupted by the integrated nature of retail media, necessitating a reevaluation of how brands approach marketing and advertising.

“Retail media has broken the organizational structure of most traditional brands and the best brands are shifting and operating in a different way now.” [09:36]

He observes that consumer-driven categories and simpler customer journeys are advancing more rapidly in adopting these new structures, whereas more complex B2C and B2B brands may lag due to intricacies in their decision-making processes.

11. The Role of Agency Partners

[04:34] Given the complexities of retail media, Zach underscores the importance of agency partners in guiding brands through strategic planning and execution.

“As the agency partner, we've tried to come in and provide structuring guidance...” [04:34]

Agencies like Kepler act as intermediaries, bridging the knowledge gap for brands less familiar with media intricacies, ensuring that advertising strategies are both effective and aligned with broader business objectives.

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Concluding Insights

Throughout the episode, Zach Raschutti provides a nuanced perspective on the current state and future of retail media. He emphasizes the necessity for brands to integrate branding with performance marketing, navigate the challenges of off-platform advertising with strategic agency partnerships, and leverage the robust capabilities of dominant platforms like Amazon while recognizing the potential of emerging channels like social media.

Mike Shield adeptly steers the conversation to cover a breadth of topics, ensuring listeners gain a comprehensive understanding of the shifting paradigms in retail media. The dialogue highlights the delicate balance brands must maintain between immediate sales objectives and long-term brand equity, all while navigating an increasingly complex and technology-driven advertising ecosystem.

For professionals and enthusiasts in the media, marketing, and advertising sectors, this episode offers valuable insights into how leading industry figures like Zach Raschutti are steering their companies through the continual changes driven by technology and data.

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Thank you for reading this detailed summary of the "Why Amazon is Trying to Downplay its Retail Media Dominance" episode of Next in Media. For more in-depth discussions and expert insights, consider tuning into the full podcast episode.

Transcript

[Mike Shield]

Accurate up to date customer information is critical to your business growth. It all starts with quality data. Epsilon has spent decades ethically sourcing the industry's top ranked consumer database covering every marketable U.S. household. With a commitment to transparency and privacy. See how you'll predict future buying behaviors and build a lifetime of customer loyalty. Discover the deepest customer Insights [e-mail] data that's epsilon.com data. This week on Next in Media, I spoke with Zach Rascudi. He's the head of retail media at Kepler. Zach and I talked about the elongated Black Friday shopping season and whether Cyber Monday still matters anymore. Zach and I also dove deep into Amazon's overall strategy in this space, why owning Antec really matters in retail media, and whether brands are getting too hooked on some of the attribution they get from this sector. Let's get started. Hi everybody, I'm Mike Shield. Welcome to Next Media. My guest this week is Zach Rashudi. He is the head of retail at Kepler. Hey Zach, thanks for being here.

[Zach Raschutti]

Thanks for having me, Mike.

[Mike Shield]

I apologize because we're talking to you on Cyber Monday during what I'm sure is an insane few days for you. How are you holding up and what have we learned, if anything, right in the middle of this, what has this weekend been like for you in the retail media space?

[Zach Raschutti]

Yeah, hectic, lots of things changing. I think most of our brands are doing pretty well or happy with how the weekend is coming. I think it was a scary November for a lot of brands, not knowing how the consumer was going to respond to things like the election, to things, you know, like the macroeconomic environment. But people are shopping again. A lot of shopping is shifting towards sort of the in betweens of Cyber Week. It's less about Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

[Mike Shield]

I was going to ask you about that. Does Cyber Monday matter anymore since some of these sales are so much more extended than they used to be.

[Zach Raschutti]

It's a two week period and brands are thinking about the marathon and not the sprint of the day just because every retailer starts their sales, you know, weeks prior and that diminishes some of the effect of the day. But yeah, we're definitely seeing more, more in the lead in and lead out than in past years, you know, retail media advertising.

[Mike Shield]

Like I guess I'm asking, are you spending heavily and adjusting spend left and right during these periods as you see sales go up and down or is it, is it, is it pretty standard? Like what does the strategy look like there?

[Zach Raschutti]

Yeah, I think it depends on each brand, but we typically advise Our brands, you know, for, for top of funnel brand marketing, that ship is sailed. We started that six to eight weeks ago to get in front of consumers. And a lot of the optimization and kind of shifting gears is happening and in depth. For endemic brands it's the on site advertising, the off site programmatic piece that extends off of the retail media network. And most of that is happening and that of course influences in store sales as well. But that's all happening in real time in and around the event.

[Mike Shield]

What are you seeing in terms of. I know I'm jumping around a bit here, but the overall in retail media there is a push to get off platform that seems to be at the buzzword. Right. We so many retailers have gotten into this space, gotten close to maxing out the advertising image, real estate on their own properties and apps. They want to go somewhere else. How's that going and is it going more towards the open web, to social, to somewhere else?

[Zach Raschutti]

It's probably one of the most important pieces of scrutiny that we apply to retail media networks here, which is, you know, over the last few years a lot of these retail media networks have done a really good job of selling media to non media experts, so to speak. Like because of the traditional where media has sat within the brand environment, usually living with shopper marketing and sales teams. You have a lot of retail media networks that are selling media packages to people who don't quite understand and know the watch outs of what to look for. As far as like what does off site mean you're being nice that they're.

[Mike Shield]

Less savvy about like the average media planning or the questions that a big agency might ask is that, you know.

[Zach Raschutti]

Not many sales leads at brands who have overseen shopper marketing for the last 30 years know a lot about viewability, for example, and when you're you know.

[Mike Shield]

Signing reading Ad Exchanger all day long or whatever.

[Zach Raschutti]

Exactly, yes.

[Mike Shield]

Is that so? Are you saying that that's led to off platform growing in a, in a non. In a way that's maybe not natural or organic or just not. Not as strategic?

[Zach Raschutti]

I think if you're a brand that is either less savvy or I think that's where the role of an agency partner comes in to come and play that intermediary. Because you know the brand is just trying to grow sales at that retailer and they'll do whatever it takes to do that. And for retail media networks they are, you know, trying to grow their, their media business which often is tied to growing their sales business. But at times it is not always. Those things don't quite go hand in hand. So as the agency partner, we've tried to come in and provide structuring guidance to that and say, hey, like what does offsite actually mean for you? Is it the programmatic open web? Is it social, is it connected tv? And I think we try and bring together the brand and performance world for that matter, because, you know, a team that is tasked with lower funnel objectives, you know, is going to have a very different set of needs than a brand that's trying to launch a product for the first time and needs a much wider awareness playing a different set of channels.

[Mike Shield]

Yes, we talk about retail media and it is this massive category that's emerged in the last couple years, but Amazon is such a huge chunk of it. You're building up your Amazon team. What is behind that? You know, you see a lot of independent agencies that are built almost entirely on Amazon. You're seeing a lot of more investment there. What's behind your move there?

[Zach Raschutti]

Yeah, I think part of that is we've always been a performance oriented agency. We were born out of programmatic. And so there is an appetite in understanding which platforms are giving marketers the most control. And Amazon has invested, you know, alongside Walmart and some of the other leading networks by far the most in their actual ad tech. Which means that there is more ability for non endemic advertisers to extend into, into Amazon and they're the number one player in terms of, you know, all these things converging. You have, you know, privacy regulations which has made digital marketing more challenging. You have the growth of connected TV advertising which, you know, for all the talk of connected TV scale over the last few years, it's really only been in the last year that connected TV has finally surpassed linear in terms of actual viewership. And then the measurement piece which is, you know, how do you actually evaluate the success of your marketing? And Amazon is one of the most powerful tools for doing that for endemic and non endemic advertisers with how self service they've made a lot of their measurement solutions.

[Mike Shield]

So I guess that sort of begs the question, can anybody compete? And obviously like it's going to be hard to compete with the world's biggest E commerce platform, but for all these other retailer retail media networks, if they don't have their own ad tech stack like Amazon does, their own measurement solutions and clouds and all that stuff, are they always going to be disadvantaged besides not being as big as Amazon, like in terms of trying to go after that bigger opportunity or can they can they match them on a tech basis?

[Zach Raschutti]

Yes, definitely. I think so. I think what, what you've seen brands do with the trade desk is how to match Amazon. The trade desk is, you know, one of the most successful ad tech platforms out there now. And when brands and retailers start this build it or buy it journey, you know, Amazon chose to build it while the retailers are choosing to buy it. And that's not necessarily a wrong solution. The success of, of retail media solutions is not going to hinge on, you know, the sophistication of their tech. It's going to be how they bring together all of the pieces that go into a retail media network, of which tech is one thing, but owned media is another. Which is how unique actually is your media, whether that's your, you know, your on site media or the properties that are adjacent. It could be, you know, digital out of home banners like in and around your storefronts. It could be your partnerships and you know, when you combine that with your customer file, it's this connection of all those different pieces.

[Mike Shield]

Coming back to Amazon you mentioned, you know how this world is. You're often trying to cater to brands that are just that just have performance goals in mind versus something broader or newer brands. Amazon seemingly can do it all right. They have, you know, they've got the, they've got the great, you know, demand generation stuff with what sports and Twitch and Prime and then and obviously can close the deal. Are those things coming together for you? Are they totally separate worlds within Amazon and within the way your brands operate?

[Zach Raschutti]

Oftentimes when we start talking to brands, they're separate worlds, but pretty quickly we try and bring them together. There is an incredibly strong intrinsic link between brand generation and lower funnel performance on Amazon. If you think about the customer journey, the first place that you go to search for a product is typically Amazon and especially for younger generations. So it's impossible to operate successfully as a brand if you're viewing those two things in separate lenses. Your inventory strategy, your pricing strategy, your advertising strategy, your PDP design strategy, everything should be tied into what you're doing in the upper funnel world.

[Mike Shield]

But they're not. A lot of those guys are not built that way, right, or they haven't been historically.

[Zach Raschutti]

And that's the challenge that retail media brings to many brands. I mean, retail media has broken the organizational structure of most traditional brands and interesting, you know, the best brands are shifting and operating in a different way now than they were even two years ago or a year ago.

[Mike Shield]

You're seeing that like in real time. They're trying to adjust the way they're structured and that's not. It can't be easy.

[Zach Raschutti]

No, it's happening as we speak.

[Mike Shield]

Yeah. I imagine certain brands and categories are further ahead than others because change is hard.

[Zach Raschutti]

Yeah. I think consumer driven categories are faster along in this ones where the customer journey is more simple. Right. Like when you don't have, you know, super long decision cycles, the B2B journey is not there at all. But for B2C brands that you know are used to either selling D2C or selling on Amazon and E Commerce, they're faster along because they've had to be faster along at this.

[Mike Shield]

I wanted to ask you more about Amazon the along those lines. I don't know if you were at Unboxed or paying attention. I actually streamed a lot of it. I wasn't not in Austin, but I've attended several of those events and it struck me how much they almost, you know, they have so many things to talk about, Amazon obviously, but how much they almost downplayed their retail media part of their business, if that makes sense. Like they were really talking about full funnel and demand generation and tying everything together in a way that you might not have expected from this ultimate like E commerce player. Did that strike you and do you think what is that? What's behind that?

[Zach Raschutti]

Yeah, I mean I think it's. It's simply where they're going to find growth as an advertising platform. I don't know if Amazon would publicly say this, but I'm sure they feel like they've a little bit tapped out. As far as, you know, if you sell on Amazon, you've probably been advertising on Amazon.

[Mike Shield]

You get it by now.

[Zach Raschutti]

Yeah, yeah. Where they see a lot of their opportunity is a lot of the media partnerships that they've invested most of their money. Right. So they've spent a lot of money over the last few years in signing live sports, buying Twitch. Now they need to figure out how to drive a return on that investment. And that's going to happen primarily at the top of the funnel. And frankly that's the most interesting piece for a lot of brand marketers now because for that, you know, as the linear TV environment has changed and has softened outside of live sports and tent pole events, replacing those eyeballs that are really like high quality, qualified reach is difficult and a lot of our brands have turned directly to Amazon's media properties to do that.

[Mike Shield]

I'm actually surprised maybe have you seen because I almost wonder with the growth of retail media and the immediacy of the results brands can see when transactions happen in the same place you advertise, how do you beat that? I almost wonder if branding was going to take a backseat, like more than it has. Like where this retail media performance addiction would color the way things are. Decisions are made, but you're not. It sounds like you're seeing, I guess do you see that at all or are you seeing much? A little bit more of an appreciation for this. Like the way these things tie together.

[Zach Raschutti]

I think they're brands are realizing that you need to have a strong differentiated brand in order to drive lower funnel success. Just because all of these data pieces are connected now doesn't mean that all of the principles of good advertising goes out the window. And I think brands that chase transactional performance oriented media over a long period of time are eroding their P and L. Because with a less memorable brand and as you chase more performance oriented thick, you're adding in discounts, you're going deeper into the bottom of the funnel. Spending more of your dollars don't mean.

[Mike Shield]

Anything to the customer at a certain point, even though you maybe clicked on Instagram for a little while, it's a long term. You can't play that game.

[Zach Raschutti]

You lose your pricing power. Right? Like if the brand doesn't stand for anything and it doesn't have meaning and value inherent in it, you're just going to chase discounts over and over again to convert them.

[Mike Shield]

Getting back to Amazon, you mentioned how one of the big pushes to go off platform is ctv. Theoretically, it still seems like the jury is very much still out in terms of shoppable TV and its potential. I've seen Amazon talk this up a lot. I've seen them maybe talk less about it lately. How are they doing in terms of pushing this dream that you're eventually going to just add stuff to your cart from a TV ad or QR code or voice or whatever. How's that journey going? Or are they more focused on TV attribution versus shoppable tv?

[Zach Raschutti]

I think Amazon is more focused on TV attribution because that's more built into the platform from a nascent perspective in that, you know, you can launch TV ads on Amazon and in real time have insight into the sales and branded searches that that TV ad is driving. I think shoppable tv, everybody wants shoppable TV to be a thing. I think it's this is a thing where, you know, ad tech marketers created a solution to a problem that maybe didn't exist yet right before Asking the people before. Asking the people. Yes. Having said that, we've run several campaigns around Shoppable TV and we've seen that they're more memorable. And so in some sense when you add something custom or different to your, your TV spot, it does drive higher recall and it makes the ad more memorable to the consumer, which is in the end all that matters.

[Mike Shield]

You may not be actually buying stuff, but you're like, oh, look at that. I remember that. That stuff that stands out to you.

[Zach Raschutti]

Yep, yep, exactly.

[Mike Shield]

That's interesting. I'm waiting for. Amazon has so much clout in that they have or potential to make Shoppable TV happen because they have so many people are logged in already and have accounts and they have fire tv. Are you seeing bigger pushes? I wonder if you see more partnerships from the Walmarts and targets of the world trying to make Shoppable TV a thing than maybe you're seeing on the Amazon front.

[Zach Raschutti]

Oh, they absolutely are. I think Walmart has done some really cool things in the Shoppable TV space. They've partnered with platforms like Roku to integrate their digital shelf data into their TV spots. That was a really unique offering that a lot of brands are running now. Other retailers are doing it for sure. It's just through the partnership angle because Amazon owns their own pipes, so to speak, which is the advantage they have over other retail media networks.

[Mike Shield]

Want to ask you about your career and your position now. What is it like running this commerce marketing team versus say like a search or social team and how does that maybe changed over time?

[Zach Raschutti]

It's very different than running a social or search team. People like to think that retail media is just sponsored ads.

[Mike Shield]

Easy, right? Boom. Yeah, same thing as search. Boom. They buy stuff.

[Zach Raschutti]

Yeah. No, it's when you go into retail media, you're operating at the whimsical of the marketplace. So pricing, eligibility, profitability, organic rank, inventory, competitor environment, all of those things play a bigger role in your advertising strategy than your paid ads in some instances. And so from a skill set perspective, you know, one of the challenges and opportunities is really taking a more e commerce based approach to training people and making sure that they understand the landscape of what they're advertising and like physically go search on Amazon or Target and think about your ads within that environment versus traditional search and social performance. Marketing is very transactional. You know, you can build your ad almost in isolation from the environment around it, put it out into market for retail media.

[Mike Shield]

A couple more for me. Zach, this is great. What, what about we mentioned the other the other potential outlets for this off platform thing. You know, there's a lot of hope I think that open web becomes this great place because the open web is sort of thought of as being hurting right now and struggling. It wouldn't it be great if the retail media money came there some way with, you know, bringing all that data and retargeting people all over the place. But then again, social seems like it's more apt to it be or because people are shopping. It's so, it's so natural to shop on TikTok or it's becoming such a bigger thing. So I guess does either one have bigger potential for you in your eyes?

[Zach Raschutti]

The bigger opportunity that we see is in social media, frankly, the connection and the pipes. If you think about where retail media is right now, it's a little bit where maybe adtech was like 10 years ago around the growth of the open web, which is there started to be all these emerging technologies that sort of plugged into the ecosystem and made it stronger like brand safety and viewability and more premium deals and creative executions that could plug in and dynamically alter your creative on the open web we're starting to see that happen on the retail media side as far as integrations and plugins that sit on top of retail media networks and connect social platforms to retail media networks.

[Mike Shield]

Those kind of connections that facilitate growth.

[Zach Raschutti]

Exactly. When things like attribution reporting, measurement optimization like that for the last two years has been a black hole for marketers who are trying to optimize social media campaigns through their retail media networks. But that's beginning to change. I think that's probably the most exciting part of growth in the industry right now is how are these partnerships going to emerge between retailers and social platforms? Are they going to be actual like first party partnerships where, you know, Amazon is partnering with TikTok and Meta to allow brands to actually manage those campaigns.

[Mike Shield]

Yeah.

[Zach Raschutti]

Which is the ideal state for most marketers or is it going to be in, you know, third party tech solutions that come in and build those creations themselves? Right. Do you sit a tech platform on top of a data clean room and begin passing that data back in a privacy safe way? And that's, that's the direction we see retail media going in for now.

[Mike Shield]

You know, we're talking on Cyber Monday. It's already December 2nd. Thanksgiving was kind of late. What does the rest of this holiday shopping period look like for a lot of your brands? Is it almost over? You know, it used to be till that last shipping date before Christmas. Now I don't know. I don't know if it's so if it's, if so much activity happens before Black Friday that it's what do the next couple weeks look like?

[Zach Raschutti]

Yeah, I mean, the benefit of most retailers are they'll offer far later shipping dates than, you know, your typical DGC brand. Right. Your, your Amazon's and your Walmarts, even your targets are going to get products to you later in the year. And so, you know, we go right up until the 22nd and the 23rd. As far as strategy goes, there's a lot of last minute gifting that happens there. And then even after that, right after the holiday period, there is this like fifth week of December that is in between the, the fifth quarter, the 26th and New Year's. We do see shopping happening then gift cards and media efficiencies. You know, a lot of brands pull out and you're smart and you leave a couple of dollars on the table. There's a lot of efficient customer acquisition that could happen in that last week.

[Mike Shield]

Interesting. Well, good luck. Within the next few weeks you'll, you'll be, you'll need your holiday break when it comes. But awesome insights. Jack, thanks so much for your time here.

[Zach Raschutti]

Yeah, thank you, Mike. Appreciate it.

[Mike Shield]

Thanks again to my guests this week, Hepler, Zach Raschutti and my partners at Epsilon. If you like this week's episode, please take a moment to rate and leave a review. We have lots more to bring you, so please hit that subscribe button. We'll see you next time for more on what's Next in Media. Thanks for listening.