Podcast Summary

Podcast: Retail Media Breakfast Club

Host: Kiri Masters
Episode: Bring the “Retail” Back to Retail Media: 4 Fixes Every RMN Needs Now
Date: May 4, 2026
Duration: ~10 minutes (excluding ads, intro, outro)

Episode Overview

In this episode, host Kiri Masters recaps highlights from her panel at the DRUMS Global Commerce Leaders Forum in Miami. The focus: What can make a retail media network (RMN) meaningfully more mature in the next 12 months? Drawing inspiration from the panel’s “magic wand” lightning round, Kiri distills four urgent fixes for RMNs, weaving in expert advice from top industry leaders. The episode delivers actionable insights for retail media practitioners aiming to stay ahead.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Embrace the "Retail" in Retail Media

Speaker: Molly Jelm, Corporate VP, Retail Media, Ace Hardware
Timestamp: [01:20–04:15]

Core insight: Many RMNs have tried to become like traditional media companies, sometimes at the expense of leveraging their core retail advantages.
Actionable fix: Integrate retail and merchant relationships from the start rather than as an afterthought.
Redvest Media's Approach:
- Ace Hardware’s Redvest Media was launched with merchant relationships front and center.
- Led with performance-driven metrics: real-time measurement, incrementality, new-to-brand stats.
- Result: Merchants began seeing retail media as an essential tool to drive sales and category growth, not just as a media “add-on.”
Memorable Quote:
- "We've spent so long wanting to be media companies and wanting to speak the language of media and kind of distancing ourselves from our retail ecosystems." — Molly Jelm [01:45]
Differentiation:
- Ace positions itself as a high service retailer.
- For verticals like grilling, the in-person expertise and services (e.g., in-store staff, product assembly and delivery) are differentiators that ad tech alone can't match.

2. Agree on the Math First

Speaker: Sean McGahey, Senior Director of Performance & Insights, Roundel (Target)
Timestamp: [04:18–05:02]

Collaboration is practical, not just rhetorical:
- The industry needs upfront agreement on “what’s the version of truth” in measurement.
- Avoid squabbles over methodology and focus on outcomes.
Retail environment evolution:
- Target’s media business once operated peripherally—now, brands and merchants expect deeper alignment and proof of impact on customer behavior.
Challenge:
- Risk that brand partners feel “strongarmed” by merchants being present at the table, fearing media investment declines might affect shelf space.
Memorable Quote:
- "We need to agree on what's the version of truth upfront and then spend our time talking about performance, not arguing about the math." — Sean McGahey [04:30]
Solution:
- Emphasize transparency around incrementality and behavioral change—build trust, don’t just trade dollars.

3. Find Your North Star

Speaker: Sarah Marzano, VP & Principal Analyst, Commerce Media, eMarketer
Timestamp: [05:40–07:12]

Urgency of long-term planning:
- The retail media boom from a small base of spend is plateauing. Survival depends on clarity of purpose.
- Advice: “Figure out what your North Star is.”
Emergent friction points:
- Legacy challenges remain (fragmentation, resource strain, measurement gaps).
- New friction: Buyers now notice when merchant and media teams aren't aligned, especially when digital expectations clash with physical retail realities.
Opportunity:
- Success comes not from copying Amazon, but exploiting unique retail strengths—physical stores, specialist knowledge, category depth.
- Only 5% of total US retail is Amazon, despite its e-com dominance—there's white space for others.
Notable Quotes:
- "The RMNs who are going to survive are going to be the ones who figure out what their North Star is." — Sarah Marzano [05:55]
- "Most of the things you could copy from Amazon as a retail media network have already been done. That time has ended. Please lean into your strengths and find your North Star." — Paraphrased from Sarah Marzano referencing Sean McGahey [07:05]

4. Break Down the Silos

Speaker: Shaun Crawford, Managing Director, SMG North America
Timestamp: [07:13–09:15]

Status quo is the enemy:
- Siloed teams—focused on different media formats and marketing segments—create disjointed brand experiences.
Warning:
- Without cross-functional integration, RMNs will stagnate despite rapid past growth.
Next phase:
- Not about adding new tools, but about connecting existing ones—within retailers, with brands, and across an agreed measurement framework.
Memorable Quote:
- "If we don't break those silos down, the industry risks stagnating." — Shaun Crawford [07:55]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Molly Jelm:
"We've spent so long wanting to be media companies and wanting to speak the language of media and kind of distancing ourselves from our retail ecosystems." [01:45]
Sean McGahey:
"We need to agree on what's the version of truth upfront and then spend our time talking about performance, not arguing about the math." [04:30]
Sarah Marzano:
"The RMNs who are going to survive are going to be the ones who figure out what their North Star is." [05:55]
Shaun Crawford:
"If we don't break those silos down, the industry risks stagnating." [07:55]

Timestamps for Key Segments

[01:20] Embracing 'Retail' in Retail Media (Molly Jelm, Ace Hardware)
[04:18] Collaboration and agreeing on measurement (Sean McGahey, Roundel)
[05:40] Long-term vision and white space (Sarah Marzano, eMarketer)
[07:13] Breaking down silos for connected experiences (Shaun Crawford, SMG)

Conclusion

This episode cuts through the buzz to offer four actionable fixes for RMNs:

Reintegrate retail roots into media strategy.
Define shared measurement standards to focus on outcomes.
Chart a distinctive long-term vision (your “North Star”).
Break down organizational silos to deliver seamless, connected value.

Each insight is practical, urgent, and drawn from those shaping the present—and future—of retail media.

Transcript

A (0:00)

Last week I moderated a panel at the DRUMS inaugural Global Commerce Leaders Forum in Miami. On the panel was Sarah Marzano from eMarketer, Sean McGahey from Roundel, Molly Jelm from Ace Hardware, and Sean Crawford from smg. And the topic of the panel was all geared around a new report from SMG about commerce media maturity. We covered a lot of ground in the session, but the sharpest moments really came in the lightning round question at the very end when I asked each person on the panel, what's one thing you'd fix in the next 12 months to make a retail media network meaningfully more mature? And their answers really reflect some of the hottest topics in retail media today. So in this episode, I'm going to jump into what the magic wand question produce in this discussion from this group of operators and observers. Let's jump in. So first of all, embrace the retail in retail media. Molly Jelm is the Corporate Vice President of Retail Media at Ace Hardware, and Ace Hardware's RMN is called Redvest Media. And Molly just got straight to it. In her answer she said, we've spent so long wanting to be media companies and wanting to speak speak the language of media and kind of distancing ourselves from our retail ecosystems. And her pitch really is for the industry to step into the fullness of what it means to be a retail media network, bringing merchants along the journey, identifying business pain points with data and solving them with media. Ace launched Red vest Media in 2025, which gave Molly the advantage of building merchant relationships into the found rather than trying to retrofit them. Her team led with performance things like real time measurement, incrementality, new to brand stats. And the merchants came around to this concept because the data showed that it worked and it showed how it actually helped the merchants achieve their goals as well. So the merchants now see retail media as a tool in their own toolkit to drive sales and category growth, not just something bolted onto the side of the business. And and as a follow on to this, I actually did a profile for Molly and Redvest Media in my column for the Drum last year and we'll link up to that in the show notes if you want to read more. So Molly also made the case for differentiation in the ecosystem as well. Ace Hardware isn't a low cost retailer, it's a high service retailer. If you're a grill company, you want customers to be coming into a store where trained staff can walk them through specs and compare products across the line. And even this is unique to Ace deliver an assembled grill to their home within an hour from outside, from last mile. Companies like UberEats and DoorDash and that kind of human LED service is not something that you can build with ad Tech. Number two agree on the math first, Sean McGahey is the senior director of performance and insights at Target's Research Roundel, and he really landed on collaboration collaboration in the industry not just as a platitude, but as a disposition that the industry hasn't really had to develop before. Here's what he said. He said we need to agree on what's the version of truth upfront and then spend our time talking about performance, not arguing about the math. Sean has been at Roundel for eight months, but he's watched the network evolve for years and as one of the earliest players in retail media in the US in its earlier phase, Target's media business was seen as a high margin operation that sat to the side, not really dependent on merchant involvement, but that has shifted. Brand partners now expect alignment. Merchants want to know that a Roundel investment is changing guest behavior, not just shifting budgets around. But Sean was candid about the other side of the of that sword. There is also a risk, if not done correctly, that advertising partners feel strong armed when the merchant is in the room, as if declining a media investment could carry shelf space consequences. So Sean's response to this is that his team focuses on standing behind the incrementality and the changes in consumer behavior so that it feels like a real partnership.