Most commerce teams obsess over bottom-of-funnel search clicks and visual display ads, leaving one of the most effective conversion drivers completely untapped. Despite retail shoppers spending an average of 22% of their digital time streaming music and podcasts, brand investment in digital audio hovers around just 1%. In this episode of Retail Media Vibes, host BV sits down live in Rogers, Arkansas with Adam Ross, Sales Director for Commerce and Retail Media Partnerships at SiriusXM Media, to unpack how marketers can leverage audio to drive measurable, closed-loop commerce outcomes.

We sit down to explore the massive operational shift from upper-funnel brand awareness to data-driven retail media execution. Adam breaks down the three tiers of the SiriusXM ecosystem—satellite in-car listening with connected 360L technology, streaming platforms like Pandora and SoundCloud, and the country's largest podcast network—as well as their groundbreaking new role as the exclusive audio advertising partner for YouTube and YouTube Music. We get into why peak audio consumption aligns perfectly with peak daytime shopping hours, how small and mid-tail brands can utilize zero-cost creative production through Studio Resonate to conquer localized DMAs, and why layering audio into an omnichannel media mix dramatically lifts conversion rates across Amazon, search, and connected TV.

The operational reality of retail media demands rigorous measurement, and audio is no longer a guessing game. By passing back direct identifiers through partners like Walmart Connect and Amazon Marketing Cloud, brands are now tracking precise multi-touch attribution, sales lift, and new-to-brand metrics—including an average 46% new-to-brand buyer uplift demonstrated in recent Kroger case studies. Adam also details how artificial intelligence is transforming dynamic audio creative, enabling brands to serve hundreds of thousands of personalized ad variations based on real-time weather, inventory, and countdown timers without ballooning production costs.

If you care about omnichannel retail strategies, digital merchandising innovation, and maximizing your ad spend efficiency, you’ll get a lot from this. Make sure to subscribe to Retail Media Vibes and share this episode with your commerce and media planning teams. What percentage of your current retail media budget is allocated to demand generation versus bottom-funnel demand capture?

0:00 - Welcome to Retail Media Vibes & Adam Ross Intro 1:04 - From Pandora to SiriusXM: 20 Years in Digital Commerce 5:19 - The Old Spice Story & Wu-Tang Icebreaker 7:54 - The True Role of Audio in the Retail Media Ecosystem 10:50 - The 22% Attention vs. 1% Investment Gap 12:37 - Breaking Down the SiriusXM Ecosystem (Satellite, Streaming, Podcasts) 15:38 - How Small and Mid-Tail Brands Can Scale with Audio Ads 19:33 - Podcast Advertising: Host-Read vs. Targeted Programmatic Networks 24:02 - SiriusXM’s Exclusive YouTube & YouTube Music Partnership 27:04 - Demand Generation vs. Demand Capture in E-Commerce 29:16 - AI in Audio: Dynamic Creative Optimization at Scale 34:06 - Closed-Loop Measurement, ROAS, and New-to-Brand Uplift 36:45 - Bold Vibes: Rapid-Fire Industry Predictions 42:55 - How to Connect with Adam Ross & Final Thoughts