B (4:51)

Yeah, yeah, I love it. So yeah, let's, let's dive in and want to start from the strategic aspect of this and talk a little bit about that tension between trade marketing and retail media budgets, which is often a major hurdle for CPGs. From your vantage point, you know, what's the fundamental misunderstanding between these two teams or areas and why does treating them as separate P Ls create such a strategic blind spot for a brand.

A (5:22)

Yeah. So look, it's, it's a, you know, I say this tongue in cheek a little bit. It's easy for me to sit there and say, oh, just combine your trade and your RMN teams. Not, you know, that's a really complicated and risky proposition for most retailers. With that said, if you look at it from the lens of media, not through the lens of like your trade arrangements and sort of the legacy businesses which you have to figure out how to navigate effectively. But I'll take you back, you know, maybe 15 years ago to most of the major media companies when Programmatic was still sort of an earlier thing. What we saw was that there were really sort of 2. There's a bifurcation in the, in the business. You had like take Conde Nasty, if you wanted to sell a very fancy, high impact, high quality ad inside of the Vogue magazine, right. Gucci spends money there, Prada spends money there. You've got a sales rep at Conde Nast who owns the relationship with the marketing decision makers at Gucci or Prada.

B (6:19)

Yeah.

A (6:20)

And as you know, and then they had vogue.com and whatever the sales team didn't sell, it fell down to Programmatic. And then you had people like me and adopts people who were trying to figure out how to create demand density in that system. And the attitude of most media executives early in the Programmatic days was, I'll just flip this on. It's some technology thing. I don't really understand it. I don't want it to touch my core business because I don't want it to disrupt anything. So like whatever I squeeze out of there is great. Well, what happened was buyers expressed the preference of buying programmatically as opposed to direct IO. They, they had more optionality, they had more technology, they had more data. And so the bigger Programmatic got, the more pressure it put on this direct sales button. But the problem was that it wasn't necessarily revenue pressure. It was also like workflow and legacy relationship pressure. And so when you fast forward to when CTV became programmatic, it took Web 15 years to really work out that dynamic. It took CTV five years. You know, if you look at a lot of the CTV inventory now, a lot of it is programmatically traded. Now most of it's programmatically traded inside of a deal. And so there is still some semblance of a relationship and an actual sale and a conversation with the brand about how you can achieve their objectives. But the Programmatic piece is simply a Workflow. If I look at what most brands, retail media networks have done, they've done one of two things. They've either taken their data, shipped it into a DSP and then let buyers buy that data across third party inventory, which is a nice way to make money. And it's highly incremental and it's very large scale. But what we haven't seen yet is a brand come up with a strategy that says, okay, I have a new product packaging, I have a new KPI, I have a new sales objective. How do I achieve that objective across the entire set of products that these retail media networks have? Now, many retail media networks might disagree with me when I say that. What I mean by that is that I have yet to see a program that a brand buys that works the same way as a brand putting money into any of the Google self serve products. You know, when you buy Meta, they say what's your goal? What's your budget? Give me your creative and get out of my way. My machines will take care of it. That's the one extreme. On the other hand you've got like this really complicated. I've a part of my budget's in trade, part of it is in store, part of it's in social, part of, you know, and you launch new tactics to try and generate incremental revenue. But the fact is that there's no unified sit down to say how do I achieve your objectives? And part of that is because the retail media networks don't really know how well each of their products perform. It's really hard to build a portfolio when you just look at things through line item by line item. And so the brands have to get better at measurement and defining for the retailers what matters. The retailers have to get better about sharing data around outcomes, particularly SKU level data. And then you can really build this program. And so I say it like let's get there quickly because that is the silver bullet. But it's, it's not easy. We're talking about large organizations whose core business is to sell products, it's not to run media businesses. And so there's a learning curve here that every media company went through.

B (9:46)

Yeah, I mean, and given that, you know, you described a little bit of the unified approach there but you know, how can a brand get started there? You know, breaking down, whether it's breaking down silos or you know, to your other point, teams aren't necessarily going to change or some of the existing relationships aren't as fundamentally going to change. But you know, where, where Does a brand start in creating a more holistic investment strategy versus thinking about these things in silos?

A (10:16)

Yeah, I mean look, I think the, if, if I were running a big brand budget, I would start with a tent pole. I would take a moment where I'm going to invest a lot of money. I wouldn't look at my upfront, I wouldn't look at my gbp, I wouldn't start there. I would say I'm Anheuser Busch, I have a significant investment around the Olympics. What's my goal? And the goal there's going to be more than one, right? You're going to have like brand recall new product to household. You're going to have SKU level sales lift in individual GEOs or individual states or individual store, store banners. But you got to sort of define what those KPIs are. And then the thing that I've also found, and this has been true for, I don't know, 20 years, brands tend to hold back how much information they share because they worry about losing negotiating leverage with their media partners. That's fine when there are four media partners and you have to maintain leverage. It doesn't work when you're buying 10,000 line items. You have to be able to share information. And so I think what I, what I, what I'd look at first is like, okay, I want to sell X number of cases of beer during this World cup timeframe. Like I know that in, in, in New York and in California for example, there's a huge investment that should be done targeting the Hispanic community around the World Cup. It's a, it's a tent pole moment to build brand equity. I'd have a KPI around that. And then I would go to my retail media partners and I would say here's what I want to do and what information can you share with me that will give you confidence that, give me confidence that I'm hitting those objectives. Now look, some of that's happening, right? Like I don't mean to suggest these conversations aren't happening, but I think, you know, if, if I'm Anheuser Busch looking at the World Cup, I would have started this conversation in June of this year and built something really compelling knowing that it's going to be something that I'm going to repeat and not just for my next tent pole, but for also my ongoing programs. And then the retailers have to start thinking about what does it mean to share really detailed understanding around how their methodology for measurement aligns to the in house methodology of measurement for the for the brand. When you get those two things to come together, you see huge results.

B (12:31)

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A (14:13)

Yeah, well, so I think one of the challenges you have with the retail space is that typically the manufacturer is blind to the data about the sale itself, right? So if you sell in cvs, you sell in Kroger, you sell in Ahold, you know, you don't really know who's buying what as a brand. And so I think that, like, that's a challenge. On the other hand, most brands have no idea what's happening to individual users on YouTube, right? And yet people are hemorrhaging money, pumping money into YouTube because they see sales results on the other end of it, or they see some KPI that equates to success. And so I think it's funny to talk about AI, right? Like Maloco, the company I was at prior to this, is arguably one of the best companies in the world when it comes to predictive machine learning and developing deep neural networks to drive high quality predictions of likelihood of an Ad generating an event. And I learned a tremendous amount while I was there. The way I'd put this is I don't know what AI in retail media means. Yeah, I think it's, it's going to mean a dozen different things. And so what I'm looking for and what I've seen so far are individual use cases being solved. There was a brilliant one that I saw and I can't remember the retailer who was doing it off the top of my head, but there was a, there was an AI platform that's being used to process all of the sales information so that retailers know how to restock and what to restock on your shelves. Sign me up. Like that makes perfect sense. You have point of sale data that has SKU level. Oftentimes it's married to loyalty card data. And you have product shop stocking data from your erp. Those two things talking to each other with an AI system coordinating makes a ton of sense. Right? Great example. Freak snowstorm show is, is forecasted. You get that data from AccuWeather or all of a sudden Home Depot knows to automatically order more snow shovels. Right? Like that kind of thing can be expressed tremendously. Once you have that data infrastructure and you have the information organized between point of sale and the SKU level data and the loyalty card data, then you can automatically start applying that to AI in advertising. And specifically the part that I, I'm focused on and that we're focused on here at Vibe is how can we make sure that the number of impressions required to generate the sale of a product is as low as possible. That is all about a prediction of the likelihood of an ad generating a sale. Now in store, you don't anchor it on a person because you serve an ad to many people, but you look at store level data and we can actually drive substantial lift. And we've seen this, we've got over 40 case studies that show that when you put in store audio on during a campaign, the results go up. And so we know that it has an impact. Once we know that it has an impact, you can fine tune a model and figure out what to do with it.

B (17:02)

Yeah, yeah, well, yeah. And I mean to your point about AI, I guess, you know, any, anyone that's been in programmatic advertising has been using AI, you know, for, you know, in, in your case since 2008. Right. So there it, it, it does require a, A, a nuance. But I, but I think the, the, the point there is to use it to do things like you're Talking about which is to be able to predict other types of inventory and just kind of connect the dots. Which I do think the better the data, the better the possibilities.

A (17:36)

Let me give you my favorite use case real quick because this is a very real opportunity that it might be a little bit further away than right now, but it's something that can be done today if the retailer makes the right investment. Yeah, there are a certain number of products that are on the shelves that sit there for longer than they should. The question becomes, if you were to marry an ad message or an incentive digitally delivered in this store and you can turn over that inventory more effectively, doesn't that give you negotiating leverage on the stocking side as well as the merchant side that like that opportunity? Like forget about the individual brand objective, just think about the grocer's objective of turning over their shelves. Yeah, right. You can use media and messaging in store to do that to drive incremental volume of the sale. Well, all of a sudden if you're the one who's able to turn up and turn down the sales volume for a particular brand, imagine what that does to change your relationship with the brand. The AI system that connects point of sale to media execution. That's where the real lift in sales volume can happen. And that's a unique thing that E Commerce can't really do the same way that in store can. Particularly in these categories that still see north of 80% of their products sold in stores.

B (18:52)

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And you touched a bit on measurement already, but wanted to talk a little bit more about that. And you know, a lot of retail media networks are measured on standard KPIs, ROAS, things like that. How should brands be thinking about a measurement framework to really capture the total value of their retail media network investment?

A (19:20)

Yeah, I mean, look, I think this is probably when we talk to brands and we talk to retailers, this is arguably the single biggest pain point. And it's very specific. If you buy from three different retail media networks, let's just say you ask for the exact same, the exact same data points, SKU level roas. Right. The methodology for determining roas is different by each three of those. And so if you're the brand and you're having a hard time navigating and by the way, none of those three line up to your own internal.

B (19:52)

Fair enough.

A (19:54)

So I think somebody has to take the leap of faith to unmask what's going on. And I don't think it's a trade organization, IAB driven thing. I don't think it's, you know, some sort of standard across retailers. I think it really starts with the brand standardizing their own thing. And so I, from my perspective, the brand is the one that should say, okay, guys, here's how I'm measuring you. Here's exactly how it works. You know, tell me how you're determining what SKU level ROAS is. Do you have a 14 day window for that individual product? Is it one day? Is it based on exposure? What's your test and control methodology? Right. And so I think either the brand doing it themselves or doing it through a partner like pathformance or iri, bringing that methodology to the RMN and saying this is how measurement's going to work and knowing you're opening yourself up to the risk, a little bit of people manipulating that. But that's why you pick good partners that won't do that and they get the bulk of your investment. And so I think once you do that, you're incentivizing the retail media networks to peel back the layers and show you how their measurement methodology works. You know, the interesting thing is that there's, there's been a big debate. Right. Standards accelerate growth. The minute that Nielsen online campaign ratings digital video became a product, the level of investment in online video accelerated.

B (21:15)

Yeah.

A (21:15)

On the other hand, this is a bidded market. It's a competitive market. So if I can generate an insight as a brand that determines why somebody buys me and not one of my competitors, I don't want to share that. I want to share that with a couple of retail media partners who will build campaigns and build programs around that for me. But I don't necessarily want to operate on a standard. I want to stay competitive. You know, so I think that's one of the things that the analogy I always give is if you're the hedge fund that pays for satellites to stare at the Foxtel trucks over the Apple plants in China, you're not going to share that information with other hedge funds. That's not standard information. Well, if I determined that, like, for whatever reason, a female targeted product skews really well for men, and I know that when no one else does, I'm going to go steal that market share before anyone else figures that out. So I think your retail partners are ready and willing to invest with you there, but you have to sort of peel back the onion a little bit and show them what you're doing.

B (22:08)

Yeah, yeah. So looking, looking ahead a bit, what does a truly mature retail media network look like? You know, how has the relationship between CPGs, retailers, technology evolved from not only what we see today, but you know, where, where you see this headed over the next several years.

A (22:29)

Yeah, it's a great question. I think. Let's define, let's define maturity. You know, look, there are some really big retail media networks out there. Walmart's huge. Kroger is becoming very, very large. Home Depot is becoming very, very big. So I don't think scale is the right way to measure maturity. I think it's can I turn up or down the dollar investment that I have while knowing that I'm turning up or down the sales volume I get. And I think the maturity is all of the products that a retailer has, whether it be part of trade or retail media or online in store, whatever them understanding deeply how those things play together to drive results, that's what really matters. And I think there are a handful that are getting their way there. But look, you know, this is the other thing I tell people on my team all the time. It took us 20 years to convert television into CTV. Programmatic.

B (23:26)

Right.

A (23:26)

Retail media has only been around really for like three or four years at the maturity that it's at now. Right. It's been around for longer but like it's not a real thing. It's early. And so I think we have to be patient while these very large organizations who, by the way, let's not forget retail is under sort of a few existential threats. Right? And I think they're trying to navigate those while they're trying to reinvent their, their retail media business. The other thing that I think that I see quite a bit is the people that generate the fastest growth, that accelerate the fastest, they typically are run a little bit like a benevolent dictatorship. And I use that term sort of tongue in cheek a little bit. But you want one person whose job it is to look at all the ways that a brand can engage with you. Yeah, you don't want to be in the middle of P and L fights. And that's a real shift for these retailers. Right. But you'll see some of the ones that have sold to private equity, they're making really dramatic shifts in how their P Ls are organized. And so I think if I'm the CMO or the CEO, the sort of the head of trade or head of merchant, I'm going to be looking at like, how do I take my pepsi relationship from 50 million to 150 million? What's it going to take an anchor on the customer and then sort of work backwards from there as I go internally. And I think we're seeing a handful of retailers do that now. Others are just starting their journey and so they're not there yet. But I think that's the maturity curve that we're going to go through is more of that benevolent dictatorship. More focus on the brand objective and less focus on how P Ls are transacting and everything else. And that's a political battle that has to be waged and we'll get sorted out and when it does, you'll see a lot of growth.

B (25:18)

Yeah, yeah. Love it. Well Dave, as we wrap up here, a couple last questions for you. First one, if we were having this interview one year from today, what is one thing that we would definitely be talking about?

A (25:32)

Well, if our, if our RFP pipeline is any indication, you're going to see a lot more screens in stores. You know, digital in store signage is a huge, huge area of investment. We're talking about significant capex investments from a lot of retail media networks who are eagerly pushing screens into store. And then I think the other thing you're going to start to see more of is, you know, in the last six months our platform has been, we've been asked to integrate our platform into more core retail media platforms. And so I think the ability to use in store in conjunction with off site and on site is a really big priority for these retail media networks. So I think those are the sort of the two things that I'm really excited about. And a year from now I certainly hope to be talking about how big in store is. Although that is a bit self serving. But I do believe it like I do fundamentally believe that it is sort of the one of the last frontiers these guys can crack into. And there's a lot of enthusiasm, there's a lot of excitement. We've seen well over 40 RFPs come in for proposals to build out in store signage. And so I think that's a big area of investment for that for this year.

B (26:40)

Yeah, nice. Well, thanks again for, for all your ideas and insights here. Last question for you before we wrap up. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?

A (26:52)

That's a great question. What do I do to stay agile? I do two things a lot. I talk to customers every day, both buyers and retail media networks and I talk to my entire org, top to bottom. That's a luxury I have that I couldn't do with a 5,000 person team necessarily. But I think understanding what the market is saying at an intimate level is so, so important in these innovation curves. And so I think that's a big priority for me is making sure we're staying close to the market and close to the people who are closest to the market every day.

B (27:24)

Yeah, Love it. Well, again, I'd like to thank Dave Simon, President of In Store Marketplace at ism, for joining the show. You can learn more about Dave and ISM by following the links in the show notes. This episode is brought to you by Tech Systems. They're leaders in full stack tech services, talent solutions and helping companies put it all in action. You can learn more after@teksystems.com and thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand podcast. If you like the episode, hit subscribe and drop a rating so others can find the show too. And if you're interested in consulting, advisory work, or if you need a speaker for your next event, feel free to reach out. Just visit GregKilstrom.com that's G R E G K I H L S T R O L the Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.

A (28:33)

The Agile Brand.