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- [00:01]
Sree Rajagopalan
Make sure to check out our 500th episode which was recorded in Cannes, France at the 2025 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Our very special guest for this episode, Tanner eldon, vice president U.S. advertising sales at Amazon. You don't hear from Tanner very much other than on Amazon official events, so this is a rare glimpse and a conversation into what's going on Amazon at the preeminent retail media platform. It's available on all platforms, Apple, Spotify, wherever you choose to find your podcasts to hear thank you. Welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast. Your hosts, Sree Rajagopalan and Peter V. S Bond explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in an increasingly digitally driven world. And now, here are the CPG Guys.
- [01:03]
Peter V. S Bond
Hello and welcome to this episode of the CPG Guys Podcast. I'm of course sri, your co host as well as co founder and CRO of Think Blue Consulting, your partner to growth. Whether Retail Media Omnichannel or Back to Basics in Store, we're here for you. Get in touch with me at sri thinkblueconsulting.co. that's again sri@thinkblueconsulting.com not com not. Joining me for today's episode is my co founder of the CPG Guys, Peter Vs Bond. When he's not podcasting, he leads client engagement at Flywheel, the E Commerce Accelerated division of E Comm. He's not here with me today because I'm actually live at the Nielsen C360 conference down here in Florida and we decided to do a live event with a guest co host and you're going to find out who that is in one second. But prior to that please do listen to my older daughter Rhea Raj's music www.riaraj.com that's R H E R A J and Laraj is a member of the Geffen Records Group Cat's Eye, who of course have another worldwide superhero in the song Gnarly. Before we get to our guests, we want to ask you to consider following us in your preferred podcast listening app. If you already don't do so now let's first talk about who our co host is. None other than Ajay Sharma from Bear Ajay. This is probably his third time or fourth time co hosting with us and he's a winner one of our famous quote unquote letterman jackets for five time appearances because we let him count the fact that he's co hosted with us in addition to appearing on the show. And who's our guest today we're here live again at the Nielsen annual C360 conference. A lot going on. But retail media is one of those topics. We decided to talk to one of the SVP's here at Nielsen who's responsible for retail media as well as retail analytics, and none other than Dan Bohnert himself. So that's what our conversation is going to be about. Everything Retail media with Dan Bohnert. And now onto the actual recording. Hi, this is Sree, your favorite co host of the CPG guys. And we're live here down in Hollywood, Florida, the Nielsen Annual 360 Conference. Joining me today is my co host, Ajay Sharma.
- [03:01]
Ajay Sharma
Hey everyone. Good to be back. Thanks for having me again. Sri.
- [03:05]
Peter V. S Bond
Fifth time hosting with me, sixth time on the show.
- [03:07]
Ajay Sharma
Look at that. So, and I've got the jacket.
- [03:10]
Peter V. S Bond
You've got the jacket. Next time. We got to show it off, man. Yes, and our conversation today is actually the niche of the CPG guys. Fun topic, hot topic in the industry. Lots going on. Sometimes I call it a mess. It's since I also call it the most exciting space to be in. Dan, as a Nielsen IQ steward, you're in that exciting space. You're in the mess. You're in the heat of solving problems, you're in the heat of guiding the industry. Like it's a fun position to be in.
- [03:37]
Dan Bohnert
We don't lack problems to solve.
- [03:39]
Peter V. S Bond
There we go. And joining me today is senior vice president from Nielsen iq, Dan Bohnert.
- [03:44]
Dan Bohnert
Thank you. Amazon X, Amazon Xtrade desk. We can keep going.
- [03:48]
Peter V. S Bond
How are you doing?
- [03:49]
Dan Bohnert
I'm well. Thank you for having me. It's exciting to be here.
- [03:52]
Peter V. S Bond
Since we're doing this live from the Nielsen C362 conference, how excited are you to be at the conference?
- [03:57]
Dan Bohnert
It's been great. We have had a wonderful turnout. You know, we have a good balance of retailers and manufacturers. There's been really good discussions with a lot of our partners about where, you know, this is the quest for next. And so we've been spending a lot of time talking about where things are headed with all the consumer behavior that we're sitting on and how do we help marketers and retailers prepare for what is coming. And so we're uniquely positioned because we see both sides of the table and we can help as people think about how they want to connect with consumers and how retailers are going to evolve their strategies.
- [04:32]
Peter V. S Bond
Awesome. So why don't we jump right into it? Retail media, let's get into it.
- [04:36]
Ajay Sharma
Right? Not a hot topic at all.
- [04:39]
Peter V. S Bond
Not for bears.
- [04:40]
Dan Bohnert
Small little thing.
- [04:42]
Peter V. S Bond
So the obvious first question I'm going to ask you is what are the key challenges you see foresee in retail media? And then how are you planning to address them in this role?
- [04:52]
Dan Bohnert
Wow.
- [04:53]
Peter V. S Bond
Loaded, man.
- [04:53]
Dan Bohnert
Yeah. How much time do we got?
- [04:56]
Peter V. S Bond
We got all the time you want, because we want to hear it from you.
- [04:59]
Dan Bohnert
Yeah. I think there's a couple things that we've heard consistently. Again, I'm in a unique position where I get to talk to the retail side of the business, and I also get to talk to the CPG side of the business. And being able to kind of, from those conversation, kind of synthesize what I'm hearing and what we're feeling. And, you know, the biggest thing, and this is going to come as no shock to anyone, but like measurement, standardization is still number one. When I talk to partners, we just spent about an hour and a half with 80 marketers talking about how standardization is lacking. And when you move from one retail media partner to the next retail media partner, how are they evaluating things? How do they look at incrementality? How are they looking at roas? And it's, you know, each one does it a little bit different. How. How does a marketer who's trying to determine how to invest their dollars, how can they best compare apples to apples? And it is the lack of that standardization is causing a lot of problems and frustrations. We've heard directly from one of the largest marketers out there telling us that they were going quiet for 30 days because they didn't really feel that, yes, it was in again, this top three advertiser in the retail media space. But they want to understand what the true impact is, how much is organic, how much is coming from media. So I think that's one that we see. You know, there's been a lot of data out there. Mars Agency said, you know, had a report last year, the 89% of their marketers that they talked to said that they're frustrated with the lack of standardization. So, you know, I think that we're getting to, I think, a tipping point here where I think RMNs and manufacturers and marketers need to come together to kind of agree on what we are going to use to unlock that next phase of the budgets that people are expecting. So I think that's one big one. The other thing is the fragmentation. And again, every week it seems like there's another retail media company or another commerce company and something coming to life that is trying to play in this space. The reality is it's natural when there's a huge shift of Dollars. Everybody's trying to figure out how they can uniquely position themselves, themselves. But you know, our data is telling us that the average marketer is using anywhere from five to seven retail media partners. And when you think that there's 200 plus globally, the reality is, is like, it's like how do you activate against all of these retail media solutions? Not to say that they shouldn't be doing more, but there's only so much talent and bandwidth to put against that. And I think the third thing that we have to think through is this ad saturation and that I think consumers are going through. And if you think about it from a marketing perspective, even if you're buying five, six retail media partners, that ad typically the creative is very similar in nature. And you may fall into that segment based on something you bought three months ago with one retailer or maybe something you bought two weeks ago with another retailer. And that how do you avoid consumers actually getting turned off? Right? Like how do they, you know, you go from that wear out phase where people are like, I'm kind of tired of it to, to now almost losing brand equity. And so I think those are three things that I think a lot about. And I think that's where NIQ is kind of in a position to help some of these markers solve for some of this.
- [08:17]
Peter V. S Bond
I'll just append to that before I turn it over to Ajay. Some days I feel like listening to this. The industry is in a state of chaos and I wouldn't want to be in the shoes of any marketer, advertiser. But when I look at the other side, it is one of the greatest times in the history of advertising to be born now and be living through this because you can shape the future of advertising.
- [08:38]
Dan Bohnert
I agree.
- [08:40]
Ajay Sharma
Yeah. I mean you've touched upon a number of different topics that we'll deep dive into. But you know, let's talk about your experience. So SRI mentioned that you work for one of the biggest tech companies, retailers, marketplaces in the world and ad agencies. And ad agencies.
- [08:54]
Peter V. S Bond
Agencies, advertising, call it what you want.
- [08:57]
Ajay Sharma
So the list is endless. So with that, how does your experience at Amazon and the trade desk inform your approach to go forward in retail media?
- [09:05]
Dan Bohnert
Yeah, as I think about what it kind of might appeal to me about NIQ is, you know, and if I go back to like, so it was Amazon 2017. We were still the other category in the earnings call. We still hadn't broken that out. And a lot of the conversations that we were having were about how Amazon is, you know, performing and so, you know, I remember sitting with one of our biggest partners, it was a candy company and we were talking about return on ad spend. At that point we hadn't really got into incrementality. And the reality is I, I knew wholeheartedly that all the ads that we were running, only a portion of those were being bought on Amazon. A lot of that was being bought off of Amazon. Right. So we ended up working with a third party to help verify and break down like what percent of is actually going outside of the Amazon ecosystem. And that's where I think, like I think where Nielsen and NIQ is really positioned well is we can look at total market measurement. And so it's naive to think that when you're buying through an RMN that 100% of all of those products are actually being bought at that retailer. Like it's natural that you're going to pick up C store, you're going to pick up mass, you're going to pick up club. Like that's consumer behavior. Right. So you will probably over index against the audiences based on the segmentation. But I think like when at Amazon, like I knew that naturally was part of the challenge. The other thing that we would talk to marketers about is new to brand.
- [10:36]
Ajay Sharma
Yes.
- [10:37]
Dan Bohnert
So new to brand is a nice metric and we always talk, we talk about it. But a single retailer really struggles with this new to brand measurement because it's hard to understand if they're new to brand on your retail platform. Are they truly new to brand? Did they just get a dog or did they move somewhere or did they decide that their shopping behavior is changing? And so this is where I think, like companies like we're well positioned to look at the whole ecosystem and say, hey, this is how we can help kind of talk going back to that measurement standard. And even if you think about my time at Trade Desk and what we were doing, like we always were trying to focus on the business outcomes. Trade desk has 100 plus retail solutions that you can actually tap into. And then how do you look at that holistically across all of them? So again, I think these are some of the things that we saw as well. The other thing that you know, I think the missing piece a lot, not missing piece, but I would say, but sometimes the afterthought is the creative piece of marketing. Like we build really good targeting, we identify the KPIs we have, we set up our measurement and then we build the creative and we run it. And there isn't a lot of work that's being done on how to make sure that we're that creative is making the most emotional connection with the consumer. And again, that's another place where I think NIQ can help partners. So we've been focused on that and we've done some data, we have some partnerships that we've been publicly talking about where we can help there.
- [11:58]
Ajay Sharma
And I think it's an important point because where we're talking about retail media, I think one theme we're getting for all our listeners is the connectivity with other parts of the organization and other parts of the business. And that's a challenge for all sorts of CPG in terms of how do we really connect it end to end, rather than look at these individual brands or individual categories and individual functions and how do we bring it all together to the points that you raised?
- [12:21]
Dan Bohnert
And I would say, like, you know, we use this retail media term. The reality is it's media. Yeah, right. Like it's data informed, targeted from the retail data. But like if, you know, we at the, you know, when I left Amazon after five years, we were a media company.
- [12:38]
Ajay Sharma
Yes.
- [12:38]
Dan Bohnert
And I remember, you know, we, I went through that evolution of sitting with the trade teams to now sitting with the cmo. And I remember those first conversations being, why, why would we meet with Amazon? Like, you're a retail solution. Like I. And I'm like, no, we are.
- [12:52]
Peter V. S Bond
I remember those days of Amazon.
- [12:54]
Dan Bohnert
Yes. And we're like, no, we're actually, we sit on a tremendous amount of data. We know what consumers are buying. Right. And we can tell you that, like, you know, Google knows what you search for, Amazon knows what you're actually buying. What do you want? Right. Like, think from that perspective. So we had to change really the way that people thought about it. And I think that's where we are, you know, today where we're shifting to media companies and wanting to be measured against the, you know, true media partner. You know, thinking about Google and YouTube and meta, like how do we compare ourselves to that instead of just this closed ecosystem of retailers.
- [13:29]
Peter V. S Bond
So you guys are the analytics captain of the industry, especially when it comes to modeling advanced analytics. Talk to us about what your vision is at NielsenIQ as the captain on the retail media side now about how you're going to integrate advanced analytics into your retail media offerings. What can the industry expect from you?
- [13:49]
Dan Bohnert
Yeah, so obviously we have a lot of analytics. There's our Discover platform, which gives us a view of the consumer. It helps us decision. Kind of like what, what's helping brands build, how Kind of how they build strategies against that. We've integrated our data with sky and pacview as well, which is a way to optimize that. So if you think about it, we on a weekly basis we see 2.4 trillion transactions, right? That's pieces of data that we can sit on. And for context, if you take Visa, MasterCard and Amex and put that together, that's about 400 billion, right? So now, you know, we're six times the size of all these three credit cards combined. And you think about how you take that data and you start informing the trends that we're seeing, right? Like how are people changing behavior? Not only how they're changing, but where they're like where they're buying, right? Like we're the move to E Comm, the move to different retailers. We've also seen the evolution of social, right. Like we had TikTok here today talking to us about social shopping and the evolution of that. And we can look at this through our various platforms. Platforms to help marketers understand these are the trends, right? So think about your investment dollars, how are you going to spend your dollars? How are you going to divvy that across your retail partners? How are you going to think about it from a social commerce perspective and then being able to then measure that on the back end with some of our unique mmm that we have and then some of the announcements that we made this week around helping retailers measure total sales lift, just not that lift within their stores. So you know, again, we've got the Discover. It has been a tremendous help for marketers as they set up their strategies on how they connect with consumers. We also have another. As we think about the changing consumer behavior, one of the things that we've identified is the search trends that people have. And so we have the ability to look at how people are searching. And people are searching more for like low sugar, right? Like they're looking at ingredient based searching. And so we have a company called Core Label Insights that anytime a product is scanned, we actually know every ingredient in that product. And so we've been having conversations with retail media partners and manufacturers about how do we think about showing up when people are starting to buy or start to search in this type of behavior. I think with so much information coming at consumers and they're thinking about high fiber, high protein, low sugar and you see that show up in the search, we're actually set in a position to actually understand the products that are going to resonate with those consumers and how do we tap into those Trends and help our manufacturers that we work with.
- [16:30]
Ajay Sharma
And it's a good segue into with all the things that you mentioned around search and the advances in technology, you know, AI has been a big theme that how long do we make it? Exactly?
- [16:40]
Dan Bohnert
Yes, we got AI.
- [16:41]
Ajay Sharma
This will probably be the last question because we can talk about it for 30 minutes without a good. But this will have a significant impact across all areas of our organizations, both as manufacturers and suppliers. So what technological innovations or advancements are you most excited about in terms of the. With its potential impact to the retail media space in particular?
- [17:03]
Dan Bohnert
Yeah, I mean I think about AI in a couple of different ways. So I think it's the reality. I think it's an opportunity and a challenge which we've already talked about because you know, machine learning has been doing a lot of the recommendations. If you think about any retail platform you go on and you do a search, it's pulling in that machine learning based on like other consumers experience. You're more likely to buy this versus that. But AI is kind of evolving that to almost self pick, right? Like if you think about just stepping away from retail media and you think about Google, when you go to Google and you do a search for something, you get optionality, right? Like hey, there's five or seven different ways that I can do that now do that same experience through chatbots and you say give me the best or what is rated the best, best for you snack that I can put in my bag and take with me on vacation. It now gives you one to two, right? And so this AI recommendation I think is, will evolve and as a retail media partners will, you know, start tapping into this. It's going to give people truly what they want based on all of the data that they're help driving to inform it. But then how do you, if you're new to, new to the category or maybe you're not that superior or top tier brand, how do you show up? Right. But I think that's where we're going, this AI driven recommendation. And you know, I think that will evolve over time and it'll get a little more challenging for brands to stand out. Right. They're going to have to find new methods to connect with consumers. So I think that's one piece of it. I think the other one that I gets me excited probably most is the creative side of this. You know, I remember doing dynamic Creative Optimization in 2005 at Yahoo. And in theory it was a great idea in execution. Did not work. I mean it, it worked a little but just not to the extent that what the marketers were hoping for. And I think as you think about AI and it starts to understand location, previous behavior, all the other categories you might be buying in, that ability to actually bring a creative piece to a consumer that actually connects with them in an emotional, meaningful way, I think AI is going to play a big part there. You know, the average person, based on some of the data I read earlier today, was like, they see 6,000 ads a day. Right. Like, if you think about it like your elevator, that you're on, the Uber driver, the, you know, as you cross, you know, navigate across your web experiences, you're listening to music in the car, listening to me, like, it just all adds up. And how do you stand out? Right. How do you make yourself stand out? And I think AI has the ability to do some of that.
- [19:42]
Ajay Sharma
Yeah.
- [19:43]
Peter V. S Bond
So the full view.
- [19:45]
Dan Bohnert
Yeah.
- [19:45]
Peter V. S Bond
A lot of conversation at C360 about the full view. I've known about it for over a year at this point. How does niq's Fullview platform contribute to retail media thinking? Retail media strategies for your clients?
- [19:58]
Dan Bohnert
Yeah. And just to give some context, behind Fullview, it encompasses like 1.5 million stores. We see 72 million products. We have 82,000 online merchants. I didn't realize it was 82,000 online merchants that were out there. And we see roughly 60 billion data points a day. Right. So again, there's a lot of data that helps inform this full view that we have the ability to capture that. And as a marketer, its ability to kind of assess campaign performance. Right. Like, what's working, what's not, how do I potentially shift dollars accordingly? If I'm seeing that point of diminishing return, where can I shift that dollar accordingly? And where can I put that? But it's understanding consumer behavior as you look across all channels. Right. So you can tailor your media strategies accordingly to the channels in which you're activating against. And there are no lack of channels. Right. We've talked about that already, like whether it be ctv, social display, audio, like figuring out what exactly is going to work best for you. We also capture in their market trends. So we talked a little bit earlier about that. But like, how is consumer behavior changing where. Because we have all that data, we can say there's a little shift going on here, like thinking a little differently about how you want to market to that consumer. And then we track these sales across club, E, comm, mass grocery, and C store. So you take all of that together and it's really Helping marketers best inform how they allocate their budgets, how they shift budgets accordingly, and where they can potentially be going that they maybe even thought of. Right. Again, the whole and IQ quest for next is really about understanding that market trend to prepare yourself for how behavior is changing. Like, you know, we know that anecdotally we live in this industry, but like consumer attention is just decreasing. Like if you think about the shorts, whether, however you get that, how do you connect with those consumers with a video platform in a three to six second format? Right. And that's the trend that we see. The likelihood of reaching people on long form is getting harder and harder. There was data that Scott Galloway shared today about how TV consumption's changing. So connecting with those consumers and being able to get ahead of that trend, that's really where Fullview to me stands out.
- [22:21]
Ajay Sharma
Yeah, and look all the points that we've discussed today, there's an impact to retailers and there's an impact to brand. And then we've also talked around connectivity. So how do you foster collaboration between retailers and brands within the Nielsen IQ ecosystem?
- [22:37]
Dan Bohnert
Yeah, no, thank you. That's a great question again because we sit on both sides of it. So one of the teams that I have the opportunity to help kind of grow the businesses is on our activation platform. So the Activate platform, we're live in five continents. We work with everything from mass to grocery club and convenience. And with the Acctivate platform, it's the ability to actually capture transaction log data from these retailers. And so we can start to look at those, exactly what those trends are. So a retailer will use that to understand, hey, where am I seeing softness? Whether it be store level, whether it be category level. We did this last week with a partner and kind of shared with them like, hey, we're seeing, you're seeing softness in the, you know, the pet food category. And then you can actually drill down and start to understand what particular brands were driving that. And so because we have that whole view of where based on the transaction log data, the retailer in this example, they can reach out directly to the pet company or the pet food company and say, hey, we're, you know, we're seeing a downward trend, it's a little bit different than what we had been before. Were we doing promotions last year? What potentially has changed? And because we have the transaction log data, you can actually build segments in the platform. Right. So that segmentation is created. We can then create an offer within the same platform and then you can measure that so it's full end to end because we have the ability to do that. So because we have the retailer transaction log data, we have our relationships with the manufacturers and being able to connect that dot. And so what typically happens is retailers will use the Acctivate platform. The manufacturers then access the same platform. So there's no question about like what the data looks like. So there's more. No more of sitting down saying, well, I'm performing really well. And the retailer says, well actually you're not. So everybody's reading the same thing and then actually building that segmentation against that. So it synthesizes all the data and gets everybody on the same page and then allows you to actually take an actionable, like do something from an action perspective to be able to drive the outcomes and change that behavior. So again, because we have the retailer and CPG side, we're just uniquely positioned to do that.
- [25:01]
Peter V. S Bond
Awesome, man. I'm going to move us to the future. Yeah, lots going on now as the industry is at the opening of this conversation. We already declared it. Some days it feels like a message, but it's also one of the best times to be in the space in media, retail media, because you can shape the future. What are some trends you're looking at, you know, what is exciting you, what is annoying you and then how does it actually in your opinion, shape the future of retail media in general?
- [25:28]
Dan Bohnert
Yeah, and I'll go back to my earlier point where I'm like we say retail media but it's media. Right. And so if I go back to even my trade desk time, we had access to the Walmart data through our partnership and we were working with an insurance company and they were, they were trying to identify how to reach people that owned boats and motorcycles. Right. For those like niche insurance products. So for me, non endemic to me is I think like that next area that will continue to grow where I think, you know, marketers from, not just in like in the actual store are going to start to realize the value of this. Right. And so for me I think non endemic is really exciting because again it moves us out of like being this retail solution to being a media solution. And I know talking to RMNs like we have the ability to help them start to measure some of that because you know, you, if you are a retailer and you're looking at closed loop measurement and you have an insurance company that's wanting to run media, they're going to measure on their end with their tools, but the retailer is kind of flying blind because they can't see that. And so we actually have some of those tools in place to help them to say, okay, actually this is what performance looks like from this non endemic advertiser. So again, what excites me being in media from, you know, since the late 90s and you know, retail media for the last eight years is like, I feel like these worlds are colliding and we are truly just being media solution. So like, and along with that, I think more and more marketers are thinking about full funnel when they think about retail media. Because, you know, and again, I go back to my early days is like, how do I get that person to take that last step? How do I get them to put that in the basket and buy it? Now we're thinking about, you know, think about concentric circles, like how do I reach moms? Okay, how do I reach moms that are buying snacks? Okay, how do I reach moms that are buying better for you snacks? And retail media is, well, you know, the retail media is in a position to help across that whole journey. Right? And because we have off site inventory, we have on site inventory, you can reach people through connect TV and like all these other channels that we already talked about. And so that's what excites me about kind of this where we're at in.
- [27:42]
Ajay Sharma
This business and sticking with trends. But now we'll put a consumer lens on it, what with all the data that you've got, what are some of the consumer behavior changes you've observed and how are they impacting retail media?
- [27:54]
Dan Bohnert
Yeah, I mean we touched on one already. But the social commerce is absolutely an area that I think if, you know, retailers are very wise to create connections with the likes of TikToks and Pinterest and Meta so they can connect with consumers in that environment. Especially if you think about the younger generation and how they consume content. Right. Like my kids are 12 and 13 and if I gave them a choice between their phone and watching YouTube or sitting down and watching Netflix, I know what they're choosing, right. And so that behavior has dramatically changed. We talked a lot about attention spans being short. So how do you get that quick burst Video is going to continue to grow, I think not just thinking about video as like that 15 and 30, but how do you actually, while you're scrolling and search, being able to get a video experience, we know that that resonates with consumers more. That behavior has like higher likelihood to drive the outcomes. I think it's always balancing though the cost of those solutions with the return. And that's again where we look at and can synthesize that all data to say okay, like here's a mass play. It's kind of, you know, efficient tonnage. This is a little more mid, what's that look like? And then how do all those pieces play together?
- [29:14]
Ajay Sharma
So yeah, and we're not talking metrics today, but again you know, it's an important part to making sure you know, we're using those channels and platforms in right way to again to connect it back.
- [29:24]
Dan Bohnert
The only other thing I would add to consumer trends is you know, if you go back to, you know, so I started in grocery, I, I, my first job was at a grocery store stacking shelves. And you think about the amount of products that we had in that store. Right. You know, it was very limited. You had your leading brands, everybody kind of knew what they bought. And what we're seeing from our consumer trend side is like that mid and long tail just continues to grow. It has been democratized. Like I think retail media and digital or you know, the likes of buying digitally have democratized this business. We did our event today, we had five people present their products. You know, pitch slam. Yeah, the pitch slam.
- [30:05]
Ajay Sharma
Yeah.
- [30:06]
Dan Bohnert
And again like go back in 10, 15 years. Like how, I don't know how they execute that. How do you effectively get to market and start getting yourself in retailers? So the barrier to entry has actually dropped quite a bit. And we are seeing consumer trends changed too. Like people, consumers are much more open to trying different things and new things. And it just, you know, the amount of SKUs and the amount of products that are available to consumers now is there because consumers behavior is changing.
- [30:34]
Peter V. S Bond
So we got to 14 minutes without saying artificial intelligence, which one we got now got to 40 minutes without saying personalization. Okay, sorry Dan, I gotta ask you this question. How do you see the role of personalization evolving in retail media? Do you actually see creative that's a little bit more personalized? Do you see media that's targeted, more individualized? Like what do you predict the future is going to be or what are you foreseeing or what are you seeing these days?
- [31:01]
Dan Bohnert
Well, we talked a little bit about personalization with the AI tool where you actually start to get that personalized experience when you're shopping. And I think that's coming, we touched on creative. I think that's absolutely coming. I think, think the ability to tailor that message based on the fact that you know, like we have to find that balance of creepy versus like yeah, the emotional connection. Right. And how do you deliver like an AI will hopefully there will Be there will be issues, there will be problems and I'm sure we'll read about them in the news about how AI has gone too far. Right. And so we're going to have to find that balance, I think around personalization from a creative standpoint. I also think that personalization, if you think about it from the you mentioned creative, I think that absolutely pays that way. I think the targeting is going to be that way. There's a major retail media company a couple weeks ago announced that you can now identify the audiences you want to go after, the business outcomes you want to get, and it will actually create those now via AI. And the early testing is showing higher performing. Right. So it's getting easier for marketers because it's not like building. I mean I remember building campaigns and trying to find the right segment and matching it to the right brand and okay, these seem to make sense. I think this will work well and then you run it and see if it actually does what you think it's going to do. And I think some of that's going to be removed and it makes it, you know, I think that again, going back to barriers, I think the barrier to entry is going to be lower. I think the other thing is you talk about personalization, we've talked about AI is, you know, the creation of video assets has been an expensive kind of barrier historically. And I think personalized creative is going to be easier and easier for marketers to do and execute against. So that's how I think about personalization.
- [32:54]
Peter V. S Bond
Looking forward, I do believe AI is definitely going to take us forward in the ability to create mass scaled content with personalization, maybe upfront cohorts and then individualized over time. While there's going to be noise around, is it doing it right or wrong? For the most part, I think even if it gets it 80% right, it's good enough for personalization. Would you agree?
- [33:19]
Dan Bohnert
Yeah, I agree. I do think that again we have to remember like it is still technology, right? And so emotion like that connection is still really important. And I think that human touch is still needed. I think we're naive if we think that AI can do everything for us. And if you think about how I use even AI outside of a media perspective, it's a starting point to help me kind of like reduce that effort. But I have to do the last 30, 40%, right? Or I do the first, you know, 30% and it helps me get to the 70%. And so that human touch, that human ability to understand what people are going to React to, I think is still going to be needed.
- [33:59]
Peter V. S Bond
Yeah, I feel it's a productivity enhancer, not a productivity replacer.
- [34:04]
Ajay Sharma
Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, there's been so many topics covered today, and honestly, this has been great. Really, you've gone the spectrum really good. Yeah.
- [34:12]
Peter V. S Bond
Corners of three ten media.
- [34:14]
Dan Bohnert
What buzzword have we missed?
- [34:15]
Ajay Sharma
Of course, I'm saving the most difficult question for last as I close this out because of everything discussed today. What advice would you give to brands who are looking to optimize their retail media investments? With the amount of change happening, the amount of platforms talking, you know, you factor there in macroeconomic, political factors as well.
- [34:35]
Peter V. S Bond
Come to Nielsen iq, come to Dan.
- [34:37]
Ajay Sharma
There are a number of different things. So what advice would you give to brands?
- [34:41]
Dan Bohnert
Yeah, I think so. One of the things that. And talking to manufacturers again, even this week, is when you're optimizing your campaigns, I want you to really think about all the touch points that you have with the consumer before they take an action. And so, you know, we talk about how big retail media is and then you actually look at how much is being spent across search versus the display or anything else. And the majority is still falling back into that search category. But we know there's so many other things that are driving that. Like, I just, again, going back to my own behavior, like, I may see something interesting and then what do I do? I search for it. Where's the credit coming? Right. So as you think about optimizing, I really want marketers to think about how the journey looks like for that consumer and how are you looking at the impact of all of your media, not just potentially that last piece of it. And then as you think about how, you know, I would encourage all marketers is, you know, we touched on like, you know, the average marketer is using anywhere from 6 to 7 is where can you test, Right? Like, think about where you can continue to make small bets because we see the trends and we can actually help you tell you, like, hey, these are probably the places that you want to start going. And I'm not saying that you should, like shift everything over there, but you constantly have to be evolving how you connect with consumers. Right. And so there are definitely retailers and other solutions that are out there that can do really well. And I think like constantly thinking about how you can just kind of play in those spaces to understand them better, to help inform the, you know, the years to come. So think about the total journey for the consumer. Think about the touch points along the way and make sure that you're constantly, constantly looking at the trends that you're seeing or what you're getting from any of your data partners to make sure that you are taking an appropriate amount of your budget and make to prepare yourself for what's next.
- [36:34]
Peter V. S Bond
Awesome Retail media Hot topic and I felt like we got insights and we got a lot of wisdom from Dan Bonner here.
- [36:40]
Dan Bohnert
So for all audience, insights and wisdom are usually two words that do not associate with you. Not associate with me today.
- [36:48]
Ajay Sharma
Sri, I think we're gonna need a part two. There we go.
- [36:52]
Peter V. S Bond
We'll definitely get you back for a part two, but for all the audience, you can find all of our content simply by going to a web browser and typing cpguys.com as the URL that easy to our followers on LinkedIn. I can't say you thank you enough times for the clicks. Likes DMs, coming to conferences, recording podcasts at conferences. Like Mr. Dan in a busy conference where he's booked, he's got stuff going on. He still did give us the time to record the episode. We sincerely appreciate that. And we can't say thank you enough times for coming to our parties. You'll never say no. So Peter and I, thank you, want to say thank you, thank you, thank you. We'll also ask you to leave us a rating on the Apple podcast. What the rating does is it tells us how we're doing. If you leave us a review, we'll know if we're having the right conversations with the right guests. Dan, for making time on a busy, busy, busy week for you. I can't say thank you enough times. Thank you for joining us on the CPG Guys.
- [37:42]
Dan Bohnert
It's a pleasure to be here.
- [37:44]
Peter V. S Bond
Sanjay, Fifth time Thank you for joining me as our guest host on this episode.
- [37:48]
Ajay Sharma
I'm always learning, so thank you for having me back.
- [37:51]
Peter V. S Bond
That's a wrap. See you soon on another episode of the CPG Guys.
- [38:06]
Sree Rajagopalan
The content in this podcast episode is provided for general informational purposes only. By listening to our episode, you understand that no information contained in this episode should be construed as advice from CPGuys, LLC or the individual author, hosts, or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for research on any subject matter. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by CPGuys LLC. The views expressed by guests are their own, and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. The views expressed by CPTGuys LLC do not represent the views of their employers or the entity they represent. CPTGuys LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual's use of, reference to, or inability to use this podcast or the information we present in this podcast.