Ferrero's Danielle Sporkin breaks down the reality behind retail media’s full-funnel promise

Summary

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The Digiday Podcast

Episode: Ferrero's Danielle Sporkin breaks down the reality behind retail media’s full-funnel promise
Date: September 16, 2025
Host: Kamika McCoy (Digiday Senior Marketing Reporter)
Guest: Danielle Sporkin, SVP Media & Marketing Services (North America), Ferrero

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Episode Overview

This episode explores how Ferrero, known for brands like Ferrero Rocher, Nutella, and Tic Tac, is evolving its retail media strategy in the face of sweeping changes in digital marketing. The conversation, recorded at Digiday’s Retail Media Advertising Strategy Summit, dives into Ferrero’s approach to retail media as a full-funnel channel, the challenges of measurement and attribution, and the experimentation required to drive meaningful business growth.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining Retail Media for Ferrero (18:30–22:43)

• Evolution from E-commerce to Full-Funnel:
  Danielle Sporkin explains that Ferrero began its retail media journey focused on e-commerce and search, aimed at boosting digital shelf presence. Yet as retail media offerings matured, Ferrero broadened its definition and tactics.
• Working Definition:
  “Retail media being any of the offerings that are coming from our retail partners… that could be data, that could be on site, that could be off site, everything that encompasses some sort of retailer partnership.” – Danielle Sporkin (21:38)
• Distinction from E-commerce:
  Retail media is now seen as a channel for both digital and in-store sales, rather than just online transactions.

2. Testing, Learning, and Measurement Challenges (22:43–29:24)

• Moving Up the Funnel:
  Ferrero’s strategy has shifted from strictly lower-funnel activities (search, conversion) to include upper-funnel tactics like display, social, and video, using retail media partner data for broader awareness and brand-building.
• Measurement Hurdles:
  There’s no industry standard—incrementality and ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) are measured differently across platforms.

  “It’s not fair to expect the same ROAS from a homepage takeover or a video asset than you’re gonna get from search… rethinking what the benchmarks look like for these different channels was the first step.” – Danielle Sporkin (23:00)

• Incrementality:
  Ferrero is actively using incrementality measures, but Sporkin notes:
  “Incrementality on Retailer A vs incrementality on Retailer B… they may not be using the exact same methodology. So it’s useful within that retailer but not necessarily something we can blanketly look across.” (24:53)
• Approach to Testing:
  Ferrero combines mass national campaigns with precision targeting informed by retail data, tailoring messaging to demographic or behavioral segments (e.g., lapsed buyers, occasion-based audiences).

3. Balancing Experimentation and Scalability (29:24–34:34)

• Funding Tests:
  The company avoids rigid budget silos, instead emphasizing collaboration across teams and fluid movement of marketing dollars based on goals.

  “We try not to be so linear… We have a lot of collaborative conversations across teams to understand, at the end of the day, we’re all working towards the same goal. We want to drive brand awareness, brand love and sales.” – Danielle Sporkin (29:34)

• Engagement with Smaller Retailers:
  The scale and capability of different retail partners affect Ferrero’s willingness to test new tactics. Larger, more mature retailers might offer advanced solutions, but Ferrero strives for inclusivity across its retail portfolio.

4. Measurement, Optimization, and Category-Specific Tactics (31:22–34:18)

• Seasonal vs. Evergreen Approaches:
  With products spanning many categories, Ferrero uses both seasonally focused “tentpole” campaigns and always-on activities (like search) to continuously optimize and learn.
• Success Signals:
  Immediate ROAS is the baseline, but sales lift, brand lift, and other studies are critical as Ferrero experiments further up the funnel.

5. Organizational Structure and Team Integration (34:18–36:34)

• Interdepartmental Collaboration:
  Retail media’s ownership stretches across brand, trade, shopper, and e-commerce teams. Sporkin emphasizes that there’s no single “right answer” about where it belongs—what matters is alignment toward shared business objectives.
• Retail Media as ‘Glue’:
  “Retail media becomes a bit of the glue that connects some of it all together.” – Danielle Sporkin (36:34)

6. Is Retail Media Truly Full-Funnel? (36:34–38:36)

• Progress Being Made:
  Ferrero sees retail media networks actively expanding their capabilities into brand-building and upper-funnel domains, but limitations around overlap and scale remain.

  “The challenge we continue to have… as we start to add more and more retailers to a retail media mix, are we just reaching the same people over and over?… There’s always going to be a place for national media. We use retail media to supplement that, to communicate to potentially different people in a slightly different way.” – Danielle Sporkin (36:42)

• Fluid Budgets:
  Brand and national funds are increasingly being used for retail media, particularly where retailer data can enhance broader campaigns.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Industry Definitions:
  “If I pulled the room and asked you how you define retail media, we would probably get no less than 10 different definitions.” – Danielle Sporkin (21:38)

• On Testing:
  “It’s not an either or, it’s an and to bring these things together and do it in a smart way, that one plus one equals three. Little cliche, but it works in this instance.” – Danielle Sporkin (28:09)

• On Failures & Learning:
  “You learn something no matter what, whether it was successful or unsuccessful. That gives you information that you can use for the future.” – Danielle Sporkin (28:46)

• On Collaboration:
  “It’s really about how all of our teams are working together… retail media becomes a bit of the glue that connects some of it all together.” – Danielle Sporkin (36:34)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:10–08:13: Industry news - pharma ad regulations, streaming mergers, Amazon-Netflix ad partnership, and FTC probes (host chat)
• 18:30: Danielle Sporkin introduction and Ferrero portfolio overview
• 19:53: Evolution and definition of retail media at Ferrero
• 22:43: Measurement, attribution, and the challenges of incrementality
• 26:09: Importance of testing and learning, precision targeting, experiments
• 29:34: Budgeting, fluidity, and funding experimentation
• 31:37: Measurement benchmarks, optimization, and success signals
• 34:34: Organizational structure and inter-team collaboration
• 36:34: The full-funnel promise—is retail media there yet?
• 38:05: National and brand marketing budget integration with retail media

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Conclusion

This episode offers a grounded, transparent look behind the full-funnel promise of retail media from a major consumer brand’s perspective. Ferrero is on an ongoing journey—testing, collaborating, and iterating—while contending with imprecision in industry standards and the rapid expansion of retail media offerings. Sporkin’s insights are particularly valuable for marketing leaders navigating the blurred lines between e-commerce, traditional retail, and new opportunities in retail media.

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Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Hello, hello and welcome to the Digiday Podcast, a show about the business of media and marketing. I'm Kamika McCoy, senior marketing reporter here at Digiday.

[A]

And I'm Sam Bradley, also a senior reporter at Digiday.

[B]

Sam, so excited to have you on the pod. Our beloved Tim Peterson is out this week, currently reporting live from the Digiday Publishing Summit. But he'll be back in next week with a special episode from the event floor, so stay tuned for that. Later on in this episode, I will be joined by Danielle Sporkin, who is SVP of Media and Marketing Services for North America at Ferrero. That is a title. We sat down last week at digiday's Retail Media Advertising Strategy Summit in New York to talk about how Ferrero is adapting its retail media investments and using the channel as a full funnel marketing tool. So in other words, they're throwing spaghetti noodles at the wall and seeing what sticks. And I chatted with them for a conversation about that. But before we dive into all of that, Sam, we've got, I want to say the last couple of days, not that it's ever a boring time in news, but the last couple of days have been really, really busy. There's been a lot of speculation and hearsay that when RFK Jr. Is overseeing health here in the US was going to crack down on TV pharma, as there have been a lot of speculation about it. And now we've finally seen an executive order come out of that space. You've been reporting on this A Are pharma people, pharma advertisers shaking in their boots or what's going on?

[A]

I don't think they'll be shaking in their boots just yet. I mean, what's happened recently is probably the first concrete policy action we've seen come out of the administration around pharmaceutical advertising. What's happened is that there's been an executive order from the president which changes the information that advertisers must supply when they're advertising prescription medication. Previously, they were able to put a portion of that information about side effects and so on, that long bit at the end of every pharmaceutical ad about drowsiness and don't operate heavy machinery. Some of that was allowed to be online previously, and now it has to be within the context of the advert entirely, which is going to affect the length of these ads probably. And then to enforce that, the Food and Drug Administration, the fda, has sent out thousands of letters to pharmaceutical companies reminding them of this rule change basically to sort of preemptively wrap them on the knuckles.

[B]

This is something, well, you know, to be determined with the current administration on how much wrapping of knuckles there will be. That's done. But I do think it's interesting talking about kind of the length of the ads. Maybe this is worth exploring an episode all on its own. But you're talking like 15, 30 and 60 second ads. Your sweet spot with all of that, that is easily a four or five minute ad happening.

[A]

Yeah. Or maybe they'll just get the voiceover artist to really, really, really speed up.

[B]

Lots of options here. But while in all of the shakeups that I was catching up on, including the crackdown or supposed crackdown for pharma ads, there's also a lot of shakeups that are happening in the streaming wars and yet another big tech investigation. So as if there was not enough happening in this space. And the FTC is knocking on yet another door. So let's get into this week's juicy scoops. And the first one is Paramount Sky Dance, which is eyeing Warner Brothers disgusting Discovery. Just a few weeks after Skydance bought Paramount Global For 8.4 billion, the Wall Street Journal is now reporting that Paramount Skydance is now preparing a bid for Warner Brothers. Which is interesting about the timing. Warner Brothers Discovery, excuse me. Which is interesting about the timing because they were supposed to be splitting into two companies. Their legacy TV pubs on one side and then they're streaming on the other. If it goes through, we are looking at a massive merger of two of the biggest names in entertainment and maybe the bundling of hbo, Max and Paramount, which I don't even want to think about what that Frankenstein of a name would be for that streaming service. Sam, what are your thoughts? What are your first thoughts on this?

[A]

Paramount Max has a certain ring to it, doesn't it?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Well, yeah. I mean, it's more consolidation, which I suppose if you're particularly tired of the television experience and the sheer number of streaming platforms you have to deal with to get to your shows, David Zaslav, the Warner Brothers boss, certainly is. He was talking in the Hollywood Reporter about how terrible he feels the consumer experiences. But whether this will actually help that, I don't know. I'll be a little bit skeptical. But yeah, it's certainly continuing a much longer trend of consolidation.

[B]

Yeah, it is. And there's something, there's something to be noted here. Obviously, going back to the point about, you know, wbd, as I'm going to acronym it right now, has been working to split up its operations. You've got Cable networks that have been pulled away from its studio streaming operations because it's saddled with that right now, they're still carrying around, I think the Wall street journal reported 30 billion worth of debt that they promised to reduce that by the end of the year. And if they are able to get picked up, you know, maybe there's a possibility to do that. But it's also worth noting that a deal of this size is going to have to pass. The antitrust scrutiny from the Trump administration and then, you know, the Skydance Paramount merger came with contingency points, right?

[A]

Yeah, that was. That's a kind. That's a diplomatic way of putting it. I think it was like a toll. I think they put some pretty hefty conditions on, especially on the news media elements of Paramax Guidance's business. With that precedent being set for that merger, it'd be surprising if the FTC doesn't try and le be a similar measure on this merger, should it get that far. Worth bearing in mind that Warner Brothers owns cnn, so would CNN be subject to some of the same restrictions we're seeing probably being placed on Paramount's current news media properties? Maybe we don't want to speculate too far ahead. Of course, this could take years to actually materialize. But yeah, there's certainly people of thought.

[B]

Yeah. Because the Paramount Skydance one took over a year itself. So who's to say that this one's going to happen quickly.

[A]

Exactly. There's no guarantee would it happen even that fast. And of course, all the consequences that fall out of a deal should it conclude would would take many years to play out.

[B]

What do you think the impact here for advertisers is? Because when you start talking about consolidation, that means like as far as a competitive ad market for pricing and things like that kind of is now at stake.

[A]

No, absolutely. I think so. I mean, like I said for a couple of years, it's unlikely that an advertiser's experience upfront season would materially change. Right. They're still going to be dealing with the same networks and probably the same network execs for a little while longer. But should the merger go ahead. Yeah, you're right. It would probably be a little bit less competitive in the market. It might be a little bit less of a buyer's market in years to come, as it's been this summer.

[B]

Yeah. You're painting two scenarios here on the one, David Ellison, who is, who is behind the Skydance merger, bidding, if you will, could leave this as is in the streaming. Our Services operate independently, which means deal making is done with each platform similar to how it is now. Right. Consolidation means less ad opera, less ad opportunities. Excuse me, less competition and potentially less range in pricing. So if you're kind of being held hostage there, which do you see? Either one of these shaking out or we're too. Too early to tell?

[A]

I think it's probably too early to tell, to be honest. Like we say, it's what we know about the merger is about the earliest information we could have. I don't think it's. There's even been a formal declaration around it just yet in terms of the declaration to the markets. So we've got a long road to go on and we don't know the structure of that deal. But, yeah, I would say it's too early to tell. But those two scenarios are, like, very plausible.

[C]

Right.

[A]

Like a consolidated Warner Brothers, Paramount, Skydance sort of Godzilla situation could be a little bit more difficult to deal with for media buyers and advertisers. But of course, the status quo may stay more or less the same for the next five to 10 years.

[B]

And then we'll be taking bets. And by we, I mean me, we'll be taking bets on what they come up with. The name, maybe. What did you call it? Paramount Max.

[A]

Paramount Max, yeah. Why not?

[B]

A lot to be determined.

[A]

Absolutely. And who knows what it means for that expensive Harry Potter series they're putting together.

[B]

That's on one side of the Streaming wars house, if you will. Right. On the other side of this, we've got some news coming out of Netflix and Amazon, which are starting Q4. They've struck a deal. So starting in Q4, as we've reported, Netflix's ad inventory will be available to buy through Amazon's programmatic buying platform, which is Amazon's DSP. It'll be in 12 markets, including the US, UK, Germany and Japan. What makes this a big deal is that it strengthens Amazon's muscle and DSP muscle as far as giving it more inventory to work with. Which could spell bad news for the trade desk.

[A]

It absolutely could, yeah. I mean, the trade desk for several years, most people consider it to have an early lead in the sort of CTV inventory space. It wasn't the only way of buying something like Netflix, but it was one of the best ways. And meanwhile, Amazon's inventory was hived off on its own dsp. Now you can get Netflix and pretty much everything else available on the stream market via Amazon, and you can target that using Amazon's own retail media data. It's a very powerful proposition. The gap between Amazon's DSP and the Trade Desk just got that much narrower. Now agencies spend ages choosing primary and secondary DSPs depending on their clients various needs. And this doesn't mean there'll be an automatic flight from the Trade Desk. It just means there's a little bit less to differentiate them next to Amazon. And we know that Amazon is being very aggressive on incentives and pricing and lowering fees in ways that frankly the Trade Desk is less equipped to be able to afford.

[B]

Yeah, it's not to your point, a David and Goliath situation yet. Right.

[A]

The Trade Desk still makes, still a very, very large company. You know, David's got quite a lot of stones in that, in that little pouch, I suppose.

[B]

But it is bared to say that Amazon. Right. As Executive news editor Seb Joseph and our platforms reporter Crystal Scanlon reported, Amazon has been really quietly grabbing up land across streaming. They've already got deals in place with Disney, nbcu. Amazon really seems to be positioning itself as the connective tissue of the streaming ad economy as they've written. And to our point earlier, it just kind of makes it just a little bit. It makes it harder for the Trade Desk to individualize itself, if that's a word. And it takes the DSP market from a triple opoly into a more of a duopoly where you've got Amazon and Google as your dominant players in this space. And not to mention, wait, they also lost exclusivity with Walmart for inventory.

[A]

They absolutely did. Yeah. Walmart altered its agreement. This is reported in I think the information so that it's no longer in an exclusive relationship with the Trade Desk. It hasn't yet added any further DSP partners, but there's really very little stopping it doing so in the future. So most folks expect that the Trade Desk will no longer be the sole gateway to Walmart. Walmart's retheming to network.

[B]

Yes, I think, I don't know, I feel like the Trade Desk has been fighting, it's been fighting more and more of an uphill battle here for a while because in terms of pricing, inventory, user interface, because we've also sat through our programmatic summit these last two summits and there's been kind of grievances about cokai, it's media buying tool, which I think you refer to as supposed to be the Ferrari of services.

[A]

Well, it's supposed to be Best in class is what I meant, but it doesn't really satisfy everybody. Done a little bit of reporting around this earlier this year and it's, it's not the easiest interface to use. It's what media buyers have told me for its worth. Most people consider Amazon to be much rougher and much readier, although it has overhauled it, I think, in the last year or so. So Trade Desk has got in theory a bit of an edge in that regard, but it's not necessarily got the confidence of everybody using it to count on.

[B]

Yeah. So long story short, if Trade Desk has got some Goliath of Trades Desk has got some stones to throw. Right. They find themselves on the defense now. If there was ever a time to be throwing said stones, picking them up, let's get them moving.

[A]

Absolutely. I think it'd be very interesting to see what response comes out the Trade Desk either within the next quarter or even over a longer period. But you'd expect there to be some responses to make to try and sharpen that differentiation or what differentiation they feel is remaining. I, I'd expect a response.

[B]

Yeah, you and I reported on this, I think it was earlier this year where although Amazon's DSP is seen as like ready to go, there's also a lot of questions from like advertisers of how much of your data and information do you want to add to Amazon's ecosystem? Right. So that could be another place for them to consider when it comes to like spending dollars with Trade Desk versus Amazon.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm sure a lot of people are a little bit reluctant to feed the beast any further, but will those sort of subjective existential worries, you know, match up against, against the economics? If the sums make Amazon more attractive? I don't know. I wouldn't be so confident.

[B]

Yeah, no, that's fair. What did ABBA say? Money, money, money, money, money. And then lastly, what would a week in digital media be without yet another government probe? So as Bloomberg has recently reported, the ft, Amazon and Google over whether they've misled advertisers about how their search ad pricing works. So according to Bloomberg, the agency is asking questions about Amazon's reserve pricing and how Google initially sets and communicates those things. Reserve pricing is search ads, just to quickly define it, it's just a price floor that advertisers must meet before they can buy an ad. Right. And so those are kind of the questions that are now being asked about how Google and Amazon initially set these things and communicate that before that bot is done. Now the thing here is that there's been a long standing concern from media buyers, as I'm sure you've heard on your end, Sam, about these tech platforms kind of having black boxes and walled gardens when it comes to ad auctions, right?

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. It's a long term concern of pretty much everybody who works in this space.

[B]

I would say if the FTC's hunch right, their hypothesis comes true, this would stand to be a media buyer's kind of fears confirmed.

[A]

No fears confirmed. Sure. I don't really know what consequences would shake out. I mean, the previous trial we've just seen, which is not wrapped up yet because the remedy stage is still to come. So Google pretty much declared as a monopoly and then Judge Mehta chose not to do very much with that conclusion. So yes, it would confirm a lot of media buyers fears and feelings about the way Google and Amazon work, I suppose in the entire wall garden system, probably. But whether or not it would actually lead to action that benefits media buyers and advertisers in the long run is like big old, big old question mark above that one. Anyone's guess.

[B]

Yeah, you're right. That actually brings up a really good point. In a perfect world, this would lead to more transparency around ad pricing. But like you said, I'm not convinced because Google's antitrust case kind of went out with a whimper. There was a lot of headlines and then not much kind of came of it. I think in our last episode I was talking to Tim and I said this seems like nothing more than a slap on the wrist because what ended up happening was Google did not have to divest from Chrome. It gets to keep Chrome. And then on the other hand of that, it can still strike deals. It just can't have exclusive partnerships in the way that it did before. So how bad is it? You know what I mean?

[A]

Yeah. But then again, there might be some value in just feeling heard, you know, like your friend says, you were right all along and that's okay. Maybe, maybe that will be healing in some sense.

[B]

You know, I think that's a very positive way to end that segment. In the end, if you were expecting a sweeping change here, maybe don't hold your breath. You, if you wanted a little bit of I told you so. Depending on how all of this shakes out, you might get your heyday. Yeah.

[A]

So is the silver lining to wrap this all up?

[B]

We've got, like I mentioned, my interview with Danielle Sporkin from Ferrero, which was recorded live at last week's Retail Media Advertising Summit. Advertising Strategy Summit. Say that three times fast in New York, where I talked to Ferrero about their approach to retail Media, how it's evolving and how they're trying to think through things like measurement and creativity while retail media networks position themselves as full funnel marketing channels as opposed to display and search and conversion. So stick around for that conversation. Sam, it's been a pleasure having you on the pod today. Thanks so much for hashing this all out with me.

[A]

It's been a pleasure being here. Thanks for having me.

[B]

I'm back on the stage this time with Danielle Sporkin, who is over at Ferrero. Hopefully some of you guys favorite candy brand, Ferrero Rocher. So thank you so much. We're here to talk a little bit about moving beyond the basket and a full funnel strategy with retail media. So Danielle, welcome.

[C]

Great, thanks for having me. And yes, for those of you who maybe aren't familiar with Ferrero, Ferrero Rocher is one of our many products, but we actually have a full suite of sweet packaged foods. We have Nutella kinder, which actually is the number one chocolate brand in the world, if you didn't know. We have Tic Tac. We've made some acquisitions. So we have butterfinger, baby Ruth, 100 grand. We have the Keebler cookies portfolio, Famous Amos. It really runs the gamut. So a large portfolio of sweet packaged cookies foods. And we've been on this tremendous growth journey and are continuing that.

[B]

So no shortage and also obviously no shortage of retail media strategies to cover all of these many, many brands. Yes. So I want to jump straight into it. During our prep call, we talked about something that was really, really interesting, which is this idea that retail media networks are pushing to be seen as full funnel marketing channels. So I want to start with, you have just kind of given an overarching look at where does retail media sit for Ferrero and its many brands.

[C]

Yeah, it's a great question. And like many CPG companies, we have been on a journey. When we first started thinking about retail media, it was incubated within our E Commerce team and very focused on search because at that point we were really thinking about how do we grow our digital penetration, how do we show up on the digital shelf? So it was almost entirely search based. Then as retail media offerings expanded, we too started to expand how we thought about retail media networks. We started to experiment with on site display offerings, homepage takeovers, other ways to get in front of our consumers, but still very much in that retail environment. And then of course, we started to think bigger and broader. And at this point, we actually had to redefine what retail media meant at Ferrero because We were finding that because it had been incubated within E commerce, people were using them synonymously. But for those of you that are very familiar with the Omni space, retail media is not just about driving digital sales. We're starting to leverage off site banners, we're starting to think about social commerce, we're thinking about video. So not only are we going further up the funnel, but we're also thinking about how do we drive total sales, whether it happens online, in store or, or some combination. So we really start to think about retail media as all the ways that we could leverage retailers, platforms or data. And we're still very much on the journey. The space is continuing to expand rapidly, but we're really looking to test all the different offerings to understand where it fits within our full funnel plans.

[B]

Absolutely. That's interesting. What was the definition, right, of retail media and what is it now for you guys?

[C]

You know, I love this because I bet if I pulled the room and asked you how you define retail media, we would probably get no less than 10 different definitions. I don't think there is one standard, but for us, the way we started to think about it is retail media being any of the offerings that are coming from our retail partners. So that could be data, that could be on site, that could be off site, everything that encompasses some sort of retailer partnership. And then we think about E commerce as anything that's helping to drive a digital sale. So that there is that. If you think about a Venn diagram, there's an overlap in the middle quite large between the two. But there are also other offerings, social commerce offerings, websites, et cetera, that you can leverage to drive E commerce that isn't necessarily retail media. So that's how we've started to define it, to make sure that when we're talking about retail media, we're not just talking about digital sales. And when we're talking about driving our digital penetration, we're not just thinking about retail environments.

[B]

I would imagine moving up the funnel as much as retailers are pushing for that. That is not a trial and error free process. Right. Some of it is still pretty new and there's still measurement and attribution challenges. So talk to me a little bit about Ferrero's approach to testing and learning those upper funnel strategies.

[C]

Yeah, well, I've already heard from a number of speakers on the topic of measurement and I think it's a really important one. You know, we start with the basics, which is roas. I think as we move up the funnel though, we have to recognize that different tactics play different roles within the plan. It's not fair to expect the same ROAS from say, a homepage takeover or a social asset or a video asset, then you're going to get from search. So rethinking what the benchmarks look like for these different channels was the first step. But again, ROAS is just the baseline and the first step. We've talked a lot about incrementality and that's incredibly important. As we add more channels or move further up the funnel, what is that doing to drive those incremental sales? Because if we can prove out that that investment is leading to a sale that we wouldn't have otherwise gotten, and again, that can be an omnicell that could be in store, that could be online, that's going to unlock greater dollars to continue to test. So we're looking at all of these things when it comes to measurement. I think the last piece on the measurement journey, as others have talked about, is there's a lot of inconsistency in this space right now because we're all learning, right? Different retailers have different methodologies, have different ways that they offer incrementality. Myself as a marketer and a former agency person, the vision is if we could get to more singular definitions, it would allow us to better compare across because we're looking at all different retailers and all different tactics. But we're still on that journey and I think we'll get there eventually. As an industry, how close are we.

[B]

To being able to get our hands the brains around incrementality and being able to say an attribution to say, yes, this upper funnel marketing strategy led to a sale.

[C]

So I think there are offerings that allow us to get there. Already there are many retail media partners that are offering incrementality, some even as a base measurement solution. So we're using it today. But we know that incrementality on Retailer A vs incrementality on retailer B, they're not necessarily apples to apples. They may not be looking at the exact same thing. They may not be using the exact same methodology. So it's useful within that specific retailer, but not necessarily something that we can blanketly look across. Now, let's be real. Even outside of retail media, we haven't cracked the code on everyone using the same methodology across the digital ecosystem. Right. We still have walled gardens outside of retail media. So I think it's something that as an industry we continue to push for. But also, let's not let perfection be the enemy of good and let's use the solutions we have now to garner learnings as we continue to build and grow.

[B]

Double click. I'm so sorry that I use that language. Double click into that. For me, this premise of testing and learning because I feel like with retail media, the basis of sales and display ads, you got that down packed right now, you're moving up the funnel. So why is it so important for you guys to be able to test and learn? And do we have extra dollars set aside to be able to do that?

[C]

I mean, we'd always love to have extra dollars, but I think the way that we've been thinking about it, Ferrero Brands, as I mentioned earlier, you know, we are one of the largest feed packaged food companies globally, but in the US we're still a bit of a challenger brand to some of our competitors. So driving national reach, awareness, penetration, those are still fundamental things that we need to do with our media and marketing. So we're still leveraging national plans, national channels to be able to do that. But we also recognize that there's value in precision. There's value in all this data that exists that enables us to better understand our consumer needs and maybe address them more precisely. So some of the things we've been testing as we are bringing retailer data further up the funnel is what we're calling precision at scale. We're layering strategic national audience buys. These more precise addressable audiences, those could be audiences that are demographically based, right? We're looking to reach parents or grandparents. It could be purchase based. Maybe they're a laps user, they've never bought our product. Or we're launching a new flavor and we want to find people who would be interested in that flavor profile. It could be occasions based, someone's planning a party or it's movie night. And we leverage retailer data and syndicated data with bespoke messaging that speaks to those individual audiences as another layer of our national plan. And what we found in this testing is when you combine those larger mass strategic audiences with these more precise audiences that have messages that speak more uniquely to those audiences, but still fitting within the overarching creative framework, we see incremental gains. We see better gains in our ad awareness, we see better gains in our brand or product awareness. And generally where our mass media will sometimes not be successful in driving people to purchase intent and purchase, especially if we're getting in front of people for the first time, we see by layering on those precision audiences that we're also driving increases in purchase intent and incremental sales. So it's not an either or, it's an and to bring these things together and do it in a smart way, that one plus one equals three. Little cliche, but it works in this instance.

[B]

Now, for every test that works, I would imagine there's tests that don't work, right? What were the tests that didn't work and kind of, what did we learn from those?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, I hate to say something doesn't work because in my mind, you learn something no matter what, whether it was successful or unsuccessful. That gives you information that you can use for the future. We're testing a lot, but there's so many different parameters. Right. It's not just the media, it's the creative, it's the targeting. And we're doing a lot at once to see what rises to the top. So we're not so binary as to say, this thing didn't work, let's never try it again. It's more about trying to diagnose the component parts of it and then start to understand how we might improve it for the future.

[B]

Now, here's a tough question, but I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't ask, does Ferrero shuffle dollars around to be able to experiment with these things? Do we tap into new budgets or how does that. How are those efforts funded?

[C]

Yeah, like others have talked about. I mean, we do try to think about it holistically. We start with what is the objective of the brand, what are we trying to achieve, what is the role of different channels? And then we go from there. So there's certainly conversations about based on what we want to test or what we want to explore, experiment with how we're able to think about moving dollars. We try not to be so linear in the sense of like, these dollars can only stay here. We have a lot of collaborative conversations across teams to understand, at the end of the day, we're all working towards the same goal. We want to drive brand awareness, brand love and sales. So we're finding the best tactics in order to be able to do that.

[B]

I imagine that a lot of the conversation. Well, the conversation that we've been having, adhere to a lot of, like the Walmarts and the Amazons and the targets of the. But for all of the testing that you guys are doing, how much or how big is the appetite to test some of these smaller players? Right, the long tail players.

[C]

Yeah. I mean, I think we work with many different retailers, many different sizes. So we're always exploring what exists. I think we think about it, obviously, we think about the commercial terms, in terms of what is our distribution, you know, what are our sales goals, et cetera. But also we have to think about capabilities. Right. As I talked about the journey that we've been on, sometimes we start with retailers and we're beginning with search to build our digital penetration, and then we're thinking about display. I mean, I don't think it's any surprise to say some retailers are further down the maturity path in what they offer. But that doesn't mean that we're only working with the big players. We really are trying to think about. Again, it goes back to what is the objective of the brand, what are we trying to achieve, what are our sales goals, and how do we bring that all together into a plan that makes sense?

[B]

Absolutely. Now follow me here. Let's say we're driving down retail media avenue in our car. What are the. I guess you could best put it as like your check engine or check oil. Like, what are your signals telling you? Yes, we keep going forward.

[C]

I mean, again, it goes back to the measurement conversation. I mean, ROAS is sort of the baseline. It's like the first thing that we check and look at, especially for those tactics that are more. More tied to the point of purchase and making sure that we're seeing some returns there. And then again, as we go further up the funnel, I mean, we do things like brand lift studies, sales lift studies. Mmm. All of those are contributors to what we're looking at to see how it's performing and how we optimize. I mentioned earlier also, we have a really big portfolio. We're not just in one category. We're not just confections. You know, we're premium chocolate, we're mainstream. We're spreads, we're cookies. So sometimes we find that different things work better for different categories. Right. Because there's different audiences, there's different needs. So, again, back to your question of, like, did it work? Did it not work? We're keeping a very open mind of, like, continuous improvement to continue to find. I mean, we're running a business here, so we need to make sure it's successful. But at the same time, we're continuing to learn and optimize and.

[B]

And grow. I want to. I am curious, do you guys have like a time window or time frame or anything like that to kind of start measuring success, like checkpoints, if you will?

[C]

Yeah. So many of our products are very seasonally based, so you have to kind of take it season by season. You can't even necessarily compare. Like, Christmas is different. Than Valentine's is different than Easter. So there is a little bit of a. You have to look at it in a silo for that particular timeframe because there's considerations and things that are going on in that moment. And then we have some evergreen stuff that we can look at that allows us to do a little bit more of that looking over time and seeing how we optimize. So it's a bit of both. We have these moments in time that we're really focused on driving an objective and then some always on initiatives or more evergreen initiatives that we're able to look at over time. Again, search is something like that for us where we can see and optimize.

[B]

Is there a difference between always on and experimental when it comes to like upper funnel versus lower funnel?

[C]

I mean, we talk a lot about our tent poles. That tends to be where we have the larger full funnel plans. Whereas something like retail search or even search in general is more of an always on because you're just continuing to meet the demand that exists on an ongoing basis while we have surges at specific times. You know, our business, our category is seasonal in that way. It doesn't mean that people aren't buying chocolate in the summer or, you know, aren't thinking about buying cookies in December. So it's balancing those two.

[B]

Absolutely. Now, similar to Bayer, I would imagine that Ferrer also has a very interdependent relationship with retailers. Right. So given that there's not this massive B2C E commerce business, talk to me a little bit about how we're able to inform strategy for retail media planning and whatnot.

[C]

Yeah. Similar to what you're asking me, I get a lot of questions of, well, how are you structured and where does retail media sit? I feel like that's a very hot topic nowadays because everyone's thinking about organizational structure. And honestly, there is no right answer. I'm not here to tell you I have the golden key right answer, because I don't. But what I really like to think about is within our organization, we have different teams that are focused on different objectives. Our brand marketers are about building that brand awareness, that penetration, and that ultimately that brand love. Our trade marketing team is about creating those deep connections along with our sales team with our retailer partners. Right. The trade team is the front lines with the retailers, making sure that we have those really strong relationships and sales. Our shopper team is really focused on intercepting consumers at the point of purchase. And then our E commerce team is all about driving our digital share and our digital penetration. So then you ask the question, well, okay, across those four groups, where does retail media sit? And my answer is, it's everything. It can do everything. It can drive E commerce, it can drive in store sales, it can help with the customer relationships because it's now becoming more ingrained in customer gbps and more and more conversations we're having. Our retail media partners are there with our merchants and it can drive brand equity and brand love. So at the end of the day, it's really about how all of our teams are working together. And to answer your question, when it comes to the relationship with the retailers, like all of those teams are sometimes in the room to talk about those different elements to build that strong, deep connection because everyone has their part to play. And then retail media becomes a bit of the glue that connects some of it all together.

[B]

With all of that being said, do you feel from your POV that retail media has become a full funnel marketing channel media channel in its own right?

[C]

I think we're getting there. I think obviously the offerings that are starting to exist as we think about audience exposure extensions, as we think about social commerce offerings, as we think about video offerings, is certainly moving away from that like Roas point of purchase, online E commerce and is starting to be more focused on driving brand equity. I think the challenge we continue to have that others have talked about is the overlap in national scale. And as we start to add more and more retailers to a retail media mix, are we just reaching the same people over and over? And is that cost versus say if I go after a national audience? That's why what I mentioned earlier about the and not the or is there's always going to be a place for national media. There's always going to be a place for our big scale buys. We use retail media to supplement that, to communicate to potentially different people in a slightly different way that will help reinforce the overarching brand message and bring them further down the funnel.

[B]

Yeah. Now that said, and I'll open up to audience question after this, but now that said, has Ferrero started spending national and brand marketing dollars on retail media or is it still trade and shopper dollars?

[C]

Yeah, again, we create some fluidity within the dollar so we don't get so hard to say this is the retail media budget and you know, brand budget. But I think the best example is starting to leverage retailer data in our national plans and thinking about that as another layer of our social buys, as another layer of our programmatic buys. That's probably the closest place where again, without getting into dollars and cents where we're executing retail media offerings in a national way.

[B]

Danielle, thank you to you for joining us. You guys give her a round of applause.

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Well, that brings us to the end of this episode of the Digiday Podcast. Thank you to everyone for listening. And please don't forget to share this episode with someone who you think would enjoy it. You can even rate us and leave us a comment on Apple Podcasts. We'll be back next week with another episode of the Digiday Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. Sam.