
Cannes Confessional #4: RMNs Should Chase That Brand Marketing Budget
B2B retail media, the ad tech sophistication gap, and identifying what you 'came from the factory with'.
B2B retail media, the ad tech sophistication gap, and identifying what you 'came from the factory with'.
Season 2 kicks off on Monday July 28. Subscribe to the podcast, the email newsletter, or the LinkedIn newsletter and you’ll be notified when I’m back!
A conversation with Microsoft's AI in advertising leader, leadership lessons from eBay's ads chief, and why Andy Jassy prioritizes speed.
Yesterday I shared some highlights from the early hours of the Cannes Festival of Creativity. The announcements are starting to come in hot, but I'll be sharing But first a quick comment on the Retail Media Celebrity Death Match hosted last night by Zitcha, QSIC and Grace &
Its my first year at Cannes, but it's not my friend Lauren's. Lauren Livak is Executive Director of the Digital Shelf Institute and she and my arch-nemisis Colin Lewis were discussing how the brands and CMOs tended to hang out in the Palais section of the
I take a moment to reflect on what this journey has taught me so far. I share five key lessons from launching and sustaining this daily(ish) content experiment, and walk through the most popular (and surprising) episodes to date.
The agentic AI wave is coming at blistering speed. Waiting on the sidelines is no safer than it was when retail marketplaces first appeared.
These examples prove that real problems can be solved with the right tools.
Here's the reality: asking shoppers about retail media ads is like asking fish about water—they're swimming in it without realizing it exists.
Advertisers have both a duty and a right to understand how RMNs are built—and how that structure impacts their performance.
EMARKETER now projects U.S. advertisers will pour over $25 billion—about 14% of all search budgets—into AI-powered search results by 2029.
The reality is that this year, conference expenses will likely be under more scrutiny than ever before across our industry. Successful conference attendance requires the same strategic thinking we apply to retail media campaigns.
AI
I spent 2 hours reading Mary Meeker’s 340-page AI trends report so you don’t have to... But you probably still should. Here are my 6 highlights for retailers, brands and agencies.
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The real question is whether Amazon will preserve the transparency and control that increasingly define its competitive advantage against the black box futures its rivals envision.
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The placement of e-commerce teams seems to depend heavily on a company's history, existing strengths, and the gaps they need to fill. Still, it's always interesting to hear how other brands are set up.
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On a recent Jason + Scot Show podcast episode, Jason Goldberg argued that all the excitement around retail media fizzles once you step off Amazon’s turf: Sponsored Products Ads dominate, small 3P sellers fund most of them, and regional or specialty networks lack true incremental dollars. I totally took the
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I remain convinced that shoppers will increasingly turn to their own personal AI assistants for help interacting with retailers, rather than relying on retailer AI assistants who always going to be limited by context from their own walled garden.
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Most businesses struggle not with what AI can do, but with envisioning what it should do for their specific challenges. Today I'm sharing four real examples where companies figured out the "what" and can tell you exactly what they got back.
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In an industry where tomorrow's challenges are unknown and the landscape shifts monthly, perhaps the most valuable skill is simply being comfortable with the unexpected doors that open along the way.
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New research from retail media tech provider Pentaleap finds that retailers like Amazon, Walmart and Home Depot already serve sponsored products on virtually every search result—97-99 % of queries—while maintaining shopper engagement (CTR and CVR) on par with organic listings.
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While 75% of consumers have encountered AI recommendations or chatbots online, only 44% actually engaged with them.
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The brands and retailers that get this right won't be the ones with the flashiest AI features. They'll be the ones that make it seamless for both humans and bots to do business with them.
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The follow-up to a killer benchmark report last year from Pentaleap just dropped today, comparing how major retail media networks perform across search terms, categories, and bidding models. I'm doing a 2-parter breaking down my biggest takeaways from the report. In this post today, I'll share
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Before we begin, if you like today's post, you'll love the webinar I'm part of next week: The Retail Media Halo Effect brought to us by Keen Decision Systems and Future Commerce. Much of my thoughts below came from noodling on the very topics