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Amazon announced its Q1 2025 earnings last Thursday. Here's my hot take on a few winners and losers, from within the earnings call and in recent discussions with brands and solution providers. When the dust settled on Amazon's Q1 earnings, the headline numbers looked solid – Amazon
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Remember the kid at school who was super cool, because they just didn't give a rats? When all the other kids were trying so hard to fit in and have the latest and greatest brands to wear, making excrutiating decisions over weekend plans. But the cool kid just
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Today, I'm sharing "The Back-Channel" - an anonymized grab-bag of snippets from conversations with industry insiders that I've had in the past week. The point is to identify updates on the big themes that are happening in the industry, just like if we were
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The article was originally published for my column for Forbes on April 23rd, 2025. Amazon is expanding its new low-cost "haul" store at a pivotal moment for cross-border e-commerce. Six months after launching as a mobile-only beta, the retail giant has extended Amazon Haul to desktop consumers while
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In the classic board game Risk, players maneuver armies across continents, form strategic alliances, and attempt to control territory. Today, a similar high-stakes game is unfolding in the digital realm as tech giants position their AI shopping agents to capture the most valuable territory of all: consumer purchasing decisions. The
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When I was a Cub Scouts den leader, we held a talent show where the winner was decided by popular vote. My den and I came up with a fun song act where we performed the kids song "Worms." But there was a key twist: at the end
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I started consulting for brands wanting to grow their Amazon business in 2015, and back then, I felt more like a salesperson for Amazon than a consultant. I'd hear things like: "Isn't Amazon a place to buy books?" "We don't want
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I've been hearing a lot about 'vibe marketing' lately— podcasts, buzzy DTC marketers on X, and even recently in my LinkedIn feed. So naturally I got to thinking about whether marketing newest buzzword actually has any practical applications for brand marketers operating in the pointy end
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Last summer I took my 8-year old son to a carnival while visiting friends in Cleveland. We warmed up with some sedate rides and then turned our attention to the most exciting ride: The Wipeout. Like any 8-year-old, he's an aspiring YouTuber and so I dutifully filmed the
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The traditional marketing funnel has been a cornerstone of customer journey mapping for decades. But in today's fragmented digital landscape, is this linear model still relevant? With the explosion of touchpoints across social media, retail media networks, and digital marketplaces, the path to purchase has become increasingly complex
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While brands increasingly demand greater transparency and standardization in retail media measurement, the retailer perspective often goes unheard. That's why I was thrilled to read a new 'Retail Media Playbook' from the Path to Purchase Institute's Retail Media Guild, which has a section on
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This post originally appeared in my column for Forbes.com on Wednesday April 2. Link to orginal post The retail media landscape presents a striking paradox: Amazon and Walmart together command over 80% of all retail media spend according to eMarketer’s 2024 projections, yet more than 70 retail media