The Art and Science of Retail Media with Mike Feldman

Jerrid Grimm (02:49.654)

Mike, welcome to the show.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (02:54.059)

So glad to be here.

 

Jerrid Grimm (02:55.768)

So you are the global head of retail media at VaynerMedia, which that couldn’t have been a title when you started your career. So I’m curious how one ends up as this global head of retail media at VaynerMedia. Neither of those places existed 20 years ago. Like retail media didn’t exist and I don’t think VaynerMedia did.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (03:15.167)

They did not know we… Yeah, Vayner, we just celebrated our… I think in February, we’re celebrating our 15th anniversary. So, for sure have not been around for 20 years. And then retail media, certainly not. I think I was sort of smiling as you asked the question too, because I’ve had… I think my last three gigs, I’ve had the opportunity to have some level of input in my title. And I’m like the least concerned of like what…

 

The title reads and most of the time it’s driven from like how people are thinking about the industry or talking about it. And I can even go into some of that history, but I think retail media has been the term that has certainly stuck with people. And so that’s where it’s in the title because it, it, plays well in audiences. But even to like, you know, my career and things like that, to your point, a lot of this didn’t exist. It does feel fortuitous for me to be in this type of role. Like I literally grew up with a dad as a retail consultant. So my brother and I would do store visits to Costco, BJ’s, Sam’s Club, because he was a consultant for wholesale clubs, literally every weekend of our childhood. And so then, you you sort of like take that experience and like understanding like what it is, like what goes into like being a retailer and a customer and the brands and like how customers shop or consumers behave and things like that. like.

 

I even got accustomed to going into the bakery of my local Atlanta Costco and being like, are the croissants selling as a favor to my dad? So it’s just part of my blood and born for the role. And then as I grew up in the ad agency media world, you can see those parallels start to come together where I was building a foundation and advertising in media. And I had this whole history and legacy and retail roots. So it’s been a really fun ride.

 

Jerrid Grimm (05:09.07)

That’s interesting. You were almost born into retail media before it was a thing. This was, I mean, this was when it was probably, was it called shopper marketing more at that time? Or was it not even called that yet? Was it just like, Hey, listen, you’ve got a retail store. You want to sell more products? I can consult you on that. Like what it was your dad’s job.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (05:22.176)

Yeah.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (05:28.545)

So yeah, my dad, well my dad was, he mainly worked with like food manufacturers with wholesale clubs. like helping either like the suppliers that would go into like the bakery department of Costco or like helping, for instance, when I was a kid, he helped sell in Ben and Jerry’s ice cream to BJ’s wholesale club, which was the coolest thing ever because we got unlimited Ben and Jerry’s ice cream for my entire childhood. So, you know, very cool stuff. But I would even say for like, to your question in shopper marketing and me. like I grew up on the ad agency side and one of my clients, this was over 10 years ago, was Georgia Pacific. like CPG brands, Angel Soft Toilet Paper, Brani Paper Towels, all the cool, know, sexy brands people are thinking about all the time. And so I was working on the agency side there and they were one of the first ones that were like really leaned into retail media, specifically, they were one of the first ever companies to do an upfront with Amazon. so Dow Burge, but at the time he was a CMO and he was like, I would invest in Amazon whether I sold product on Amazon or not. And sort of that notion is then what sort of launched the idea of the retail media practice. I ended up having an opportunity to get hired and go work directly for Georgia Pacific to then build out the retail practice. And so I made the joke of I’ve had the opportunity to have some input in my title. And so I came to work with Dow and the Georgia Pacific team and he was like, okay, what do want the name of your department to be? He was like, I don’t care what it is, but it can’t be shopper marketing. So that was my first remit was name what the department was gonna be, but I can’t be shopper marketing. And so we went retail media.

 

Jerrid Grimm (07:07.038)

Interesting. So I’m curious why not shopper marketing? Was it because the CMO just saw this different way of approaching these retailers? Like you said something there that was interesting, which is he would have invested in Amazon even if he didn’t sell on Amazon. And what’s the, what’s the insight there that Amazon has better reach or data or why would you want to invest in Amazon if you didn’t sell your product there?

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (07:30.217)

Yeah, the idea would be that it’s better data. so, you know, the idea would be like, really, as we talk about, like, I’ll even go into like the 101 cents of like, I define retail media as retailers monetizing their data and their properties. But that definition is like any media publisher out there, like Facebook monetizes their data and their properties, Google, you name it. And so, you know, a lot of it is just like, truly the same playbook of media to a degree and then I’m I I apologize you’re gonna have to repeat the question but just on the the shopper front and sort of why that was looking in that direction I think one like or sorry go ahead

 

Jerrid Grimm (08:13.772)

Yeah, why? Yeah, why? I guess there’s kind of two thoughts here, which is why not call it shopper marketing? So that seems like an intentional thing was that this isn’t shopper marketing. It’s something different. I guess first, what is that? What was that shift in mindset?

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (08:31.393)

Yeah, so on the shopper front, so shopper marketing has existed for a really long time. And I think like, you’ll have people that have been in retail media for a while, like me and like, a lot of folks come from the legacy shopper marketing background. There’s so many of those people and it really has been retail media has been an evolution of that. Like even I think this is such a fun small world sort of thing. But like in my first couple months at Georgia Pacific, we had an innovation summit and we had this awesome speaker named Gary Vaynerchuk who came in. I was like a couple months into a new role, sort of building out the retail practice, but I was half funded by shopper marketing. So I was a shopper marketing manager, but then I also was building out this retail media practice. And so Gary gets up there and he was like, he goes, you know what I call shopper marketing? He was like, he was like, it’s trade spend. He’s like, you’re just giving money to the retailers and things like that.

 

And like, you know, sitting in front of like 10 of my colleagues who all worked in shopper marketing, I’d say it was like an interesting moment, but we were all aligned with the general sentiment of like, historically, what shopper has been is then evolving, just like I think, in a lot of cases, retail media is just the best that media has become with better data for targeting better measurement, more accountable results. And so a lot of it was like, I think shopper had some stink on it, for lack of a better term.

 

But it was also like to signal like we wanted to make a purposeful step change and like the way we were gonna think about it was a little bit differently again going to like that even the Amazon conversation and Like even where retail media is gone and like how it hits P &L’s and things like that But a lot of it was like we’re not gonna think about it in this really like myopic world We’re gonna like really think about it as a media channel that then fuels the rat and is integrated with the rest of the business And so that was why it was more like retail media than shopper marketing

 

Jerrid Grimm (10:22.008)

That’s interesting. And so you’re, you’re with Georgia Pacific. So they have all these CPG brands. They’re trying to increase their sales. I imagine that they’re like various retailers that they’re at. So, you know, start working a little bit on that side. And then you return, you return to agency side after that, you go to density, right next. So what was the, guess, first of all, what was the big learning that you got being brand side, being manufacturer product side that you maybe didn’t.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (10:41.141)

Yes.

 

Jerrid Grimm (10:50.036)

know as much from agency side.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (10:53.885)

It was like, I mean, people talk about like in generally in the industry and I know Georgia Pacific’s a competitor, but like the P &G MBA as like an example. And, you know, I sort of grew up agency side, spending that time on the brand side is something I recommend to like, to literally anyone, especially for me and like where it was the most helpful one.

 

Georgia Pacific is unique in the best way, where it’s one of the largest privately held companies in the world. And so I had the amazing opportunity to like really be able to think and like make investment decisions in a different way, where it was like, if I could be like the average annual return of Koch Industries or whatever, like if I could build a good enough business case, I could generally get the dollars. And so like one, was how do you think about all the different trading variables and things going on in retail media?

 

To sort of communicate what the total value is for the organization. So just from a pure privately held standpoint, it made me think differently about like, how do I get all the stakeholders to capture all the different value and be like, yes, so that I get as much credit as possible so that I can get the dollars and go do the thing that I wanna go do. And so like that was definitely a part of it. But then any client in general, I think there’s a couple of things, but like the sort of P and L management aspect, but then especially in retail media, I think the more time I spent brand side was understanding why in often cases brands are set up to fail in retail media because the sales organization and the brand organization are often at odds. And so like sitting in a shop or marketing or retail media role, often the brand teams will be like, I think you’re too aligned to sales.

 

Jerrid Grimm (12:30.434)

Hmm.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (12:37.037)

The sales teams will be like, I think you’re too aligned to brand. And really I’m like a people pleaser and I just want to help anyone. And so, you know, it’s that experience really like helped me understand not only like what each team valued, but then even things like I understood that in a lot of cases and now as I’m working agency side and meeting with clients, I know what questions asked even understand sometimes they’re bonus differently. Like for instance, some organizations will have three different bonus structures as it relates to where

 

Jerrid Grimm (12:43.043)

Yeah.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (13:06.673)

Retail media could run. like someone is only incented to drive ecom only sales. They get a bonus based on the number of ecom only sales they hit. Someone else’s total sales at one specific retailer. And so then they’re looking to hit those. And then a brand person is maybe looking at MMM results for just their brand peanut butter spread across all retailers. And so as that relates to like, all right, I want to run this retail media spend. I want to optimize towards this KPI. You could have three people looking at three different things. And they’re also monetarily incented to care about different things on a personal level. So it’s just like a real, it can be a real mess for orgs. And so that was the biggest unlock is like really understanding how a matrix CPG organizations operate, especially in a privately held to then like maximize the value from retail media.

 

Jerrid Grimm (13:38.018)

Yeah.

 

Jerrid Grimm (13:54.156)

Yeah, I think this is something that’s interesting in any new area. I mean, I’ve been in advertising long enough. worked a little bit agency side before as well. You, there’s a couple of things that always happen. There’s always some new shiny thing that comes along, right? For whatever reason, it’s just, it’s got to keep it exciting. You got to recommend different things to your clients, that type of idea. And there’s also like a renaming that happens like every 10 years. So, you know, I’ve seen it with.

 

You know, it was called, they were called banner ads at one time and then they were called display and then they were called programmatic display. Like the word got different over time. I mean, at the end of the day, it’s still serving like a leaderboard on a page on a website, right? But it gets a little fancier, sounding a little more sophisticated. Affiliate turned into partnerships and that’s the industry that, that impact lives in, right? you have shopper marketing turning into retail media, and then it starts to encompass more and more things from a you know, the product side, because you did work CPG product side. What do you feel is the main, what’s the main thing that attracts these products to work with retail media and who is the most common department within that CPG? So I take any CPG, you’ve got your sales team that’s trying to push product, right? And just like sales is what matters. You have your brand team that’s looking at things like maybe share a voice or consideration or the rest of it. So what do these groups see in retail media networks and which department is more often than not taking the lead?

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (15:31.263)

Yep. I think it largely depends sort of where you are in your journey. But I would even go back to in the most cases, retail media is going to start in the sort of shopper marketing side of things. I would even say like the sales organizations, maybe a little bit depending on how small the retailer is not to like I hate classifying it in that way, but basically in a lot of CBG orgs, like they’re going to have less and less sort of shopper marketing or brand acceleration or like shared resources, the smaller the retailers are. And so that’s where the sales teams get scrappier as Wawa rolls out their retail media network. Like I’m an adventure to say there’s not a shopper marketing manager. And so in that case, like your sales person, if the, you retailers on the longer tail, like they’re probably trying to manage all of it because they just don’t have a ton of resources. And so like.

 

Jerrid Grimm (16:26.669)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (16:27.589)

One, they’re going to be generally interested because they’re, again, purely incented on driving sales at that retailer. And so if the retailer’s pushing it, they’re going to be all in. As you get into some of the larger ones, then retail media typically falls on the shopper marketing manager. If you’re a Walmart, Target, a Kroger, you’re going to have sales resources. You’re going to have shopper teams. In some cases, you have a shopper team and a retail media team, depending on how big your CPG org is and where those get define can be a little messy as well. I would say like the retail media team sometimes falls more in the sponsor product camp where or like on site and then like some of like the shopper stuff can be more of like the offsite and trade desk and things like that. But it gets blurrier. But then like where retail media is growing. So we’ve talked about retail media growing 20 % year over year for nearly the last decade.

 

Jerrid Grimm (17:04.748)

Yeah.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (17:22.401)

We’re also now at a point where they’ve got all the shopper dollars, they’ve got all the trade dollars, and so now it’s moving more up the funnel into non-endemics. so, a place of the greatest success has been moving up the funnel, and that’s where you then get into the brand marketers and things like that. I would call out a trade desk, but I would even look at Amazon Thursday Night Football. They have NBA rights. Those are all super relevant from a national brand standpoint.

 

Jerrid Grimm (17:39.672)

Hmm.

 

Jerrid Grimm (17:46.626)

Yeah.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (17:50.761)

And then my last plug and where I would say, I firmly believe our industry is just too divided. I’ve made a 10-year career in retail media off the simple notion of getting people to work together to get more out of what they’re doing. And that’s one where I’m obsessed with the idea of flipping it a little bit and using retail media as a creative and insights engine. So let’s test out things.

 

Jerrid Grimm (18:05.773)

Yeah.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (18:19.563)

Quick feedback loops in retail media, learn and then go push that out. like Amazon as the example, we can run, you know, a couple thousand impressions to get a read on a video, find out what’s going to win. And then that goes to millions of people on Thursday night football as an example. And so like that’s where brands don’t think that way because their P &Ls aren’t separated by the retailers and they’re like, I don’t want to go do this Walmart thing. But if they’re like,

 

Jerrid Grimm (18:33.997)

Yeah.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (18:43.841)

Do you want to do this creative testing engine tied to actual sales with your largest customer and your most important data sets? They would be like, absolutely. And so that’s where a little bit of understanding retail media and the value I think is so essential for brands. our biggest barrier is often ourselves.

 

Jerrid Grimm (18:52.236)

Yeah.

 

Jerrid Grimm (19:01.77)

Right. Do you think that retail media networks in general have been become so big and popular because they tie back to the sale? Like we’ve both been in, in advertising a long time. Normally you’re measuring top of funnel stuff, reach impressions. Maybe you get down to a click when you’re running large ad campaigns. It’s not often that you say I ran this campaign and I can tell it drove X amount of sales or this amount of increase. It’s usually fuzzy math that you’re doing. It feels like in the retail media world that that math is a little less fuzzy. Like it comes a little bit more into focus. Would you say that’s the primary reason it’s it’s become so popular or is that just like one nice nice to have?

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (19:32.191)

Yes.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (19:50.378)

I think it’s definitely a piece to the puzzle. I find it to be an interesting question because I think if I’m talking to someone more outside of retail media looking in, absolutely, certainly more accountable metrics. And like I even said, like on the insights engine, like we talk about creative testing right now, creative testing for a lot of clients is like going to like Ipsos and having a bunch of people sitting in a room, make subjective opinions where we could do that in retail and tie it to an actual sale. So like we can run 10 pieces of creative. We can see which one drives the most sales. And then we know that that one is more effective at driving sales, not just like subjective opinion, then test it and run an MMM and things like that. Like we can just learn quickly and then go do the thing. Yeah. And so like, I forget where I was going with it. So apologize for a sec.

 

Jerrid Grimm (20:39.288)

Well, I think this creative testing thing is interesting. you basically, mean, the traditional way would be you take some video ad and like you said, you put, you get a bunch of people look at it. They fill out some survey. They’re like, I felt, you know, happy or sad or whatever, or I knew about this. There’s like unaided awareness and aided awareness. And it’s all this like surveys and focus groups. It sounds like you’re the way that you’re testing creative using retail media is you’re taking a video.

 

You’re getting a couple thousand people and you’re tracking whether it drove sales or not. And then you’re just taking that information and saying, yeah, let’s run, let’s run an ad on Amazon prime video, which may not tie back to a sale anymore. You may not be able to get that full loop every single time. Cause you know, I might be watching a sporting event or a movie or something like that. It’s not necessarily, I’m not buying my toilet paper because I was so inspired by, know, this movie I’m watching. So, so talk a little bit about like that testing process because that seems unique to this space where you weren’t able to do that kind thing before.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (21:45.141)

Yeah, by the way, I remembered where I was going on the last one. was saying just outside looking in, yes, insiders, retail media. would say there’s a lot of questions around standardization and reporting, by the way. So I just wanted to put a bow on that one. Where I’d say if anyone’s listening and is a true diehard retail media person and I’m saying like, yes, all the data more accountable and things like that, and they’re thinking about standardization, like, yes, I know that’s a problem, but we’ll certainly cross that bridge.

 

Jerrid Grimm (21:59.926)

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (22:14.689)

So I apologize for jumping back at that one. In terms of the creative testing though, exactly, you have it exactly right. And I would say even a few different use cases. So like one is the, instead of doing subjective opinions, and I would argue also, this is sort of why I ended up in this role is sort of this talk track right here, specifically in like where Gary and like,

 

Jerrid Grimm (22:17.419)

No, that’s fine.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (22:40.437)

VaynerMedia and what VaynerX stands for is a lot of social at the center. And you can talk about all these different things in the industry, but to me, as the retail person that didn’t do creative coming in, what that really means is social has some of the largest data sets in the industry. And also the algorithms are designed in a way where the best creative will then get served to people because it’s trying to keep them in the platform as long as possible. So it’s like, targeting an algorithm based on interest in what is most like going to capture their attention. So then like using that saying and like where Gary then has taken things is like, instead of, you know, going to Ipsos or whatever, like I wanna run 30 social media ads and see like based on the creative, which one takes off in the algorithm and has the most interest. And that gives me the insight that like this is what people respond to. And even like creating things for specific cohorts because like if you’re like, I wanna.

 

And this is where we can’t do this in retail yet, but like, I’m gonna do this specific message for this audience and like see how, if that actually validates, if that hits that audience and if that’s who it’s like being served to based on the algorithm. And so like hearing all of that, and then in my world in retail media, like all I’m hearing is like, we need to invest more in sponsored products and like doing all this kind of stuff. And I’m like, that’s not sustainable. And so really the notion is like, if I took social at the center and what Gary and Vayner have talked about, and I take that same mindset, I’m like, what does retail media at the center do for me? And really retail media at the center is the insights engine tied to accountable metrics. so like we can, I’d say again, not through search and where the majority of the spend is now, but through like a DSP or display or things like get really granular in the audience targeting and cohorts, things like that, looking at specific messages and then tying that back to actual purchase.

 

Jerrid Grimm (24:11.726)

Hmm.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (24:26.621)

Even to your movie toilet paper example, where Amazon just blows me away is with Amazon Marketing Cloud. And so there’s even things because of their persistent login and they have such a ridiculous share of life on their consumers, let alone share of voice and media. we can track post view search behavior and then conversion rate off of that. So I can see, or did you see the?

 

Jerrid Grimm (24:50.798)

Mm.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (24:53.641)

And like with AI and everything now, like maybe we can get some like AI generated, you know, AngelSoft toilet paper in the movie you’re watching or whatever, but like I can see you were exposed post view. Did you search toilet paper and did you convert on that? And so like we can get really granular. And then again, like I’ll even go to like the sort of Vayner craziness way. We do everything in like higher volumes. And so like my mind went to like, all right, I’m gonna.

 

Jerrid Grimm (25:06.209)

Hmm.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (25:19.605)

Run the 10 creative, find the winner and go push that out. Where now even like we’ve taken it further is the creative teams are tagging each creative element. And I think this is so fascinating. We’re like, we’re testing which product claims work the hardest, how many product claims, what order we put the product claims in. Do we do a social hook? Do we do a demo? Like a torture shot, like things like that. And so then we’re testing each of those and tagging it from creative standpoint so that

 

Jerrid Grimm (25:34.296)

Yeah.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (25:48.467)

Not only do we identify like, which one’s the winner, but then the next brief is like, OK, this claim is the most impactful at driving conversion. So we want that to be the primary message for our next batch of creative and brief and things like that. So it’s like marketing for the sake of insights and then better marketing.

 

Jerrid Grimm (26:00.238)

well.

 

Jerrid Grimm (26:04.854)

Yeah, well, and think about like how granular that gets. You know, you might make changes to your product description based on the insight of which benefit is most attractive through your creative testing, right? Like it goes all the way down to every step along that consumer journey, right?

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (26:18.111)

Yeah, we had, yeah, I would even say like, again, you can always take it even a step further where like I would even go is, so like one in retail, like if I look at ARA, so Amazon retail analytics data, I can see keyword trends across Amazon. So like I have a general sense of like, here’s what’s trending coming up, coming down, like, you know, how’s that adopting consumer behavior? Where I would then take it the step further though is in TikTok.

 

We have, so creator search insights is a free tool within TikTok. They have this thing called content gap, and it literally will tell you where your audience has a higher demand for content than there is a supply within TikTok. so like pairing that all into a CBG world, you can basically see like, all right, my audience is searching all these different topics. You can then find the ones that are most related to your like product from like a purchase standpoint, like specific recipes or seasonal things, things like that.

 

We can then pair that with Amazon ARA data to understand how big is this? Is it gaining over time? Is it starting to become more viable? And then not only in the creative, but then actual product innovation, where if we’re like, hey, this recipe is really taking off, maybe we create a different flavor of this thing based on this insight, where then you’re fueling.

 

Jerrid Grimm (27:33.315)

Right.

 

That’s interesting. It really starts to not be necessarily just advertising and marketing. If you’re starting to like inform product development and creative design, like it’s kind of all in one place. I’ve been in the media side of the business. I’m not a creative. Like I can barely draw a stick now, right? But,

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (27:52.883)

I’m drinking through the fire hose and learning creative as it speaks. But like, that’s where, yeah, I came into the role thinking like media, I believed in media and creative together. And I’m now nine months in and I’m like media creative and like sales or innovation or commerce is like really where I think it can all come together. And like, even if you look at like creator affiliates today, like Mr. Beast and things like that, like really it’s a lot of that together. Like even,

 

Jerrid Grimm (28:07.777)

Yeah.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (28:23.029)

I forget which of the Paul brothers, you’ll have to forgive me. But one of them is launching like a beauty care, personal care line at Walmart. And I remember the quote was like, you know, we’ve been looking at this category for a while, like not a lot of innovation, things like that. And that’s where you can literally see on a TikTok and through some of the social platforms of like, here’s the products that are trending. Again, the content gap, here’s what people are consuming content. So then if you’re a creator affiliate, like, you have a huge following, you can literally create products that fill voids in the high interest areas with high potential. And now a lot of them have great relationships with the retailers and then sell the product directly. And so like that is creative media and product commerce all together. And that’s what creator affiliates are doing.

 

Jerrid Grimm (29:06.68)

Yeah, that’s cool. It’s the feedback loop has really tightened up from like a day where your creative director would come up with this great insight into, know, this is the ad that we will create. And then the media team would go out and say, okay, we’ll buy a bunch of media where we think those people are. And then let’s put that into market and let’s see how sales go over the next six months and see if there’s a lift. Maybe we’ll do a brand lift study and then let’s do it again. Six months. It sounds like this is happening just in real time. You’re putting a

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (29:34.667)

Yes.

 

Jerrid Grimm (29:35.5)

You’re finding out what ad people might want or like what creative people may want through this content gap, what products they’re interested in. You’re serving that up to the people that might be most interested in it. Maybe it’s a sponsored listing or video or otherwise. You see how well that does. And then you put more fuel on that fire if you need to or compare different creatives. So, Adam, you’ve mentioned Amazon a couple of times. They’re always the like elephant in the room because I mean, they have the most data. They also have the most platforms, like everything from to Video, to Audio, to the Store, to know, Affiliates, etc. right? So let’s take Amazon to the side and just make the assumption they’re the elephant in the room. It seems like retail media started out just being really a name for Amazon and Walmart Connect essentially, right? You have these two big behemoths. They own most of the market. Over the last like 18 months, everybody’s starting to come into this. Whether it’s DoorDash or Uber or you know, United Airlines or everybody seems to have, you know, a media network. So I’ve seen this, this splitting of even terminology where you have retail media networks, which is really clear. I’m a retailer. I have a media network. Pretty self-explanatory. You have these things that are like different. They’re not a retailer. They might be an intermediary, a delivery thing. They’re airline. They’re a travel provider. They’re a bank and everything in between. Everyone is now has a media network and I’ve heard it called commerce media.

 

As a way to basically say this is the same thing-ish, but we can’t call it a retail media network because we’re not a retailer. You being right in this space, I’m sure you have your thoughts on this, and I’d like to just get your opinion on what retail media is and what commerce media is. Are they different or are they just different flavors of the same thing?

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (31:23.707)

I think it’s whatever you want it to be. I am not particular. think the way you framed it up in terms of like retailers being retail media, sure. The way I even like think about this topic more broadly is again, and I’ll go back to like the definition of retail media is retailers monetizing their data and their properties. That’s the same definition of every media publisher. If you look at them.

 

Delta Airlines, they would be the travel media network. You could also call it media, retail media, commerce, whatever, but it’s the same principles. Everyone is trying to monetize their data and their properties. so, if I was to try to create definitions, maybe commerce media is more of the… buying function or strategy or things like that where your KPIs are related to sales or something like that. again, it’s the room, the definition. My ultimate thing would be enter the conversation and state what you feel like the definition is so that everyone has the same playing field. That’s why you hear me say, I believe that the definition of retail media is retailers monetizing data and properties. And I do not think that is unique to retail. And so I just try to get those sort of caveats out there. Then we’re like, things are going where everyone is looking for more ways to make more with the same. so retail media is a no-brainer for any organization. And again, going back to that definition, anyone with data and properties, I would highly recommend figuring out a way for you to monetize. this is a bad example because they would never do it. I also don’t work on this account. But I’ll say, a Kraft Heinz. Could you imagine Kraft Heinz selling a piece of the ketchup bottle for advertising purposes. They could make a ton of money on that. Now, they probably don’t want to, and there’s brand equity and things like that, but literally everyone out there that has data and property should be thinking about how they want to monetize it. Anyone with a checkout experience is a call away from rocked to monetize that experience.

 

Jerrid Grimm (33:29.782)

Yeah, that is an interesting way to think of this as, you know, it’s just, it’s a media property that you own and you have data on who your consumer is, how they act on your site or in your app, which does mean the retail media is just media. It’s the same way that the New York times is like, I know my reader and I’m going to make sure to present the reader, your brand in the right way. But so they’re all media networks.

 

This is a retail media network. You’re right. We might have travel media networks. We might have financial media networks and on and on and on. And we may group these all under some nomenclature and maybe it’s commerce media. Maybe it’ll be called something else. Right. but that’s an interesting way to look at it. So because this is starting to fragment, you know, you go from two or three big players. Now I’ve heard there’s 200 different retail or commerce media networks out there.

 

You know, from media side, it’s extremely difficult as things get fragmented to one, be able to even just effectively buy from a hunt 200 different properties, but also to tie any KPIs, dedupe your audiences. Like it all gets extremely messy as you hit this level of fragmentation. We’re kind of like, I feel like we’re pushing at the point where it’s so fragmented that usually what happens is some sort of consolidation. traditionally that consolidation is like, Media company A buys media company B, but it’s unlikely that Walmart’s going to buy Costco, right? Like these are media networks within larger organizations that compete on like a very product level or retailer level. So consolidation likely would be more in the technology layer, like you’re buying platforms, you’re reporting platforms. Where do you see this? Cause I have heard this quite a bit where the buying side of the people that are representing the brands and the agencies that are trying to buy across multiple retail media networks are getting a bit frustrated with the difficulty that’s coming into it. Where do you think this is going and do you already see signs of consolidation?

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (35:32.057)

Yes, we already see signs of consolidation. I think like the next two years, especially in retail media, again, going to like growth trends. I feel like over the last year, this year, next year has been really a tipping point in as retailers are trying to capture more dollars. Like we’ve seen big pushes and sort of moving at different parts of the funnel. We’ve seen

 

Walmart creator affiliate we’ve seen, Amazon Thursday Night Football we’ve seen, Roku partnerships, Spotify, like a lot of it is like, how do we get more of the brand dollars? And I think that’s coming through. We’re gonna start to get to the point where if all the retail media networks are now coming with additional 20 % increases, like there’s not gonna be anywhere to take it from. And so that’s where it’s gonna be tougher conversations on like which retailers we wanna make strategic investments with. And that’s like one of the…

 

Jerrid Grimm (36:16.973)

Hmm.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (36:18.155)

top things I talk about with clients is like, we need to think about retail media for both the media value as well as the retail value. In some cases, like, you know, there won’t be an integrated P &L and the retailer might, you know, try to tell you that there’s no, you know, sort of impact between the two. We have some hacks and ways to do it with specific retailers and things like that. But, you know, I would say it’s really about extracting more value from the two and then would you mind repeating it? I apologize.

 

Jerrid Grimm (36:49.324)

Yeah. So on the consolidation of these networks, you actually, yeah, go ahead.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (36:53.547)

yeah, okay, sorry. Yeah, for consolidation specifically. So again, like people are gonna make some more strategic bets. I would say, hey, we’ve already seen it a little bit. And like, if you go into the smallest sense, like regional grocers, you know, they’re starting to be like, how do I monetize? I like don’t cover a big enough part of the country. So there’s a Ridge, Ripple, I forget the exact name of it, but like they’re starting to pull together the regional grocers to like become a bigger part.

 

You know, bigger sum of the parts, whatever. And so as that continues to play out, like I see Criteo making a lot of strategic investments. Like we’ve also, you know, I’ve read that story before we like look at like programmatic media, like it went from a bunch of publishers to the networks to then, you know, open exchange and things like that. So retail media, probably in a similar path where like all the inventory, you talk about like monetizing properties.

 

That can all be open exchange, biddable, inventory, things like that in terms of the monetizing the data. I see the network sort of play coming, but where I really see it going over time, and that’s where I look at the broader media landscape, is I like talking about these sort of media death stars. And that’s where think Amazon has all the ingredients to be a media death star, where you can essentially take all your stuff, plug into them and then you can run everything you want to. So you can supplement your data in Amazon Marketing Cloud. You can use CTV. You can measure sales. You can use Amazon and market segment data to drive your D to C sales if you want to. There’s so many things that you can do and all you have to do is sort of plug in. I think Walmart with the Vizio acquisition, I think they’re one or two acquisitions away from a similar sort of Death Star setup and like…

 

Jerrid Grimm (38:39.971)

Hmm.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (38:42.557)

I could certainly see it going that way over a longer period of time. You look at like a Disney or others like that that could sort of set up or like a Google with YouTube and things like that where they’re connecting a lot of the insights, the media inventory, the data, things like that.

 

Jerrid Grimm (38:51.597)

Yeah.

 

Jerrid Grimm (38:58.092)

Yeah, we saw that same thing happen in social, right? You had meta, you know, Google to a sense or whatever, where you’ll, you’ll actually take your own data. You’ll put it into their system, this Death Star system, because you can do so much with it, right? What you end up learning is your data is a very small piece of the pie. Like which customers you have, especially when you’re prospecting for new customers or trying to figure out what they’re doing. So you have these, I like this term, these these big death stars because they just have so much data, so many channels that they can promote on. You can, you know, bring in your own data to it and use it to buy off their platforms too. Right? Like you don’t have to just buy on Amazon using, you know, Amazon marketing cloud. You can use it for offsite targeting. can use it for virtually everything. Right? So let’s say I’m a, let’s say I’m a publisher and I, I think that I have, you know, some sort of conversions that are happening.

 

Maybe I’m something as small as like a movie theater or, you know, it could be anything, right? I’m I’m a grocery, a regional grocery store, or maybe I’m something like, like a review site. And I’m like, well, the transactions are pretty close to happening here. At least I’m, I’m informing those with your experience being the product marketer, the buyer, right? The demand side of this, what would you recommend are some best practices for me as a publisher that’s trying to enter into retail media, knowing that there’s already these big death stars that are playing in it. There’s 200 other, like competition is really huge. Like what would you think, what should I focus on if I’m trying to enter this market as a smaller, more niche publisher trying to get in the space?

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (40:37.481)

Yeah, I’m going to answer it not from the buyer’s perspective, but I will get there. And I’ll answer from a legacy retail media. And so I would say sponsor products and retail search has been the most mature in retail media for long time. And even the way that started was networking up. And then a lot of the retailers got big enough to take it in-house and do things like that. And so similar trends and parallels. A Criteo, a Promote IQ, a Citrus ad, if you go back

 

Jerrid Grimm (40:59.48)

Hmm.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (41:07.467)

five, six, seven years, the way they would approach it is, everyone was sort of like, hey, I wanna turn on sponsored product inventory. And the way they would make those decisions is, do you have 10 million monthly visits? Yes or no. And if it’s yes, okay, we’re willing to do that. So to go back and answer your question, like where I think things are heading and the value is really the value of the data. Again, like I think in terms of like… monetizing the properties, a lot of that’s going to be open exchange biddable. And so that’s going to be sort of consumer demand and traffic and things like that. But like, in terms of the data and building up those packages, I believe the ones with the largest and most connected first party data sets are going to be the most advantage. So like Amazon has massive data, large share of life.

 

They also own their own media inventory through like Fire TV and things like that. So they’re getting really good tracking. And then, by the way, they have Amazon Marketing Cloud and Amazon Web Services and like all this incredible stuff. You know, I’d say again, Walmart, with Luminate, Kroger, Stratum, like some of them are sort of moving in that direction. But I think like the more robust data centers are going to be the priority. And if you don’t have that, I would think about it in two ways. One, can you add value to another person to make their offer bigger? Or, and going back to retail media, there’s a few out there, and there’s not a ton, but there’s a few where I think they have a really distinct comparative advantage where I would lean into that in the biggest way. So 7-Eleven is one of the examples I’ll give where they have no business competing with a lot of the retail media networks just based on sales. However, they have 13,000 locations. And so you talk about

 

Jerrid Grimm (42:47.426)

Hmm.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (42:49.355)

Gulp Radio, Digital Out of Home, Experiential, like they have a huge right to win where maybe no one else does. And so like there’s just, you know, I’d find like either my comparative advantage where can go crazy or yeah, find like where I can add value to other people to build their desktop.

 

Jerrid Grimm (42:57.838)

Yeah.

 

Jerrid Grimm (43:07.746)

Yeah, I like that. So, you know, in traditional media, it was always about scale because it was all third party data. So I just follow this user around and like whoever’s got the most page views, you know, most impressions, they’re going to get the most money because the data was centralized, you know, with the buyer. The buyer had this third party data and they could, they could pick like, I’m going to hit this person when they’re on this website. I don’t need you website to tell me who this is. already know who it is. This shift to first party starts to go more than like, just know who this person is. Like this is Mike, right? It’s more like, I know that Mike lives in this neighborhood and buys like, you know, a hot dog from seven 11 or whatever buys his milk and cheese at this place in some kind of capacity. And so I can advertise to Mike and know like this proximity, like the more data that you have, it’s less, it can be less about how many impressions you generate and more, how well, know, these individual people and what they do. I think that’s a big shift. I think that’s probably one of the biggest shifts that makes retail media different than traditional media was, which was really just about scale. It’s just how many page views can you have on your site, which led the media business down to a lot of click bait over time, right? That’s really cool. So.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (44:21.855)

Yeah, well, I mean, we some folks are still looking at traffic on PDPs and things like that. So everyone’s in a different spot of the journey. would say most altruistic in a lot of my talk track.

 

Jerrid Grimm (44:27.523)

Yeah.

 

Jerrid Grimm (44:32.298)

No, that makes a lot of sense though. I mean, you have to find like what differentiates it other than it just having lots of page views on a site that we couldn’t buy ads on before. Like what makes it special and different? You’ve been in retail media now. How many years would you classify you as being in retail media in some sense? Okay. So you go back 11 years is probably

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (44:51.253)

like 11 year.

 

Jerrid Grimm (44:56.15)

I heard you mention this one once before, like it’s the cool thing now. Like you weren’t, it wasn’t always 11 years ago. It wasn’t, you know, you wouldn’t be invited to be speaking on panels all the time, the way that they would happen today. You’re like one of the cool kids now. So a lot has changed in 11 years. Let’s fast forward another 11 years in the future. And let’s assume you stay in, in retail media, you get to make up your own title. It’ll be something else probably if you get to keep making up your own titles. Do you.

 

What do you think happens? don’t want to put words in mouth, but do you think that retail media starts to swallow all of the rest of media? Or do you think it just goes like, what direction do see it going in?

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (45:35.045)

man, I, one, I love the idea of thinking so far out. In order to get this job, I had to think 20 years out and what I wanted to go do. And it did not, it was not specifically in retail media in 20 years from now, but I love the idea. And so we’ll play this one out a little bit. But I would even say like, so, you know, again, I was in retail media.

 

Before it was cool, I joined a shopper marketing organization to build out retail media, then sort of joined a holding company to build out the retail media thing. And as I would say it’s at its pinnacle, I decided to leave and go pursue an integrated creative and media type role. And I would say largely because I think retail media is super cool. It’s going to continue to grow. But there’s a couple areas where I just don’t think any or a lot of people are really looking at it in the right way. And to me, it’s the retail media as an insights engine is something that is just being slept on in our industry. And again, going back to like my client side days and even how like creative is funded, retail media creative, like talk about $50 billion in retail media spend, no one is spending anything in retail media creative because everyone’s getting pressure to spend more in their RMNs. Creative budgets are typically done on the brand side, different incentive structures, all this good stuff. And so really like trying to maximize like retail media is almost like the center of it. And even going back to like my, you know, Georgia Pacific days and things like that, sorta when Dow and I were talking about the role initially, the way a lot of organizations operate is like, hey, we’re gonna look at our brand media, we’re gonna spread it all, and then we’re gonna fill in where we can with retail. And he was like, I would love to get into a world where like, here’s our retail specific plans and then everything we’re not gonna hit, we peanut butter spread with national brand medium. Like that makes a ton of sense, but like we’ve never quite gotten there. And so that’s where I think creative, like cohort audience insights, like we’re obsessed with like retailer specific social campaigns, just from the kind of insights you can unlock and things like that. And so, yeah, that’s where like, I see where it’s, it’s really cool, but I do see the challenges. And so like, I’d like to figure out what the solve is going to be to then lead us into the next sort of 11 years.

 

Jerrid Grimm (47:48.568)

Yeah.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (47:55.359)

The other one I will say though is, so like going back to sort of the sort of Death Star conversation and things like that, I really am really highly interested in Walmart Creator and what Walmart is doing there. Then if you look at like, I talk about retail media lot, but I would say in addition to that, I’m spending a ton of time talking about TikTok shop and social commerce. And so to me, you know, as I’m thinking about the next 11 years, like, creator affiliates, social, how that plays into retail media, using insights from retail media that are tied to purchase, social that is tied to like consideration, intent, interest, things like that. That’s where I would love to go with things. And I think creator affiliates gonna play a huge piece in that. And brands haven’t really done it yet because if you’re a big CPG, like TikTok seems too risky, creator affiliates seems risky, Amazon maybe not, but now that like Walmart has it.

 

Jerrid Grimm (48:54.382)

Yeah.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (48:54.728)

I’m really curious what’s going to happen.

 

Jerrid Grimm (48:57.302)

Yeah, I love this idea that, like Vayner, you know, Gary’s original kind of idea was, Hey, like do organic social and see how that does, see how the algorithms like it, because there’s obviously a bunch of data in this algorithm on what people like and what they don’t, and then apply spend afterwards. That’s kind of the idea there. And you’re, taking that framework and saying, use retail media as your starting point test and learn on your credit. have this tight feedback loop, like super fast feedback loop on this accountable metric, which is sales. Like what more do you want? Right? It’s the, the wanna maker. 50 % of my advertising isn’t working. Like that’s, that’s being solved essentially. And then you extrapolate that out to the rest of your, and you do it on social the same way. It’s a really interesting framework that I haven’t actually heard people talk about. When I hear people talk about retail media, they’re talking about like this site has

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (49:34.003)

Exactly.

 

Jerrid Grimm (49:54.478)

you know, four billion views and we can put a sponsored listing on it and sell some more products. well, you’re, what you’re talking about here is a different approach to media in creative, which I find, I find really fascinating. So I mean, I, I,

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (50:07.573)

Yeah, that’s a it’s it’s very validating. Thank you. It’s why I joined. But I would even say like in retail media and like, yes, that was a lot of the conversations. The other piece was like the AI and SaaS platforms were getting so sophisticated. And then even from like, you know, sitting in a hold coast side, a lot of like the brands are like, hey, like, I want you to do the buying like cheaper for less and things like that. And with so much automation, like really the creative juices are gone at that point. You see the biggest retailers, you see where the sales are. It’s the same 10 keywords. You set up the algorithm and go. And the idea of the old Amazon flywheel of, hey, we’re going to go heavy and sponsor products to get a bunch of clicks, fuel organics. That is gone. The idea of the old Amazon flywheel is gone. And so I’m obsessed with finding the next flywheel. And so I think it’s a lot of the creative and media insights, things like that. so, yeah, love to hear the take. That’s awesome.

 

Jerrid Grimm (51:02.508)

Yeah, I think this is really and I think these things they start to be a gem of an idea and then they grow from there and they grow from there just because it works like the advertising and media that sticks around is the one that works. You can only get away with being, you know, the flashy thing for so long before it actually has to drive some business outcomes so that people invest more. So I’ve loved having you on the show. I think this is a really interesting insight to be able to take from this. And I mean, who else has

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (51:21.513)

Yeah, you need to drive the sale. Yeah.

 

Jerrid Grimm (51:32.046)

more than 11 years experience. I you grew up essentially in retail media and I’m glad that you stayed with it until it became cool. So thanks for being on the show, Mike.

 

Mike Feldman | Vayner (51:42.625)

Yeah, glad to be here. Happy to come back anytime. If can’t tell, I could nerd out on retail or commerce media any day of the week.