From Boom to Burden: Is Commerce Media a Growth Driver or a Brand Tax?

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Commerce media is exploding—projected to surpass $100B in US ad spend by 2028—but beneath the hype, a harder question is emerging: is this truly incremental growth, or just a rebranded tax on brand dollars?

In this episode of Signal & Noise, hosts Rio Longacre and Brett House sit down with Amie Owen, Global Chief Commerce Officer at IPG Mediabrands, to cut through the noise surrounding retail and commerce media.

With Amazon and Walmart controlling roughly 80-85% of U.S. retail media spend—and more than 200 retail media networks now live—brands are facing growing fragmentation, opaque measurement, and rising pressure to “pay to play” on the digital shelf.Together, we unpack:

- The difference between retail media and commerce media—and why it matters

- Why many brands see commerce media as both a growth engine and a brand tax

- How closed-loop attribution and deterministic purchase data are reshaping media strategy

- Whether retail media is truly incremental—or simply reallocating trade spend

- The role of CTV, clean rooms, and commerce signals in the next wave of growth

- How agencies can help brands navigate fragmentation, standardization, and measurement chaos

- What AI, agentic systems, and commerce data mean for the future of media planning

In a wide-ranging discussion, Amie brings a pragmatic, operator’s perspective—grounded in real client outcomes—on how brands should think about commerce media in 2025 and beyond: where to lean in, where to push back, and how to avoid confusing scale with success.

If you’re a CMO, media leader, or brand navigating retail and commerce media today, this episode will help you separate signal from noise.

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Read the full transcript bellow:

Duration: 49:42

Brett House (00:03)

Amy, welcome to the podcast. Welcome to Signal of Noise. Glad to have you.

Amie (00:07)

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to chat with you guys today

Brett House (00:11)

So ⁓ for the audience, I just want to give a little background and let you introduce yourself in your own words. But you've been recognized as one of the leading executives driving the rise of commerce media. ⁓ You rose to the ranks at Universal McCann, which I think is now called ⁓ Worldwide. It's a flagship agency of IPG media brands. And now you're the global, I'm going to use that word global in there, global chief commerce officer. That is a mouthful.

Amie (00:30)

Correct. Correct.

Rio (00:37)

It's a mouthful.

Brett House (00:38)

Which sounds like a big role and you and I met at Beat Retreat Berkshires just a couple of months ago when I started the icebreaker, which was kind of funny. I hope you found it funny. said, what about the notion that some people think retail media is a hoax? So we'll talk about the topic. I don't really believe that. It was just a way that I could say, hey, Amy, let's get into a conversation. We had a great conversation at the table. But I want you to just introduce to the audience.

Amie (01:04)

Did I prove you wrong? Did I prove you wrong after I spoke?

Brett House (01:06)

Yeah, I think you did prove me wrong. Yeah, I think you did. was like, there's, you know, I've got a lot to learn. And so I'm like, we've got to talk about this on the podcast. So for the audience, I'd love you to sort of introduce yourself. What brought you to your role? What got you involved in shopper, retail, commerce, media? Yeah, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Amie (01:27)

Yeah, so hey everyone listening. It's Amy Owen. I actually, it's kind of funny. I've been in the role for, or in the space for about 20 years. You could say that I kind of just stepped into it and didn't really realize what I was getting into. I went to Syracuse University and we were talking about that a little bit earlier because Brett has a child right now at Syracuse, but go Orange, always. Go Syracuse.

Brett House (01:52)

Go Syracuse! Play-Colgate tonight! They start tailgating like four hours in advance.

Amie (01:56)

Just seriously. Yeah, exactly. Great time of my life. But anyway, so I majored in marketing and I went to a career fair and they were interviewing from a lot of different companies and I figured, hey, I'm going to meet with all the different companies that have marketing in their title because I thought it was a marketing company. And so the first interview that I remember having was with News America Marketing, which I ended up actually taking the job in the big city. So I grew up on Long Island, always wanted to have like that corner office in the city like Sex and the City was like my dream show and like I always wanted to like, you know, commute to the city and have that gig. And so I took that job ⁓ right off of ⁓ the college interview and it ended up being a third party company who sells retail media. And so for those that are listening, retail media in their world is like coupon machines, shelf talks at the grocery store, any sort of like floor graphics that you're walking through like the aisle, they actually still sell that

Brett House (02:47)

Hmm.

Amie (02:59)

today. But that's how I actually got into it because I was selling that to a lot of CPGs out there trying to actually say that, you're closing a sale at shelf and you need to remind your given consumer, especially when you're buying something where you have, you know, five different options in your brain at all times to really, you know, trigger that at point of sale, which was brick and mortar at the time. And I was doing that for a few years and really started to learn the landscape of what retail media was. And so like a little fun fact for is that retail media actually started in 1972 with this company. So it's been around for decades and some people think it started in the 2000s or started with Amazon. No, it actually started with Sam's Club and it actually started with News America actually selling these in-store products that you could buy on a client's behalf or at that point I was selling. I went over to the agency side. I was part of WPP. ⁓ They created a retail media group which I service a lot of CPGs and basically I took all the information that I learned on the sales side, flipped over to the buy side and I was negotiating now with News America and actually supporting a lot of my clients in ⁓ the buys of in-store media. I was there

Brett House (04:06)

Mm-hmm.

Amie (04:12)

for a little bit and then IPG, which I ⁓ currently came knocking on my door. And I've been here ever since. ⁓ started within the IPG walls about 12 years ago. My anniversary is coming up actually, it's Columbus Day ⁓ or Patriots Day or the rebranding of that. But ultimately from starting, I was a strategic hire. No one knew what retail media was. I was a team of one.

And we really kind of used to just say like, hey, we do this thing called retail media buying on your behalf. We could do it for you. And we started growing. so now, fast forward 12 years later, consumer behaviors have changed and we've evolved. So we've never really sat still. We actually do a lot of digital buying, understanding retail media networks, et cetera, through the evolution of what we're calling commerce and retail media. We have a global team. ⁓you know, like 400 plus clients globally. We have about thousand people on the team and we support, you know, what we're doing from a retail media buying consulting practice on behalf of our clients. And so I've been treated very well here. As you mentioned, I started in the Universal McCann or UM umbrella and I was doing so well in servicing those clients that they moved me into the middle of media brands. And now I service all of our clients across our umbrella and so it's not just media brands clients it could be IPG clients or any honestly type of clients that are looking for support in this area so a little bit about me I'll stop rambling but that's kind of how I how I grew up in the space and I have to tell you I love and I've been treated really well so here I am still in it

Brett House (06:01)

from a team of one to a team of a thousand. It's pretty impressive.

Rio (06:02)

I mean, that's a cool story. Yeah, you would do this for a long time. That's 12 years. mean, like no one knew what retail media was 12 years ago. That's for sure. It was definitely a nation thing. ⁓

Amie (06:06)

Yeah. Yeah, it's so funny that I've been doing it for so long that everything's coming back full circle. So like we were talking about in-store media when I first started my career and now all of sudden there's like articles and things like that coming out saying in-store media is the new best thing and I'm like, man, it's back. Like it used to not be sexy and now it's sexy again.

Brett House (06:31)

Hahaha

Rio (06:31)

Well, yeah, the merger of digital out of home, right, with like in-store. It's funny. It's all coming full circle. Yeah, they are. Yeah, totally. ⁓

Amie (06:35)

Yep.

Brett House (06:37)

And end caps are back. Now they're digital screens

Amie (06:41)

everything up on this thing.

Brett House (06:42)

in the store, but.

Amie (06:43)

They never went away. They were just never sexy. And what I mean by that is that they were never topic of conversation. And you always had the sales and the marketing team or the shopper marketing team back then always investing in it to drive the sale or to get a secondary replacement. But now it's like, if you say the word end cap, someone's like, tell me more. What do you mean? How do you actually get an end cap? How do you invest in it? Retailers actually became a little bit more ⁓ attuned to

Brett House (06:46)

Yeah. Yeah.

Rio (07:06)

That's so funny.

Amie (07:13)

what consumer behaviors are doing. I think COVID really like flips everyone on their heads in the sense of people weren't going to the store anymore. Hey man, they were spraying their groceries with Windex like when they were getting them delivered. And so like Instacart was born. Correct, like everything was born. Exactly, so yeah, so it just.

Rio (07:26)

I remember the shopping with gloves on, right? And it was crazy.

Brett House (07:29)

Yeah, having a table that was split into two sides. Right, clean and dirty sides.

Amie (07:37)

Yeah, so I mean, like it was like the best three years, but worst three years because like it actually put retail media and commerce on the map, right? Because people were never really thinking about it as a tactic in the media world. So now all of sudden, like you can't have a conversation without retail media or commerce being part of your focal conversation with any client right now.

Rio (07:38)

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, well those are crazy times, a lot changed. remember, you know, digital, like, you most companies I work with, their team has doubled. I mean, the amount of hiring and churn, it was certainly wild. I'm sure for retail media, that's when it just went meteoric and just went crazy. then, I mean, I guess speaking of it going meteoric, I mean, it's just, you look at like the pace of change and like the areas of growth, commercial retail media has been like the fastest growing part of media, right? In the ad industry for the last few years. mean, that, were pulling some stats, right?

100 billion US spend projected by 2028. 17 % kegger, which is crazy. It's like easily outpacing other channels and more more brands are flocking to do this. You look at how fast Amazon ads has grown, Walmart's getting crazy growth. ⁓ It's all over, right? mean, it's like combining authenticated like really rich purchase data with the closed loop reporting, right? And closed-loop attribution, really gives, you my opinion, CMO is a great way to prove out, if we're in the age of outcomes, I mean, what's, there's nothing more outcome oriented than retail or commerce media, right? But at the same time, there's kind of been a, like a backlash, right? mean, know, Brett, you were mentioning this and we were chatting earlier, right? About how...Is this just a brand tax? Is this a toll? Do these ads work? I've done incrementality tests. I know they work, but there are some, think, some valid questions about ⁓ should brands be investing in this? Does it matter? so ⁓ you come, and I've also heard complaints about limited transparency, fragmented reporting, and that we've had this, because of the success, this explosion of new retail media or commerce media networks is over 200, right? It's just a crazy number.

And how do you even deal with that if you're retail? Where do you spend your money, right? Knowing that Amazon and Walmart make up the majority of it, but still there's a ton of them. There's a lot of fragmentation. So, just a big question we're really looking to talk about today, Amy, besides just getting your background and understanding what you're seeing is, is this really the new growth engine of modern advertising or is kind of a rebranded trade span? mean, it's been around a long time, right? I mean, like...

Amie (09:44)

Everything that you said. Yeah. Yep.

Rio (10:09)

It's a huge revenue stream for these big retailers. ⁓ Will this continue to help us cut through the signal and noise? Great to have you on here and excited to dig in.

Amie (10:20)

Yeah, mean, listen, everything that you just said, you're not wrong. we, I actually, it's kind of funny. I was talking to someone and I mentioned it a bunch and Brett, I might've even said it to you during our debate, but I feel like we're in our middle school years where, yeah, like we were debating at first. Well, he came at me and he said, you know, retail media is not a hoax. I got to defend my territory. ⁓ But from our standpoint, we're,

Rio (10:36)

Was it an actual debate? That's awesome.

Brett House (10:47)

Yeah, and it was sort of like I was representing sort of the standard media buys and then I had a whole table of sort of commerce and retail media people and we just rep it was like it was like a debate we represented both sides of the story. Yeah

Amie (10:56)

was good.

Rio (10:58)

Amy, he's known for this. mean, well, you're probably learning now. Like this is a sign of affection.

Brett House (11:03)

Yeah it is.

Amie (11:04)

I mean, I didn't do it. I was just like, I like this conversation. Here we go. ⁓ But like I was saying, like we're in our middle school phase almost where it's like there's some retail media aspects that I'll be honest, it's an infancy and like we need to figure it out, right? So like, I can't tell you how many times we talked about measurement increment incrementality. What does that mean? Is it really just trade spend? So like there are things that we as an industry don't know yet. And then there are things that are really working. And so you hit the nail on

Rio (11:10)

Love it.

Amie (11:34)

the head when you said it's the merge of the specific first party data and the tech and we didn't have that back in the day like there were two actually retail media networks I'm gonna call them retail media networks even though they're more aggregators but it was my web grocer and grocery shopping network way back in the day and we used to look at click and click theory rates and and look at like consumer behavior and people used to go on those websites and actually make a grocery list and print it out and then go to the store so there was no connection with the data and the behavior online to what someone was doing in a store, now we can connect all of that. So yes, it is to me, and it can potentially tap into Tree, but it's so much more because now it's functioning in the media space as well. So depending on what client you talk to, and we had this debate internally earlier this week, the conversation is different.

So if your client is set up differently and the organization is different, they actually might talk about commerce in a completely different way if they are really like shopper led or sales led and they are living and dying by the sales numbers. Then there are different types of clients that are, you know, like, let's do the big things, flashy, shiny, let's do marketing, but we still have to drive a sale. Let's connect what we're doing. I'll say like the air game and ground game and how do we connect that football terminology and really drive through what we're doing. in store. And so there's a lot of different ways that people are actually experimenting with retail media and commerce media, which is a good thing because I think at the end of the day, you are getting the better data and you are getting the technology that are now supporting each other that we didn't have in the past at all. Like it was very segregated and it was very slow and it was all manual on PS. Some of it still is manual. So we're growing up. And that's why I said like where I started, you know, like my little rant saying like we're middle schoolers. Like we're just trying to figure out where we land.

And it's going to be interesting because the efficiency play is really understanding the landscape as a tool. it will be interesting for me to see in five years from now what it looks like and how actually has it evolved and who's now working with who and what has technology done for us and what is the consumer doing with a lot of these ecosystems. So, so exciting. I'm getting on my high horse because I'm really passionate about it.

Rio (13:45)

Retail or commerce media, how do you, like do you prefer a term? Is there a difference? I'd love it if you could explain to people, because I think these terms get thrown around a lot. A lot of people might not even know the difference. what is, because there's a lot of different media networks out there, like banks, like Chase has one, right? United as kinetic, right? I mean, what's the difference? mean, is there a difference and how do you define it?

Amie (14:09)

Yeah, so from my standpoint commerce media is an umbrella term, right? So it encompasses a little bit of everything retail media specifically is with retailers and or a company that is actually selling a physical product So someone who's selling something on their site that actually wants to drive a sale or in their store, right? So online or in store and so that's kind of where it started So like I think Walmart you think H e be you think Ali not Ali Baba That's a bad example when you think of like McArthur Libre you think of anything that actually has a physical footprint ⁓ with the exception of Amazon, right because Amazon

Brett House (14:45)

Yep.

Amie (14:47)

is that digital footprint, right? So like you have all of these retail media networks. Then you have what's called like the commerce media networks, which you just described where it's like the United's of the world. It's with, ⁓you know, like Chase, like you said, and so they're actually taking their first party data and driving an action instead of potentially a transaction. So the action is bookings, right? If you're looking at United, you want someone to be a loyalist, you want someone to actually really be ingrained in the given brand. You see a lot of that happening now. Chase, you want people to actually be investing in, you know, either like loans or opening up a bank account and things of that nature.

They're driving an action versus being tied and uniquely tied to a physical product. And then there's almost like a third option where it's like the aggregators that are now popping up. And so Instacart to me is an aggregator. The trade desk is becoming more of an aggregator in the sense of you can look at more than just one of those networks and either drive an action or a sale of a given product. So it's interesting in the sense that, like I mentioned earlier, like it evolves over time. And so we have seen the evolution. And I think it's important for us to say, like even from like our agency, to keep up with the trends. And I always say we can never be wrong because there's something new every day, but we should take that new piece of information and integrate it into what we're offering or just figure out what's happening. So then we have the latest and greatest for our clients instead of just saying, hey, we buy, you know, retail media. And that's kind of a thing. I hope that helps a little bit.

Brett House (16:20)

Yeah, the way that I've, me, tell me, yeah, tell me if this is the right way to interpret it, just in terms of how, kind of the machinations of how ads are placed and leveraged across retail media as well as commerce media. And I think of retail media as sort of a hybridization of both the on-site digital advertising.

Right, obviously the in-store digital advertising as well. But anything that's happening, whether they're sponsored products, sponsored brands, videos, onsite display, category specific ads, that's happening within that ecosystem, Amazon ads or Walmart connect. And then there's the offsite, which is sort of an audience extension play where you're using that deterministic data to find people elsewhere. So is that a good way to think about retail media? Now commerce media to me in the aggregators, I think, ⁓ Really, of it is, in fact, I think all of it really is offsite because they don't have either the digital. mean, United does have a digital commerce sort of platform or a platform where they're where they're ⁓ capturing. Yeah. But it sounds like most of that data is being used for offsite ⁓ programmatic and targeting across channels outside of their own ecosystems because they're not retailers by definition. Is that a good way to think about it?

Rio (17:21)

They're selling tickets and they're selling different things. ⁓

Amie (17:37)

Come on. would say yes and ⁓ because they do have on site properties. So it's it's more so just taking their data and to your point, like maybe the bigger game is to drive people to their websites. But they're also reaching people to make sure that they're driving loyalty with their given brands, right? So I go back to United where it's like you're sitting in front of a screen, you want someone to take another trip with your airline or you want them to enter sweepstakes to win something with a partner so that drives you back and then you're making more money, coincidentally. And so that's why it's still a commerce media network, because there's still something at play. I can't think of besides like working with like the trade desk. And that's why I put it into an aggregation and where it's just offsite. There's always an onsite element. And there's always an offsite element. But to your point, whether they we invest in one or the other is dependent on what we're trying to do. ⁓ But then we'll also see like clients say like in like the banking space where like they are like, we want to run with Walmart, and we want to be onsite.

We're a non endemic because we know people that shop at Walmart use our card. So there's things like that where we're also trying to work through.

Brett House (18:44)

Yeah. Yeah.

Rio (18:47)

Non-endemic is a huge increase in the last couple of years. know Amazon Ads was focusing heavily on that for a couple of years ago. I think they've seen a lot of success, in my understanding.

Amie (18:59)

Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's interesting. Go ahead, sorry.

Brett House (19:00)

Yeah. Yeah. no, no. And you would think that somebody like a United would do a lot of partnership deals, right, with leveraging their data to sell or to have other brands target those United buyers, know, Sheridan or Marriott, right, because they know destinations and purchases that are happening at the point of sale with United, right?

Amie (19:24)

Yeah. I'm giggling at you because I had a panel and it was over a year ago and I was the moderator and I had three different types and one in each category. I had a retail media, I a commerce media and an aggregator on the stage. And I said, why won't you guys all work together and make something called, I would call it like a super network or whatever it was. I don't remember what I called it on the stage, but it makes sense because they're non-compete. And to your point, like as a consumer, like the consumer is not going to say, oh wait, I need to go buy this from my retail media network over here, but then I need to go work with the commerce network here. And the reality is, like as I sit in the buying seat, it's hard because what am I going to do? 200 different buys in each of different ecosystems, but it's one person that might be shopping in four different places for four different things. So it's interesting to me and I've always pushed why can't they all work with each other as long as they're non-compete. I haven't seen it happen yet, but you're starting to see like someone like an Instacart allow their ad to be on other sites and then you actually just see it was in the trades recently that Amazon is working with Netflix so it's a little bit incestuous and it's starting to happen, but it's not there yet. And that's why I'm excited to see like what the future would hold because you are going to see some sort of consolidation. I think that's the best bet where everyone wins, where you still have your network, but you're also working with through the networks that are not actually, you know, stealing your share, but actually amplifying your share. So it's, it's, it's interesting, but I'm glad that you said that because I've been trying to push that. And I was like, if anyone wants to try it, please come my way. have clients that are asking for that as well.

Rio (21:00)

Well, think people kind of see it as a zero sum game, Like, like trade desk stock tanked when Amazon added, you know, third party, adds third party supply. They added Netflix, right? And then like trade desk stock went down because I guess the thought is that more people are to go do their buys just with Amazon DSP, right? Or I guess you can kind of look at Criteo's aggregator, right? They have a couple hundred retail retail media networks, right? I think I think that they give access to the kind of like a DSP. So.

Amie (21:24)

I think there's another one,

Rio (21:27)

Yeah, yeah. So it's interesting. think in Expedia, I think they're kind of becoming, trying to become a travel aggregator of commerce media for travel is my understanding. So. ⁓

Amie (21:36)

Yeah, I think it's funny that you say zero sum game too, because that's always a debate that we have. Because one would think that if you take what you're doing in, I'll call it like standard media world, where you're not using retailer data, and then you apply retailer data, first party retailer data, that you would have greater efficiencies. But we make our job a lot more complicated than it is. And sometimes you see it, and sometimes you don't. So in my mind, It shouldn't be a zero sum game, but sometimes it is because when you have people that are actually buying retail media, they actually treat it as performance media. And then they're not actually considering what you're getting on the other side. So for example, we look at what we call return on retail relationship. So it's not just the ROI of a media program. It's like, what are you actually getting from the retailer and how are you building that relationship? Whether it be like beta testing or a secondary display or the end caps coming up again in conversation, like the end cap. So it's like, how do you actually utilize media to unlock a holistic game and then maybe your media tanks but then you got you know two million dollars more in an order from a given store that actually is successful in a way and so had so by looking at it as just a media play yes we need to be better at it but you should be looking at it in all sorts of different directions and it shouldn't be one one perspective it should be holistic of many so like so zero-sum game to me when I'm talking about it, I take the side of that it isn't a zero sum game because you should be using it as leverage to get something else to better your profits year over year with a given retailer.

Brett House (23:14)

Yeah, and I think thinking about it holistically is critical. I know Pepsi did use retail media and since I was reading to measure incrementality and halo effects across categories and they were really trying to see, ⁓ you know, funnel sort of trade, bottom funnel results versus the halo effect of sort of brand awareness building, which ⁓ you've talked a lot about. I mean, it's the difference between sort of brand building and performance marketing and how

Amie (23:34)

Right.

Brett House (23:40)

honestly, you have to holistically think about these things as interconnected, right, in terms of driving consumer outcomes, right? And banks are well known, and Ryo and I have talked about this in a couple of episodes, financial services is well known as just driving all of their spend, 70, 80%, we saw this at New Star, towards direct mail, because it was so trackable. Even though there's a lot of waste just built into the process.

They know that if they acquire a customer, that customer's gonna have a lifetime value of X. But they would ignore the spend on the top of the funnel. And we came to them at Newstar with sort of an MMM and MTA analysis. And this was Bank of America, it was JP Morgan Chase that said, if you're combining these things and you're actually shifting more to the upper funnel and having a more holistic balance strategy versus just focusing on the direct response bottom of the funnel stuff, you're gonna drive better ROI and we can prove it through like a decade of your data. it sounds like retail media sort of going through some of those same sort of challenges where brands are like, maybe this isn't just a down funnel direct response channel.

Amie (24:49)

Yeah. Yeah. So it's the same notion from a media perspective. If you are reaching and targeting the same audience over and over again, you're not going to grow.

Right? If you are just telling someone to go add something to your cart over and over again, no one's going to get any new news. No one's going to get the detailed information they want. So I always say that commerce is the glue that ties brand and performance together. And it needs to be integrated into your total plan. Right? And it's driven by media behaviors. So like, I know right now that in my households, we buy on Amazon and we use voice sometimes. And if you're not advertising in certain areas, I will never see the message. There are people that are buying from a screen not like their actual like cell phone but like an actual TV screen. If you do not actually play there from an awareness play and also have the option to buy you're going to lose people because people are just trying to shift like their behaviors there. So it's getting more complicated for a brand because you used to just say let's do a TV by its awareness and then you have a shelf signage in the store and people will go to the one store and it was kind of like one pathway now There are many different pathways that people are taking and you're not really seeing any incrementality So you have to make sure that you are balancing out what you're doing for an awareness play and also performance Because you don't want to talk to the same person over and over again. You're never gonna see the growth You'll sub seen like the what they call it like the leaky bucket Like you'll see a lot of that and like you'll make sure like your numbers are hitting year over year But until you start reaching either another audience or in a different faster a different way Like you're not going to see that substantial growth. So I'm a very big advocate of retail media should be included in everything that we do. We actually have a shirt that's saying make everything shoppable everywhere all the time for your given audience. And so like it's one of those things where it's like, just make sure that the options to buy is there and that the content and creative and the inventory that you buy is, is, ⁓ right, right for your audience. Because if it's not, then you're missing out on all the different aspects of what you could be doing to trigger a sale. So yeah, like we're, I think there's

Rio (26:59)

It's interesting you say that. mean, think that you look at, yeah, sorry, you look at like full funnel, right, retail media. I love the point you just made. And I think that's kind of why you look at what Amazon, like Prime Video, for example. I mean, I think when they launched that, it practically sold out of inventory. There was such a demand for it, right? So being able to tie an ID to really top a funnel, brand awareness, which I think a lot of CTV is, right? And then driving it down into...more like search and display and sponsor brands and all the very kind of lower funnel that you can add activity that you can actually and then track to purchases, right? Or connect to purchases. It's super powerful, So I can see the why, like for example, I mentioned it before, Amazon's trying to get more third party supply, including more CTV inventory, right? Within its DSP. So it can have that complete picture and it can offer brands what you're describing.

We can offer them a full funnel, one place to buy everything, right? I think it's very compelling, right?

Amie (28:00)

Yeah, I mean, that's exactly. Go ahead. I was going to say I'm agreeing with you.

Brett House (28:01)

Yeah, well... So go ahead, sorry.

Yeah, and Amy, ⁓ it's interesting, because I wonder ⁓ how much of that is real and how much of that is sort of the promise of connecting sort of deterministic point of sale.⁓ know, of authenticated data that's coming from some sort of commerce event to media exposure, right, to, you know, back to that incrementality conversation. I how real is that today and how much further do we have to go to sort of live up to the promise, I think, is my question.

Amie (28:39)

think it's real. think we have to do a better job of actually selling it in and testing it because what will happen is that when you're looking at these retail ecosystems now, so it's not just like a retailer like Apple has a ecosystem, Samsung has an ecosystem, like everyone is starting to come up with ecosystems. They all measure and look at things differently. So how do you know which one actually worked? So I think we just have to get better on our definitions and how do we standardize, if anything, of how we're looking at everything across the board to say this actually worked, this actually drove X. ⁓ But it's all there. Like I've seen it. I've seen the measurements. I've seen the methodologies. We've had clients that are testing it. But there are other clients that are hesitant to do so, maybe not because they don't like the idea, but because their organization isn't set up to actually function in that manner. So like they're very segregated. Maybe, you know, sales doesn't talk to the brand team that doesn't really talk to the media team. So before you get everyone on the same page, it's kind of like, like a colossal effort, essentially. So it's, it's, it's also understanding how the workflow is going to work at a given, a given agency, or even like a given client. And so I would say that it's there. It's just, there's a lot of complexity and like I said earlier, I think we get in our way a bunch ⁓ to really just try to figure out like what's, how things could work, how we can drive sales, how do we make things efficiency, how do we, know, have the efficiency play and like our whole mantra this year is how do we simplify things for us, for our clients and maybe it's like the bringing up the topic. I know you can't have a podcast probably without mentioning AI, but like AI has done a good number for us to like understand how well things are performing when you look at pure sales or you know, like, standardized measurement and it's not just looking at retail it's looking at the entirety of the package and so it's there there's just a lot we don't have enough time to talk about all this

Brett House (30:34)

Yeah. Yeah, and with all of the networks, there's 200 plus networks, you've got two big players, the Amazons and the Walmarts that have about 80 % share. There's a lot of grading your own homework, right? If you're a retail media network that kind of is behaving like a walled garden to a certain degree. How do you coach your clients to, it's really a data unification exercise. Like you've got to start with getting actual access to.

⁓ path data or whatever exposure engagement and purchase data getting that into one unified analytics cloud, right, and then performing holistic MMM MTA, etc. on that unified data set. Is that a huge lift? Because I've seen that in real life just coming from an MMM and MTA company at Newstar. ⁓ And it was extremely difficult. The larger the business came was the more difficult it became. ⁓

Amie (31:10)

Yep.

Brett House (31:30)

because you had so many, to your point, so many brands, so many teams, multiple data warehouses, not a lot. So half of our job was literally data unification, normalization, and then you can start to derive insights that are predictive, maybe prescriptive, et cetera.

Amie (31:46)

Yeah. Yeah, that's one of one of the steps that you need to take. I would say the step that you have to take first is what's what are you trying to get at? What's your goal as a company? And like the CMO is supposed to like set with their label if you're public like a board the board or like if you're private with like the CEO, like what are you trying to accomplish for the year? And then that should ladder down to Okay, well, if we need to accomplish x, then we need to make sure that all of our data is segregated. We need to make sure we're having these measurements and then we can matter it back up. I think that's almost hard because we're in a state right now where like we talk to like CEO, CMOs and they're trying to do one piece and then you get to, you know, like the head of media, the head of sales and they're trying to maybe potentially do something slightly different, but it's a different track that you would take. And then you get to the day to day people and they're like, well, I'm just doing this. And yes, it can all matter back, but I think we're just complicating it because like some people are just not singing from the same song sheet, which is just a byproduct of how we're So like no one's doing it, I'll call it wrong. It's just how history has set up a lot of these, I'll call them like mid to like large sized companies and smaller companies figured out more quickly because there's one person that's doing 80 things versus 80 people doing one thing within like the given line. So that's the part where we're having conversations and there's a lot of aha moments of where the P &Os are set up or like what, I guess teams that need to be involved in certain instances. figure that out, then it's like, this is what we have to do to get there. And to your point, yes, 100 % data is the next step. And that could take anywhere from 12 to 36 months of actually combing your data, organizing ⁓ your making sure. And it's a very big, lengthy process. And so what you're starting to see is a lot of CMOs and CEOs are creating five-year plans because the first year is literally organizing yourself and to get where you need to be.

Brett House (33:31)

Yeah, that's.

Rio (33:45)

Yeah, maybe AI can speed that up a little bit, hopefully in the future. I mean, looking at like retail or commerce media, I can understand why it's attractive, right? I mean, it's growing quickly. But it's also the margins are crazy, right? know, compare that to groceries where the margins might only be a few points. I mean, I think the margins in some of the advertising products are like 80, 90 percent, right? So it's attractive, it's growing quickly, like Walmart connected with 31 percent last year, while the rest of Walmart were only 4.8 percent, right?

Amie (33:50)

moment.

Rio (34:14)

I think I read that Amazon ads contributes as much bottom line like net revenue as AWS, even though AWS is significantly bigger, right? So it's attractive. I can see why everyone's getting into it. That's why there are hundreds of retail and commerce networks. Like, are there too many? mean, when is enough enough? Or is there not enough? Will there be consolidation? What do you think?

Amie (34:35)

Yeah, I think honestly it has to go get to what is what are you trying to do as a company and then what retailers or what networks will help you get there. So there's a usually annually we do some sort of like discovery exercise and we try to categorize how we're investing into retailer networks and some some networks become tier one and some come tier two and some become tier three and that changes every year just depending on what you're trying to do and maybe if you're trying to grow distribution so it changes you know, more than just every year, maybe it's biannually or maybe even every quarter. But yes, there are a lot. And if you peanut butter yourself, like you're going to get stuck because you're not going to know how to see how everything is performing. But there is a need for all of the networks to exist because every category is different and every product is different. And every client is going after maybe a slightly different audience. So there are needs for all these networks, but there's going to be some that are needed more than than others. But as we mentioned earlier, I think there's going to be some sort of like condensation or piece where they all work together. And that's also okay, too. And so that's why I think the aggregators are really key to our success because like you mentioned, like a Criteo or like the trade desk, you could hit or even Instacart, you could hit multiple retailers and drive your strategy across all of those retailers and then even like turn out like a return on retail relationship. So I think that's interesting as well.

It's just a matter of like what you're trying again what you're trying to prove and then I mean, sometimes we get briefs and it says we want to drive sales. I'm like, okay, that doesn't help me because I can't ladder up to like what you're trying to do. And then they're like, we want to try drive. Well, why Walmart? Yeah. So it's like, why Walmart? Why are you actually doing retail media networks? And sometimes when you actually sit there and have a conversation, like, why are you do you want to invest in retail media networks? Like half the time they're like, I don't know. It's shiny. And we're like, or I've been told we need to be on the flip side. I've had conversations with retailers where they're like, oh, I was told to make a network and I'm like, well, why are you making a

Rio (36:16)

No kidding, right? Who isn't?

Amie (36:40)

Network. Like what's in it for you? Like do you have the data that you like have a data play that you maybe should work with like the trade desk or do you have a lot of people on your site that you think you can make a profit off of? Like when you say like Amazon and Walmart and they're all making a lot of money, they're only making so much money on the buying aspect of the buy. What's actually happening is that in the past you were dropping off a pallet off of a store. So like Walmart and products were being sold and you'd say, Hey Walmart, call me. Let me know what this sell through was. Now what they're is they're saying you're digital, so you have to set up your content on your PDP page or your shelf page, understand what creatives you want, make sure you know the assortment, make sure that you have the ratings and reviews. And by the way, we have all these tools that you can invest in to help you do all of that. So the cost of actually setting up everything online and the user journey is so significant that all of these retailers are making even more money because they're offering all of these tools and all this help. to set up what would have in the past just been someone dropping off a pallet at a store. So that's where all the dollars are coming from. Like when Walmart's making a lot of money and when Amazon's making money, don't get me wrong, they're making billions of dollars on media, but the growth is all in how can we actually have like Amazon calls it like A plus content. So how do we actually have the right content? Well, you invest in certain packages or you invest in certain areas, we could help you get the best. So you show up in like, you know, like the first one or two searches.

And so that's that actually to me is even more interesting because people again are buying Probably not more quantity wise but in so many different ways that you have to be there And if you're not there you're going to lose that sale

Rio (38:26)

It's interesting you mentioned data. So there's been this big push the last couple of years. I've noticed this from a lot of the big retail media networks, right? To give us your first party data, upload it. mean, not all of them have the data, And if they do, it might not be in great shape. But it's been a big push for that. It's been a big push for CAPI or conversion API. Why do think this is? And is it working?

Amie (38:48)

Yeah, ⁓ I feel like it's... I don't know if it's working. I just feel like there's a lot of restrictions and there's a lot of guidelines. And I think a lot of clients are scared to invest and a lot of retailers are scared to share. So I think there's just got to be that one mover who starts doing it all and then everyone will follow. But until we actually see that, I feel like... it's going to be hard and it's a nut that we just necessarily can't crack. And there's always that uphill battle because you have to have people sign off on everything from both sides. Then is it legal? Is it legal in the state? So there's a lot that we have to invest in. But ultimately, like, yes, like, I feel like that should be where we should go because it would help everyone's lives. And I think again, like from a media buyer standpoint, it would help my life be a lot easier.

Rio (39:47)

Yeah, mean, I can see for suppression, it's easy. know what I mean? Upload your first party data. Like, let's say you're not, maybe groceries you don't want to suppress, but if you're selling bank accounts or something, you're not endemic, you probably want to not market, pay for impressions to the same people, right? ⁓ So I can see that, but yeah, it's not easy. mean, convincing brands, convincing your legal departments or privacy departments, and you should upload this, especially to, if you're retailer, to Walmart or to Amazon, that could be a tough lift. And Brett, you were saying something.

Brett House (40:15)

Yeah. isn't this a, I mean, doesn't this, lot of this happened, the promise of clean rooms, right? In sort of a native cloud environment where you can do second party data sharing privately, right? Where, where retailer can share data with publisher in a anonymized, semi-anonymized, pseudonymized, whatever you want to call it fashion within a clean room type of environment within, let's say Snowflake or Databricks. mean, isn't that a How you do this isn't that the promise, right? To be able to share this data without actually giving up the golden goose, so to speak.

Amie (40:49)

So yes, but then to your point earlier, you have to have your data in order in your house, right? So what, what data are you sharing? What are you allowed to share? What do you want to share? ⁓ how do you want to share it? What are the implications? What's the cost? So like we've had a lot of conversations with lot of retailers. We did like one test, like back in the day, like maybe like seven or eight years ago. And it was like the best thing we ever did because we took two types of data. took a client's data and a retailer data and overlaid it.

Brett House (40:56)

Yeah.

Amie (41:19)

and then applied it to Media Plan and it was awesome. And it was like the best performing campaign. But we took a lot of the brunt. ⁓

Brett House (41:21)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because you're deduplicating. could, yeah, you can create real cool segmentation schemas to what with the hit.

Rio (41:29)

You can build look-alike models, like you can create seed audiences. Yeah, mean, but it's, yeah, it works. I think it's crazy though, but most brands today, Brett, like, clean rooms are made for that. But I've seen, I've talked to so many brands, like, ⁓ we just upload our data to DV360 or the trade desk, just right to the DSP, just for suppression. they're, and you know, obviously he uploaded to DSP, saying we'll only keep what's matched. You we won't, you know, it'll be hashed. They'll tell you that, right? mean, but.

Amie (41:34)

Yeah.

Rio (41:59)

So like a lot of retailers are doing it, but they're not doing it through clean rooms. I find that really interesting. And I think that maybe mistrust of it or just not knowing really what it is, but I don't think adoption is where we expected it be a few years ago. I'll be honest.

Amie (42:09)

Right.

No, I feel like there's more of a, I'll call it like a more AI play than anything right now versus like talking about clean rooms. Like clean rooms was like a blip on the radar screen and people talk about it, right? So like I was just at IAB. Yeah, I was just at IAB and there were some people there talking about clean rooms, but like it's just, I don't wanna say it's easier said than done. I think that there's not enough people that know about it and know the process of it to actually make it work.

Brett House (42:25)

It was big at Cannes like four years ago, five years ago.

Amie (42:41)

That's going to be my statement there.

Brett House (42:42)

Yeah, yeah. The the it's funny. I just read an article this morning. James Hersh Hersher.

Rio (42:47)

I think when you start evolving data, it's just people get, brands get really sensitive.

Brett House (42:52)

Yeah. I saying, think we got a little delay, I think, yeah, so I just read an article in Attic Shows. I don't know if you guys saw it this morning. said, and it was kind of a racy click-baity kind of title. said, retail media is starting to come to grips with the fact that we know nothing at all. So I thought, well, I got to read this. What does James Hersher have to say? And I guess he was reporting from the IAB Connected Commerce event in New York City. I don't know if you heard about this, Amy. And it was interesting because a lot of what you're talking about how⁓ data unification and data normalization and organizational change within organizations that are very complex. We're sort of the building blocks are there, the tech stacks are there, but we're not as an industry quite, we're sort of, we're like middle schoolers, you said, we're like advanced adolescents and we're not quite where the promise of this technology could potentially bring us. ⁓ And that impacts things downstream, like proving ad impact, right?

Amie (43:40)

Yeah. Yeah, and I love that you bought it full circle. Yep, yep. And I love that you bought it full circle because it's one of those things where...

The targeting has gotten so much better and the targeting plus technology has gotten so much better. And the opportunities from a measurement standpoint, whether or not it's measured in its own ecosystem is another story, have gotten better. But like, we're still trying to figure out other places and spaces of how to actually move the ball forward and actually make things a little bit more efficient. And so...

I would just say like I think the clean clean room like there should be like clean room 101 and people should really understand like what it means What can it yield and then you need retailers to actually be pushing that on their behalf? I don't like I've heard a few retailers talk about it a few of them do testing but like it's not widely used so I think that's the other part too where it has to really be Implied that it's already in use and like who actually wants to test it. So then we actually have case studies for it

Rio (44:47)

Yeah, I know we're getting close to the end of time here, but you mentioned incrementality earlier. I I just think that's such an important one. I mean, that was kind of like the measurement word of the year, like maybe in the last year. But I mean, think retail media really comes down to that. Can you prove it incrementality? Are these ads people should be paying for or are people going to buy the products anyway? Thoughts on it?

Amie (45:10)

Yeah. It does exist. You have to make sure that you have the right strategy and that's why we have a lot of commerce strategy team members that understands like what you should be doing for reaching a given audience and how you're actually placing your ad. So I would say there's a right way to do it. There may be a not so right way to do it, meaning that you might be reaching the same people and not really having that group. So was kind of the conversation we were having a little bit earlier where like commerce is that glue between brand and performance and how are you wanting to grow and what does that entail? And that is all dictated, hopefully, from the CMO down or from the sales up, and everyone is on the same page. So then they are all beating to the same drum to get to the right spot. So yes, I definitely think it exists, but it also, how do you actually utilize it? And like, are you just looking at incrementality in a given retailer? Because that's great, but like, what does that mean for everything else? You have to look at it agnosticly to see like how it's really gonna drive your business at the bottom, at a bottom line.

Brett House (46:05)

Yeah. Yeah, and have you seen, is there a general mistrust in sort of like ROI and ROAS metrics, which oftentimes can be, you know, averaged aggregate metrics, right? They can be gamed a bit, right? Hey, we've driven, I've seen on the B2CC side, I've seen a ROAS metrics that are just ridiculous, but you actually don't see them down funnel in the actual purchases. Or in retail media, they could reflect things like brand name search, which means somebody's already predisposed.

Amie (46:19)

Yeah.

Brett House (46:36)

They have the propensity to buy that anyway, so it's not incremental. It's not incremental lift, right? It seems like that's the crux of the situation there. Is that what you're helping your clients figure out?

Amie (46:47)

think so, but it all comes down to the whole like we need a dictionary for methodology as well because what happened is I mean like Walgreens, Walmart, Target, ⁓ Amazon and like, know, like all the top in the US like they were all doing the same thing in the sense of they were all selling media, but they're all looking at it differently from a methodology standpoint. And then the other thing too is like, how are you setting it up? Because you might have five products being sold on target, but you have 20 items being sold on Amazon. And it's not apples to apples. Like we say it's apples to oranges. So it's like, what's the common denominator and what do you look at? And so you have to actually look at the sales growth or the bottom line sales growth in order to actually move everything forward.

Brett House (47:33)

Yep. So, yeah, so looking ⁓ three to five years out, because we are running on time here, ⁓ what's your what's your prediction? I you've you've seen you've been since the nascent brick and mortar days of what they called retail media back in the day to now what is a far bigger ⁓ media play. It's a far different animal than it was. ⁓ You know, there's a lot more folks involved right on the commerce media side. What is your what are your predictions for how this is going to look in the next three to five years?

Amie (47:54)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I would say that.

The new model should eat the old model in the sense of there's a lot of AI, there's a lot of agentic solutions, there's a lot of efficiencies that are in our space that haven't been in our space for a while. So I would see more flexibility and allow us to be more agile when it comes to planning and buying and really working with retail media. And then the other part is we're going to see simplification and maybe some of that consolidation. ⁓ But it all is derived by media behaviors and how people are engaging with media. so I can't like to say like put my finger on like, you know, like podcasts are going to be the next best thing or, you know, shopping carts with screens are gonna be the next best thing. It's just a matter of how people are actually going to engage and how the brands are really wanting to reach. So I would just say that there's gonna be a lot more technology that's gonna be involved and then there's gonna be some winners and some people that aren't going to win as much. And so what does that do for a company? And so how does that really handle it? And I'm excited to see where it nets out.

Brett House (49:08)

Well, thanks, Amy. ⁓ Thanks for joining Signal of Noise. was great having you. I know you got to run. ⁓ And I look forward to seeing

Rio (49:09)

Cool.

Amie (49:18)

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. This was awesome.

Rio (49:26)

Hopefully see you soon.