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Unlocking Retail Media is the essential podcast for leaders and marketers navigating the rapidly evolving world of retail advertising. We move beyond day-to-day operations to explore the strategic future of the industry, covering major investment trends, the shift to hybrid marketplace models, and the existential disruption posed by Agentic Commerce. Host James Avery brings in top industry veterans and visionary founders to analyze how ground-breaking technology is transforming customer journeys, influencing product catalogs, and forcing retailers to rethink on-site, in-store, and digital media strategies to remain competitive in the modern age.
Austin Leonard: [00:00:00] I like to say that we're building the last mile of e-commerce for the last mile of America because especially once you get outside of the main urban areas, the ability to tap into the evolution of shopping with same day delivery has been limited to the bigger markets where it's, it's easier to invest in the infrastructure you need to to deliver because there's more households there.
But our shoppers should also benefit from the time savings and the convenience of delivery, and that's been a huge growth driver for. Us and it's a huge focus for, for we're, we're taking the business.
James Avery: Welcome to Unlocking Retail Media, the podcast where we explore the evolving world of retail media from data strategy to monetization and everything in between.
This is where we break down how retailers can build smarter data-driven media networks by aligning with what brands truly need from scalable ad solutions and meaningful metrics to cross channel attribution and programmatic strategies. Welcome to unlocking retail media. Uh, today I'm excited to dig into what it actually looks like to build a retail media [00:01:00] network from inside a company that wasn't born digital.
Uh, my guest is Austin Leonard, VP and General manager of DG Media Network, dollar General's Retail Media Operation, uh, dollar General's, a different kind of retailer. Uh, more than 20,000 locations embedded in communities that most digital platforms don't reach that well with a shopper base that CPG brands care about, but struggle to get in front of.
Uh, Austin has been building the media business on top of that footprint, figuring out what it means to stand up a network at that scale, make it valuable to brands and build something that actually fits Dollar General. Uh, today we're gonna talk about how he thinks about building and differentiating the network from the inside, what it takes to scale, what the value prop really is for brands trying to reach a customer that the rest of the media, retail media under serves.
Uh, Austin, thanks for joining. Great to have you.
Austin Leonard: Great to be here, James. Appreciate you having us on getting a chance to talk a little about the Dollar General and uh, DG Media Network story.
James Avery: Absolutely. So I think it's, it's, uh, it's really interesting. Dollar General is something that like a lot of people in instantly [00:02:00] know what it is, right?
Like, I, like, you know, I, I know what Dollar General is, especially when we end up. You know, we go out camping, we go out, you know, a little bit outside the city Dollar General's where we end up going, right? Like, especially like, I go get soap and I get some beer and I get, you know, uh, some Cheetos and I get, you know, uh, towels.
I think we forgot one time. Right. It's kind of kind of everything you need, but for other, for, you know, people, people listen to this from, uh, Manhattan, right? Like what's, what's Dollar General? What makes it unique in kinda the retail world?
Austin Leonard: Yeah, and, and it's interesting 'cause I do believe that everyone has a bit of a perception about the retailers they've heard of before.
And, you know, we, we fit a different role for a lot of different people. As you said. The, the, the part of that's really important is that it's America's general store. We're not a dollar store. And so I think a lot of folks, especially in, in the bigger cities where they, they don't go to Dollar Generals regularly or, or, or rarely they think of us as that dollar store.
They don't realize that in most of the markets that we serve. Um, about 80% the, [00:03:00] the towns less than 2000 people we're their only store in town. So we, the general store concept is really important because we allowed to them to have access to, to all of the national products that they know and love at, at any retailer, but a lot more conveniently, a lot closer, and many times saving them 30, 40 or an hour and a half worth of drive.
And that that role that we play in the community is, is so critical. And that's about 80% of our stores. And so that we have, we, we just, uh, recently hit uh, 21,000 stores, which is when you, when you think about, it's pretty crazy. We, we have, there's more Dollar Generals in the US than there are Starbucks or McDonald's.
Um, and that helps with some of the folks in, in the bigger cities that don't go as often to, to really conceptualize it. But 80% of our stores are in the smaller rural communities that we support. But that means we still have over 4,000 stores in all of these major suburban and, and urban areas. So it's, it's really interesting everyone's perception of what their local DG is, is to them.
And to your [00:04:00] point, sometimes their local DG is the one when they're on vacation or at their lake house or when they're, they're going doing a road trip.
James Avery: Yeah, I think I've found like that's, that's when we would usually go, but now there's also one, like literally on the way to my dad's house. Like, and we're, you know, we're in Raleigh.
It's not, it's not that far out of the, the city limits, uh, but it's also pretty convenient. Uh, it's one of those fresh ones, right? So it even has milk and meat and, and things like that that, uh, you know, people probably don't associate as much, but really is kind of ties back to that general store mentality.
Austin Leonard: Absolutely. Yeah. And we have over 7,000 stores that have that, that fresh layout. And that's one of the things that helps add to the convenience. And we're, we're pretty proud of, uh, how we're able to bring, you know, fresh produce, fresh meat to your point, and, and really round out the, the basket, but also bring that fresh assortment closer to communities that, that typically don't get that.
James Avery: Yeah, absolutely. So now let's that, you know, 'cause we're here to talk about retail media. Um, you know, what's the, you know, so you, you joined Dollar General to kind of build out this media network. You know, how do you, how do you think about building out the network, right? Like [00:05:00] knowing kind of, you know, what we've just talked about, like, you know, unique, unique kind of requirements, 21,000 stores, you know, kind of different communities, uh, but also a wide range of, you know, CPG products.
Austin Leonard: Well, I've, I've been here almost a year now, and so I was excited to, to join for a couple reasons. Uh, but I think the important part is that, uh, I'm not building from scratch here, which was great. There's, there's a strong foundation in place. Dollar General has been in what I would call the retail media business since at least 2018, and, and got pretty serious about it a couple years ago.
Started building that foundation before we had our, our current e-commerce footprint. That's, that's really been growing, and I'll talk about that in a second. But the, the key part is that we started very differently than other retail media networks because we had a great assortment of the in-store tools, you know, the shelf talkers, the aisle category science, things like that, that are pretty standard traditional shopper marketing tactics.
But then we started offsite first. So the, the biggest proposition that we had is we were able to reach. All of these customers that are going to all our stores. And again, that's, you know, for, for us, uh, that's over [00:06:00] 2.7 billion people a year. Uh, so it's a pretty significant number of people. But we were reaching them primarily through offsite tactics like the Trade Desk and on meta, because we didn't have a huge digital footprint and we, we didn't have as many reasons for people to come to the app other than searching for deals, doing some research before they do their shop.
But what's been great and what really incentivized me and, and got me interested about learning more about what they've were building over here is this growing footprint that we have from an omnichannel perspective. So, um, the start of last year, you know, we had a couple hundred stores that we were piloting with same day delivery, and over the course of 2025, we, we got 17,000 of the 21,000 stores and we're, we're well over 18,000 now.
And that delivery. Uh, the delivery offering it, it really brings a lot of more value to our customers and it opens up the store base a lot. 'cause 75% of America is within five miles of a dollar General. So think about that for a second. We've [00:07:00] got a huge store base footprint. We now have same day delivery, which, uh, the vast majority of people actually get within an hour because they, they want that, that immediate convenience.
So now we can serve our customers, uh, and our core customers better because we can also provide the value of time back, not just the value of savings with the great prices that we have, but you can also open it up to folks that wouldn't typically go to a DG because they can get it faster than any of the other.
Major retailers that are out there. And so when you combine all those things together, we build a great foundation in our stores. We started building this really sophisticated machine to be able to take a lot of the data points that are typically offline data points and be able to help reach our customers and help advertisers, you know, tell their brand story across the web.
And now we've got this rapidly growing digital business. We've, we've been really focused on how do we make that experience, uh, even better and also bring value to our advertisers. So we've been migrating more of, of what we're doing from a capability standpoint to [00:08:00] the DG app and to dg.com. And so that's, that's been a, a really exciting part of, of the growth story that, that we're working on here.
James Avery: Yeah, and I think it's one of the things that I think people, people kind of overlook when they think about Dollar General. And I think I did when I first, when we first started working together and I was kind of like. Oh, there can't be that many people that are using the DG app or using the DG site, but that's just a misconception, right?
Like I think the, the amount of people that are now using that, the amount of people, like you said, that it's their, it's their main grocery store. It's their main. General store. Right. Just like they would use, you know, the app for another store. They're going to often, they're, they're in the Dollar General app.
They're, they're using it for deals. They're, you know, getting the delivery right. And the, the delivery is also, uh, you know, not to name names, right. But there's companies that have invested a ton to try to go build like mini distribution centers close to, to lots of people. But Dollar General kind of has 20,000, you know, 20,000 of those within, you know, five miles of, of half of America.
Right. Like that's
Austin Leonard: 75%, not half. It
James Avery: was built in, right?
Austin Leonard: Yeah. 75% of America, James, [00:09:00] 75%, sorry. Sorry. 75%.
James Avery: Yeah. Yeah.
Austin Leonard: And, and you know, that's, that's part of the story. Yeah, absolutely. And, and our partnership with DoorDash has been, uh, a really productive and, and effective one. We, we've helped them extend their reach out to more of America.
Um, I like to say that we're building the last mile of e-commerce for the last mile of America because especially once you get outside of the main urban areas, the ability to tap into the evolution of shopping with same day delivery has been limited to the bigger markets where it's, it's easier to invest in the infrastructure you need to, to deliver because there's more households there.
But our shoppers should also benefit from the time savings and the convenience of delivery. And that's been a huge growth driver for us. And it's a huge focus for, for where we're, we're taking the business.
James Avery: Yeah. And so thinking about when you're, when you're talking, you know, you're out talking to a CPG to a brand, you know, how are, how are they, how are they thinking about Dollar General?
Right? Like, this is, it's kind of a, a way to, I mean, it's reaching a group of people they probably weren't effectively really reaching before.
Austin Leonard: Yeah, in a group, they weren't thinking about [00:10:00] from, from, as they were prioritizing a lot of e-commerce growth, they, they weren't thinking about the opportunity that we have there.
So I think a couple things. One, we've got great partnerships, um, with, uh, you know, the top CPGs. They, they stock our shelves. They, they're a great partner to help get great products to, to our customers, and we've been able to help them drive growth. We, we've got some great brand stories around how we're helping to, to partner to, to grow their sales together at Dollar General.
We're able to have a lot more sophisticated conversation now because they, most of the CBGs have prioritized the. The e-commerce growth lever. 'cause that's the, the future and the evolution of, of retail and it's critical to their business to, to be in those digital baskets. So now we have another way that we can be a growth partner for them with the ability to deliver a lot of the, the digital sales that they're growing and, and that they're aiming for.
And, and specifically the digital tools on DG Media Network have been really critical to make sure that we're able to show that growth and show the incrementality of, of [00:11:00] what we're doing. And we've, we've got great feedback. Great progress and you know, there's, there's a lot of what I would call joint strategic plans that are coming together that allow us to, to, to grow together.
James Avery: Yeah, absolutely. And then how, and you're, you know, thinking about this omnichannel, you know, you talked about some of the existing in-store offsite, you know, on onsite digital. Uh, I think you, you guys recently announced, uh, doing some work with Cusick, right? For like audio in store. How do you, how do you think about the evolution of like the, the in-store kind of media experience?
Austin Leonard: Yeah, well, so because the, the retail media network really is founded on some of the core in-store tactics, and that's one of our key differentiators is just how many stores we have and, and how many people we're able to reach physically. You know, one of the, the first missions I was given when I got here is like, let's figure out how do we take.
The, that number one competitive differentiator that our core asset, how do, how can we leverage that in a way that actually improves the experience for our shoppers and also delivers results for our merchant [00:12:00] teams and our advertisers. And we, they, they had started a pilot. Um, so we've been piloting in-store radio for about two, three years.
We got to about 6,000 stores, which is always fun. And we're like. We piloted with 6,000 stores and people were like, how? Wow. That scale is, is crazy.
James Avery: Yeah. Like more stores than Kroger has, right? Like just the Yeah,
Austin Leonard: exactly. Exactly. It's a, it's a, it's a great opportunity and advantage for us and we were learned a lot from that.
You know, we, we, we certainly learned, uh, the power of being able to reach those stores. We also got a lot of great feedback on what makes this investible from a, from a media standpoint and, and what we like to call investment grade media. And we also know that in order for it to scale, you need to be in more stores.
So even with 6,000 stores, that's less than a third of, of the total store fleet and there's, there's plenty of opportunity. But what we also heard is that in order for this to, to be additive to what we're offering on the ad side, is it really needed to be personalized to [00:13:00] each store as best as possible.
And in order to do that at scale, you actually need pretty sophisticated technology. So we're, we're excited to be expanding out to, to another 6,000 stores. So we will be, uh, one of the largest, uh, in-store radio networks in the US at 12,000 stores, the by July. And the platform that, that we're working with, with Cusic allows us to do more sophisticated planning.
So we've got our product catalog and our POS plugged into their platform so we can actually make sure that when we're building the media plan and the media recommendation that it's a, it's a store that has their product in stock, that we can also deliver the right message at the right day, at the right time based on their category, based on the traffic flow that we see.
And we can also do measurement in real time. And, and what's really important about that is we're we're able to know when someone has checked out and how long it's been since that ad played. And we can then also look at the stores that didn't have a purchase or didn't have in-store radio [00:14:00] playing. So we've got multiple ways and multiple angles to be able to show the value that this is bringing.
And it helps fund the ability to bring music and, and more energy into our stores. So when you think about the ability to improve the shopper experience. You think about the ability to deliver a message that's gonna be relevant for that shopper in the store, for that category, and the ability to cover our store footprint, which, you know, most of our stores are 7,500 to 8,500 square feet.
You can do that in a way that, that other stores can't. Um, yeah. Through the power of audio. And, and that's, that's a big driver for us. And something that I think is, it's gonna be really, really impactful to the results we can deliver in the shopper experience.
James Avery: Yeah. That's awesome. And how are you thinking about, uh, I mean, maybe not specifically at Dollar General, but you know, you obviously you spend a lot of time in the industry.
Uh, you know, you talk to a lot of folks. Like just in general, how do you see in-store kind of evolving, right? Like, I think it's a big question for me when we think about, you know, does AI change online shopping habits? And, you know, for, for stores, you [00:15:00] know, retailers that have physical stores, like, it seems like a big opportunity.
Uh, I'm just curious how you, how you think about the bigger picture there.
Austin Leonard: It's, it's a massive opportunity and I think each retailer will need to decide what is right for their experience. And specifically what type of tools, whether that's audio, whether that's screens, whether that's printed signage.
It's, it's definitely a huge opportunity, I think because it's been, uh, traditionally in that trade and that in-store shopper group, they haven't talked as much to the digital groups as, as the CPGs have evolved. And so I think a lot of folks are starting to, in, on the CBG side especially, they're starting to realize.
Hey, there's a lot of value to that branding and because you can talk to them when they're in the category, when they're at the shelf, there's definitely different ways to provide value. However, if you just throw up a screen and you don't have measurement and you don't have the ability to prove that it's additive to the experience and and driving results, then it's gonna be a much longer growth curve.
And, and that's, that's part of why measurement is going to be the key that [00:16:00] helps unlock more of the, what I would call the national media dollars in the retail environment. And specifically for us, we believe that the measurement that we're able to provide with, with our, our new evolving AI enabled in-store radio network.
Allows us to make it comparable to the tools that a lot of the digital teams are used to using for, for search, for display, and for, for programmatic buy-in. So we think that that will help us accelerate the, the adoption curve.
James Avery: Awesome. Yeah, and I think we, it's kind of ties into the next thing I wanted to talk about, which is, which is that measurement, you know, measurement, incrementality.
There's, you know, there are a lot of focus on this. I know, you know, we've been doing a lot of work on this. You know, how do you, how do you think about, you know, what, what are, what are the types of measurement or what are the approaches that are gonna unlock like the next, the next set of budgets from, from the brands?
Austin Leonard: Yeah. I think the most important thing is it has to be outcome-based. So we have to be able to prove that by investing in this tactic or in this platform, that we are able to drive sales that [00:17:00] they wouldn't have gotten at the store by, by just having their product on the shelf. That's, that's, and that's not DG specific?
That's, that's everywhere. So by having traffic and by having ads, that doesn't mean that you're actually having an impact. So to be able to start to measure, uh, these a lot more effectively and to deliver, uh, standardized measurement according to the definitions, but also trusted methodology. Uh, is, is really key.
Um, and breaking down those silos between our, our shoppers don't shop in silos. They don't think about as, oh, this was a digital ad, or, I was technically a digital shop, but then I bought in brick and mortar. So I think that's, that's where the, the greater industry is going. Uh, and specifically as we start to break down some of the tactics, you, you shouldn't have to run a campaign, uh, differently for onsite versus offsite versus in store.
I believe that bringing those together allows you to deliver a better experience for the advertiser. 'cause you're gonna help minimize waste. You're gonna be able to get to the right frequency against the right audience groups. And you can also tell a story a lot better if, if I [00:18:00] know that I've reached someone on meta or on their favorite website and that I was able to bring them to our app before they came in the store.
And then I know when they're in the store. It allows us to really take that message and and have it flow all the way through so that we're not hitting them with the exact same message. But we're also. Helping that the right context is delivering that right message too.
James Avery: Yeah. I mean, if the right in-store audio ad is playing when you know the, the right set of users are in the store, like, you know, things like that, that, yeah.
If you can tie it all back together, uh, I mean, that's kind of the most compelling opportunity to a brand, right? Like, show me, show me I'm the dollar I'm spending on your offsite, on your onsite, on your in-store. How are these all impacting, you know. Moving products off shelves, right?
Austin Leonard: Yeah. At the end of the day, like how many, how many sales are we moving is most important that the unit velocity, so folks are talking about shopper purchase rate.
I think that's all for all the tools that we have. Those are all critical. And, and I think that the key thing the brands are asking for is help us tell that [00:19:00] story. How we'd like to tell the story, but also in a way that's, that's a little bit more organic or relevant to your shopping or retail environment.
And, you know, easy examples, like you've got, you know, gain is. Is a really popular detergent, uh, with our shoppers. Uh, and they can do a lot of things from a national media to help build up the awareness of, of the, of the power brand and obviously some of their rights to win in the detergent space. Our shoppers should then be able to see that customized in a way that's relevant for them based on the pack size and what we have available at dg.
Uh, they'd also see that brand messaging flow through to the website and then the in store they can see through, you know, the shelf tag or the aisle signage. They can continue to see that brand recognition, but also then hear the brand message, uh, through the power of in-store radio. To me that that's the ultimate way that we can help brands build and, and it'll also impact the sales that we drive for them as well.
James Avery: Yeah. Awesome. How do you think about, like, how does, how does kind of AI play into all of this? [00:20:00] Right? When we think about. Whether it's first party data or, or measurement or, you know, I think some of the, like audio ads right, can just be, be created dynamically using ai. Like, you know, obviously it's what everybody wants to talk about, so we have to have some part of the podcast where we talk about it or nobody will listen.
Yeah. But you know, like, how, how are, how are you, how are you seeing it kind of applied to, you know, the job that you guys are doing.
Austin Leonard: Yeah, I mean, I wanna, I wanna be snarky and, and make some fun jokes about it, but I think at the end of the day, like we, we see AI as a huge enabler. Clearly when you have a data set, uh, across as many stores as we have, some of the core things that are happening behind the scenes are just the ability to crunch that data faster.
Uh, the ability to connect those dots so that you can more accurately build a profile of, of our shopper base, uh, be able to do things like measurement, that's all. Stuff that like, even though it's been powered by machine learning and technically would be ai, it hasn't traditionally been classified as that.
But we've been using it to, you know, build audience models. How do we start to get better at predicting what we think the, our [00:21:00] different customer groups will be interested in versus just reporting on what they just purchased. Um, even just the reporting, what they just purchased and getting those insights is enabled by ai, so we can do it a lot quicker.
Uh, our team on the retail media side has, has actually used it to reduce the amount of time it takes to manually pull together insights, reports so that our analysts can actually spend more time. Translating that into here's what we learned, here's what we need to go do for the next campaign. And helping our sales team be a lot more in tune to the customers for each brand and our partner.
All those things are, are powered by ai. 'cause those tools can actually put the data and the insights into our team's hands a lot faster. And, and that's before we get into, you know, creative, you know, for right, for in store audio. Um, we're actually gonna be using creative to help build out some of the execution of the ads.
It's still gonna be written. The script has to be human. But some of the technology that's out there, you can't tell if it's a, a human voice or non-human voice. And the ability to then [00:22:00] move that to production faster at, at a lower cost for, for the advertisers is really key. Um, but you, you need to be careful to make sure that the, the AI ads.
Continue to still sound relevant to the experience and also, you know, don't sound like ai.
James Avery: Yeah, yeah. But the ability, like, I mean, I think the, it opens up, I think in like creative, right? There's always, there's always lots of constraints, like whether it's, you know, whether it's a banner ad or it's an audio ad or a video ad, you know, the, if we can iterate really quickly with ai, it really makes it, it kind of unlocks that, right?
You can start to say, okay, how targeted can this be? Right? If you have a segment of. You know, 5,000 people in a certain area that has a certain sports team, you're like, oh, well we can actually do a, a custom audio ad tailored to those fans of that sports team. Right. Whereas before you wouldn't go have somebody record that for, you know, 500 different segments, right.
With different teams and different, different segments and stuff like that. So I feel like it unlocks a lot of, like, it unlock, it's a better experience for the, the end user as well. Right. Like I would rather hear. You know, I'd rather hear the latest score [00:23:00] right. As part of an ad where it's like, you couldn't do that if you had somebody sitting there recording it.
Austin Leonard: Absolutely. Yeah. And the ability to tie it directly to the assortment in each store and make sure that it's relevant is, is really key. And, and to your point, like we've done some of that, uh, with, you know, dynamic creative optimization with banner ads and in some video. I think that's where it's, it's easier still to spot some of the AI generated images and yeah, we're working on tools to help make those models get smarter as we, you know, explore how that can be efficient.
I, I think media planning and I think execution is all starting to, to really grow through ai, even when you think about the ability to, to optimize a campaign. So within the trade desk. You know, we've, we've been able to integrate some of our data so that it's easier to optimize the campaigns in flight based on what media is working, based on the cost of the media, based on the audience segments, based on what's converting.
And we think that those tools will continue to evolve.
James Avery: Yeah. Makes [00:24:00] sense. Speaking of the trade desk, like we, uh, you know, I think by the time this podcast comes out, we'll have, we'll have announced a, a kind of partnership that we have where the Trade desk will, uh, we have an integration that they'll be, you'll be able to buy.
Both, you know, offsite, you know, DG powered media, which they do today, but also by directly onsite, you know, kind of through the keval integration onto dg.com and, and the DG app. Like, uh, so this, this is pretty exciting. Like, how do you, how do you think about, or how, how do you, uh, you know, kind of what led to this kind of integration and, and partnership?
Austin Leonard: Yeah, I'm super excited about this. Um. I, I, I like to talk about, it's a little bit of my white whale, so I've, I've been chasing this for a while because I think it's one of the, the key achilles heels of retail media is when you think about we're getting compared against, especially once you get big enough that like you're asking for budgets from that, that compete with social and, and digital platforms and linear tv, there's a, are more established channels.
Those platforms are more established. What we actually are building in retail [00:25:00] media is we're actually building. A central hub that connects into many different platforms and serving an ad in four different places that are four different platforms. Um, that's hard. Yeah. That's your business, connecting lots of channels together that you don't own, um, other than your, your obviously your, your owned and operated inventory on your, your, uh, your app or your website.
So I've really been passionate about the ability to, to leverage a single platform to buy. Um, and actually have, be able to, to look across audiences, measure the reach and frequency more effectively. And specifically offsite and onsite is the absolute perfect place to start because if you're talking to a customer offsite, what you want to do when they get to the site is make sure that the next message, whether it's the landing page or another paid message.
Follows in that flow. And candidly, you should also, from a, an efficiency standpoint, also be able to know how many times you've reached them in both places while the campaign's running, not just after the [00:26:00] fact. And so being able to tie in our own inventory into the, the buys that we're running through the trade desk is, is a huge advancement.
Um, there's, there's not, uh, pretty much anyone else that's, that's doing this in retail media other than like one of the, one of the big ones out in Seattle. And we think it also helps show where we're trying to make it, uh, more impactful to the advertisers and, and also candidly helps our operations team out.
Yeah. So we're, we're excited about this integration.
James Avery: Yeah. And I think, I think it is, it's definitely like first of its kind with, with Trade Desk and, and retailers in this way. And I think, you know, really just a brand to be able to go in and, and traffic these campaigns together, right. Unlock so much. Not just in like workflow, but I agree with you where.
I've always thought it was, it was really crazy where, you know, a brand is buying offsite and then they click through and they end up on a page, and then the next ad they see could be for a competitor. Right. It's a totally different auction. It's a different system. Uh, and so like really be able to control a little bit of
Austin Leonard: that.
It's a marketplace though, so, you know. Yeah,
James Avery: yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:27:00]
Austin Leonard: You gotta, you gotta fight on both sides of the equation to make sure that you've got your brand voice top of mind. Um, but, but a hundred percent agree that, you know, the, the future vision about making it easier to buy. And specifically for DG Media Network, we, we want to find new ways for our advertisers to buy.
And we want them to be able to buy how they wanna buy it. You know, we'll, we'll start with this as, as a huge upgrade, uh, for our managed service campaigns. 'cause it'll allow us to, to really test that out, make sure the creative workflows are there. Um, but we're, we're excited about this integration to eventually.
Give us the option to, to open it up more to self-service through a unified campaign on, on the trade desk for, on onsite and offsite.
James Avery: Yeah. It's awesome. I'm excited. I'm excited to, uh, to, to, uh, launch it and, uh, announce it. I think we'll announce it in a couple weeks, but it'll be, it'll be well before this episode comes out.
Austin Leonard: Yeah. It's all, it's, it'll be hot breaking news or late breaking news based on, uh, how quickly we can get this produced and pushed out. Right?
James Avery: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. All right, so kind of wrapping things up, I'd love to, [00:28:00] um. You know, obviously you've been, you've been running this, but you, you know, we didn't get into like your past, right?
You've, you've got a history of working with a number of retailers. You know what, you know, there's a lot of people out there, a lot of retailers who are building retail media networks, but probably further behind kind of where you guys are. Like, what's the one piece of advice that you'd, you'd give to somebody?
Running a retail media network that's trying to think about what, you know, what should my roadmap look like for the next year? Right? You know, what should I be focused on?
Austin Leonard: It's start with the customer, and I know it's a bit cliche, but I think you need to directly understand what is most important to your customer.
How does your customer act in your retail environments, both digitally and physically? And build from there. So what are the things that you can do to improve their experience? What are the things you can do to add value? Sometimes it's just being able to make sure that you can help them see new products, find the latest offers, or get a coupon that's really impactful to their purchase.
But overall, you gotta start with the customer and work backwards. Because as a retailer, as a commerce brand, that's the core thing that you [00:29:00] can bring to the media market, which is what is unique about your environment and, and how do you deliver something that they can't get somewhere else.
James Avery: I love that.
I think we, we think about that sometimes when we, we think about our customers, the retailers, and it's kind of like, you know, fundamentally a retailer's job is to sell product, right? It's not to sell advertising. Selling advertising helps sell the product. And so we, whenever we're, so, I think in the same way, it's like, you know, your customer fundamentally, their job, their job to be done is.
Get in the store, get what I need, get the best deal on it possible, you know, get, you know, be satisfied with my purchase. Right. And where does advertising support that? It's like a great, great kind of guiding light for, for what you guys are doing.
Austin Leonard: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, appreciate you giving us some time to tell that story and, and what we're working on here, James.
James Avery: Awesome. Thanks for coming on Austin. Thanks for tuning in to unlocking Retail media. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe and share this show with your network. We'll be back soon with more insights to help you navigate the future of retail media. See you next [00:30:00] time.