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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.
Sam Wright: [00:00:00] You don't need to be a behemoth of a, of a business in order to offer a retail media network. I think that, you know, we have customers in the low millions as well as the hundreds of billions, or the billions in revenue, right? Like there's a big scale of players who are coming onto the market, um, and creating retail media networks.
I think the, you know, the headroom is different for every one of these businesses, but I think you can get started and start to build a strong sort of revenue line from advertising. I think you just need that kind of core business, but also a. A route to talk to your customers about, Hey, we want to expand.
We wanna go beyond the business that we do with you today. We wanna drive you customers or drive you more purchases. So, you know, we are bringing this to the market now.
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 the podcast that breaks down how retailers can build smarter data-driven media networks by [00:01:00] aligning with what brands truly need from scalable ad solutions and meaningful metrics to cross channel attribution and programmatic strategy.
Today my guest is Sam Wright, who leads strategy here at Keble. Sam spent the last 14 years working across some of the most interesting companies in commerce and advertising. From digital transformation at eBay to helping build and globalize Klarna media and now advising retailers who are launching and scaling their own retail media networks.
He's seen retail media from every angle as a product leader, a commercial strategist, and now as the person retailers talk with when they're trying to figure out. What good looks like and how to get there. Today we're gonna talk about what it really takes to stand up a retail media business, the biggest mistakes retailers make, what maturity looks like in in a retail media network, and how the space is evolving towards commerce media.
Thanks for joining Sam. Thanks, James. It's absolutely great to be here. It is a, it's, it's really exciting. Uh, I always like a little personal history here. Sam and I, we, we worked together when, uh, Sam was at Klarna. [00:02:00] Uh, and, and we, we were working together with him here at Keval. And now we've got the opportunity to work together again, uh, more directly this time.
Uh, at the same company. Um, comes full
Sam Wright: circle, full circle. Fantastic. Yeah, I've, uh, I've really looked forward to the, uh, the opportunity and, uh, yeah, I mean, really great company from knowing that, already being on the, uh, on the customer side. So great to be here on the insider now as well.
James Avery: Absolutely. And I think, uh, and you know, your, your role is kind of a newer role for us at the company.
And I think it's kind of an exciting thing. We're kind of announcing it on this, this podcast, even though obviously you've been working with customers for a while. I don't think we've talked a lot about it publicly yet, but Sam, we brought Sam in to Keble to really go work with our customers who are busy building world-class commerce, media networks, and for us to have somebody available to.
You know, consult with them at a strategic level, right? Not how to use the software, but really how to think about the challenges and the problems that they have, the business decisions, the strategic [00:03:00] decisions. You know, things like pricing and ad formats, and you know, how do you hire a sales team and how do you structure a team?
So today we're gonna jump into a bunch of that and just go through some of Sam's history of building the Klarna network, but then also, you know, what he's seen across all these different networks that we work with today. So maybe to start, Sam, I'd love to maybe get a, a little bit of background on, you know, kind of really, let's, let's start with Klarna, right?
Like, kind of like building that network inside of a major FinTech player. You know, let's talk about kind of the, the process there. How'd, how'd you do it?
Sam Wright: Yeah. So I mean, it started not really in a, in a retail media light, or certainly I didn't come at the job thinking that it was gonna turn into that, right?
Like, not really knowing the challenge in front of me. Uh, so 2016, um, I joined Klarna. Um, I'd previously worked with the GM of the UK business. So I started in the UK arm at Klarner, um, as marketing. And uh, my role there was super wide [00:04:00] ranging across B2B and B2C. So it was kind of, you were taking everything on.
'cause we had 20 people in the UK at the time. And so, you know, the first part was, and it really kind of leads into the retail media story, is we. Started off by having to recruit a bunch of merchants into the network. So we had, you know, in the UK we had very few players live. Um, we started off making all kinds of mistakes.
We had a buy now pay later finance product initially, which wasn't really a good fit for the market. Was like really clunky. So we had a lot of product work to do to kind of refine down. The experience that we were gonna bring to UK consumers that eventually netted out in like the payment methods that people kind of know and love today from Klarna.
Like the pay in 30 days and the split your payment in three or four in the us. Um, so we did a lot of product work first, and then we really were able to kind of start getting, uh, you know, more and more traction from merchants. As we kind of built that network, we then suddenly, you know, suddenly merchants started to [00:05:00] come to us to say, Hey, we wanna be part of your channels.
Uh, and so it was a very organic growth in terms of, um, you know, it was growing on the back of this other, um, behemoth of a, of a business. Um, you know, and we were doing really well from a payment space perspective, but we were essentially giving away a lot of marketing, right? So it was all value add and we had a.
Then like a un an inflection point, I suppose, where the kind of the scales of uh, or the balance of power or that the network effects started to come into play where we could, you know, then start to say to merchants, Hey, I think you need to to pay for this now. Um, so, so you've sort of, they helped us build that network, but then that network became something bigger.
And, uh, you know, we were then able to kind of go into the, the different sectors that Klarna were really strong in. So fashion, for example, starting then to go more into luxury, to go into beauty, to go into, you know, a bunch of other electronics and so on. A bunch of other sort of, uh, sectors that they're big into today.[00:06:00]
And then to start to monetize that. So, um, you know, my role kind of transformed initially from sort of working on the UK marketing space to then into sort of, uh, what we called like partner marketing or co-marketing. So working on bigger, um, campaigns with the likes of booking.com, the likes of asos. And so real kind of working on different launches from the UK and then also more globally as well.
Some even great fun like brand and above the line type work or collapse with some of these merchants. And then into like delivering marketing plans, which was really was the start of our retail media network where we started to say, Hey, we are gonna sign up to delivering these things for you as part of your kind of.
What is really a JBP, but we kind of had no knowledge of JVPs at that time in, in our business. We were just kind of, you know, flying by the, the seat of our underpants essentially. So, you know, we built those, um, you know, great relationships with merchants and over time we were able to sort of introduce more and more, uh, you know, monetization.[00:07:00]
And then, um, David Sandstrom, the CMO over at Klarna said, Hey, I think we have something here now, and I'd like to start to look at building Klarna Media. Uh, so it was a, a fantastic kind of opportunity for us to, to go from one team. Two teams, uh, you know, eventually you end up with over 120 people. Um, you know, and, and a big piece on both the affiliate side and a growing piece on the advertising side as well.
So yeah, very exciting kind of journey from marketeer to retail media lead.
James Avery: How do you think about, you know, 'cause I think that's a point, probably a, a number of of listeners are at here, which is they're standing up a new network for the first time, right? Like, I think there's obviously a lot of retailers who have had a retail media network for years and years now.
You know, eBay was one of those early ones, you know, back in the day. Yeah. And I know you were at eBay, but you know, if you're kind of coming at this, especially in the kind of FinTech space where we're starting to see a lot more investment, a lot of more companies looking into this, you know, how do you think about that initial.
Uh, [00:08:00] kind of strategy, like that plan obviously at, at clarinet kind of evolved, but now I know you work with so many different companies here at Keville. It's like, what, what is that? You know, how do you think about those early steps of where to get started?
Sam Wright: Yeah. It's a, it's a great question. I think it does depend on, on the business, but you need to have that kind of core business to, um.
In effect, that sort of engine of revenue going first, I think, and then you sort of, when you're looking to optimize or go beyond what you can achieve today and really diversify your revenue, then I think you look to that. You'd also, I think, see. Like we did at Klarna, that kind of push for, hey, we want to start to utilize, we wanna get more out of our relationship with you coming from your brands and your advertisers.
They might not be called your advertisers yet, but they're people you work with and they'll definitely be asking you for more things and you probably won't formalize it into an offering yet. Or if you, if you won't have started to offer things, it's probably very ad hoc and it's delivered by some kind of really old school CMS or maybe homegrown piece of tech that you, you know, you [00:09:00] built.
Um. And you wanna work out like, okay, yes, we could offer some kind of service with this, but actually we need to kind of, it needs to be modernized or it needs to be like, uh, you know, uh, we can't let our one and only campaign manager grind themselves into the ground with this, but the tech, you know, we need something that they can really deliver a lot of different campaigns on.
Uh, so I think that's kind of where it starts. It's like. You'll have those, or organic sort of, you know, a very strong core business and then you want to enhance that. But also you will, I think, already be seeing like some requests from your brands or advertisers probably to say, Hey, I want a, a broader relationship with you, or what else, what other value can you deliver for me?
Yeah,
James Avery: I think it's a great point. It's kind of the, is there like pool in the market, right? And we see this a lot where different marketplaces or different apps that become like a strong channel for a brand. That brand starts reaching out and saying, how do I increase this? How do I deploy? How do I deploy capital here?
Right? How do I get more growth on your marketplace? Um, that's always a [00:10:00] great sign, right? Because if the demand isn't there, I think it's probably hard to just manufacture that demand out of thin air. You really want to have those brands kind of already coming to you, you know, at least a couple, right?
Like some signs of interest in demand.
Sam Wright: Yeah, I think it, it varies like you, like you say, for, for a marketplace who's all about that customer experience, right? Like they, they pride themselves on being able to bring customers and give them a better experience and keep them there. So, you know, their sales pitch becomes more about the number of times that people shop with them and how embedded they are in their loyalty programs and so on.
Um, so I think every business has its own either unique piece of data or customer type. Um, and I think that's where kind of, you don't need to be a. Behemoth of a, of a business in order to offer a retail media network. I think that, you know, we have customers in the low millions as well as the hundreds of millions or the billions in revenue, right?
Like there's a big scale of. F players who are coming onto the market, um, and creating retail media networks. I think the, you know, the [00:11:00] headroom is different for every one of these businesses, but I think you can get started and start to build a strong sort of revenue line from advertising. I think you just need that kind of core business, but also a, a route to talk to your customers about, Hey, we want to expand.
We wanna go beyond the business that we do with you today. We wanna drive you customers or drive you more purchases. So, you know, we are bringing this to the market now.
James Avery: I think one of the things that comes up a lot early on in building a retail media network or commerce media network, but I think never goes away, is the tension between the kind of site usability folks, you know, user experience, the kind of the key product people, right?
The people who are responsible for that e-commerce site or that FinTech site, and then, you know, you're coming in as this retail media group. And you're messing with their stuff, right? You're like, we need to put an ad here. We wanna promote some things. Yeah. How do you, how do you think about that kind of tension and what are some best practices for people running their retail media network to kind of work best with the other side of [00:12:00] the business, that, that kind of keep core product side of the business?
Sam Wright: Yeah, definitely experienced that a lot at Klarna. We were very distributed and we had this sort of, um, you know, it was a larger business, so we had a. Distributed sort of set up. Um, but also I've seen that at some of our customers that we work across as well and, and even more magnified in some cases where things are, you know, very distributed.
I think I'll go start with a solution and then tell you why, but like, it goes back to having really strong, I think, C level and down alignment. Like you need to know where you want to go and what you wanna achieve as a. Uh, a retail media business, you need to all be aligned on the fact that like retail media is going to be a revenue line for you and that, you know, this is the vision for delivering that.
And not just in my experience, not just from the fact that you want to enable that, but also down to the detail of how the things are gonna look. Because when it gets to, uh, you know, typically like a senior leadership team. Everybody really cares about the customer in most cases. Like I've not met a [00:13:00] C-level leader who doesn't care about the customer experience to some degree, like in varying sort of balances.
But, you know, so from everybody, from the chief product officer to the, obviously the Cee o to the, uh, commercial officer care about like what their customers are gonna see right down to the ad format or how relevant an ad is. So I think everybody needs to be aligned around like what's gonna be delivered.
So that makes things a lot easier when you start to, um, you know, go low down into the organization, to the people who are actually building, um, you know, the things, um, from the alignment and also the like, uh, the priority of, of, you know, some of these things in the, in the organization. I think it's super important to, you know, create the ideas, have the agency to kind of, to build out the different formats to build out, like how you're gonna, uh, go to market and the pricing and everything else.
Do that within the sort of the lower levels of the organization. But. Keep having those check-in points back with leadership to make sure that like everybody's on the journey. I think that smooths things [00:14:00] out a lot and makes things go a lot faster. Um, rather than kind of having these big elongated periods of like, Hey, we're working, we're working, we're working and delivering.
But then, you know, something that gets delivered isn't quite sort of what's expected by maybe the senior leadership team. So I think it's, it's super important for me to have that kind of c level alignment, um, you know, all the way through, through a pro, a project like that.
James Avery: Yeah, it makes sense. And I, I think a lot of times these pushes into retail media are coming down from a board level and C level.
So there's usually a sponsor at a high level, but then there's still gonna be fights between the product managers, uh,
Sam Wright: on the ground. To work it out. Yeah, exactly. I think that's great. You know, if you've got a, a really strong sponsor as well, and somebody who can advocate for the teams at the lower levels to, to support you there, I think that's really key to have, like you say, that kind of champion within the organization for that line, especially if it's a new line of business.
Right. I think once you get going and you start to see the dollars or the pounds flowing in, then it becomes a bit more of a no brainer and it, [00:15:00] it's a good idea to everybody, right.
James Avery: Yes. Yeah. Everyone, everyone was, was all in on it. All along when it's, when it's successful. Exactly. How do you think about, and this, I guess this is kind of true for somebody starting out new or even very established, you know, RMNs, uh, how do you think about that kind of org structure of an RMN?
I think we're starting to see it's still pretty diverse across lots of different retailers, but I'm curious how you kind of think about what are the best practices there for how you kind of structure your RN org?
Sam Wright: I think this is a great question and it's one that comes up from our retailers and also others working with retailers in this space.
Um, and as you say, it is very different depending on the type of business you work in. So I've, I've had, I've seen it work in a few different ways and, you know, both from the, the big questions I guess that get asked around like, where does commercial sit and, you know, kind of, is retail media carved out into a completely separate business unit or is [00:16:00] it like.
Somewhat integrated into the rest of the business. Are there shared resources? So I think there's a couple of different models, and one is like, hey, you want as much agency as possible, you wanna enable as much autonomy as possible. So you essentially create a competing organization or a second organization, right?
Which is. Yes, it's part of the parent group, but it's got pretty much full autonomy. It has its own people in all areas, so from sales to ad operations to product to tech, and you really kind of carve that out. So that's kind of one model. I think the pros of that one are, like you say, you can run really fast, but you might ruffle a few feathers in the process with the originating org.
Um, both from a, you know, experience perspective. So like, okay, hey, we wanna put ad units here and. You know, how did the discussion go for resolving those kinds of decisions, but also from a commercials point of view, right? 'cause now all of a sudden you've got essentially the same customer. Let's say you have a, you know, let's take [00:17:00] an example of, you know, that the advertiser is Coca-Cola.
Um, you, you're speaking to Coke over here on fulfilling their product and stocking their product, but also over here, you're now talking to 'em from an ads perspective. They're both commercial conversations, you know, and sometimes these things could conflict because, you know, maybe that not everybody's talking to each other.
So that's one model. And I think that the second model, which I've also seen and can work equally well is, and we actually adopted this one at at, at Klarna. I think it goes a bit slower, but what it utilizes is a sort of. Tries to embed and use as many resources from the existing org as possible. There are some roles like product and tech, which would hire separately and have sort of dedicated resources, but actually try to keep the commercial relationship in one place.
So I think that's the key difference there, is that you are with that view. You have, you know, one. View commercially with a customer. So you have almost all kind of conversations funneled through that sort of lens, and that's a total value [00:18:00] of that customer to you as a business. And you can have those kind of discussions around, hey, we're, um, you know, we're doing this on the payment side, or we're doing this on, um, GMV side.
We're doing this on advertising and you know, you get that kind of single view of how important a customer is to your business. So I think, you know, there's multiple ways of cutting it and, and I think each business, depending on kind of where they've come from, will have a view as to how easy it is to get themselves into one or the other of those kind of models.
And there are, I think, a bunch of variations kind of in between as well.
James Avery: Yeah. And how, and I think it's. I think it's always interesting like when you look at the Klarna, right? I don't know that there was a lot of existing kind of selling to merchants, whereas in like a traditional retailer, you take a grocer.
There's kind of this merchant team that's already doing a bunch of trade dollars. How do you think about, you know, how do retailers think about those trade dollars? Do they move them to retail media? Do they leave them where they are? Do they [00:19:00] have the same group doing the ad sales as was doing the trade negotiations?
Like I think it's one of the, one of kinda the messiest parts that for a lot of retailers to deal with.
Sam Wright: Yeah, I, I think so. And I think we did have a, a kind of similar concept at Klarna where there would be some marketing investment essentially going into, uh, from either side, you know, Hey, we wanna feature in your channels and you wanna feature in our channels, those kinds of things.
So I think, you know, a lot of these contracts are quite, you know, they go back many, many years, right? And they're sort of deeply rooted in how these retailers and brands have worked together over a long period of time. So I think. Whatever the change is coming, it's gonna take a very long time. But I do think that more and more revenue will get moved into a more measurable sort of state.
So parts of those of that JBP or part of that contract, uh, you know, going towards or sort of defining how and where that gets spent in a more granular way. I think over time is kind of where we're going, right? So. Previously, uh, you know, [00:20:00] hey, it's a multimillion dollar contract and we don't mind where you spend it.
You just need to spend it on marketing us, right? So like at a very un granular level, and now getting to a point where actually, hey, we now have a measurable channel to deliver advertising for you, we can show performance. So. Actually let's, you know, be a little bit scientific about this and start to apportion, um, you know, some of those dollars at the end of the day, like the money's coming from the same place, right?
Yes. It might be different accounting lines and different teams that are currently sitting on that budget as whether that be the trade dollars or the, or paid media budget in the, you know, in the marketing teams. But it's all, um, revenue. So I think it's, it's an accounting problem more than, more than anything else.
But over time, I think, um, you know. We will err on the side of let's put this money where it works. And we want to know that things are working. So rather than sort of handing over a big pot of money, we're gonna hand over sort of a pot of money defined to, [00:21:00] to retail media.
James Avery: Yeah. And you really bring in, you know, a lot of times the trade dollars had so little.
Attribution and measurability and, and was kind of, you know, just, just kind of thrown in or, or done as part of negotiation versus actual retail media where you have things like incrementality and, and attribution and, and you can really kind of prove performance results.
Sam Wright: Yeah, absolutely. I think you are, you know, there's always gonna be a huge amount of sort of those kind of co-branded or brand campaigns that you wanna run and be part of.
Like, there's obviously a power in running those and I think more and more brands are sort of going back to that sort of old school, uh, I say old school, but I think it's always been a valuable way of thinking of, of brand versus performance. But I think when it comes to like the performance element of their plan.
People are gonna wanna see more granularity around how that money's being spent and the performance that they get for those investments over time. So I just think it's more of us tracking and kind of better financial [00:22:00] standards in those JVPs over time.
James Avery: Yeah. And so that's a good kind of lead in to my next question, which is really thinking about.
You know, we obviously working with lots of different retailers here, you hear from lots of different brands as well, right? Sometimes it's directly talking to brands. Sometimes it's what we're hearing the brands are asking for from, you know, our customers or retailers that we work with. You know what, what, what are you hearing from brands?
What are brands looking for from a modern retail media network?
Sam Wright: Yeah. So I think, again, it depends a lot on maturity, right? So in some cases you've got, uh, you know, let's just take some of the bigger brands, for example, and some of those represented by some of the agency groups in their buying. You know, those, uh, folks are looking for, uh, incrementality.
They're looking for really trackable. Uh, spend, they're looking for, um, net new customers, new to their brand. Um, you know, they're not looking to, uh, invest in, uh, you know, purchases that would've happened with them anyway, right? So they're looking to try and deploy [00:23:00] that money in, in the smartest way that they can to ensure that they get, uh, new customers.
Uh, I think they're also, um, you know, there's two schools of thought around like how they want to interact with, with the retail media network. One being almost that kind of like, uh, you know, what offering have you got that's as close to say a performance max type offering as possible. So how can I press a button and go inside your retail media network and you just deliver me the best results to kind of low effort?
So that's one kind of school of thought, which I think. More for, um, you know, potentially brands who are less, kind of want to get less under the hood and just want to press play and go and get the best results. The second kind of school of thought is actually I wanna, um, you know, maybe I'm an agency and, and I want to dig right into the targeting.
I wanna dig right into how do I really get the best performance and, and find those new customers. And then, you know, so how much configurability can you give me essentially, and [00:24:00] kind of. What tools can you put in my hands from a self-serve capability? So I think that's also key, right? Like we've seen a lot of, um, you know, retail media networks build their own platforms.
Uh, and I think especially for some of those larger, uh, you know, platforms out there, like as they start to enable more functionality, I think brands and, and agencies are, um, you know, really looking for how they can kind of control the campaign and, and the results for their, for their customers as well.
James Avery: It's a great, it kind of leads to a couple other questions because I think it's one of the other kind of big decision points that people have when they're building their retail media network is do they only go manage service? Do they go self-serve? Do they do self-serve, like a kind of very simple self-serve?
Or do they really, you know, dive deep and support things like Pack for and Sky and, and you know, build really sophisticated tools? Um, you know, when you, when we go in or you go in to talk to a retailer. You know, how do you, how do you help them make those decisions, right? Like kind of the, what's our, what's our, what's our sales [00:25:00] model really gonna be?
Sam Wright: Yeah, so I think it often depends on, um, you know, are they really maxing out a kind of their managed service right now, obviously they have some people delivering campaigns or typically they would have some people delivering, uh, you know, campaigns today, basically, are they getting what they, uh, you know, what they can out of their current sort of level of investment or is their headroom to grow there?
And the way I always kind of think about these challenges are, it's kind of like a series of. Bottlenecks and you are unblocking the river as you go down the river essentially, right? Like you wanna make sure it's flowing, uh, and you're addressing the biggest opportunities first. That sometimes starts with self-serve and an introduction of a product there, because maybe they have a really strong long tail and like they've just been waiting for it for so long.
They can't wait to jump in and start advertising on that brand, on that platform. But, uh, and oftentimes it starts with the fundamentals of the site and the formats that they're offering and like how sold out they are, like their fill rates and so on, and how like efficient their [00:26:00] processes are in terms of their campaign delivery and so on.
So it's not self serve, I don't think is the solve for every situation. Definitely. Um, you know, we see more and more people, uh, going down that route, but there's often a lot that can be done on the managed service side of things before you get there. That makes
James Avery: sense. And that kind of leads into thinking about the maturity of a retail media network.
Um, this is something we've, you know, I think Sam, you and I have talked about this a lot, we talk about a lot at Keval of like really looking at how, uh, you know, where, where people are in that journey from kind of zero, no retail media network to, you know, five probably being Amazon, right? Like probably the best retail media network in the world.
Um, you know. How do you think about those different steps? Like when you're going in and talking to a retailer, what are the first things you're looking at to figure out what's their level of maturity?
Sam Wright: Yeah, so I think, um, you know, the revenue opportunity is a big piece there and I think there's obviously a lot of different elements to that.
And, uh, you know, we're working on our own maturity model for retailers, and I think there's multiple dimensions to that. Um, you know, [00:27:00] that model for, you've got both, like kind of what inventory and formats they're offering, how they're going to market. Kind of what their, um, you know, how sold out they are.
All of these kinds of things before you ever get to more complex uses of first party data and how relevant like their ads are and how some of those auction mechanics are being used and their commercial models and so on. I think's a whole bunch of different elements to that when we really scale back maturity to the bare bones.
I think it's like. How much revenue is your ad program generating in comparison to the rest of your business? Like it boils down to that kind of core question. And I think you can be on a fairly simple, uh, sort of setup and still be doing really well on the revenue side, but then we can also show you like the headroom that you've got, right?
If you, um, maybe move this placement to an auction. Um, you know, there's a potential, like huge upside from doing something like that. So, um, yeah, I think the maturity is. Uh, and, and the model as we see it is like, it's not on one [00:28:00] dimension. It's not a, you're either a level zero or a level five. I think there's more layers to it than that.
Um, and, and yeah, I think, but it comes back to, uh, you can kind of distill it down to that kind of the revenue opportunity, I think for, for that business to grow. Once you look, you know, once you evaluate those different layers.
James Avery: Yeah, and I think it's really interesting. I totally agree. And you'll talk to a retailer who has like a very sophisticated attribution and measurement model and system, and then have some very basic.
Display ad units and that's it, right? Yeah. And so there's just a different kind of, you know, and then you can have another retailer that has branded shelf and branded shelf video and really innovative units. And then just really behind on kind of attribution and measurement. And so I agree with you, it's kind of very inconsistent across the different vectors.
Um, but also going back to, you know, what's your percentage of GMV is probably just the greatest indicator of the maturity of your network.
Sam Wright: Yeah, for sure. I think when you, you know, you talk about those kind of ad units as well and they sort also like kind of the root to [00:29:00] the market with those. Right. So, um, you know, we work with, um, some retailers who.
They almost offer every placement or every experience they have is through a different route, through a different platform, through a different, like there's, there's a, you know, some work to do to kind of tie those things together. And I think once you have that right, you can then start to introduce an advertiser on, say, sponsored listings, a sponsored product placement, and then, you know, migrate them across and cross sell them or upsell 'em to some of your other ad products like the, the branded shelf or, or video or whatever it might be.
Um. So at the moment though, a lot of that, because it is so disparate in, in many cases, it's quite hard to, um, you know, to migrate or to upsell, uh, you know, your advertising to kind of grow them into, into new products. So I think that kind of unification is quite, is quite key as well. So access and availability, um, of those ad, um, products quite important.
James Avery: Awesome. I think, uh, something else that, you know, I think kind of shifting away [00:30:00] from traditional retail media. Uh, something we're starting to see a lot more of now is, you know. FinTech is, you know, what we call it, financial media networks or commerce media or all these different names for it. Um, you know, obviously with people like PayPal, we had Mark Grether on like an earlier episode.
Um, you know, you're seeing it from other kind of buy now, pay later. Uh, you know, you were kind of at the forefront of this with Klarna. I think Klarna was one of the first, you know, kind of financial media networks or commerce media networks, um, around. And so I think now that, you know, it's kind of hitting mainstream, right?
Uh. You know, what are kind of the key differences you see in, in kind of looking at building something on a, you know, FinTech or, you know, bank, uh, versus like a traditional retailer.
Sam Wright: Yeah, I love the FinTech space because it sits at this great position and I think a a, as others do as well in this space, they're sitting on a two-sided network, so they've got both the advertiser and the customer, but they also have, the key thing about most of these players is that they [00:31:00] have this transactional level data, and I think Mark Greta talks about it as the transaction graph.
Klarna certainly sort of, I think ever before they. Even before that, they thought of themselves as a, as a, as a retail media player. They, uh, or a financial media network, as you say. Like they understood the value of having skew level data on transactions. So not just, Hey, you bought at X but you bought at X and you bought all of these things.
Um, and so that kind of skew level data across retailer becomes really powerful, right? So I think that's, um, that's something that your, your Ty, your bank might not necessarily get. But somebody who is deeply embedded in the site and that experience gets that kind of line item data through, that's what really makes them powerful.
And I think, um, you know, gives them that insight to what you're shopping, you're browsing, what you're clicking, you know, uh, in your experience. And I think, you know, PayPal are building more and more shopping type services. Uh, and certainly Klarna went down that, [00:32:00] um, route as well. So how do we bring better consumer experiences and go, you know.
Probably go outside a bit from our financial box into the world of shopping and kind of reach as far into that space as we possibly can. Um, you know, there's a few re routes you can go though as a, as a player there, right? You can pivot to more kind of financial services and go down the route of offering more kind of credit and mortgages and loans and so on.
Or you can kind of go that consumer angle into shopping deals, offers. There's a bunch of different sort of business models that you can look at there. Um, and I think the shopping one was really interesting for Klarna and not my brainchild, but the team there built, you know, their own browser inside the app.
So almost a fully functional browser, but enabled us to kind of keep users in that experience. But also, um, you know, shopping with Klarna and making sure that they kind of, or as best as possible, transact with Klarna when they get to the checkout. So I think, you know, PayPal will do similar in terms of their reach out [00:33:00] into shopping.
I think they've had a, a number of different efforts there. Uh, and you know, and what we're seeing with them from shoppable ads is really exciting. I think nobody's really been able to crack that yet. So I think that would be a great, uh, step if we can see that from, from them. Um, and, and really have, you know, that become a big thing in the market.
And I think that also then leans into. Um, you know, those kind of shoppable ad formats I think will probably end up in, in the GPTs of the world, um, you know, in the next few years as well. So maybe there's a partnership there to tie up.
James Avery: We almost made it all the way through without talking about ai. Uh, it was close.
Yeah, but I, I totally agree. Like, I think there's, you know, like these. Banks, credit cards, payment platforms, uh, you know, there's really kind of a big opportunity, especially as they transition, you know, a lot of them transition from kind of the old offers kind of approach, right? Of just a, you know, a wall of untargeted offers that, you know, somebody has [00:34:00] to go in and click through versus, you know, how do you really use that first party data to deliver a much better either shopping experience or ad experience, or even an offer experience.
Uh, but I think we're at, we're kind of like the very beginning stages of what's gonna be an exciting couple years, uh, and kind of growth of these new kind of commerce media or financial media networks or whatever, whatever we all decide to call 'em in the long run.
Sam Wright: Yeah, absolutely. I think there's, for those financial media services, like obviously privacy is absolute key, so it makes a lot of sense that they're looking at retail media, working with first party data.
Doing it all really securely and everything else. But I also think that more and more they're focusing now on the customer experience. Big thing, you know, a theme at Klarna, but I'm, I'm sure it's a theme at PayPal and others as well, is we want to offer these services, but we don't really want to be kind of considered a traditional bank and we want to be a little bit more, you know, we wanna take a few more risks and build new products.
We want to, you know, build new offerings. So I think there's a velocity there that you don't get with a traditional bank, right? Like. Um, [00:35:00] so, so those, that's why I think the fintechs typically are quite exciting. Yeah, absolutely.
James Avery: Well, this has, this has been awesome, Sam. I really appreciate you coming on.
Obviously we work closely together, but it's fun to have the conversation here for everybody else to hear. Um, and I also wanna throw out there, I think if you're listening to this and you're a marketplace, you're a retailer, you're a FinTech company, and you want to have an hour conversation with Sam and talk about kind of your strategy, what you're working on.
Just reach out to us at Keval and we will get that set up. Um, I think we'd love to be helpful even if you're not a current customer of ours. And so, you know, please reach out. We'll put a link in the show notes or just, you know, reach out on the website, but we can definitely get that set up and you kind of get some more specific feedback and advice from Sam.
Thanks James. 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 [00:36:00] time.