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10 minutes of expert insights every weekday. Your morning ritual for staying ahead in retail media.
Its the end
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[00:00:00] Kiri Masters: It is my last post of the year. Can you believe I only started Retail Media Breakfast Club in January this year? I can't. In fact, today I got a notice from my podcast [00:00:15] hosting company that we have passed 50,000 podcast downloads, and sometimes when I go in and look at who's subscribing to my newsletter or following along on LinkedIn, my stomach kind of drops a little [00:00:30] bit.
[00:00:30] There's all kinds of people reading this and tuning in. Who knew? Retail media could be so interesting to so many people and have the occasional dash of drama too. Today in this last episode of the year, [00:00:45] I'm gonna share some of my personal lessons from this year.
[00:00:49] But first I'm going to share a quick story about one of my favorite bands, vampire Weekend. When Vampire Weekend First formed in the [00:01:00] dorm rooms of Columbia University. Chris Thompson wasn't supposed to be the drummer. He was a guitarist in a band. He picked up the drumsticks when Vampire Weekend booked their first gig because they couldn't find [00:01:15] another drummer and he had never drummed before, but he took what he knew from being a guitarist and got started.
[00:01:24] Vampire Weekend, went on to have three number one albums in the [00:01:30] US and I feel like that is. Many of us in retail media, we didn't go to university for this. Most of us fell into it by necessity or curiosity, either coming from [00:01:45] inside a retailer or from another era of ad tech or like me, from working with brands on one specific advertising platform.
[00:01:55] Retail media might be a function that has emerged fairly [00:02:00] recently, and it has certainly evolved rapidly in the last few years, but with ai, it's going to change right up again. And just like Chris Thompson, we're all just making it up as we go along.
[00:02:13] So with that in mind, I'm gonna share [00:02:15] five or six takeaways I've learned from running an independent daily or near daily newsletter and podcast. Let's jump in.
[00:02:23]
[00:02:25] Kiri Masters: So first of all, we are all beginners.
[00:02:27] Just like Chris Thompson, there's really [00:02:30] only a handful of people who have spent. More than 10 years in retail media. Most of us come from somewhere else, from another part of Ad Tech coming up through retail and veering into this weird world of [00:02:45] advertising, I've learned that we all come with a sliver of expertise and experience that colors our understanding of the industry and that.
[00:02:57] We may not understand the [00:03:00] motivations or perspectives of all of the other sides of the industry.
[00:03:04] For me personally, I had a huge blind spot around ad tech, and I've really had to stretch my brain in ways [00:03:15] this year to understand that more prior to. Retail Media Breakfast Club. I founded and owned for several years, a marketing agency that was more or less devoted, at least in the initial [00:03:30] years to the Amazon platform.
[00:03:32] And Amazon doesn't really have any external ad tech besides some of the, um, the media buying technology that they integrate with. On the front end, it's just Amazon. All, [00:03:45] All the way through a fully custom built ad platform. So when I started to learn more about how other retailers had set up their technology ecosystem, I just felt like the first day of school learning [00:04:00] about what is an SSP, what is an ad server?
[00:04:03] Why? Are things set up differently? How does it really work with managed service versus self-service? It was a whole new paradigm for me, and I'll be honest, it [00:04:15] it took me a while to really wrap my head around it and I eventually, um. Put some diagrams together showing like the flow of funds from when a dollar gets bought on retail media to how it shows up [00:04:30] on a page.
[00:04:31] Just so I could understand it myself. I didn't really see, I couldn't really find a diagram that really made sense to me, that explained how that worked. And I even though it, I kind of felt like this might make me look a bit [00:04:45] stupid or like a beginner. I just felt like, you know what? I am a beginner and.
[00:04:50] I need to map this out. If I don't understand this, maybe there's other people out there that don't understand this as well, and I was honestly shocked the number of people who [00:05:00] even coming from ad tech or coming from places, I thought, surely this person knows how everything works under the hood.
[00:05:08] A lot of people, it turns out really didn't. They kind of had to skip that elementary [00:05:15] stage of understanding at a, at a really high level how it all works. So, um, that was really important for me to hear because. It finally made me realize, oh, we really don't [00:05:30] necessarily understand the perspectives or incentives of all of the different people in this industry.
[00:05:36] And so that's what I have endeavored to do this year is sort of go around the horn. Get the perspectives of different stakeholders and share [00:05:45] them back with everyone so that we can kind of have a little bit more empathy as to maybe why our counterparts behave the way that they do, why they make the decisions that they do.
[00:05:55] And I think if we can walk a mile in someone else's shoes, we can [00:06:00] have a better relationship and we can have better outcomes. Miracle Ads is the only retail media solution designed for both one P and three P [00:06:15] Marketplace brands. Why does that matter? Marketplace sellers demand a seamless advertiser experience that still offers full funnel ad formats, and retailers need a flexible solution that allows you to scale [00:06:30] your media business.
[00:06:31] Learn more@miracle.com. That's M-I-R-A-K l.com.
[00:06:39] All right, moving on to the daily grind. A lot of people make [00:06:45] this comment, wow, it must be so difficult shipping a piece of content every day, and I have shifted down from five days a week to four days a week since the start of the year, because I found that not a whole lot of people were listening to the podcast or reading the newsletter on a Friday.
[00:06:59] So I just [00:07:00] quietly shifted down to four days a week. But it is still really, really hard. It is as hard as it sounds. And to deal with that, I take two long breaks each year. Um, so I'm just kind of sprinting [00:07:15] for a few months at a time before I take a break. And I'm in fact coming up to my second break of the year.
[00:07:20] I'm going on vacation tomorrow, um, back to Australia for Christmas, and by the end of it I get kind of sick of [00:07:30] talking about all this stuff. ~There. I said it.~
[00:07:31] ~Okay ~Okay there I said it.
[00:07:33] As of right now, it's the day before my last day. I'm totally run down. I feel really sick, actually. I've just been in bed all day watching trashy television [00:07:45] 'cause I just, my body is start, is just putting up a real fight right now. But it is, it is challenging.
[00:07:52] I have found personally, this is a way for me to make this work. I really find what I do quite [00:08:00] fulfilling. I love connecting with people about the industry and hearing their challenges and trying to make things not necessarily better and solving the world's problems, but helping people to feel heard and understood.
[00:08:14] Um, [00:08:15] is very rewarding, but. I do find I really need that break a couple of times a year. So that is a little bit about, I guess, knowing what my limits are, making sure that I can keep doing it for the long term. [00:08:30] And that relates onto my third point, which is. Make the main thing. The main thing. So people follow me for this daily content, and if that doesn't happen, I haven't fulfilled my promise and the whole thing falls down.
[00:08:43] So I have to [00:08:45] protect my time and I've had to say no to a whole bunch of things that sounded really fun and I would really like to do, but it would ultimately pull me away from putting content together every day, which is the whole sort of middle part of the flywheel. ~I have found this year is that quantity is quality.~
[00:08:59] ~And so, and ~[00:09:00] so, and that brings me on to a related point that I've learned this year, which is quantity is quality. Some of my articles take. Eight hours to research, [00:09:15] interview thinking, and you know, putting in some mooching time as well to that. And some articles take two hours because I've planned my time very poorly and that's all I have to work with.
[00:09:29] And something [00:09:30] has to go out the next day. So there seems to be less of a correlation between the time spent and the popularity of a post. I've also found in terms of quantity, that the motion and the [00:09:45] discipline of creating one or more pieces of content every day inevitably forces some inquiry on a topic.
[00:09:55] As you can imagine, if it's just kind of putting in the reps, sometimes I have a [00:10:00] breakthrough idea. Sometimes it's just the smallest, most incremental build on an existing idea, but the act of showing up every day creates momentum. That careful planning months in advance of every, [00:10:15] everything that I'm gonna talk about, never really could
[00:10:17] Another point of discovery is that the gold is in the comments. I'm so pleased these days to get a lot of thoughtful comments on my content, and that means sometimes plenty of [00:10:30] people disagreeing too. And although I would love to be able to put something fully formed and complete out there every day, the reality is even if I had all the time in the world, I would never think of everything.[00:10:45]
[00:10:45] No, every angle. Understand everyone's POV. So I love that when I post something in the morning, it often becomes the start of a bigger conversation.
[00:10:57] So I love that. I love, I love this [00:11:00] being a jumping off point for some bigger industry discussions.
[00:11:05] Two more points. Second to last one is LinkedIn live videos. This is something I've been experimenting with in the last quarter of [00:11:15] 2025. This is really cool because as you know, I don't do interview podcasts, but I have found doing these LinkedIn lives is really fun because we can invite people along, get some live conversation going, get some engagement happening, [00:11:30] And then that, that is sort of, uh, audience formed content. So I was able to do a few of these at the end of 2025 and plan to do more next year. So stay tuned to that. And the final point is drama. Drama [00:11:45] is great for engagement, but it is taxing on the psyche. I've had some really fun beefs this year. One of them being retail media is mid where, uh, I got into a little tiff with Jason [00:12:00] Goldberg and then also the Celebrity Death match at Cannes with Colin Lewis and Andrew Lipman.
[00:12:07] Tons of fun. And then I've also had. Some more serious disagreements and I do have to consider each time, is this worth [00:12:15] it? Is this a hill I'm prepared to die on? But on the other hand, I'm not here to make bland content. There is enough of that out there already. If everything was working great and everyone got along, there's no reason for me to be [00:12:30] analyzing it.
[00:12:31] So that's a little, that's a personal line that I've had to kind of figure out this year.
[00:12:37] So bringing this all together, I wanna say thank you for tuning in to Retail Media Breakfast Club, whether you've been here right from the beginning or you're [00:12:45] just starting to tune in.
[00:12:46] Thanks for coming along for the ride. And I just wanna leave you with one little thought, which is
[00:12:52] I hope you have a wonderful holiday break. I hope you are kind to yourself. I hope in next year we are kind to [00:13:00] ourselves, helpful to one another while we reinvent our industry. Catch you next year.
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