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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.
Gareth Menton: [00:00:00] Not everybody is a fan of ads. Not everyone is a fan of retail media. Luckily, our C-level are a big fan of retail media and of ads on the system because I'm making all those ads as relevant as possible, and when we have sponsored ads on our platform, they are relevant. So if you put in a filter and you want to see SUVs in a.
Blue color and has four doors, you're gonna be shown a sponsored ad that is an SUV blue color and four doors. So I'm not gonna show you something that's not relevant to your search. And I think that is really key to making it work is relevance to the user, making sure the product is fit for purpose.
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.
All right. Welcome to unlocking Retail Media. Uh, today I'm excited to talk with someone who's lived the evolution of retail media from multiple angles, traditional tech, product, food delivery, and now the automotive space. Uh, Gareth Minton leads retail media product at Carlisle, where he's help. He's helping a huge automated marketplace monetize shopper intent.
Before that, he launched the retail media business at just eat across multiple markets. Gareth is one of the clearest thinkers on where this space is headed, especially the shift from retail media to commerce media and how AI is gonna reshape the buying journey.
Gareth Menton: Welcome to the show, Gareth. Great to see you again, James.
James Avery: Awesome. So, yeah, it's great. Great to have you on. Uh, been as I'm excited to kind of chat about your background and, and the different retailers and marketplaces that you've worked with. So maybe it'd be helpful if you just give us a little bit of your background, where you, where you started, and retail media and the last couple networks that you've worked on.[00:02:00]
Gareth Menton: Yeah, absolutely. And great to be here and, uh, I, I have. Fallen into retail media. It was kind of by accident. I have always been in a product development, product management type background. When I joined, just Eat, probably about six years ago now, I joined the Commercial Growth Team, and within Commercial Growth was a small business, which was the retail media.
Development team, right? Back then, it wasn't even called retail media as part of Just Eat. It was just a sponsored ads platform that was making a little bit of money while working for Just Eat. That grew rapidly, that retail media network grew rapidly. The. Transactions grew rapidly and the revenue grew up rapidly.
When the company started seeing this revenue, they scaled the retail media part of the business. I helped scale the retail media part of the business there, and that's where I kind of fell into retail media and the growth of it over the last six or so years. Uh, so. It was from a traditional product background, but it's [00:03:00] evolved into more of a retail media focused and is now purely retail media focused.
Um, product background. Um, I also have a, a doctorate in products in my doctorates commercializing digital products in the multinational context. And a lot of that was focused on retail media as well. Uh, I completed that last year, so very much into the theoretical part of it as well as the actually making it happen part.
Um, so that, that was something that I did too. Um, and also have a very. Much commercial focused background, um, in terms of MBA that I did many years ago too. So I'm kind of in this from two different perspectives from the, the commercial side. But I really love and enjoy building commercial products that are relative to the people that use them.
So I fell into retail media, but I love their industry and I think it's, uh, it's evolving day by day.
James Avery: Awesome. And so for, I know for all our American listeners, just eat is really kind of similar to like a DoorDash, right?
Gareth Menton: Yeah, yeah. It, it is. So just Eat takeaway.com [00:04:00] is a global food delivery marketplace.
They actually acquired a company within. The US many years ago, but have since sold it. So they had GrubHub in the us it was GrubHub that, that just eat where the owners of have f since sold it. But it's a global food delivery marketplace. Um, very transactional based. Um, so very different to what I'm doing now.
James Avery: Yeah, so let's, let's jump into that. I think that's one of the interesting things for us to chat about is, you know, retail media spans these different verticals and I think it looks, it can look very different in different applications. So starting out in just eat, helping launch their retail media, you've now gone to Car.
Wow.
Gareth Menton: Yes, I'm at Cardwell now and, uh, very different. It's a marketplace, but a very different marketplace. I think the similarities between them is user intent. So a user comes onto the platform looking to do something and that person is looking to purchase something at Just Eat. It was very much on the spur of the moment decisions.
Um, and that's you. And for the retail media [00:05:00] network that's capturing that, that user intent towards the end of the transaction journey when they're buying food. In Calwell it's a very different, because it's a very much methodical way of buying a car. It's much bigger purchase and it's done over a longer time period.
So the retail media network is, has to be different for that type of user. It's, it's also high intent. The users have a longer journey. So advertisers along this journey have to try and gather people's interest, gather people's thoughts, and get the brand recognized and later on follow them through that journey through to purchase at the end.
And that's, that's the exciting thing about this. I feel like many other industries have ridden the wave of the retail media, commerce, media growth, and I feel like automotive is. At the start of that journey, um, we've, we've used KE for our sponsored ads within this journey and it's, it's [00:06:00] going really well, but there's still a lot more to do.
So I always feel like the sponsored ads is kind of the start of the journey, a sponsored product at the start of the journey. And now we're working on our display media. We're working on offsite media. It's an exciting space to be, but it's very different marketplaces and very different user journeys.
James Avery: Yeah. So how do you think about that? Because, you know, definitely, like you said, with just eat, you know, it's like I'm, I'm going in, I'm gonna order something for dinner. I'm looking at my options. I am, you know, maybe I already selected pizza, you know, and now it's, it's kind of letting Pizza Hut and other people compete for my order in a way.
Whereas with Car Wow. Which for our. American listeners again, is more of a, like an Edmonds or a cars.com, right? Like I'm, I'm going there to research. Is it new and used, like, maybe a little bit about like, kind of the context for, for, you know, who are, who are the advertisers in that case then, right? Is it the car brands, is it the dealerships?
Is it used cars? Maybe walk us through a little bit of the like commercial model.
Gareth Menton: Yeah, absolutely. So Umwell [00:07:00] is a. Global automotive marketplace. So we have offices in Germany, Spain, Portugal, and the uk. We work on new used and leasing vehicles, and we have a lot of cars on our platform. People can then go onto the platform and either look at a new or used or a leasing car and eventually buy the car on the platform.
So we have two types of advertisers on our platform given that. So we have a. A OEM, which is original equipment manufacturer. These are the brands like Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, all the big brands. They are advertisers and they want to advertise on our platform, usually in forms of display advertising or video advertising on the platform.
And they are some of our major contributors to our media. Spend. Currently, we have a sales team who go out and sell these advertising spaces to them. The other side of the [00:08:00] spectrum is we have car dealerships. So car dealerships actually have the cars on the platform, and they are the ones we use to sell sponsored ads to.
So if a dealership has 30,000 vehicles, they want. Certain vehicles to be more prominent on the page, we will use kettle's ad server and we will then promote those cars on the page. So that's how the model works. We make revenue from the dealerships because we sell their vehicles, but we also make money media revenue from the different brands.
So there's two different categories in which we make the revenue. So yeah, it's two different avenues that we go down to create the retail media revenue.
James Avery: Yeah. And it sounds like, I mean, thinking about those two different use cases, the success measurement is probably different, right? Like how are brands kind of measuring success, right?
If I'm Toyota or, or Volkswagen. And how does that differ from if I'm a dealer?
Gareth Menton: Initially, the brands wanted to have share of voice market share, [00:09:00] and that was all about impressions on the platform that we give them. And dealerships, were all about sales. So it's all about the end metrics, about the leads and sales, and that's where the sponsored ads journey helps.
But we've found that with the way the world is moving, brands also want to be able to measure sales. To what they are doing. And that's the change within retail media recently is that the performance goals are across the board. It's not only from the dealers, the brand also wants performance goals too.
And now we can actually measure that as well. So just for an example, we currently run a connected TV campaign through a clean room, and we are now advertising using our first party data, advertising it with ITV, which is a. For, for the US people, it's a, it's a a TV channel within the uk and we are matching audiences with ITV and actually serving ads to people who have been on our platform [00:10:00] and serving it to them on a different platform.
So finding the user where they are basically offsite and offsite advertising. And what we've managed to do is we're using a tracking company called Surface Three. They are in the automotive industry. And we can actually now track a user who's been. Via hashed emails and all the rest of it. We can actually track a user who's looked at the ad online through their connected tv.
And if that user comes back and is on our site, we can actually track them back to our site all the way through to a sale. So if Volkswagen did a campaign on ITV, we can monitor if that ad has been seen by a user and all the way through to our site and a sale. So it's the full end-to-end journey and I think that's where the things are changing is the brands want to see performance measurement.
At the end of the day as well. Um, initially it was always that they just wanted to see, uh, share of voice share of markets improving, but now we are seeing that they want to see sales and performance goals too.
James Avery: Yeah, that's, I mean, that's [00:11:00] awesome to be able to, I mean, I think that's what we see with a lot of offsite, right?
Is really making sure that you can prove the value of that first party data, right? So essentially somebody's been on car, wow, maybe they've been looking at sedans. You can then target that group on ITV. Then track that, hey, they came back and you know, previously they hadn't looked at a Volkswagen, but now they went in and looked at a Volkswagen, eventually bought one.
Uh, and be able to actually attribute that back to what was traditional branding spend, right? Like, you know, if you're just buying TV ads, right? You're just kind of looking for general brand uplift.
Gareth Menton: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, I think a lot of off sites is that with that, now we've got such great first party data within Kawell, just to give you a bit of perspective.
We have a publishing side of the business as well. So we, we acquired, uh, probably about 18 months ago, we acquired a business called Auto Via and they have a two publications, auto Express and Evo. They two car manufacturing or car publications. And we can actually, that's very top of funnel. So that's where somebody starts researching into what type of vehicles [00:12:00] they want.
But that's really valuable information and first party data for us to say, okay, you've started at the top of the funnel and you're looking at these vehicles. We can use that data. Track them through their journey to serve them the right ads at the right time, at the right place. So when somebody is online and they were on our platform looking at electric vehicles, plugin hybrids, for example, and a certain make and model, if they are searching on a news site somewhere, we can actually serve them an ad for that.
Exact make and model that they were researching just to refine that journey for them a little bit more and help the advertiser make more considered decisions about what they want to advertise to the end user. Um, so I, I feel like our first party data is really, really good and we are trying to use it a lot more to make, um, better advertising journeys for consumers as well as advertisers.
James Avery: Yeah, no, I think that's kind of the testament to when we talk to retailers or commerce media [00:13:00] or somebody exploring this, it always goes back to what's the quality of your first party data. Like the quality of it and the, the value of it.
Gareth Menton: Yeah.
James Avery: Right. And so I think when you, you probably comparing, uh, you know, if we kind of continue this little path of comparing these two experiences, right?
Like I think you look at just eat versus car. Wow. And you think about your first party data. Just eat clearly has some valuable first party data. You know, where somebody lives, you know, what kind of food they order, but you know, you're talking about a $20 transaction, right? Or for, for my family, like $80.
Uh, but you know when, uh, but when you, you know, car Wow. It's like you're, you're talking about a 20 to $80,000 transaction. Like it's a, it's a, a much higher value buyer intent difference there, right?
Gareth Menton: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's one of the biggest differences between the two marketplaces is the value of the transaction is just the scale is not comparable.
And I feel that's why within just eat, that's why the focus was on [00:14:00] sponsored ads because it was very transactional. Um, and that's where the journey was going. So you would focus on the restaurant owners wanting to sponsor themselves up. The SERP wears within car while the, the transactions are so much more valuable that you'd have high intent audiences and the brands are willing to pay a lot more for that in terms of display media.
So yeah, very, very different. But yeah, that you're absolutely right.
James Avery: Are you able to, uh, are you able to remove. People from the dataset when the transaction's complete. 'cause probably that's another difference between the two is that, you know, I might order from just eat, you know, five times a week, but chances are I buy a car and then I'm, I'm done for a while.
Gareth Menton: Yeah, the average, the average person actually changes cars every four years. So it's a really long transaction process between events. So we don't, we don't remove them because we have a lot of people who still [00:15:00] like to. Look at cars and research cars and you know, the buying journey never ends. They might, they might have a son or a daughter or a mother or a father that they wanna buy a car for.
So we try not to take them off the data sets. We try and keep them because that journey we feel will continue at some point again, and we can grab them at the top of the funnel again when they start researching different makes and models. So. And it's not something that we do, but it's such a long process to buy a car and it's so considered that we, we need to keep that, we keep that data on our platform.
James Avery: Yeah, that makes sense. And then you mentioned earlier something you said, I think, I think this probably ties to more the dealership side, but the outcome, it sounds like you can actually buy a car through the platform. Or the other outcome is a lead, I assume, like a, I wanna, I want somebody to call me, or I want to come into the dealership and test drive.
Gareth Menton: Yeah.
James Avery: How does, but you can't actually buy a car completely through the platform. We,
Gareth Menton: no, uh, that, that's one thing that we don't, we don't actually hold any stock. We don't [00:16:00] actually sell cars on our platform. We provide leads to the dealerships, the, the dealerships pay us per lead that they get, and that's where we make our money from.
We actually have a different side of the business as well. Which is called Sell My Car. There's two, there's two sides of our business. There's Get your Car and Sell my car and you can actually sell your car on our platform as well. So, okay, if you have a car that is for sale and you wanna sell your car, we have a, A platform on our platform, you can actually sell this car, upload photos, put all the information in, everything is set up on the system for you to go.
And then once a day we have an auction. And during this auction process, we have the dealerships who are cars on our platform of they can actually buy cars. So for example, you selling your car, the dealership will then come in and buy the car from us. So every afternoon at three o'clock there's an auction and the dealerships can come in and place an offer on the certain cars that we have on the platform so that they can then upload them onto our platform again and sell them.
It's a bit of [00:17:00] a, a, a circle. So we've got a buying platform and a selling platform, but we don't actually. Sell any cars to the public, we provide leads to the dealerships that we make our money from that way.
James Avery: Yeah, that makes sense. I've only heard of, I feel like Tesla and a couple of others that actually let you just, you know.
Via car or strictly online. Uh, so I,
Gareth Menton: yeah, funny you mentioned that. I think Amazon in the US have started selling cars on their platform in a few states. Uh, so I think that there's certain areas that they want to do that more. It's something that has been done in the past. It's also something that was done in the UK with a certain company, but that didn't do so well either.
So I'm not gonna talk too much about that. But it wasn't, it wasn't a great business model.
James Avery: Yeah, no, I think there's, there's a lot of challenges with that for sure. And I think even we talk about this when it comes to other parts of retail media of like, as we think about. Changes in buying behavior, people ordering things, e-commerce, there's a lot of things that people are still gonna go see and touch [00:18:00] and feel before they buy, right?
Like I think cars are probably top of that list where, I don't know too many people that would buy a, you know, a new or used car without. Sitting in the seat first and feeling the steering wheel and driving it around the block.
Gareth Menton: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's why this model works because we provide the leads to the dealerships.
They are the ones who are the experts in the car itself, and they can arrange test drives and things like that, but. I sometimes think to myself, I wonder if that is changing. The new generation do a lot of things online and purchase things online, so maybe in 10 years time it's something that you can buy without looking at it.
But for me, and I think the majority of the world, I think it's something that you'd want to feel and see and test drive before you actually go and buy it.
James Avery: Yeah, absolutely. Um. Yeah. And so, uh, that leads to another, another question I had is kind of thinking about, you know, we've kind of gone through like what the dynamics are, right?
Like the dealers and the brands and the different levels of performance [00:19:00] as you kind of came into Carle and were kind of designing this program. Like how did you decide, like what approach to take? Like what's your kind of, you know, strategic plan on how you're rolling these different features out?
Gareth Menton: Yeah, it's, it's tricky.
The, um. Every stakeholder wants something to happen fast. Everybody wants revenue immediately, and I think you need to build something that is valuable for both the end user and for the advertiser. And the way you can do that is measurement. So you need to be able to. Give proper measurement. And I think it starts with data.
So getting the right measurements in place, getting the right data in place, getting the right ad tech provider on on board. So in this case we used KE and, and, and the team are great and help us getting the ad service set up. Um, so having those expertise to be able to support you and help you through the process was really, really useful.
I think we started with our sponsored ads recently and it's growing rapidly [00:20:00] and I. Feel that the big thing is to get buy-in from the rest of the business. So getting buy-in from the wider business as to the potential of retail media, it's not difficult when you show them the potential numbers. So it was something that took off quite rapidly, but that was the start.
We are now scaling to offsite, offsites, retail media. Propositions and our connected TV platform and programs that we are doing. But the initial phases was getting the right measurements in place so we can show value to our advertisers. Then the world's your oyster really. Once you can show the value you, you're getting them on board and they'll continue to be on board with you.
That there, there's a lot more we can do. I feel like there's so much coming down the line in terms of different retail media networks connecting together. I think the traditional single retail media network is something that's going to be, the horizons are gonna be expanded because I feel there's ways that retail media networks can be combined across different industries.
Different advertisers want to reach different users [00:21:00] on different platforms. So I think. Everybody can start broadening the horizons and start thinking cross retail media networks. We are nowhere near that yet. We have big plans to evolve our network, but this is gonna take a while to get there. Um, but yeah, the process for me was starting with creating measurable outcomes for our advertisers and our users and scaling it from them.
James Avery: And that's that. Uh, I have two questions coming outta this. The first is on measurement. So I think we talked a little bit about the brands. You know, kind of first being kind of more like share of voice, share of category, you know, moving to more performance and the dealers are around the performance of selling a car, but is it.
Like, you kind of have a delayed transaction, right? Like I might, I might be on the site, I see a promoted listing, I click on this, you know, Toyota Camry. I request, you know, I, I get a lead in, right? The, the dealer calls me or I call the dealer, I go see it. I, I buy it. It might, it might take three or four [00:22:00] days.
When you're thinking about measurement, do you anchor on the lead or do you anchor on the actual transaction, like completing.
Gareth Menton: Both. Um, so a very good point. We focus on the lead for dealers, so we tell them how many leads we can give them. Just as an example, we've got a very big car dealership group, a nationwide one, and we've increased their leads by using sponsored ads by over 35%.
So by making them more. Top of funnel, top of the page, we've given them 35% more leads. We rely on their data for the sales. So that's a little bit difficult sometimes because we need to get their data, which they give us on a monthly basis, so we will then match that data to lead to sale percentage and use that to show how many leads completed into sales.
So there's a bit of a matching process that to happen. It's a bit, a little bit delayed. The dealerships are happy for their results to be within leads and not in sales. The sales are for us to show value because if [00:23:00] we can tell them that we've given them 350 leads and 10% of those leads converted, that means it's 35 sales that they've done at an average of 20 k.
We've, we've generated them quick math off that 800 K, right? Whatever it may be.
James Avery: And is that, is that kind of similar on the brand side? Like if I'm Toyota, they probably care less about the leads and they care more about the, how much volume did you move in new cars? Maybe? Is it only new cars or do they care about used as well?
Gareth Menton: They care more about new cars. Traditionally, Carow has always been a new car platform. It's only recently we've gone into used cars and got the dealerships on more on board with us. Um, we are quite unique in the way that our new car system is a way you can actually go in and configure a vehicle so you can configure.
A specific vehicle to your taste, all the different trims that you need. Um, and they are all about the configurations for new vehicles, for the brands. Um, but brands are all about, uh, the, the, the amount of impressions you can give them, the data you [00:24:00] can share back with them. There are so many new entrants coming into the car market and most of them come from China.
So there's a huge, huge increase in Chinese brand entrance and electric vehicles, and they are taking over. The market. So we need, well, the, a lot of the brands are wanting to show that they are still top of mind by advertising more and showing more of their brand across our site. So they are less about leads, more about share of market, share of voice, and also about brand perception and sales.
So it's, it's sales, but it's not leads for the brands.
James Avery: Yeah, that makes sense. And then this kind of ties into measurement as well. Uh, you know, when I, when I think about, we think about retail media networks, we think about, you know, when you try to understand what's the potential of them, what, you know, any given one, right?
What's the potential revenue, what's the, what's the success metric, right? And so like in. You know, if it's like a grocery chain or Amazon, right? Everybody's always [00:25:00] comparing Amazon to what's their percentage of GMV, right? Yeah. Like their 8% of GMV or 9% of GMV. And I'm not gonna ask you for your number. I'm gonna ask what I want.
What I wanna know is, do you think that that differs in the, in like the car Wow. Space? Like, or do, do you, or how do you, I guess really more as more open question like, like how do you measure your success in building the retail media network and the potential of it?
Gareth Menton: Um, I, I think. The two ways our, our current sell through rate of our current inventory on our platform is close to 100%.
So on our current media that we have on our onsite media, it's measured on the, on our sell rate is high, so we have. Lots of different advertisers wanting to advertise with us, which means that our network is good. We have got the right inventory. I think the issue with us now is we need to take that somewhere else.
We need to follow the user off site and go and find them wherever they are. And we are not there yet. 'cause those users [00:26:00] are not looking for a car. Only on car Calwell. They're looking for a car. On different review sites, on different news sites, or they d they are influenced on multiple different places on the internet and we need to find them there.
That part we haven't cracked yet, and we will try to, but I feel like our retail media onsite network is, is doing okay because our sell-through rates is quite high. A broader term. I'm, I'm not. Too sure of what else we want to look at, but I think that shows that our, our retail media network is, is strong so far by the Yeah.
By the way that our advertisers are, can't get enough of what we're trying to sell.
James Avery: Yeah. I definitely think sell rate is definitely like a key indicator. Right. And I think, I think we see that a lot when, when a retail media network gets to a certain level of maturity. They're almost always at a hundred percent on site fill.
Right. Because that should be the easiest thing to pretty much get to a really high fill rate, or 90, you know, 90 plus.
Gareth Menton: Yeah.
James Avery: Uh, and that's what it makes sense to figure out offsite. [00:27:00]
Gareth Menton: Yeah.
James Avery: And especially with the high intent, like, and the, and the journey. Right? Like it's not a impulse purchase. They could research it for three months or six months.
Right. I'm sure you guys probably know mm-hmm. How long, how long people usually research cars for. But that makes a lot of sense.
Gareth Menton: Yeah, absolutely. It's different on the, on our, our sponsored ads product is, is still relatively new, so the full rate is a lot lower. There's room to grow there and we, we've got plans to do that.
But yeah, on the brand side, there's one of our main metrics is, is that full rate.
James Avery: One other thing to touch on because I think this is something that every, everybody running, you know, retail, media, everyone, especially in the product side, I think one of the challenges I think you talked a little bit about earlier is, is really interfacing with the other half of the business, the other part of the business.
And do you, you know, I know in e-commerce there's traditionally a debate about how many listings are sponsored, right? How many, what's the ad load? Is the ad load too high? Is the user exper? Are we impacting the user experience? What's, you know, how do, how do you kind of tackle those, those, uh, those challenges, right.
[00:28:00] Of working with the other, the other kind of organic side of the business?
Gareth Menton: Yeah. It, it's, it's such an interesting discussion we've had internally and when I first joined, it was not everybody is a fan of ads. Not everyone is a fan of retail media. Luckily our C-level are a big fan of retail media and of ads on the system because I'm making all those ads as relevant as possible.
And when we have sponsored ads on our platform, they are relevant. So if you put in a filter and you want to see SUVs in a blue color and has four doors, you're gonna be shown a sponsored ad that is an SUV blue color and four doors. So I'm not gonna show you something that's not relevant to your search, and I think that is really key to making it work is relevance to the user, making sure the product is fit for purpose.
Interestingly. I've done quite a few tests on this recently and our organic. Click through rate and our sponsored ads click through [00:29:00] rate are exactly the same. It's not worse to have a sponsored ad and people will not not click on it because it is an ad. So it's, it's not bad for business. It's actually good for business because if those click-through rates are the same and you monetizing that position better by having an ad on there, why not?
And it's relevant. I've solved this issue across the business by showing them data. I've been at multiple company presentations and company meetings and presented sponsored ads and what the benefit is to the business, and I think people are slowly starting to buy in now. I think you need a few advocates in the business, and I think you need to just show the possibility of what can be done and use your data to do that.
So I think making your ads relevant is key, but also having some key advocates in the business is something that really helps too.
James Avery: Yeah, I think that's a great takeaway as a way to really compare the relevancy and effectiveness and prove to the rest of the business that the click-through rate is the same, which I think is [00:30:00] fascinating.
I think, I don't think a lot of, I haven't heard of a lot of other networks really analyzing that, but they could right. Anybody in a sponsored listing. Model could, could just compare organic, you know, the top ranked organic to the top ranked promoted, and, and you know, compare the click through rate and see what the effectiveness is.
And sometimes it might be even higher on the promoted, but I think sometimes if the relevancy is poor, you know, if you're showing 'em a red two-door, obviously it's gonna be a lot, a lot lower effectiveness.
Gareth Menton: Yeah, absolutely. And also the click through rate actually increased so much when we started adding more relevance.
So the click through rate started at, I think, was under 1% and has gone now closer to 2% just because we've improved the relevance as time went on. But now we have the right relevance and filters in place that the click through rates and organic and sponsored are the same. Um, which to me is positive for the, the wider business.
James Avery: Awesome. Well, Gareth, it's been great to have you on and learn more about Carlisle's journey. Where could, if people wanna get in touch, where can they find you?
Gareth Menton: Uh, well, they can look on our [00:31:00] website@carl.co uk. Um, happy to reach out to me as well. They can find me on LinkedIn. Gareth Minton, happy to answer any questions they have there as well.
James Avery: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining.
Gareth Menton: Thanks, James. Good to see you. Bye-bye.
James Avery: 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.
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