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10 minutes of expert insights every weekday. Your morning ritual for staying ahead in retail media.
44% of US RMNs are led by Women
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[00:00:00] Kiri Masters: Good morning, and welcome back to Retail Media Breakfast Club. Sorry for the slightly froggy voice. I've been away. I was in the US for a couple of events last week, and of course, I get some kind of illness on [00:00:15] my way home. I'm feeling a lot better than I sound. But this is gonna be a short episode today because I actually have very good news.
[00:00:24] This is a really pleasant surprise, something that we really seem to be doing [00:00:30] right in the industry.
[00:00:32] Sometimes I get a bit disheartened by the goings on in the retail media industry. Most recently it was the Amazon versus FTC case, and I concluded that despite how icky it all felt, nothing much is likely to [00:00:45] change. That can be disheartening. As well as this assessment that we'll never figure out measurement.
[00:00:51] That's a pipe dream that's never going to happen. It can be a little disheartening, but I discovered something really cool [00:01:00] recently
[00:01:00] Which is that there is a remarkably high percentage of women in top retail media network positions. It was a higher percentage than I was expecting, despite personally having met dozens of total baddies [00:01:15] over the past couple of years in this space
[00:01:18] So the headline here is that 44% of US retail media networks are led by women. So 44% That is much higher than [00:01:30] the 35% of VP roles and 32% of SVP roles that McKinsey has compiled in some recent research. So we're quite substantially higher above that median percentage [00:01:45] number
[00:01:45]
[00:01:46] Kiri Masters: I'm gonna get into some theories about why this is, but just a quick note on the methodology. What I did was I created a database of all of the named P&L leaders of retail media networks for the top [00:02:00] 100 US retailers per the NRF's 2026 rankings. Now, I have been very specific with that definition because if I wasn't, this would be a project [00:02:15] without any end in, in, at all.
[00:02:17] Um, so I did do just US, I did just do NRF Top 100, and that does mean that some fairly prominent and important media networks like eBay, [00:02:30] Instacart, DoorDash, for example, are not included because technically they are not retailers, and I would like to do some more comprehensive analysis in the future that includes commerce [00:02:45] media networks and international commerce media networks as well.
[00:02:50] Uh, perhaps track this over time. It really depends how much interest there is or is if this is, uh, a one-and-done kind of thing. But for [00:03:00] now, this is more of a community note than particularly deep analysis, although I have put together this database that you can see on my website if you are a subscriber to my free Retail Media Breakfast Club newsletter
[00:03:14] [00:03:15] Now, I did reach out to a couple of people in the industry to get their reaction, to these results and, um, try and see if there was any leading reasons for this. Um, industry analyst [00:03:30] Andrew Lipsman from Media Ads and Commerce posited that retail media as a category is a particularly non-asshole segment of the media industry, and that certainly fits with my own expe- experience.
[00:03:44] But my [00:03:45] question was really why that is. Co-founder of the community Women in Retail Leadership Circle, Anna Laura Zane, says that women who land top jobs tend to have a wider network and a closer [00:04:00] female inner circle. She says, "That's why at Women in Commerce Media, we care so much about building experiences that provide the right environment to build meaningful relationships.
[00:04:14] [00:04:15] Organizations like Women in Commerce Media Collective and so many others exist not only because we wanna empower each other, but also because we women love getting together and connecting at a deeper level."
[00:04:26] and for me personally, I think that makes a lot of sense. This [00:04:30] really is like any other industry. It is a relationship business. It is about who you know and having sponsors within your organization helping to lift you up, as well as people outside of the organization who can vouch for you and recommend you [00:04:45] Are manual processes slowing down your RMN momentum? With GrowthLoop's composable commerce media solution, retail media and ad [00:05:00] teams can build and launch precise audiences in minutes, activate across DSPs and ad platforms, and deliver transparent ROI reporting that drives advertiser [00:05:15] revenue.
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[00:05:39] Another possible reason that was put forth to me is that retail media often [00:05:45] sprouts out of a retailer's marketing function, which itself is a function that often has a higher female ratio versus other executive roles. So that's one other [00:06:00] working scenario. One other thing that did cross my mind but I quickly ruled out was a glass cliff situna- situation.
[00:06:07] And a glass cliff is where a woman is brought into a senior position in a [00:06:15] turnaround situation and is unwittingly set up to fail. Now, I crossed that off the list because there are just too many successful female leaders who have been successful enough to move on to their next big leadership position [00:06:30] for that to be true.
[00:06:31] So I'm not seeing any evidence of that being the case
[00:06:35] But that's really it for now. I wanted to share this without having a real conclusion or a so what here, [00:06:45] because I just thought it was really exciting. I don't think that we've really talked about this much as an industry. I would love to hear from you out there. Why do you think this is? What are we doing well here, perhaps even without realizing [00:07:00] it?
[00:07:00] And what should we be doing with this information as an industry? I would love to hear from you. Probably the best way to do it is to comment on today's newsletter post on LinkedIn. I'm sure there will be a lot of [00:07:15] conversation happening over there. Otherwise, feel free to drop me an email or go to retailmediabreakfastclub.com, and that is also where I will be posting the Retail Media Network leader database with all of this analysis in it.
[00:07:28] Thank you for listening, [00:07:30] and I'll catch you tomorrow.
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