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10 minutes of expert insights every weekday. Your morning ritual for staying ahead in retail media.
My Media Diet
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[00:00:00] Kiri Masters: So we're getting closer to the end of the year, and in fact, tomorrow is the last day. Of Retail Media, breakfast Club for the year. Today I want to share some of my personal media diet and [00:00:15] how I stay on top of what's going on in the world of retail media.
[00:00:20] Ag commerce, et cetera, and give you some tips and tricks that I have learnt with the caveat that [00:00:30] I still feel like I'm woefully behind Every week there is way more interesting topics and trends and ideas and research to keep on top of then I have time to even consume, let alone actually dig [00:00:45] into and come up with my perspective on it.
[00:00:48] So I'm just putting that out there to make you feel a little bit better if you feel like you're behind. I do this full time every day, and I still don't manage to catch it [00:01:00] all by a long shot, but I do. As someone who is a professional content consumer and creator these days, I wanna share a little bit of my process.
[00:01:11] Maybe it is even less [00:01:15] sophisticated than your own. If you have tips to share with me, I'd love to hear them, but I'm just gonna get right into it and tell you how I've stayed on top of the trends this year and my quote unquote process for doing so.
[00:01:29]
[00:01:30] Kiri Masters: First of all, accompanying this episode today, I have pulled together a mega thread of. Retail media and agentic commerce resources that I subscribe to and that I use, [00:01:45] it wouldn't make for an interesting podcast experience if I just read that list out to you. So I'm, I'm not gonna go through all of that today on the pod.
[00:01:54] I'm gonna share my process and if you wanna look up that database and see all the [00:02:00] podcasts. Newsletters, publications, et cetera that I follow. We'll link up to it in the show notes and you can troll through that to your heart's content.
[00:02:09] So let's start with podcasts. I have actually this year started using two [00:02:15] podcast players. One of them is Apple Podcasts, and I have started exclusively using that for my sort of personal slash non-work related podcasts. Listening, I find that. When I'm looking to unwind, [00:02:30] at the end of the day, I can't keep listening to retail media or work related stuff, otherwise my, my brain just doesn't slow down.
[00:02:37] So I have a cadre of non-work related podcasts I listen to on that application, and it [00:02:45] keeps that feed kind of clean for when I'm cooking dinner or unwinding at the end of the day. Or just trying to have a little escape from work. I keep that separate to my [00:03:00] work podcast. App, which I've started to use, one called Snipped, S-N-I-P-D.
[00:03:07] We'll link up to it in the show notes and look, it's not perfect, but it is the closest thing I've come to [00:03:15] having a podcast app where I can actually. Take notes in it and it will take, as the name suggests, snippets of the conversation that you can save for later. Then it takes those snippets and it syncs it up with, I [00:03:30] think they interface with just Google sheets and notion right now.
[00:03:34] So. Those snippets auto export to a database that I have in Notion, and it means that when I need [00:03:45] to remember, oh, who said that thing, or which brand was talking about their matrix or scorecard, then I can usually do a search in Notion and and find it a little easier than trying to like troll through my pretty [00:04:00] terrible.
[00:04:00] Long-term memory and remember anecdotes and stats that people talked about on, on podcasts. So I do quite like that system. Snip isn't perfect, but it's, it's pretty good and it means I can sort [00:04:15] of catalog all of that information there and come back to it later in tax form.
[00:04:21] Second is newsletters and just a little bit of inside baseball for you all. I've recently [00:04:30] switched email service providers from Ghost to Beehive, and I was really struggling with this decision for a long time because everyone seems to have a Substack newsletter and. [00:04:45] The reason why is there's a big network effect happening on Substack right now.
[00:04:50] You have all these people writing substack. You can recommend other publications when you set up a Substack, so your new subscribers often [00:05:00] end up following the same people, and that's a great way to build an audience for your newsletter. Second benefit is it's free. There's no cost to it. So that's another reason why a lot of people get started with a substack [00:05:15] and, oh man, I really struggled with this because I wanna be in there for the network effect and have people discover retail media, B Breakfast Club through it.
[00:05:26] But Substack just has a few significant limitations [00:05:30] that led me to Beehive instead. The reason I'm telling you all of this is that Substack itself is a great platform, almost like a social media platform at this stage with the number of publications [00:05:45] just in.
[00:05:45] Our very niche and nascent category of retail media and agent commerce is a, a number of excellent publications there, which again, you'll find in the database if you click on the link in the show notes. So I do [00:06:00] recommend getting the Substack app on your phone and instead of doom scrolling on social media when you have a bit of downtime.
[00:06:08] Pull up the Substack app and if you have subscribed to some really good newsletters, you'll get much [00:06:15] better content quality, something to really think about, and that's another good way to sneak in some vegetables. Uh, if you, if you're just sitting around scrolling on your lunch break or in your downtime, you might be able to find some pretty [00:06:30] interesting stuff on there from publications like Retail Gentech, Andrew Lipman's, uh, newsletter, media Ads and Commerce.
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[00:07:19] Learn more@miracle.com. That's M-I-R-A-K l.com.
[00:07:25]
[00:07:27] Kiri Masters: Number three source is traditional [00:07:30] media, and there's some excellent publications that have been around for a long time that continue to just recruit excellent journalists and cover the space really, really well. I have, been fortunate to be invited to [00:07:45] become a contributor to the Drum this year,
[00:07:47] that's been a great experience helping to build out their coverage of retail media there. So I definitely recommend you read my columns@atthedrum.com, but the reason why I still [00:08:00] recommend traditional industry publications as well as independent analysis from people like myself and Andrew Lipman, et cetera, is that.
[00:08:12] A lot of companies still chase [00:08:15] traditional press, and that's where they go when there are major announcements, major partnerships. They are calling on the ad weeks, the Path to purchase institute, the, you know, the big name publications [00:08:30] with staff writers that have, some capacity to cover all of the news as well.
[00:08:36] So definitely make space for traditional trade publications in your content diet as well. And then finally, [00:08:45] LinkedIn. LinkedIn arguably should go to the top of the list, but they are in my bad books right now because they have changed their algorithm in such a terrible way. I don't know if you've noticed this, but when I get onto LinkedIn, I'm seeing posts [00:09:00] from three weeks ago.
[00:09:01] And that is just ancient history in our world. I don't want to hear about someone speaking at an event that was three weeks ago. It's already passed. Recency is a big criteria in our [00:09:15] space for content that things just change very quickly. So. I hope that LinkedIn does something about the algorithm right now.
[00:09:22] 'cause right now it is very painful. It used to be such a great experience and now it is. Um, you know, I've gotta spend a lot more time there [00:09:30] wading through all this old content and sponsored content. I guess maybe that's the point from LinkedIn 'cause they're getting us to spend more time on it to wade through all that content,
[00:09:39] putting all of those issues aside, I still think LinkedIn is a great place to stay [00:09:45] on top of the news because you don't just see what the trend is or what the news is. You get to see what everyone else is having to say about it. And I will say, this is one of my favorite parts of my job, is publishing [00:10:00] something on LinkedIn and then hearing what people have to say.
[00:10:03] They share their experiences. They often disagree with me or point out things that I hadn't thought of. It's a true dialogue and I appreciate the community [00:10:15] there so much because we can learn so much more from each other than we can from just reading the headlines ourselves. So I have a few tips for LinkedIn.
[00:10:26] If you are, um, not a [00:10:30] power user yet, I have some tips for you. Number one is curating your feed and following the right people. So you want to be curating your feed with people that are thought leaders in the space. They can be [00:10:45] from agencies, from software and technology companies, brand side professionals who generously share their learnings.
[00:10:54] There's not as many of those, and a lot of the retailers. You know, fairly [00:11:00] cautious in what they talk about. As I spoke about last week, they could do a little bit of a better job than that. I'm sure many of them would like to, but. The quality of your connections dictates the quality of your feed. So certainly check out your, [00:11:15] um, there are some lists floating around people who to follow.
[00:11:18] Ask your peers for recommendations. Ask, just ask your colleagues, Hey, I'm looking to build my list of people that I follow on LinkedIn. Who do you suggest? And you'll get a really [00:11:30] good, you'll build up. Build up a better. Menu from that. Next is maximizing the notification bell feature. Once you've identified high value individuals or company pages, you can ensure that you [00:11:45] see their content and that it isn't getting buried in the feed by going to their profile.
[00:11:51] And clicking on, there's a little bell at the top of their profile. If you click on the bell, you can change your notification, [00:12:00] um, level to be all posts, and that means you're gonna see all of their posts and not the irrelevant stuff that you're seeing from everyone else. So be sparing with that feature to avoid it becoming [00:12:15] dominated by just a few voices.
[00:12:16] But that's a great way to make sure that you're seeing more from the people that you wanna hear more from.
[00:12:22] And finally engaging with content. So you can benefit from being a passive observer, but there's two [00:12:30] benefits from actually engaging with content, whether that's just a reaction, liking it or putting a comment in. Number one is if you engage with content that. Resonates with you, you are gonna see more of that content.
[00:12:44] [00:12:45] That's the way that the algorithm is working these days is the more you engage with a topic, with a person, with a theme, LinkedIn's gonna show you more of that content. So tell LinkedIn what you wanna see more of. [00:13:00] And then secondly, we become smarter by sharing and learning from each other.
[00:13:04] So~ Put your votes in, put your money where your mouth is, or your, you know, your put, it's a silly analogy. Um.~
[00:13:04] ~So ~interact with the content and ideas that you're enjoying, that will give the algorithm some information about what's interesting to you. But it will also give the people out there [00:13:15] sharing some positive feedback like. Okay. That was a good topic. I got a lot of comments on that. I'm gonna revisit that again in a couple of months and do a follow up.
[00:13:25] I just say this myself as someone who shares content on LinkedIn, [00:13:30] if I don't get a response from people, that's a signal to me that I'm not gonna talk about it again. And I know that there are a lot of people out there that are lurkers for. Good reasons. They're not supposed to really talk about [00:13:45] stuff on LinkedIn or their company doesn't really like them doing that.
[00:13:48] I understand that. But if that is not you, if you don't have that, then it's certainly appreciated by the people putting this content together if you engage with it and let them know what [00:14:00] is, uh, let them use that as a signal to know what to continue discussing in the future, even if it is to disagree.
[00:14:07] I actually love to hear different POVs. That's how we all get smarter. So final thoughts here. [00:14:15] Do check out my mega list of publications and people and podcasts to follow. And I wanna thank you again for tuning into Retail Media Breakfast Club this year. It's been a blast getting this show off the ground, and I've [00:14:30] got one more episode for you this year.
[00:14:32] I'll catch you tomorrow.
[00:14:33]