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10 minutes of expert insights every weekday. Your morning ritual for staying ahead in retail media.
(The Drum Reprise) Austin Leonard Profile
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[00:00:00] Kiri Masters: You know, when most people think about retail media, they're picturing urban shoppers browsing Instacart or suburban families clicking through Walmart's app. But there's a huge chunk of America that the advertising [00:00:15] industry barely thinks about. And Dollar General is betting that oversight is a massive opportunity.
[00:00:22] I recently sat down with Austin Leonard, who's three months in to leading Dollar General's Retail Media Network, [00:00:30] DGMN, and his pitch is fascinating. He frames it like this, where essentially building the last mile of e-commerce for the last mile of America.
[00:00:40]
[00:00:41] Kiri Masters: Let's think about what that means. Dollar General has [00:00:45] over 20,000 stores, and they're often the only retailer in a small town. We're talking about communities that the big e-commerce players struggle to reach efficiently. And Leonard's ~sitting on top of more than 90 million addressable shopper profiles.~
[00:00:57] ~That's not a small audience.~
[00:00:57] ~And here's where,~
[00:00:57] ~and Leonard's sitting,~
[00:00:57] ~and Leonard's sitting on and Austin's ~sitting on top of more than 90 [00:01:00] million addressable shopper profiles. That is not a small audience. And here's where Austin's background really helps in bringing this vision to life.
[00:01:08] He came to Dollar General from Epsilon, where he served as SVP of retail media. Before that, he [00:01:15] had stints at Walmart, Sam's Club, Rakuten and eBay. So he's seen both sides. He understands what retailers need, but he also knows what advertisers and agencies are looking for, and that dual perspective is shaping [00:01:30] how he's building DGMN.
[00:01:32] One thing that really surprised me in our conversation was his data on marketplace partnerships, and in this context, marketplace partners are companies like DoorDash and Uber, and [00:01:45] so Dollar General works with both of those companies for delivery, and Austin told me that they're seeing really high incremental customer acquisition through those channels.
[00:01:55] Now given that Dollar General often dominates in their local rural [00:02:00] markets, you'd think that everyone who wants to shop there already does. But that is not what the data shows.
[00:02:06] Austin explained to me that a lot of people still think of Dollar General as just a dollar store. They don't realize the price advantage [00:02:15] or the product selection that's available. So when these customers discover that they can get same day or even one hour delivery from Dollar General, often faster than much larger competitors, it opens up a whole new customer [00:02:30] base.
[00:02:30] But Austin's really pushing back on something much bigger, the industry assumptions about rural customers. He says that these customers actually over-index on digital engagement and are more likely to [00:02:45] use same-day delivery services. Then the general population. The problem he says is perspective. I found this really interesting, but also once he explained it, not surprising at all.
[00:02:57] The advertising industry is heavily [00:03:00] concentrated in coastal cities, so most ad professionals just don't have exposure to how rural customers actually behave. [00:03:15] Did you know that 60% of shoppers abandoned carts when product info is wrong? Before you ramp up your ad spend, fix the shelf Acosta group's. Award-winning connected commerce [00:03:30] crew is trusted by brands like Coca-Cola and Sanofi to deliver critical content updates.
[00:03:37] Acosta Group handles it all. Then layers on media buying. Learn about Acosta group's connected commerce [00:03:45] capability at Acosta Group and tell them Retail Media Breakfast Club sent you. That's A-C-O-S-T-A group Now, let's talk about the infrastructure side, because this is where [00:04:00] Austin's background. In Ad Tech really shows up. Dollar General has built those 90 million shopper profiles through partnerships with LiveRamp, connecting offline purchase history with online targeting, and that's really [00:04:15] impressive given.
[00:04:16] Kiri Masters: That a lot of Dollar General's business is cash transactions. So you think about all of the heavy lifting that's required to connect an in-store customer paying cash with a online [00:04:30] shopper profile. That's pretty impressive. Another thing that caught my attention is Dgm N's approach to measurement standards.
[00:04:38] This is a huge topic in the industry that I've spent a lot of time on, and DGM is using [00:04:45] IAB specifications for test and control methodologies, and he's very specific about this, saying they're using. Testing control based approaches, not synthetic ones. Now, these kind of things really matter a lot because of the signal [00:05:00] that it sends to media buyers.
[00:05:02] You've probably heard me talk about this research before from the a NA, the American National Advertisers uh, association, showing that more than half of advertisers cite lack of [00:05:15] standardization as their biggest challenge when it comes to buying retail media. Walled gardens delayed analytics, a sense of a lack of transparency.
[00:05:26] These are all issues that are driving brands to withhold spending from [00:05:30] platforms that can't demonstrate real incremental value.
[00:05:34] This is where Austin is very deliberate. He said to me, we want to be an active vocal member pushing the industry to do it the right way. And an industry where many retailers resist [00:05:45] external verification.
[00:05:46] That stance is notable.
[00:05:49] Looking forward. Austin's vision for DGMN is what he calls the most innovative, collaborative and centric retail media network. He emphasizes that retail media [00:06:00] works best when shopper teams, sales teams, brands, merchants, and the RMN. All collaborate to create impactful programs
[00:06:10] given Dollar General Scale, and we're talking about a 40 billion plus [00:06:15] retailer serving a very diverse geographic and economic segments. That collaborative approach makes sense. The company's CEO recently called the Media Network aspect of the business, the [00:06:30] linchpin of the digital initiatives for the company, which tells you just how strategic this part of the business is for Dollar General's evolution.
[00:06:38] What Austin is building at DGMN is essentially a bridge to audiences that major e-commerce [00:06:45] platforms struggle to reach, combined with the kind of measurement rigor that buyers are demanding. Whether that translates into significant brand budget shifts remains to be seen, but the thesis is compelling.
[00:06:58] Rural America is [00:07:00] more digitally engaged than the industry assumes, and Dollar General has the data and infrastructure to prove it. It.
[00:07:07]