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10 minutes of expert insights every weekday. Your morning ritual for staying ahead in retail media.
SNIPS
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[00:00:00] kiri voiceover: .
[00:00:00] Retail media networks want brand dollars. That is not new or surprising. What's new is the growing realization that the barrier [00:00:15] may not be a lack of demand or a lack of capability. It's that many brands are structurally incapable of spending those dollars through retail media even when they want to.
[00:00:27] On a recent LinkedIn live, [00:00:30] I sat down with Jordan Whitmer, who leads retail media strategy at the agency, salt xc, and we talked about what actually happens when retail media networks come calling for brand marketing budgets. Jordan [00:00:45] spent years on the big CPG side before moving over to the agency side, so he has seen this from every angle.
[00:00:52] And the punchline here, whoever owns. And the punchline is [00:01:00] whoever owns the budget determines what retail media is allowed to be. Let's jump in[00:01:15]
[00:01:17] the conversation really kicked. The conversation really kicked into gear. When we got into the internal dynamics on the brand side. Jordan made the point that you can predict almost everything about how a brand will [00:01:30] evaluate retail media based on a single variable who owns the budget?
[00:01:38] Jordan: It's not a hundred percent accurate, but you get a really strong leading indicator of what a brand wants [00:01:45] out of their retail media investment based on who's, who's picking up the phone and who owns that budget, and who gets to say yes and no.
[00:01:53] We often see, yeah, if you, to your point, if you're working with a sales team or a shopper [00:02:00] team that's gold on one thing, then yeah, you've. You're gonna get, I want return on ad spend. I want incremental lift at that retailer. I want all the things that we've been asking you for here. And what you're not [00:02:15] gonna get is really anything that helps you go prove that you're a legitimate brand player as a media network.
[00:02:25] Um, you also get this friction if you move the media team [00:02:30] in and they run off their playbooks. You start to get these weird conversations of wait, but if we're gonna run streaming, that goes [00:02:45] everywhere. And that's now part of my JBP, that's not helping me deliver my business at at Target,
[00:02:54] Kiri: right?
[00:02:55] Jordan: Every retailer that tunes in.
[00:02:57] I'm picking your names at [00:03:00] random.
[00:03:00] Um, I think they've gotta do what they're really uncomfortable doing, which is making fast, decisive decisions about.
[00:03:10] What they want. Uh, the, the number of briefs that I've seen [00:03:15] in both in my own experience, agency side, brand side from friends and peers, and that say, uh, your, your brief is to build [00:03:30] awareness and drive sales
[00:03:33] Kiri: easy. Okay.
[00:03:35] Jordan: Uh, yeah. Cool. Got it. Sure. Yeah, I'm, I'm pretty sure that's why we all have jobs, but yeah.
[00:03:42] Great.
[00:03:43] Kiri: Yeah. Right.
[00:03:43] Jordan: Um,
[00:03:44] Kiri: right,
[00:03:44] Jordan: but [00:03:45] how, how much uhhuh, which one, what's your pre, what are you actually gonna judge this on? Mm-hmm. Um, prepping for that conversation and being really clear and trying to get some of the, let's call it [00:04:00] emotional or personal barriers, out of those conversations at brands is.
[00:04:04] Step one.
[00:04:06] kiri voiceover: Build awareness and drive sales. Ugh. If [00:04:15] only those of us who've spent time in agency land could have a dollar for every time we've heard that. And this is exactly the kind of ambiguity what. And this is exactly the kind of ambiguity that produces what Jordan later called [00:04:30] franking campaigns, stitch together plans trying to satisfy incompatible goals.
[00:04:37] Now let's move on to talk about reporting. One of the most useful frameworks from the conversation came when we [00:04:45] unpacked what credible reporting actually means. It really depends on who's asking. This was sparked by a LinkedIn post from Catherine Mazzer, who formally head up Hy-Vee's Retail Media Network, and [00:05:00] she talked about what it takes for R Mens to unlock brand dollars.
[00:05:04] I.
[00:05:05] Jordan: She's talks about the foundation built. On what matters that flow into, what does credible reporting mean and useful reporting mean [00:05:15] when you, I don't wanna say graduate, but you move between being So a group that services a sales team that is singular retailer focused to a brand [00:05:30] organization that wants to drive everything everywhere.
[00:05:35] Um, uh. The credible, the definition of credible reporting changes completely. Okay. From, [00:05:45] can you prove that my, um, if I just, well, we use, we'll use Hy-Vee can from, is your reporting credible enough to prove that the dollars I put into Hy-Vee drove growth [00:06:00] at Hy-Vee to the dollars that I put in? At Hy-Vee, drove growth across the country are two very different asks of a reporting team.
[00:06:14] Yeah, [00:06:15] and uh, we could talk more about it later, but I don't know how reasonable it is to ask an RMN to. Answer the second question. Um,
[00:06:27] Kiri: well, this is where we were talking before we started [00:06:30] recording about data, clean rooms and retailers and commerce media networks actually co collaborating. I think that's where it happens.
[00:06:40] Absolutely. You know, it's, it's, it, it seems to me like it's a [00:06:45] bit of a taboo right now. To be talking about collaborating because everyone is still kind of like, I wanna keep this to myself, but I think what, from what you are saying, [00:07:00] it would be a more powerful asset to a brand team if retailers and commerce media networks did start collaborating.
[00:07:10] Jordan: Absolutely. I, I think the, if I continue down that set of [00:07:15] questions and you start to change around some of the inputs, um, and instead of talking retail retail, we just go look at who's done a good job of cementing themselves inside of brand budgets because they do the, they produce the [00:07:30] outcomes. That brands are looking to produce.
[00:07:33] Um, and I'll, we'll just, we'll pick on meta for a second and if we put, did Hy-Vee money Drive Hy-Vee impact? Did meta drive [00:07:45] meta impact? Well, meta impact's not a thing. I mean, sure there's right, there's a certain amount of sales that are happening direct to platform, but largely you're not asking that question anymore when you start to be, I'm a.[00:08:00]
[00:08:00] Brand, mass market media publisher, um, versus a retail network. Um, so the natural question that flows outta that is, so, so how does, what do you look at for met if they're not [00:08:15] doing the credible reporting that retailers do? What do they do? How do they get here? And if you dive into that, it's, they've made.
[00:08:27] A lot of the data easier to access over [00:08:30] time. That flows out into, into brand organizations and third party measurement partners
[00:08:35] kiri voiceover: This is a big insight because it explains why retail media can feel completely be. This is a big insight because [00:08:45] it explains why retail media can feel completely persuasive in one meeting and completely inadequate in another. The friction isn't a lack of data. It's mismatch expectations about what the data is supposed to prove.
[00:08:59] [00:09:00] A shopper marketing team and a brand marketing team will look at the exact same reporting package and reach opposite conclusions about whether it's credible, the.[00:09:15]
[00:09:18] Jordan's meta comparison is sharp too. Meta doesn't prove it drove sales at any specific retailer. It made it state at accessible enough for third party measurement [00:09:30] partners and malt and media mix models to pick up the signal. That's the model RMNs should move forward. Yeah, that's the model RMN should move forward with if they want brand budgets.
[00:09:41] Not better closed loop attribution, but more open [00:09:45] data that plugs into how brand teams already measure.[00:10:00]
[00:10:02] I have a few more great tidbits in the article that accompanies this podcast today, getting deeper into this topic, but we're gonna need to wrap it up, but we're gonna need to wrap it up [00:10:15] here pretty soon.
[00:10:18] The takeaway here is that the industry often frames this as a supply side problem. Retail media networks need better brand products. They need better measurement, they need better [00:10:30] agency relationships. Those things might all be true, but the conversa. But this conversation today also makes it clear that it's equally a demand side problem.
[00:10:41] Brands need to decide what they're buying before they can [00:10:45] evaluate whether retail media actually delivers it.
[00:10:52] If the sales team owns the budget. Retail media will be evaluated as a sales tool if the brand team owns it. [00:11:00] It'll be measured against awareness benchmarks, and if both teams share the room without resolving whose goals matter more, you'll get franking campaigns that satisfy nobody. If you wanna check out [00:11:15] the full live stream with me and Jordan, I'll link up to it in the show notes.
[00:11:19] Thanks for listening, and I'll catch you next week. Okay.