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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.
Mark Mannino: [00:00:00] You know, the reason Cheerios has 17 different kinds of Cheerios and chips of, you know, Nabisco has 17 kinds of chips of hos is not necessarily because people want 17 different types. It's a large, it's largely to protect shelf space and to make sure that another cookie brand can't get in there. So defense, it is not new to the retailer world, and it's not new to the brand world.
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 aligning with what brands truly need from scalable ad solutions and meaningful metrics to cross channel attribution and programmatic strategy.
Today's guest is someone with deep insights across the retail media spectrum. Mark Mannino is the newly appointed president of VidMob, a creative data company, helping brands optimize their performance through smarter [00:01:00] data-driven content. But what makes Mark's perspective especially valuable is his journey through the very heart of retail media.
Spending nine years at Amazon ads in leadership roles, followed by three years at Flywheel, one of the largest retail media buyers in the world. And our conversation, we get into what brands really want, metrics that matter, smarter use of first party data, and how retailers can make their media offerings both scalable and attractive, whether you're building a network or refining one.
There's a lot to learn in this episode.
Mark Mannino: I am currently president at a company called VidMob, which I could probably explain later. We work on creative data, but my background and really most relevant to Keval and to the topics we're gonna discuss is I spent nine years at Amazon within Amazon ads and a number of leadership roles, and then I spent the last three years at a company called Flywheel.
Which is pretty much the largest buyer of retail media, uh, globally across a number of different retailers. And so I'm excited to, uh, to dive in with you, James, and [00:02:00] Awesome.
James Avery: So, yeah, I think, I think what we really wanted to talk about today and something that we hear a lot from the retailers that we work with is, you know, they're, they're thinking about, we're building a retail media network.
You know, really it's a, it's a product they're building. The end buyer, right? Is the, is the brand. And a lot of times they're buying through a company like Flywheel that which you, you know, you just came from, uh, after a nice successful exit. So I think, I think what I'd like to talk about today is like, how do re, how do retailers think about really packaging up what they're, you know, their offering to these brands?
What are brands looking for? How do they, how do they make their retail media network more attractive to these, these buyers out there?
Mark Mannino: Yeah. It's a good question. It's something that as a, when you're working on the brand side or at an agency you're thinking about all the time, um, there's a few things that if I was starting from scratch that I'd hope to nail because that's what a flywheel or others in the space, other agencies or markers are gonna think about.
One is, um, really understand how you're thinking about [00:03:00] data. Um, and there's two ways to think about the data. One is. Just what data are you gonna use that you have as a retailer? What's unique and what's valuable? And do you have scale in that type of, of data that you know how you're gonna break it down and you're gonna allow, uh, marketers to use it, right?
Either through your platform, um, or maybe you're gonna expose it, uh, on other platforms so they can apply it and they can use it in buying it. Um, it needs to have scale and it needs to be pretty precise. So you need to think about that. Um, the second. Um, piece of data that I think is really important is, um, more around reporting data and analytics data, and how are you gonna tell, uh, your marketer customers how everything's performing, how it's working, um, and allow them, ideally allow them to.
Get their hands dirty in the data and to learn and to figure it out because I think the [00:04:00] days are gone, particularly in re retail media, where you can just create a, uh, a, uh, reporting ui, um, and have just standard settings and let them go to town. Smart marketers now expect to be able to go in, um, and do lots of different analysis on understanding things like incrementality, new to brand, um, topics like that, that, uh, that make them.
Think they should invest more money in, in a specific retailer, a retail media network.
James Avery: So how do you think about, I know this is a, this is like a hot topic kind of measurement, uh, in this space, and there's, you know, roas and there's I oas and there's NTA brand. And like, what is, what is the, you know, I mean, I, I've heard that agencies don't care about ROAS anymore, right?
Yeah. That ROAS is the old number. Like what, what, what do you see as the, the latest thing that agencies are really looking at?
Mark Mannino: Well. You need to bring it back. And this isn't new, but you bring it back to your, what are we trying to do here? Right? Both the retailer and the marketer are [00:05:00] trying to sell more stuff.
That's it. So what are all the metrics that you can do, you can use to prove you're selling more Stuff that means that don't get caught off on, on metrics that have nothing to do with selling more stuff. And that's things like. Clicks or, or impressions or, you know, things that are really, really, um, just relevant to a specific ad, um, roas.
You know, I think the reason ROAS gets a bad. Uh, wrap is that it's somewhat incomplete and it doesn't give you the full picture. And there are ways to make, uh, return on ad spend, um, look really good when really nothing really happened. And that's why, um, if you really try to understand, did I sell more things, more product?
Did I literally shipped more, did more trucks with my stuff in it, go to the loading dock at that retailer? Um. How do you put together the KPIs that you want to use to measure and understand that? [00:06:00] Um, so I would look at a few things. One is really try and understand your incremental, incremental return on ad spend.
If there's ways you can figure out, did what you're doing, drive incremental sales through the reporting, um, tools that the retailer gives you. And then secondly, um, important, a lot of brands is new to brand. Did a customer try my brand that hadn't tried, hadn't tried it in the past, or wasn't gonna try it in the past?
Um, one thing I'd just like to go back on, 'cause you asked me the the first question 'cause it is so impacts this. One is, um, it's really important as a retailer to understand how you're gonna think about omnichannel. And by omnichannel I mean both within the um, online, right? Think of the Amazon world.
Everything happens online. Everything's measured. Right. Um, but at Walmart that's not the case. You know, 80, 90% of their sales happen off offline in the store. So, and, and, and all other retailers are some, you know, somewhere on the spectrum. And so you have to really understand [00:07:00] as a retailer, how am I gonna give, um, and how can I give my, my marketers transparency into that?
Um, and as a marketer, you have to learn and figure out how am I gonna measure that? 'cause if I spend a dollar on Walmart. It might show a, an online return on ad spend of X, but really the, the real return is probably much higher than that. Right. Um, and, and so you need to filter that into these metrics like, um, and understand how you filter them into real, like incre, incremental return on ad spend and new to brand.
And one, one example I'll give you is that, um, that really makes this a little bit complex, is let's, let's just stick with Walmart for a second. If you go buy media on, on Walmart, connect. And you'll see, you know, your, your return on ad spend of what happened on the site. Um, you may classify someone as new to brand.
Um, they may not be, they may have been buying that brand in your at, at your local Walmart all the time, but they just finally decided to buy it or order it, or one day they needed it and they needed it quick, so [00:08:00] they ordered it online. So just think every retailer you work with, you're gonna have to think through all of those different challenges and the retailers need to figure out how to make sure that the marketers understand their specific nuances 'cause only they know and have the time or the inclination or the care to figure that out.
James Avery: And is that like, how does, I mean, 'cause that seems like, uh, I mean, especially the online, offline kind of attribution, you can Yeah. There's ways to do that, right? I know that, you know, whether it's tied to loyalty cards or, or things like that. But even that's, that's an imperfect world, right? So is, is this stuff getting kind of estimated, like, like if you're thinking about that Walmart, you know, you buy on Walmart Connect and then, you know, are you looking at like, like share of category or something like that?
Yeah. Like how, how are you?
Mark Mannino: It's always, it's always estimated for a couple of reasons. One is, um, but you can get more and more precise around it. First of all, remember, every retail media network is a silo, right? You know, I was at Amazon and we used to try and drive sales on Amazon, but we've [00:09:00] done studies that showed that, you know.
Five to seven times the number of sales from ads we ran were people buying, buying, buying items in store. That may change over time as Amazon becomes bigger and, and becomes a greater share of wallet. But, um, think about every dollar you spend on Amazon. You gotta think about that. Is that driving sales in, in Walmart?
Probably is. Um, I think people tend to buy products where they're gonna buy them anyway, and many ads they don't know. That at the ad is running through the, you know, retailer X retail network. I'm not a brand marketer by background. Um, but if you're selling, um, I think it all comes back to like the p and g type examples where if you're selling toilet paper or you're selling, um, mouthwash or whatever, um, the fact matter is you're not gonna get people to buy more toilet paper.
You know, we have a limited need for how much toilet paper we need. Um, but so what you do tend, what those marketers tend to do is fight over the, the, uh, the [00:10:00] share of the market. And it's really important, um, I think for retailers to figure out ways to give, uh, marketers a sense of how they're doing versus the, um.
Versus the overall, um, overall market or the, the market that they're in, right? And that they've got a good share there. Some retailers don't like to give specifics around that data. Totally understandable for various competitive reasons. Um, but the, I think you really need to figure out how am I gonna tell someone that.
They are growing within their specific category because there's so many other things that could impact it. For example, they may be like, oh, why my sales are going down. Well, maybe just, you know, the retailer itself is shrinking a little bit, or it might be growing a lot, right? You may think you're really doing awesome on a retailer, but it turns out everybody else is growing faster because the retailer is growing faster.
Or there could be, you know, just economic events. You know, the pandemic being the big one, but there could be other things that are happening and they're [00:11:00] causing people to buy less or more of your specific category. And if it's a pretty stable, mature category like that, you really need to understand how are you really doing.
James Avery: Yeah, that makes sense. And I think it's an interesting point you brought up is thinking about how does this differ for different types of brands. Yeah, right. If you're a, so if you're a CPG buyer, you're probably looking at different metrics and thinking about differently than if you're a. You know, DTC brand that's trying to sell some, some new gadget, that is just a matter of how many of these can you sell.
It's not essential. Yeah. It's, it's just, you know, you're just driving incremental sales.
Mark Mannino: Exactly. And yeah, and it depends the maturity of the space, how saturated, what's the growth rate of that specific vertical. Right. If it's solely new product. Right. Um, you know, then you, or a totally new category that no one's ever touched before.
Sure. You probably would just want to be in deep, deep, hyper growth and push. If you're in a, um, in a really, really stable category that's been around for a [00:12:00] hundred years and people aren't really buying more and it kind of grows with the, the economy, then you wanna look at different metrics to understand how you spend and, and go.
James Avery: Let's, and let's go. Um, let's jump back to, I think one of the first things, uh, you were talking about was kind of, you know, retailer really understanding their, their first party data.
Mark Mannino: Mm-hmm.
James Avery: Um, how, you know, I've always wondered like when you, when you look at that, obviously it's the, it's the most essential part when you're doing offsite.
Yep. How do you think that plays into onsite? Like, how important is that first party data, especially I guess when it comes to targeting? Uh, yeah, for onsite,
Mark Mannino: it's a really good question. I think that it. It really depends on what consumers do. On a site, right? Um, so let's just think maybe there's three types of, broadly, there's always three types of whatever you do.
But let's just think of three types, right? There's, there's a site, um, maybe like Amazon where people tend, tend to come on, come on. When I go on Amazon, I'll just talk about my experience. [00:13:00] I know exactly what I want. I buy it within five minutes and I'm gone. Right? Um, I don't browse on Amazon. Um, there might be sites that are a little bit more browsey.
Where people go on and they, they spend a lot of time, right. Um, but they might not be always like looking at. You know, product detail pages, for example. Um, and then lastly, there's, there might be sites, um, where people really never go to the site. Um, rarely because maybe they've subscribed to a lot of deliveries and that's all they do and they never come back to the site.
But when you get them, that experience is really, really valuable because you know, they're looking to subscribe to something and you could get them, how you measure those three, how you apply data to those three. Use cases is really different, right? Like if you, if you've just got what we used to call spear fishers, meaning you come in, you're gonna get your stuff and leave.
You may not need to use data in a really. Um, sophisticated way because the person's gonna come on, [00:14:00] they're gonna search for air fryer or deodorant or whatever they want, and leave, you know exactly what they want at that moment. All you need to do, you don't want to talk to them about anything else. Right, right.
But if they're browsing, if it's a place where they browse a lot, so they're not really telling you what they're looking at or in the extreme exam, well, not extreme, but you know, the Asian market and the Asian retailer, the, the Asian. Retail consumer is very different than the American or the Western retail consumer, right?
A lot of sales that happen on, um, on the, uh, on the retail media, on the retailer sites, in, uh, in, in China for example, they happen in more of a social. Function. Right? Right. People are there, they're watching videos, they're doing things, they see demos of products and everything there. You've got a lot more time to apply data.
Um, and if you've got a retail site, even in the, in the west where people are spending a lot of time, you've got a lot more time to apply data and show them different things to try and get them interested in, [00:15:00] to increase awareness. Um, those may, that, that, that you really need. I think. I would think you need a very sophisticated.
Um, experience in terms of how you apply data. Um, and then the last one, which I was really just the third example around, if people rarely come on and when they come on, they do, you know, they're subscribing or they're managing their account and that's it. I, I think there you need to be really, really sophisticated.
'cause you need to know this person's only come on once or twice a month or, you know, once a quarter you better at least, for example, if it's a pet, um, if it's like a pet. Site know that they own a dog or a cat, right? Because you've got a very limited time to get them interested in something. So that's how I would think about it.
And it's really important if you're managing your, the retail media network to really know what, what type of users am I dealing with? What are they doing and how do I think about it? And, and really to think like a publisher, uh, you know, because that's how, how you need to understand what your consumers do.
James Avery: Yeah, that makes total sense. [00:16:00] And I think in the, especially in that subscription scenario, I think it ties back to what we talked about with metrics where you have to have the right metrics as well, right? Yeah. 'cause if somebody's only, if somebody's buying something, but on average they're subscribing for six months, how do you make sure that you're reflecting that in the metrics versus just showing that as a single, a single purchase.
Uh, so I think that that obviously is very important of how do you get that kind of lifetime value. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, return on ad spend.
Mark Mannino: Yeah. Well, and that, and that flows back into, like we talked, I talked a little bit about reporting and analytics and letting con, letting your marketers get into the data and do their own analysis.
Right, understanding how your site works, how consumers use your site, and how re how products flow off the site, um, really should impact how you apply things like attribution, right? You said it lifetime value. If, uh, the fact of the matter is like a standard 14 day window for, you know, attribution window is not.
Generally not sufficient [00:17:00] for every type of, um, type of product. There might be things where you really only need a one day window is appropriate, 'cause anything after that, no one's gonna even think about it. Right. But then there's products like, I mean, it's not really in retail, but a car right? Where, you know.
Or seemingly insurance, for example, at least the way marketers seem to treat us when we're watching television, that attribution window could be a year or two, right? Yeah. And so you need to understand how do you expose that data to, to their, to the, uh, marketers so they can make the right decisions.
'cause if they can strain themselves to really short period of time, they may underinvest 'cause they don't really realize the impact they're having.
James Avery: Yeah. I mean, it makes sense even like in the retailer space, like if you think about a TV versus a, uh, you know, deodorant. Right. Yeah. Like you're probably right that a day, you know, a day attribution window for deodorant is probably pretty fair.
'cause you either need it or you don't need it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Uh, but a tv you know, like, you know, you're all going on there and you're looking at it and you're researching it and you're, you're seeing if the prices are gonna go up or down, raised on [00:18:00] tariffs and, you know, it could be, could be a month before you spend a thousand bucks on a tv.
Mark Mannino: Yeah. It should be,
James Avery: when we're thinking about, like coming from flywheel. And thinking about, you know, you're, you know, you're controlling a lot of spend or a lot of spend is flowing through YouTube retailers. Yeah. Right. Like from a, from a more like, you know, we've kind of talked about measurement, we've talked about these things.
A lot of it feels like really bespoke, right? Like, it's like you're a retailer coming up with what are the right ways you measure it. Mm-hmm. How do you think about that when it, when it then comes to, you know, how do you make this so that it can be bought? Kind of pragmatically or bought through, through a system.
Yeah. Like flywheel, where it's like, it's, it's kinda becoming like standardized. Like what are the, what are the best practices for retailers when, when they're thinking about, you know, preparing for that sort of demand?
Mark Mannino: Yeah, it's a good question. So, um, I think there's a few things you need to understand is that retail, the, the brand buyer, whether they're at a brand themselves or at a, at an agency, has a lot to do.
They have a lot to understand. They have a lot to think about. They don't have a moment in their time. [00:19:00] So the first thing I would recommend is understand standards or common practices or how things are done. In the industry so that you tend, so that you minimize the number of things that you create that are very bespoke, so that people understand what you're, what you're doing, and, and, and they can fit them very well into their workflow, so to speak.
Right? Um, and so that they can, they can understand and they can just allocate budget and go. And the second thing I would think of, and I think this helps, especially if you're a smaller player, is. And you talked about programmatic and things like that. Um, because as you get small, depending on your size as a retailer, and I say small, and I don't really mean small, like insignificant, I mean small.
Like, you know, you may have lower traffic because you're regional or you may be in a small country or you may be, um, your category is just one that people buy on. Monthly or quarterly instead of [00:20:00] daily, right? So you have to, um, be cognizant of that and to the extent that you can take advantage of programmatic, uh, sources of demand, uh, which don't require the media buyer to make either a decision or major workflow changes, that it just kind of happens and it flows into their, um, all of their, their bot, their campaigns, their.
They're reporting and analytics tools and everything they use, that's obviously the best because people will test and experiment with you and, uh, will learn the quality of the audience and the the, uh, the, um, the content you can provide. Because, um, when I look at retail media, I mean, the one thing to remember is whenever anyone's on a retailer, they're thinking of buying something.
I mean, they're think they've got their credit card out or they're thinking of doing something. So it's a really, really valuable, even if the buyer, [00:21:00] the ad buyer, doesn't necessarily know at that moment or isn't thinking of buying on a retail media network, if you're in the flow of their, their, their, what we call their in, you know, their, their inventory supply chain, right?
So that they can actually see, um, or buy, uh, placements on your site. The, the fact that the, those people are ready to buy things should drive and make the performance better and better, which will allow you to win more and more share over time.
James Avery: What do you think about like, one of the things I always think about going back to kind of.
Like measurement a little bit. Yeah. Um, you know, I always, I always, uh, laugh that like, we have to buy our, our brand name on Google. Mm-hmm. Right? Like, if you go search for Keble, we have to like, run an ad Yeah. With Keble, because you want that to show up on top. Even though our, our website is the number one organic result, but there's six other ads, like competitors are advertising and stuff above that.
Um, yeah, obviously like that's not, that's not really effective advertising. [00:22:00] It's like protective advertising.
Mark Mannino: Yep.
James Avery: Right. When I think about retail media, one of the things I think about is like, I know, I know brands are a lot of times looking at incrementality. How are they driving? How are they selling new stuff?
Is there a part of it that's also like protective that you're like, I'm Coca-Cola. And so like if, if somebody goes to Walmart and searches for a Coke, like, I need to advertise against Coke just because otherwise I know Pepsi's doing it. Like, how,
Mark Mannino: how do, do you think about? Absolutely. It's, um, a yes. I don't think that's necessarily wrong or bad.
I mean, uh, if you go back to the, uh, you know, the in-store world that we've all been living in, you know, long before there was a retail media network, you know, the reason Cheerios has 17 different kinds of Cheerios and chips. You know, Nabisco has 17 kinds of chipsa hoist. It's not necessarily because people want 17 different types.
It's a large, it's largely to protect shelf space and to make sure that another cookie brand can't get in there, right? So defense is not new to the retailer [00:23:00] world, and it's not new to the brand world, right? But you need to be really creative in how you defend. Um, your space, obviously it's probably frustrating, but it's probably required that if you are, you know, if you're Coke for example, you want to make sure that you, that when people search for Coke on a site, they're gonna get Coke and not Pepsi, right?
Yeah. But there's also other things that you really need to be thoughtful of in that if you are doing a promotion. Um, or if you think there's even an external event that's happening that is gonna drive people to search for your product or your category, um, you need to be ready and make sure you're, you're in there.
And I'll give you a really good example. Let's say you have a, you run a Super Bowl ad, um, and you know, you're, you know, the entire reason to run a super A is get people aware for your, aware of your product, but you know, they're then gonna go search for, you know, theoretically. [00:24:00] Searches for your product or even for your category, should go up right after that because you know, you just showed your ad to 150 million people in the us, right?
200 million people. You better make sure that when they go do that. That the ad that the, the top listing on, on, on whatever major sites they're on are not for your competitor. 'cause all you did was tell people that soda exists and now they just went and bought your competitor. Right. Right. So, and you need to do that on all the retail media networks you're on, um, on Google, on everything like that.
So, and that's, that's an over a very extreme. Example, but I think defense is a key part of what you're doing as a marketer. Um, and retailers should really think about how they can help brands to understand that and to work with it, um, and can do it in a way that it doesn't just sound like some mafia protection scheme and blah, blah blah.
Right. You know, if you just gimme some money here, I'll make sure that doesn't happen. No, this all happens on auctions [00:25:00] nowadays. It's not, um, it, it's, it's, you just gotta understand and know how it works and, and make sure you're investing properly.
James Avery: So for a brand is like, is a way to think about that. Like, it's almost like a separate budget, like you're saying this is a, this is a budget we're gonna use to like, protect the Coca-Cola brand.
And then this is a budget we're gonna use to target people that maybe aren't, aren't already adding soda to their cart. And how do we, how do we convince them that they need a two liter of Coke along with their, their healthy food they're ordering.
Mark Mannino: Yeah, it's probably, I mean, it probably is wisest, like I said, I'm not a brand marketer.
Um, but it's probably wisest to have different budgets and how you think about that so that you could, um, you know, because you could also learn that maybe you only have to protect yourself every two weeks. And you could take a week off because you know, the other guys give up a little bit. Right? You know, there's ways to ba and then that's, it's, it's a little more sophisticated that than that.
But there might be ways for you to save here or there. Um, for example, let's just say a big retailer has four placements at the [00:26:00] top of a search result, right? Maybe you only have to be the top, you know, two of the top because geez, if they search for Coke and there's an ad for Coke there and an ad for Pepsi and a, an ad for rc, you know, they're probably gonna click on the Coke one.
And you should measure that and understand that and think about how much are you losing by not dominating all of them, uh, because it may get really, or it may get prohibitively expensive to try and block everything.
James Avery: Yeah, that makes sense. All right, I'm gonna take us in a little bit different direction now.
Yeah. I think it'll be a fun topic. Um, you didn't talk about, uh, previous to Amazon, you were at a little company called Media Math. Yeah. Right. Media Math for people that don't know, is a, you know, one of the major DSPs, you know, competing with Trade Desk Google, uh, for, for quite a while. Um, and so, you know, you have that, you know, similar background to myself where you spend a lot of time in traditional ed tech and traditional programmatic.
Yep. Uh, now that we're over in retail media, there's, today there's not a lot of actual programmatic. Mm-hmm. Right. What do [00:27:00] you, what do you think about the, what do you think the future holds for, you know, programmatic and retail media? Do you think, do you think we're headed in that direction? Do you think we're not headed in that direction?
Mark Mannino: Yeah. Uh, it's a good question. First of all, media math still is. They still do exist.
James Avery: Sorry. Media mass still exist. Sorry, sorry. Yeah, they're,
Mark Mannino: they are, and they're, you know, they're. I think they're doing some good and interesting stuff and, uh, some of my friends are there. But, um, to your question, um, it's a couple of things.
I think like, first of all, and I'll just, you know, I don't know if I'll have the most structured answer on this, but first of all, the, um, if you're a retail where retailers who don't have significant scale, right? Um. Can really, really benefit from, um, from programmatic because it can really allow them to both expand their reach, um, to their current consumers.
Right? [00:28:00] Um, meaning, you know, I may be a ShopRite customer, but I don't only go on the ShopRite app. Once a month or twice a month when I'm in the store, but now ShopRite can talk to me everywhere, right? By using programmatic, uh, technology, um, they can also go and get other customers who don't know about ShopRite and try and bring them in, right?
And, and do things. So understanding how that happens I think is really important. Um, and then, you know, they can also take their data. And extend it out and allow, um, brands to access it on different platforms or on television places. You know, because most of these, um, most of these, uh, smaller retailers can't build a prime video, for example.
They need to figure out other ways and they can, you know, they can leverage the fact that there is a, a vibrant streaming media, uh, ecosystem out there that they can access and let, and so they can kind of expand their reach there. 'cause the consumers aren't always on the site. You know, the other way that helps them [00:29:00] on site is kind of relates to the answer I gave you before around the different types of consumer experience.
If you're a, a ShopRite, for example, um, you only have consumers on your site for a limited time. Um, but they may be do in different things. If you can really work on getting, bringing in programmatic demand, things that you don't have to sell yourself, um, and things that tap into, you know. Really active and vibrant demand systems like, you know, large DSPs, like the trade desk, um, or other sources of, of, of spend.
Um, it can just really help them scale while they, they nurture their core, you know, probably sponsored ads type, uh, retail media placements.
James Avery: And how do you, like I was, I was actually at a conference the other day and, and somebody was talking about programmatic and retail media, and they were kind of giddy about, hey, like programmatic is coming to retail media.
[00:30:00] Um, and I think you're right, like I think in a lot of these cases, like if you're a smaller regional grocer, right, like you're not gonna, you're not gonna get the brands coming to you spend with you. Like programmatic makes a ton of sense. But my immediate thought was, you know, thinking about the history of programmatic and traditional ad deck.
And how, you know, publishers in general got really commoditized.
Mark Mannino: Yeah,
James Avery: yeah. And so you went from where, oh, you were a publisher and you were paying your writers, you know, great salaries and you were commanding $50 CPMs to where you were, you know, creating listicles because it was all just about how much, how do you get as many impressions as possible?
And, you know, do you, do you worry about that when you think about, if I, if you're a retailer, thinking about pragmatic, like, like do you worry about like just being, becoming commoditized?
Mark Mannino: It's a really good point. I'll expand on something I've been saying is I, I, 'cause I think just, it, it, you should worry about it if you just blindly throw your, you know, your site and your impressions into a random supply chain, [00:31:00] right?
Because then you will just be in there. Um, you'll, no one will really value you. Um, for what you are. And, um, and I think re publishers, non-retail media publishers have learned this lesson. And while to some extent, you know, the, the, the horse has left the barn, but by, um, really working hard on, uh, private marketplace deals, which, um, for those that don't know, allows a re a buyer.
A marketer to buy programmatically from a specific publisher or for a group of publishers at a set price. So kind of, it can take the auction out of the situation or it can at least put in a floor to the price. Um, but it really values and allows the marketer, Val, to value that specific re um, publisher or a group of publishers.
And given the high quality that I just. I attribute to retailers and [00:32:00] retailer sites, again, back to having a credit card in your hand, making sure that you understand and are part of private marketplace, um, decision making, both within, you know, and, and, and now there's also a lot of curation going on, uh, which is just a, a more advanced way of, of doing private marketplace and making sure that the dollars go to the right.
Um, publisher or a site, um, is really critical. So working with your, both your, uh, your retail media tech partner, your SSP, if you have one, and your, and the DSP and building those relationships, I think is really important. And then it won't happen, I don't think.
James Avery: Yeah, no, I think that makes sense and I think that's, I think there's, there's a lot that retailers can learn from.
What publishers went through.
Mark Mannino: Yeah.
James Avery: Right. And I think the publishers today that are still commanding a premium are doing exactly the kind of things you said, right. Which is focusing on their data, focusing on PMPs, focusing on, uh, you know, the [00:33:00] experience. Uh, and so I think that it makes sense if retailers do the same thing, they can hopefully avoid the.
That a lot of, a lot of traditional publishers, uh, ran into.
Mark Mannino: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
James Avery: So thinking about, uh, you know, we're talking about kind of got into pragmatic and so just thinking about offsite, right, which we touched a little bit on offsite earlier, uh, I think there's like a, there's a, uh, there's a question that a lot of retailers have.
There's kinda like a fork in the road of how they think about offsite and it's, do they, do they make their data available? Everywhere. Right? Or other places. Right? Like do they go and say, Hey, you can use our data on the trade desk, you can use our data. Here it is in LiveRamp. You know, go use it wherever.
Or do they, or do they control that and say, we're gonna control the sale. And targeting of our data. How do you think a retailer like should think about that decision? Because I think it's like a, it's a big decision that I think a lot of 'em kind of, you know, quickly pick one way or the other. Yep. But I think it's like a, it's a big decision of whether they're gonna, they're gonna like really let their data be out there and usable everywhere, which I know there's retailers doing that approach and there's retailers that say, [00:34:00] no, if you want to like, call up our sales reps and we will, we will handle, you know, setting this up or making it available to you.
Mark Mannino: So there's no scenario where you shouldn't control it. And I mean, even if you just let it go through a DSP and let others use it, you should really be understanding and evaluating where's it going? How are, how are marketers using it? Are they finding value? Um, I would never just let the data. Just go into, you know, like almost un unfettered into some tool, right?
Um, even like, you know, the DSPs and SSPs will work with you nowadays, especially if you're big enough to get to work with, you know, advertisers, advertisers to beta tests, and to evaluate how something works and to give you feedback. Um, I think that, um, after you get outside the top two or three. You know, retailers who, it's easy for them to say, I won't, we won't let our data go anywhere.
'cause a lot of [00:35:00] people will, everyone will just have to buy directly from them. Right. That's the, that's what Amazon did. Right? Right. That's what Walmart does. Um, as you get into the, you know, the middle of tier of retailers who are large brands that all of our moms know, but, um, but you know, may not be large enough to that marketers are gonna do dedicated work with them.
Then you have to think about how you'll release your data, how you'll expose it in different ways. And, and that's, I just think you really need to be thoughtful and make sure you build some sort of a, you know, a learning agenda over time about how you do it, and you really understand what value am I getting back, right?
How much revenue am I really getting by exposing this data? And then, and then make the, make the right decision. I'll give you a good example. I think this is the Instacart. Um, that has their own platform, right? They did a deal with Roku, right, where their data could [00:36:00] flow through and people buying media through Roku's ad platform could apply, um, Instacart data and learn.
How the campaign, you know, and they'd learn, you know, and they'd learn how it performs and everything. And I think that's a really good example. And Instacart's large obviously, and so is Roku. So it's perfect 'cause it's a large data set with a large, uh, user base, but it's very controlled, right? There's no chance it's gonna go anywhere.
I'm sure they meet every week or every month and go through the results and what advertisers buying from us. Um, it's not just like, Hey, I'll throw it into this SSP and see what happens or this DSP and see what happens and tell me how it goes. Yep.
James Avery: No, I think that makes total sense. And I think, you know, in a lot of ways this first party data is the most, one of the most valuable things these retailers have.
Yeah. And they need to make sure they're protecting it and not just spreading it to the wind and, and, uh, 'cause there are like, you know, as we learned in traditional ed tech, there's plenty of ways to take that data [00:37:00] and, uh. Co-opt the cookies and, you know, drop your own cookies on those users and, and then do whatever you want with it.
So, uh,
Mark Mannino: yeah. And there's also a ri there's a consumer risk too. I mean, as the world becomes tighter and tighter, appropriately and rightly on how. Marketers and platforms can use consumer data. Even if the ROI is, let's say the ROI, is just positive and you're like, oh, this is good. Like, really think about where, where you're letting your data go, who's making the decision on how to use it and things like that.
Because, um, if you're a retailer. You know, a publisher has to do certain things. The only way they make money is through ad revenue unless they have subscription. And that's, that's a small set of, of, of publishers. But if you're a retail, you know, you're a retailer, you, your consumers have probably. Decades of experience with you and a glow around you, whether you're Winn-Dixie, or ShopRite or what, or Tesco.
It doesn't matter. And if it, [00:38:00] if you find out that people, they're just using your data to do whatever and letting anyone do it, um, irrespective of the illegal of the, of whether that's legal or not, which is a thing you need to think about. Um, really think about what the impact would be. I mean, at Amazon we used to always say, and this is early days when we were fighting against the grain in terms of you can't use our data anywhere.
Um, we always said to ourselves, we're the only major publisher out there that our consumer, our, our visitors, our users pay us. Right. You know, and it's really, you really need to hold that relationship, precious.
James Avery: Yeah. I think it goes back to one of the things I, I tell retailers a lot, which is the, the number one job in RMN is first do no harm.
Exactly. Yeah. Right. Like the, the number one job is first do no harm, you can't hurt the core business. Yeah. You can't drive users away. You can't break the trust that you have with these Yeah. Decade long customers. Uh, so yeah, a hundred, a hundred percent agree on that.
Mark Mannino: Don't be in the Wall Street Journal.
Don't [00:39:00] get your Cee o on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Yes. Don't do that. Yeah.
James Avery: You don't, you do not want that call, uh, from your Cee o. Yes. Yeah. Awesome. Um, so yeah, I mean, I think this, so Mark, this has been great. Great having you on the show. Um, you know, I think this is a lot of valuable information for, for retailers out there thinking about how do they really package themselves up and what are brands thinking about?
How do they think about the key different kind of measurement, uh, approaches, how they're working with first party data, uh, onsite and offsite. Uh, so it's been great having you on. Thank you for joining.
Mark Mannino: Thanks for having me, James. I appreciate it.
James Avery: That was Mark Mannino. To learn more about Mark's work, connect with him on LinkedIn and to learn more about VidMob visit vidmob.com.
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. See you next [00:40:00] time.