Retail Media Breakfast Club

Follow the Wallet

Consumer AI is growing at an incredible pace, but here's the thing: even though millions of people are using AI, very few are actually paying for it. So how are these pla

Does the World Need More Retail Media Networks? It Depends.

The retail media landscape is getting more crowded by the week. McDonald’s, Simon Property Group, Delta, and a growing list of other companies are launching commerce medi

Bulldust Metrics In Retail Media

There’s a lot of talk in retail media about better measurement, incrementality, and finding the one metric that finally tells us what’s really working. But sometimes the

Best Buy Ads Showcase Recap

I recently took a closer look at what Best Buy Ads is building, and what it tells us about where retail media is heading. Best Buy was one of the early retailers to launc

RMNs Are Launching MTA. Do Brands Want It? [Part 1]

A couple of years ago, two neighborhood cats started visiting our house. We fed them, they kept coming back, and then one day they turned up wearing collars that said, “D

The Retail Media Doom Loop: 2026 Edition

I’m revisiting one of my most popular episodes from last year: the retail media doom loop. The basic idea is pretty simple — a retailer sees the ad revenue being generate

Trust in AI Shopping: Two New Studies

AI is becoming part of how we shop, but how much do consumers actually trust what an AI assistant recommends? In this episode, I’m digging into two new research studies —

Retail Media Is a Creative Wasteland. So What.

Retail media is a creative wasteland. That’s the catchy line coming out of Ipsos’ new Creativity Over Clicks research. And honestly, my first reaction was to get my hackl

Trip Report: Retail & Commerce Media Activations in Poland

I recently spent a week in Poland on a family trip, and while I didn't have nearly as much time for retail media recon as I would have liked, I came away with a few obser

Are RMNs Finally Getting The Hang of This Collaboration Thing?

Are retail media networks finally getting the hang of collaboration? This week, two major announcements have me thinking about the transition from parallel play to collab

Shoppers Think That AI's Answers Are For Sale

We’ve struck a pretty clear deal with advertisers: we tolerate ads in exchange for free or subsidized services. But what happens when those ads show up inside AI assistan

44% of US RMNs Are Led By Women

I've got some really good news to share on today's Retail Media Breakfast Club. Despite some of the things that can leave me feeling a little disheartened about the retai

Rocks, Pebbles, Sand: Retail Media Eras (Part 2 of 2)

Why do good retailers make bad ad tech decisions? In part two of my series on the different eras of retail media, I’m expanding on my recent article for The Drum, and exp

Retail Media's Four Eras (Part 1 of 2)

Retail media technology has already gone through several major reinventions. From retailers building their own ad tech stacks, to point solutions, cloud-based composable

What It Now Takes For a Shopper To Switch Brands, Using AI

Most shoppers are now using AI tools to shop, and they’re increasingly discovering new brands and products inside a chat window. That raises a practical question for anyo

Amazon Extends Its DSP Into ChatGPT Ads

Amazon is extending its DSP into ChatGPT, giving brands that already advertise through Amazon Ads a new way to reach consumers inside the ChatGPT app. But the headline is

Why Do Brand Marketers Love To Hate On Retail Media?

There’s a new beef in marketing, and this one hits close to home: can retail media actually build brands, or is it really just trade promotion with a fancy name and a das

Retail Media Isn’t a Cart.

Today, I’m digging into a question that has been coming up more and more as retail media expands into a broader commerce media ecosystem: does commerce media really need

FTC v Amazon: Nothing Changes

By now, you’ve probably read plenty of coverage about the FTC’s case against Amazon’s ad auction (last week I shared an article on The Drum). But the question I’m more in

The UK Takes A Run At Retail Media Aggregation

Retail media has a fragmentation problem. We have better dashboards, better reporting, and better measurement than we did a few years ago. But media buyers are still bein