Yesterday I joined an IAB Australia Retail Media Council meeting. It was great to connect with the local heavyweights here and learn what's on their mind. I was asked to share my read of the local market and what opportunities might we be missing here right now?
It is an interesting question because it assumes that there's companies or even entire markets out there who have somehow figured it all out.
In a word, its FOMO and we all have it.
Even at Amazon, there's clearly some FOMO around personal AI agents. The current narrative there is "shopping with third party agents? 🤮 who wants that?! " but also "by the way we have this great shopping agent called Alexa For Shopping, everyone just loves it! 😍"
My buddy Christian Rich at Azoma shared this week how Amazon has turned Alexa for Shopping into the default search view DEPENDING on what you search. So yes, it could very well be "the" definitive shopping assistant Amazon claims," he says.
This puts a whole new meaning around the idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It's natural to doubt ourselves at times. Maybe we just need to take a little dose of Amazon's confidence.
Pressure Test: The future of retail media is.... gifts? (video) I was commissioned by Nift to give an independent assessment of its offering, and I went in with my usual spicy take and anonymous feedback from the RMN community. With onsite sponsored products nearing saturation, I ask where, when and how gift-based advertising makes sense for a retail media network, and where it doesn't. Watch on YouTube
Walmart Turns Its Shelf Into An API In a guest post, Doug Chavez of Mars United Commerce wrote about Walmart's new operating rules for AI agents shopping on a customer's behalf: Agent Profiles, the Walmart Agent Gateway, and new terms for what agents can and can't do. His piece lays out five implications for brands and agencies, including what an agent calling an API means for retail media pricing. Read here
Is advertising in ChatGPT kind of mid? I'd been hearing from performance advertisers that ChatGPT ads weren't pulling their weight, so a new working paper didn't surprise me. It found a paid ChatGPT visit brought in $0.89 in revenue against $2.45 for a paid Google search visit. But a separate case study from Dose and WorkMagic found ChatGPT ads drove 2.3x more orders than click attribution credited, with some showing up on Amazon. I dig into why both can be true. Read here
AdGentic: Ads in AI Aren't Just for the Bottom of the Funnel My first AdGentic guest was Roger Dunn, chief commercial officer at Thrad, who spent 20 years in retail media, most recently leading global retail media at Diageo. He brought two visuals: one mapping nine AI conversations where an ad could win a new Netflix member, and one sorting agent ad formats by who's doing the talking. We get into why ads in AI belong higher in the funnel than most advertisers assume, and whose side the agent is really on. Read here | Listen to the podcast
Forrester says the retail website is about to radically change Forrester analyst Emily Pfeiffer thinks retail sites and apps are heading toward conversational search, and she calls it the first major change in website layouts in decades. Sponsored product ads are sold against keywords, so if shoppers stop typing keywords, retail media has a problem. Read here
Retail media's loudest brand-side defender on where it wins and still falls short Benoit Vatere, Liquid Death's Chief Media and Digital Commerce Officer, is a retail media maximalist. He says it will be over 50% of the brand's ad spend in 2027. I pull out my top five highlights from Benoit's recent interview on The CPG Guys podcast, including why even a true believer won't spread budget across 20 networks, how retail media protects the physical shelf, and Benoit's 2027 wish-list from RMNs. Read here
The Drum: Four major US retail media networks, four different ROAS calculations Albertsons Media Collective, Orange Apron Media (The Home Depot), Instacart and Walmart Connect were each asked to explain how they calculate ROAS, and each counts it differently. Agency Ovative Group analyzed the differences. Read here
Have a great weekend!
PS: Posts go out at 6AM ET Monday–Thursday. Subscribe here to get them fresh.
