I love writing this newsletter. I get to follow my curiosity about the industry, and I'm fortunate that enough people read it to keep me supplied with a steady stream of tips, stories, and interesting things to chew on.
But, real talk – after last week at The Drum's Commerce Media Leaders Forum and POSSIBLE Miami, my brain is overflowing. I have too many topics in my notebook and not enough confidence about which ones matter most to you.
So instead of picking one and hoping it lands, I want to hear from you. Below is a list of topics and trends I've been turning over — including some shared by loyal readers.
I'd love to know which ones you want me to go deeper on. The best way is to share a comment on this post about which topics are tickling you right now.
And if you have some intel on any of these, I want to hear from you!
- Brands don't want a "retail media" line item from their agencies
At POSSIBLE, a number of conversations centered around the fact that retail media has grown up way past Sponsored Product Ads, but the plans that brands are getting back from their agency partners aren't mapping back to real objectives.
"I don't want to see 'retail media' as a line item on my campaign plan," said Supergoop's Lauren Weinberg on a panel at ADWEEK House. Bingo.
Brands are asking for integrated plans. Why are they not getting it? One stated culprit is internal siloes within agencies. What else is at play?
- Objective-based buying: breakthrough or black box?
Objective-based-buying was positioned as a potential solve for the problem of retail media being mis-applied only as performance marketing. I personally am skeptical that this is the right path for all media buyers, particularly the larger, sophisticated brands & agencies that are responsible for the most volume.
Buying by objective could be helpful for the whole ecosystem to break out of the ROAS trap, but are marketers better off with more transparency and customizability?
3. How retailers pay their ad sales teams
The gap between tech-platform-style comp (uncapped bonuses, 50-70% of base tied to performance) and traditional retailer comp (10-15% bonus) may be one of the most underappreciated factors shaping RMN performance. And as the commerce media ecosystem matures, will that force comp up or down?
4. Email, SMS, and WhatsApp as retail media surfaces
Retailers are sitting on CRM channels that could be monetized as media inventory, but most haven't touched them seriously. There are early movers — Chemist Warehouse in Australia does a lot with email, and Douglas was experimenting in Europe — but the revenue is still small. Could influencer-written brand emails sent through retailer CRM become a real revenue line? Or is this one of those ideas that sounds better in a pitch deck than in practice?
Retailers know that a marketplace model can dramatically boost product assortment, shopper engagement, and total revenue. But, to get the most out of your marketplace, you need an ad tech solution that can really engage sellers. Mirakl Ads is powering the future of retail media for leading retailers — to activate both 3P sellers and 1P brands.
5. Experiential retail media: sampling, events, and activations
Beyond digital screens and audio, some retailers are investing in experiential formats — product sampling with pickup orders, in-store events, influencer meetups. At POSSIBLE, Best Buy's Lisa Valentino spoke of bringing back midnight openings for major product launches.
At POSSIBLE, brand leaders kept coming back to the value of physical retail experiences and human connection as something digital can't replicate. The opportunity is real, but the logistics are brutal — especially sampling with fulfillment orders, where you need to track who got what programmatically. Is the juice worth the squeeze?
6. What are we using data clean rooms for these days?
Courtland Dearing, most recently Team Lead for Retail Media Technology & Innovation at Douglas, the major European beauty retailer, told me recently about a genuinely interesting use case for a clean room on a call recently. And I'm hearing clean rooms are becoming more relevant for cross-network collaboration — retail media networks partnering with financial services or quick commerce for complementary data. What are the use cases here both for CMNs partnering together, and if/how brands & agencies are leveraging them directly?
7. AI agents in retail media operations — not just agentic shopping
I've written a lot about agentic commerce from the consumer side — AI agents buying on behalf of shoppers. But where are agents being deployed inside the ad business itself? Managing performance buys, optimizing bids, replacing manual campaign management at RMNs and agencies. This is the 'workforce angle' of agentic.
It's also me saying 'goodbye' to my email inbox... Steeling myself here for a barrage of PR from vendors 😬
Drop a comment with the topic(s) that interest you most. Tell me what I'm missing, what I've got wrong, or what your experience has been. And if you're a practitioner working on any of these — building this stuff, not just commenting on it — I want to hear from you. Hit reply or DM me.
I'll report back on what resonated, and I'll credit the people who helped me get smarter on these topics.
PS: catch me at Xnurta's Signal To Scale Summit in Chicago
The retail media teams pulling ahead right now aren't just optimizing campaigns. They're rethinking the infrastructure and decision layers underneath them.
That's the conversation happening at Xnurta's Signal to Scale summit on May 19 in Chicago, and I'm opening the day as keynote speaker.
My talk, The Agentic Reset, uses the rise of self-service retail as a historical lens to explore what AI could actually change next: how consumers discover products, how intent gets captured, and how retail media creates value in that new world.
This is the room to be in if you're serious about what comes next. 10+ industry experts and a full day of sessions built to be actionable.
Seats are going fast. Reserve yours here
