# S1 E13 - Keith Bryan

The Middlemen - Episode 13 - Keith Bryan 

[00:00:00] ​ 

[00:00:05] Elgato Wave Neo-24: welcome to the middlemen. I'm Tom Limongello, and I'm here with Todd Sawicki. We, as middlemen, live at the intersection of media and e commerce, and we would like for you to join us in our discussions where we turn that chaotic intersection into your comfort zone  

[00:01:43] Tom: Really excited to have Keith Bryan with us. Keith , is one of the people who created retail media as we know it today. And we wanted to get, firsthand look from him about how it all started and where it's going. [00:02:00] Specifically Keith was behind the Best Buy ads network. 

[00:02:04] Tom: And Keith, why don't you tell us how that happened? 

[00:02:07] Keith Bryan: It's getting it's fading in memory, but it's still relevant. I hope. And that it goes like this. I started as a brand manager before I joined Best Buy in 2004, but pretty soon after I joined Best Buy in 2004 leading large category marketing teams, those are the marketers that are embedded with the merchants and get involved in certain vendor conversations, certainly brand and promotion and things like that for certain categories, big categories like computing or emerging categories in those days, digital music or, categories that re redefined their future like major appliances that suddenly became sexy again. 

[00:02:42] Keith Bryan: One of, one of the areas that my team was responsible for was computing. And so this was in the era of taking you back to Wintel and Intel inside and big OEMs like HP. And in those conversations, it hit me literally, I kid you not six [00:03:00] months in. That some of the conversations that I got to sit in on were definitely about traditional retail merchant terms  

[00:03:08] Keith Bryan: but the other half of the conversations were very much, I would call them bad media conversations. No one really knew that they were media conversations, but they were media conversations nonetheless. And this of course was in the day of linear and heavy print out of home linear TV, , magazines. 

[00:03:26] Keith Bryan: And the essence of the conversation was the vendor brand wanting to have better access to Best Buy's Audiences, our customers, but that obviously is a sensitive topic. We, our customers for both us and our brands, as with any retailer are on a pedestal, and we want to be very careful about how we provision communication with our customers  

[00:03:48] Keith Bryan: but that was the conversation. They just were bad media conversations in some ways that had some. Economics behind them. So I coined this phrase that we were a media company in denial. And there were a few people [00:04:00] in the company who thought that at least was interesting, if not provocative. And so I decided to become a merchant director for about three years to explore the hypothesis behind that. 

[00:04:13] Keith Bryan: And while I was a merchant, I wrote a business plan to start the Best Buy Media Network. And that, if you take that to the end, that was happening, 2008 is when I started really crafting that that business plan and presented it to the board. 

[00:04:28] Todd: I think that's interesting. It goes back 2008. One of the things that Tom and I talked about is the history of retail media and how it didn't start. In 2019 and goes back in many ways, a hundred years with co op and circulars and coupons, and it's been around for a long time. Digital obviously is emerging, but I had no idea that the best buy media network or best by media, best by advertising, whatever the right name is today, went back that far. 

[00:04:52] Todd: Cause when we were researching that, I thought it was started in like 2018. And so it's fascinating to realize this is an effort that goes back. [00:05:00] 15, 16 years and is something that, is it and Best Buy is a much bigger player in this world. What was, when you pitch this, to the management and the board of Best Buy, what was the reaction back then? 

[00:05:12] Todd: And what are they, I bet you, they're probably surprised at the success and scale of what it's become today. 

[00:05:18] Keith Bryan: There are certain things that connected to a, certainly a specialty retailers DNA. And that is the idea that had been around. Floating around for a while that we should act more like a publisher. We should have content that's engaging and things like that. So you start with the idea that media isn't just advertising, it's also content. 

[00:05:34] Keith Bryan: And so the idea that this could help facilitate more content that was relevant to our customer shopping journey, certainly had an appeal. And then the idea that we could monetize an asset. Our our experiences, our stores, the growing, web space and e commerce that certainly had appeal to, but I think the idea that we could publish more content and act more like a publisher or a media [00:06:00] company also had a ring to it philosophically there were also some things that, that, that were somewhat threatening or, watch out. 

[00:06:07] Keith Bryan: And that was basically the economics behind our vendor relationships. And that was something that I understood really quite well from having been a merchant director on a multi billion dollar business for three years and been responsible for that P and L. So I understood the sensitivities on our side and with our relationships with our vendors. 

[00:06:26] Keith Bryan: One of the top topics that my partners and I see is this relationship between retail media and the merchant organization, including the economics. Of those relationships with vendors. That is a very hot topic these days, and we saw it coming from 2008. 

[00:06:43] Todd: Yeah. I think that's fascinating because one of the things that, when we talk to people and especially Tom in your background and talk to people on the brand side, When they get asked in, in these 1 percent asks, 5 percent asks in terms of investing in retail media. And they're at a point where they're not sure what to do. 

[00:06:59] Todd: I think [00:07:00] Tom, you've talked to the, about this a lot in terms of, if you're on the brand side, the vendor side, are you really ready to embrace retail media the way that retailers potentially want you to? 

[00:07:10] Tom: We look at retail media as, there's a great opportunity to monetize the audience. I think the question we would ask you is to which counterpart is it to, the trusted, the key brands, is it to non endemics , where is the sweet spot for retail media is probably a good way to, to start this discussion of, the merchant and retail media relationship. 

[00:07:34] Tom: So 

[00:07:35] Keith Bryan: Yeah. I, and I might add a couple of cornerstones to this conversation about this. One is that retail media is becoming quite catalytic to solve some , longstanding retail and media problems. And, in terms of making sure that we're serving our customers in a contemporary way that matches their journey, which is very the whole idea of a funnel or the idea of a linear [00:08:00] purchase path is, has collapsed on itself. 

[00:08:03] Keith Bryan: And so retailers have to create new experiences. And retail media is a way of reaching customers along that journey with the best data that media has ever had, which is retail first party data. I know it's not the only first party data, but it is the highest fidelity first party data right now. There's certainly a lot of discussion around how to. 

[00:08:23] Keith Bryan: Make sure that value translates end to end across the value chain from retailer to, to brand. So we want to make sure that works, but it's happening. So it's solving some problems that retailers and media have had in terms of reaching customers along their journey with the most effective, best message, best time, right message, right time, all of those kinds of things. 

[00:08:47] Keith Bryan: It's actually helping with that in a lot of ways. It's also going to help media. As as programmatic becomes much lower fidelity with not just cookie deprecation, but also MFA and [00:09:00] invalid traffic and things like that, that are really infecting to a double digit percent. The programmatic and open web world. 

[00:09:08] Keith Bryan: So it's solving these problems while it also figures out it's, figures out how the engine should be made.  

[00:09:13] Tom: Yeah, let's slow that one down a little bit. Cause I think I'm following you, but maybe for the listeners, you just jumped into. Okay. Retail media in some people's concept is the onsite media, sponsored search, maybe some display placements. But it has shifted to now also become the full funnel. 

[00:09:32] Tom: And so when I was a quotient, we did tons of offsite because a lot of the retailers we worked with in the grocery space outside of, Walmart and the guys who have tons of traffic, they had very little traffic, their sites look like brochure where, especially. We. Pre COVID. And we used a lot of the audience offsite, but now, you start to really look at what sites are they on, what apps are they on? 

[00:09:52] Tom: A lot of MFAs, a lot of, a lot of invalid traffic. We had to deal with a lot of those problems, but it's getting worse and [00:10:00] worse as data privacy is locking down. Now that I've given that context to what you were saying, what do you see coming? How does retail media solve that problem offsite? 

[00:10:10] Tom: Even all the way up the funnel to digital out of home and CTV 

[00:10:14] Keith Bryan: let's, we'll go onsite and then offsite. Onsite is is a place where the first party data and the ability to measure at the SKU level comes together very well for the retailer and the brand. There's no dispute. Disputing that people can talk about CPCs and pricing and, supply and demand, and we can go there but there's no dispute that onsite media is so close to the point of sale and it's using very high fidelity data. 

[00:10:38] Keith Bryan: And it's quite measurable in ways that media has never been measurable. When you go offsite, there are a couple of things and I'll start with endemic, the idea that you can reach a customer, whether they're a grocery shopper, a CPG shopper, a club shopper or, or looking for something in the specialty space, consumer electronics, fashion, beauty sporting goods, things like that. 

[00:10:59] Keith Bryan: [00:11:00] Home improvement, certainly, you're talking about a longer customer journey before there's a transaction. So there's a huge opportunity, especially in specialty to meet customers along the way when they're in Google search or Bing search or in Safari, regardless of their browser. 

[00:11:16] Keith Bryan: They can they're going to find information and the more you can make sure that the, that we understand the customer in those ecosystems, many of course are large walled gardens and social and things like that, that you can meet them there with the, with a message that helps them along their journey and know that you can find them on the other side. 

[00:11:37] Keith Bryan: When they end up on the retailer site to investigate further or ultimately transact. And so you know, the retail media networks in the endemic space are trying to figure out how to find to use the highest fidelity data. The brands, I should say, are looking for the highest fidelity data. To reach people in the highest fidelity offsite ecosystems. 

[00:11:59] Keith Bryan: [00:12:00] And the more retail media is able to leverage, include non cookie based platforms to reach those customers and know that you're not spending your money on empty calories, 

[00:12:12] Todd: One of the things that's, I think, interesting to, to dive into, you talked about the two pieces of. That make a retail media network successful, right? It's the having the data, the walled garden sort of data and the ability to track conversions, right? Attribution, closed loop attribution is a big part of what makes it successful. 

[00:12:33] Todd: And what's interesting is we start getting into the non endemic conversation, right? Which was a big part, I think, of what retailers are trying to do is reach that. What's your take on the non endemic opportunity? And is it as real as people think, or the fact that non endemic doesn't necessarily have the closed group attribution piece of that, maybe it's a bit overblown, or is that, is it, so how do you, should people be thinking about this non endemic opportunity? 

[00:12:56] Tom: and before, before you answer that just so the listeners [00:13:00] understand endemic, non endemic is something that if you're not really deep in the advertising industry, you're not going to know, but like at a Best Buy and endemic would be, I don't know, windows, HP, yeah. HP a non endemic might be United Airlines. 

[00:13:14] Tom: I don't, something 

[00:13:14] Keith Bryan: Ford, yes. 

[00:13:16] tom-limongello_1_09-24-2024_141127: Okay. So go ahead. 

[00:13:17] Keith Bryan: So I think let's go here first is that I've been in many conversations going all the way back to when we first talked about this with inside Best Buy where it is endemic versus non endemic is interpreted as a binary thing. It's either one or the other, it's a zero or a one when in fact it's a spectrum. 

[00:13:36] Keith Bryan: And for every retailer, whether it's grocery, Club, specialty CPG, whatever it may be mass. There is that spectrum. And so when you think about if the litmus test for endemic versus non endemic is, do we sell that SKU that brand that SKU, then you're in the zero to one chain world, but there, Many opportunities to reach [00:14:00] customers with other brands that don't have a SKU on a peg or, on a product detail page where it's relevant to the problem they're trying to solve or their experience in life. 

[00:14:11] Keith Bryan: So for example, in there are so many cars that are technology forward. And they have to integrate with a customer's technology. I would call that pseudo endemic, at least in the mind space, the actual utility of a tech forward automobile and what car isn't tech forward these days or travel. And how does that connect with with, 

[00:14:36] Tom: Yeah. You need to get your gear to Thailand or whatever. 

[00:14:39] Keith Bryan: that's right. 

[00:14:39] Keith Bryan: And so there's all, there are all kinds of extensions of this. And so take theatrical releases. It's actually, I can only imagine how challenging it is for a studio to reach audiences right now. With linear TV blowing up and must see TV pretty much non existent except for live sports and things like that. 

[00:14:58] Keith Bryan: So it's very challenging. I [00:15:00] would say that just about every retail media network is pseudo endemic to to a theater trying to build an audience for their theatrical release. Does that make sense? 

[00:15:11] Todd: Yep, no, I think that's interesting, and, one of the things that, You talk about, we've talked with you as we were preparing for this is what the reaction to non endemic. And you said, look, you don't understand non endemic until you want to run a non endemic takeover on the homepage and look at the merchants reactions to that. 

[00:15:29] Todd: Everybody wants the money, but do they want the experience? And I think that's an interesting sort of like where the rubber meets the road kind of conversation to the realities of what it takes to run a retail media. That work. And I think that might be interesting to touch on in terms of your background of what is that reality? 

[00:15:43] Todd: Yeah. 

[00:15:43] Keith Bryan: Yes, I know what you're talking about. And and so without spilling, beans that I shouldn't spill, I can imagine many of my colleagues in the industry in RMN GM jobs, where there's been some excitement around the idea of non endemic, and so they love the [00:16:00] idea of a media transaction with high margins on their O and O, their owned and operated real estate, most prominently something like a global homepage or the opening screen. 

[00:16:09] Keith Bryan: Screen of an app or something like that. And everybody thinks, Oh, that would be so cool. And the check would be big and it's higher margin than our EBITDA of five, six, 7%, and that kind of thing. And then, but then you imagine when that runs, what is it going to be? The reaction of the merchant community, the consumer experience community, even the board, when there's. 

[00:16:32] Keith Bryan: When there's a BMW ad on the GHP of a retailer. And I think that's actually one of the more you're raising this Todd. I think that's one of the more interesting things that needs to happen to actually have the real conversation because the theoretical conversation is easy. It's cheap. The actual conversation after something runs and you have both the brand or the, the theater or the auto brand or whatever.[00:17:00]  

[00:17:00] Keith Bryan: Evaluating the effectiveness of that media and their, or their agency evaluating the effectiveness of that media, what they spent on it, the retailer and all the constituencies inside of retailers saying, was this a good experience, the customers? Getting a voice from the customer about what they thought when they went to retailer X's site and they saw auto ad or a quick service restaurant ad, that's when it's going to get interesting. 

[00:17:28] Todd: It's fascinating because, back in the day I was zero for an early generation mean publisher and the same conversations would happen when you had a brand wanted to do a homepage takeover. And so what's fascinating here is you talk about, your comment earlier. That sort of was the modus operandi for Best Buy for a Long Time. 

[00:17:47] Todd: You're a publisher in denial. And I think that, those conversations, those hard conversations of what are the standards around a homepage takeover exist at publishers? How do you work with agencies? And I think what's, one of the things we like to talk about, [00:18:00] because Tom and I have talked about the future of retail media. 

[00:18:02] Todd: It retailers as publishers. That's been one of our rallying cries. And when we talk with retailers, we're like, look, if you want to build out a retail media business, that's fine, but you're going to have to hire a lot of publishing people to do that. Add salespeople out of publishers. You're going to need a GM out of the publishing world. 

[00:18:18] Todd: People who understand what it's like to make those decisions around homepage takeover. Publishers have been having those conversations for years, by the way, people weren't familiar every time there's a homepage takeover on a publisher like the New York times. There is a big conversation whether that's appropriate or not like the editorial side hates that stuff So it's funny you bring it up that these same conversations that are happening when the merchants go What do you mean? 

[00:18:39] Todd: You're blocking my big, mother's day sale banner with a bmw ad That's terrible. And you know the new york times the same thing the editor is like, what do you mean? You're covering up, you know my coverage of the most recent debate or whatever it might be And so it's I think that's part of the mechanics of we talk about with these retailers of why aren't you hiring? 

[00:18:58] Todd: You These publishing people because [00:19:00] that's who you need to run these businesses in a lot of ways. It's not a retail business. It's a publishing business. And what sort of experience did you have building out the team at Best Buy? Did you bring in a lot of publishing people to help augment the retail side of that business? 

[00:19:13] Keith Bryan: I think that all retailers to keep me away from specifics about Best Buy, I think all retail, and I would say especially specialty retail. owes it to itself. And more importantly, it's customers to create more content and better content that is reflective of their customer journey and their customer needs, their purpose as a retail brand. 

[00:19:34] Keith Bryan: I can name two that have come in my opinion. Farther on that path of creating better content and actually going into the publisher mindset from a content standpoint I would name REI and Sephora, for example, you know these are retailers that I've used personally for years and I'm not the only one as examples of progress in terms of content and community and those kinds of things so that it's not just about ASKU with [00:20:00] specs and a price and a PDP and those kinds of things I would say that my observation is that most RMS and retailers with very mature retail media networks, the top five or 10 of which certainly BestBuy is one, I probably, we're for a variety of reasons, including accounting reasons, you will have trouble. 

[00:20:20] Keith Bryan: Actually comparing retail media network size, even on a top level, much less 

[00:20:24] Todd: By the way, I can confirm that we were researching for this in the background of trying to find how big Best Buy's business was, and we couldn't. I was like, what? How is it? And because you see Amazon reporting it, but others generally don't. 

[00:20:35] Keith Bryan: It would be a sleeper of an episode for you guys. So I'm not advocating this, but it has a lot to do with accounting rules that are written for the nineties instead of today. Where I was going with this is for the most part, I would say. Retailers have not really embraced the idea of the publishing, the actual content side of. behaving more like a media network. On the other hand, what they have done, and we did this at Best Buy, is look for [00:21:00] talent from ad tech and media on the sales side. 

[00:21:03] Keith Bryan: It was really, I think that the appropriate composition for for a retail media networks GM's team. Includes some traditional digital media sales or media sales, people from industry, they obviously come with certain comp expectations, ad tech, you need people that under understand, DSPs and SSPs and those kinds of, you actually have to have people that are fluent in that. 

[00:21:29] Keith Bryan: And the third that I would say, if you had to pick three would be, you need to bring some people in. From your merchant community. And I know they're doing this. And this is if I had all of my retail media network, GMs and alums behind me, they'd say, yep, we're doing certainly that last one. For sure. 

[00:21:45] Keith Bryan: They're doing all of the above, but everyone who's, successful at running a retail media network right now realizes that they need to bring some people in who understand trade marketing that understand vendor program agreements, even if they're not connected right [00:22:00] now, because most are not. 

[00:22:02] Keith Bryan: They will be, but most are not connected between retail media network and merchant team and merchant P&L. They're going to get there. And one of the ways they'll get there is making sure that they can, it's almost like dialects. You have to be able to speak a common dialect at the end of the day. 

[00:22:17] Todd: It's funny you bring that up. And I thought I would, a bit of a hotshot coming out of the last coming time and I worked at in, in the Shopify space and the e commerce tech space, and then as I started. Sitting down and we were, and Tom and I started doing more with retail media, I had no idea how little I knew about how retailers really worked. 

[00:22:39] Todd: Tom, brought up and I can say these things like I know what a JPP is now, but I didn't know what it was necessarily before, Tom and he's whipping off these acronyms, vendor agreements and business proposals and in the fact that they called it the media spend investment. 

[00:22:53] Todd: Yeah. Versus, media dollars, right? We don't necessarily use that language the same. And I think it's interesting because I think [00:23:00] that's the other thing for a retail media GM to be successful, like you were at Best Buy, I think your background and Tom's background at quotient and Unilever and what have you, where you understand the mechanics of how a retail business actually works. 

[00:23:14] Todd: Like retail media is a subset of retail. And if you don't understand how retail works, You're probably not going to be successful as much as I want to think that, yeah, we digital media guys are really valuable. Now we're below that. And I think you have to have a real retail background to really understand how this works. 

[00:23:31] Todd: Again, I didn't know the language of things like JVP, when I hear people like you and Tom start going off and using language like that, I'm like, oh yeah, there's a lot that is retail specific that we digital media folks aren't really up to speed on. 

[00:23:44] Keith Bryan: I'll underscore that with there. There's no doubt that the two most profound impacts I had in my journey and how I built Best Buy ads, obviously with a team of people who ultimately knew more than I did. But it was being a merchant. And running a multi billion dollar [00:24:00] business and having my butt on the line and getting humbled any given day or week and working upstream. 

[00:24:05] Keith Bryan: And those kinds of things, that's number one. And number two was being responsible for the demand side of Best Buy Media as well, because pretty much immediately when I was building Best Buy ads, I also had responsibility for media investment teams. And then you can, Learn from the people that, I'd never worked inside a media agency. 

[00:24:24] Keith Bryan: I'd never been a planner. I'd never done any of those things. And now I had responsibility for, that's a pretty hot seat in a company, cause it's a pretty large SG and a line is your media investment. And that's, that's a pretty warm seat on any given day. And at various times it's a hot seat and having your, having your butt on the line to run that and understand and get humbled and learn from people that have been doing this for their entire careers. 

[00:24:50] Keith Bryan: And agencies with resources that, that you can only dream of and having access, certainly when you're, reasonably large, like a best by having access to a teams at Google and meta and places like [00:25:00] that, you, you're able to create some new molecules together, but you have to listen and you have to learn you have to learn how to leverage the leverage that you have, if that makes sense, 

[00:25:09] Todd: Yeah. No, I think it does 

[00:25:10] Tom: Retailers are, know that they have that leverage, but a lot of times, yeah, when they're in front of a Facebook or whatever is, is it about doing a partnership on, an A, a conversion, API or not? And a lot of times it was, let's set this out for a little bit. 

[00:25:24] Keith Bryan: that is exactly right. 

[00:25:27] Tom: The retailers aren't really pushing really that far into becoming a publisher themselves, it seems like from the press that we read that they are pushing to work more directly with the endemic publishers of their industry. 

[00:25:41] Tom: And this is where I think getting into a couple of things would be really interesting. What have you seen? Obviously, the CNET Best Buy thing we're interested in. And you said a little bit like in a specialty retail world, it's different. And I know this from the grocery world. It's like people are coming back every week. 

[00:25:56] Tom: It's very easy. You don't really have to have that content to [00:26:00] keep people involved here. There's just, they have to come back. Tell us a little more about what that world is like and what for the future in terms of publisher partnerships. 

[00:26:08] Keith Bryan: I think we can, you can talk about it from a grocery and a high velocity standpoint, like what Instacart and Tim Costelli and his team are doing. Over there with New York Times cooking and others, by the way, because for every one that you read, there's probably a few that you're not reading about. 

[00:26:22] Keith Bryan: And then on the other end of the spectrum specialty, let's say, Best Buy and CNET, which took a very long time. My team and I were deeply involved, both the demand side, you can imagine we, we had a media relationship. We have a, this is not confidential. And of course, Best Buy has a media relationship with CNET. 

[00:26:39] Keith Bryan: Of course, Best Buy has an affiliate relationship with CNET. Those are all on that side of my team. But then also we were exploring this sort of like, how do we make the one plus one equal three in terms of a specialty retailer and a relevant specialty publication coming together? 

[00:26:53] Keith Bryan: To create value that didn't exist, all the way around for the brand first and foremost, but also for Best Buy and CNET [00:27:00] or Red Ventures at the time. So both of those are interesting because if you agree with the premise that customers aren't just shopping for groceries in the closed Kroger ecosystem or closed Instacart ecosystem then on the grocery side, they want to be part of that journey as well. 

[00:27:20] Keith Bryan: And people are going on to Epicurious or going on to New York times cooking or going into recipes. com or whatever it may be. And then on Best Buy, people are, going to the Wirecutter, they're going to CNET, they're going to TechCrunch and places like that. So why wouldn't we extend? You know, that relationship. 

[00:27:38] Keith Bryan: And I think it's inevitable that these relationships are going to get stronger right now. I don't think that these are ephemeral. Just wait until tomorrow and the weather will change and these things will go away. I think right now we're in a proof of concept phase. And if you read what's public about the Best Buy CNET thing, or read what's public about [00:28:00] Instacart and New York Times cooking, you can infer three different facets. 

[00:28:03] Keith Bryan: One of course is advertising. An ad business. Inventory, audiences, all the things that go into ads. Number two is commerce. Because there's no point in doing this if you're not going to sell more products and get it in the hands of people who want it. Okay and that translates, you can send that into market share, you can extend that into comps, you can extend that into everything. 

[00:28:23] Keith Bryan: And then the third is content. Okay? And so those three facets, more often than not, are going to exist in one of these deals. And the teams that have to talk about these or hear the message are processing these for the first time. So it's very much, I think training wheel days. I don't, I think we should expect there to be a lot more and it to snowball all the way into retailers buying publishers and actually saving publishing from itself in many cases or saving publishing from what programmatic is now [00:29:00] doing to it. 

[00:29:01] Keith Bryan: And everybody's been complicit, the brands, the agencies the, everybody's been complicit, the DSPs, they've all been complicit in in, in creating an existential threat to publishing.  

[00:29:13] Tom: Into it. Cause I think I know where you're going with this, but I want for our listeners to understand what's wrong with giving all your money to Google or what's wrong with giving money to DSP, tell us a little more about why you think it would be better if the retailer owned this publisher. 

[00:29:30] Keith Bryan: I think number one, I think the retailers are going to be so connected to I, you, I probably won't say anything disparaging about the trade desk or Google in this regard. Instead, I want to, it's more everybody's been complicit in this race to cheap reach. Okay. And I'll point to the ANA transparency report. 

[00:29:51] Keith Bryan: I've read it multiple times and I've used the slides in that multiple times even though they're on page 90. It's a long document. It's worth reading. 

[00:29:59] Todd: [00:30:00] No,  

[00:30:00] Keith Bryan: worth reading multiple times. The ANA has covered that. So I don't need to cover that. What I'll say on the positive front to answer your question, Tom, is that the retailers, Have such unsurpassed respect for the customer and their journey that they are going to be arguably the most respectful of the value of brand equity. 

[00:30:23] Keith Bryan: When it comes to a publication travel and leisure CNET, even brands that have gotten beat up a little bit, like sports illustrated, these are, and I've just named three, I think, every publication brand brand Lifestyle, specialty, whatever it is. You pick it ski magazine, what just name a publication and some retailer, if they, first of all, they're buying media on it right now, but they're probably buying media through means that could be improved. 

[00:30:56] Keith Bryan: Let's just put it that way. And they're losing [00:31:00] fidelity. A lot of their reach is going a disproportionate amount of their spend is going to cookie based audiences and they're missing a Non cookied audiences. We have proven that with our clients and that's just a thing that's happening right now. 

[00:31:14] Keith Bryan: So if we can address those sort of media fundamentals, like reaching the full audience and making sure you're not old school terminology, saturating a cookie audience, just because you're going through a DSP, all of those kinds of things, if we can address those and then imagine that a Very closely related to, with a ton of respect for that publication and the content that it publishes, you can get where I'm going. 

[00:31:39] Keith Bryan: I hope that's not too abstract, Tom. 

[00:31:41] Tom: No. I think that's great. And it's also, it's just nice to hear somebody. I think it's because you've been doing this so long, somebody who has the grounding of what the retailer's perspective is, but can talk about it. With respect to what's happening with cookies and what's happening in the industry and what you know, where the threats are That is rare. 

[00:31:59] Tom: [00:32:00] So thank you for bringing that to the middleman 

[00:32:01] Todd: I will say one of the things that you know, Tom and I've talked about is we see, having been someone who built the DSP, I guess I'm one of the bad guys to an extent, though it was contextual and native 

[00:32:11] Keith Bryan: We're all to blame. I don't know. 

[00:32:13] Todd: were not cookie based in our approach, which is our unique thing. And, but prior to that, I came from the publishing world. 

[00:32:20] Todd: And so I write, let a sales team within that world. And so I'm familiar with, to your point of the downsides of What that has happened on the publishing side. And I think one of the things that's fascinating is, we talked about the future retail media is our prediction is that retailers are going to buy publishers. 

[00:32:38] Todd: It makes too much sense. They have the data, they have the first party relationships, they have the closed loop attribution and what they need is audience. And it's almost the. The price points of these companies are at a point where it's almost cheaper to buy the company than it is to buy the media. 

[00:32:52] Todd: And, just math says that those opportunities exist. And so I think one of the questions that, that, I've had, or Tom and I've had, [00:33:00] has been why haven't we seen it yet? And then you look at, you mentioned, you're the best by CNET deal, and there's others, and Instacart, and New York Times, and I think to your point is what we've missed is, it's the training wheel stage of, can they work together well, and if this bears out, then I think you will see some of these transactions occur. 

[00:33:17] Todd: Like Dick's Sporting Goods owning Sports Illustrated. I think the industry would look at that as a positive, right? As Dick's is a steward of the sporting industry, and would treat Sports Illustrated well. And I think that's the type of things that we look at and go, Wow, that really might be the future of the open web, is The connection of retail plus publishing, I think could be the best and most important counterweight to the Google and meta and now emerging really Amazon oligopoly around media 

[00:33:47] Keith Bryan: Yeah, I can go in a number of directions with you on this, Todd, as and I completely agree with you. Look at what's happening in search. And how even organic search is just look at what's happening in search [00:34:00] with AI and your own experiences there. Look at what's happening in social and your own experiences in social and you can see almost the desperation that's lurking in those in those closed those walled gardens. 

[00:34:14] Keith Bryan: And then think about the amount of first party data that exists between a publisher, their first party data, all the engagement, all the facets of engagement that they have, that is real people looking and clicking and browsing on real content and real things, by the way, also including affiliates. Okay. 

[00:34:34] Keith Bryan: Okay. And then think about retail which we all know about and putting those together, and there's a real one plus one equals three from a customer standpoint and an economic standpoint, there's just, we've it's there, and if people do the math they'll see it. And one of the catalysts will be supply. And that is the fact that as retail media networks continue to grow, Go on their mid twenties growth curve, according to E [00:35:00] Marketer and just about everybody else. How is it how is it that retail media is growing in the mid twenties and a good year of retail comps? is, commerce comps, let's call it commerce comps somewhere between three and 5 percent basically the rate of economic growth and then even bigger than media's growth, which is in the high single digits. 

[00:35:23] Keith Bryan: How is that even possible? What's going to get what's going to happen is things are going to get reconfigured. The water is going to flow differently. And and one of those ways is going to be because retailers Right now we're faced with very high margin O&O inventory, which is finite. And some know it more than others. 

[00:35:41] Keith Bryan: Okay. The big ones and big categories that have been around for a long time. They know that they're running out of supply. I guarantee that. And then at the other end, they have very low margin offsite. That's important, but again, it takes a tremendous amount of effort, but it's low margin back to your point, Todd [00:36:00] retailers, figuring out where they should have very tight, even M&A level publisher relationships. 

[00:36:09] Keith Bryan: They will actually create opportunities for brands to work more efficiently with high quality. Content that's valuable that can be measured at the SKU level when it's endemic by the way and they'll create new media opportunities. Those impressions are still being bought right now They're just being bought for one to three dollars and that's partly because they're infused with essentially MFA And fraud. 

[00:36:36] Tom: You answered my earlier question about what happens with off site and that can include CTV I think as you can imagine It doesn't have to just be Sports Illustrated. It could be ESPN. It could be, it could be any of these things that have video or pages or whatever. 

[00:36:50] Tom: What I want to do now is move to what are you doing now? You're not at Best Buy, you're at Coliseum. You created a, a consultancy with Andrew Lipsman and some others who were in [00:37:00] London. I want to ask you about this move. Where the rest of the media becomes retail media. And you can make a statement like 5 percent of GMV should go to. 

[00:37:13] Tom: In store TV. So like that crazy statement to somebody who doesn't understand what you understand, tell us about what you're doing now and how you got there. 

[00:37:22] Keith Bryan: So so one of the things that underpins are thinking is that the easy work has been done, and it hasn't been easy. I've been there as you guys pointed out. 

[00:37:35] Tom: I've finished it now. It's 

[00:37:37] Keith Bryan: Yeah, the findings, we started with hook logic for our sponsored products. And then, of course Hook was bought by Criteo and that kind of thing. 

[00:37:44] Keith Bryan: And everybody went on their journey. Oh, in the first phase, I would say in the early days, it was, do you insource or do you outsource? And we had a bias toward insourcing, at Best Buy. And I think that was a safe bet. Can you insource? And build it all yourself. Absolutely not. So you need [00:38:00] partners, we, in those days, no one talked about building an ad server, Amazon was already thinking about doing it and they did, like nobody was talking in those days 

[00:38:07] Todd: Then Amazon bought Sizmek and others. They bought a lot of other pieces. 

[00:38:10] Keith Bryan: So then, and that obviously helps, doesn't it, Todd, but so you went from like in source or outsource and then you, but it was mostly an O&O business with some basic early technology. Some of which was, all of which was plug and play, whether it was Criteo or GAM, okay? And in many cases, both. 

[00:38:25] Keith Bryan: But now, but it was and then you kept it separate. Most retailers kept it separate. And most still have it separate. From things like merchandising and JBPs that we talked about. So that was now the hard work is beginning from two, two facets and a lot of third. One, one is it's now internal. 

[00:38:44] Keith Bryan: It's organizational. It's just as much about right brain, if you will, as it is about left brain that, we're still going to need people that know ad tech and can hold the tech, tech tax in in check and those kinds of things, but it's very much about change [00:39:00] management and org change all the way into how you account for the flow of money from retail media. 

[00:39:08] Keith Bryan: Inside the walls. Okay, so that's very challenging. I can tell you number two is the idea that it's increasingly about managing a complicated P&L that just like the retail P&L some it's a rate mix analysis. And you have to work all of it. Some products carry a large margin and some don't carry much, but the blend ends up being what in a public company P&L ad businesses are becoming more like that. 

[00:39:35] Keith Bryan: And so you have to run them back to one of your earlier points. You have to understand, you have to have brains and logic that runs the retail media side of an enterprise. With as much acuity as you do the core business and you need talent for that and things like that, you need skills for that. 

[00:39:55] Keith Bryan: You need, um, tools for that. And so those are very challenging [00:40:00] things that didn't really happen when you had it nice and cleanly over there. It was all about sponsored products and it was a separate business. And I didn't have to worry about the impact that has on my vendor relationship over here. That's out the window, nevermind the other stuff that we all know about, like measurement, self service and things like that. I hope 

[00:40:22] Tom: And then three is what? 

[00:40:24] Keith Bryan: three is going to be the idea that the assets that currently exist. Are going to change in their purpose. And it's going to be hard for retailers in some ways to get their heads around that, the idea that loyalty programs for a long time existed for customer acquisition and retention, and had a very high, let's say CLV or whatever you're using, and it was all very accretive. 

[00:40:50] Keith Bryan: Because they were new. Now the purpose of some of those, including for airlines, by the way, it's harder to prove the [00:41:00] profitability of a loyalty program today than it was 10, 15 years ago, because it's harder to make the incrementality case when 80 percent of your customers already are members, for example. 

[00:41:10] Tom: Ah, okay. 

[00:41:11] Keith Bryan: But they're just as important, if not more important than they ever were, because they deliver the highest fidelity. Volume and fidelity of first party data. So it's almost like polarities reverse. If that makes sense, it's just as important. These loyalty programs are just as important, if not more important than the, 

[00:41:31] Tom: Yeah. They're a health meter instead of a growth meter or 

[00:41:34] Keith Bryan: yes, exactly. 

[00:41:35] Keith Bryan: They provide, they are your lifeblood of first party data in many cases. 

[00:41:39] Todd: it's interesting, along those lines, which is, we have a, another conversation with Clive Clive Humby, and one of the godfathers of the modern loyalty marketing system. And he's made the exact same argument that the easy wins around loyalty marketing and loyalty programs are gone. 

[00:41:55] Todd: And so they like squeaked out every last little bit and how [00:42:00] that's the way it is. Retail media is the next generation of how do you leverage that? And that's, we're Dunhumby and other organizations are now involved in retail media in a lot of ways for exactly the reason of they've squeezed those incremental dollars as best they could out of those areas. 

[00:42:14] Todd: And now they've got to do something else with it as well. So I think it's interesting to hear. You referenced the same point that he was making about where loyalty marketing was and where it is today and in its future as a foundation for retail media, 

[00:42:27] Keith Bryan: Think of United the most public airline with a retail media strategy from this past can CES can period earlier. And. Think about how valuable the United loyalty program is, even though if, even though it's probably harder than ever to make the case of incrementality around United. 

[00:42:47] Keith Bryan: I don't know this to be a fact, but with such penetration among their flyers, being members, um, you need to join to use Wi Fi or whatever. It's very easy to get to nearly [00:43:00] 100, essentially 100%. Penetration of your flyers, but the value of that to understand the uniqueness of each one of us three in our seats on a plane or on their website or in a lounge or whatever it may be is just as valuable. 

[00:43:17] Keith Bryan: You just essentially deliver, extract the value of that in a different way now with a media network. 

[00:43:24] Todd: It's fascinating. You also like to talk about things that you're not reading about, right? People have read about Best Buy and seen that you're aware of 5x other things that are happening that are similar. And last night I flew back from back east and was on Delta and what Delta now has is a little thing that allows you to sync your phone to the screen, right? 

[00:43:46] Todd: Your account so that they're tracking now. And I'm like, Oh, I know what this is for. This is so they can target me on the screen, my frequent flyer profile. And  

[00:43:56] Tom: taken Uber and seen that. 

[00:43:57] Todd: And it's and to your point of United Airlines made a [00:44:00] big splash at Cannes this year, but I think one of the things that, we're seeing is as you look, everyone's look around is look for where you're being opted in to these programs and when, there's a big terms and conditions box next to that button on, it's called Delta Sync and it's a, my bet is it's exactly what United is trying to do. 

[00:44:16] Todd: They're just doing a little more quietly. But I think that speaks to what your point is, we should all be looking for these things too. Anyways. Look around just because you haven't seen a press release doesn't mean it's not happening and we're going to see lots more of these examples emerge elsewhere. 

[00:44:30] Todd: And so I think it's fascinating. I think, the other areas Tom touched on the CTV relationships. One of the big things that to me is fascinating, and not just the Best Buy thing, but look at Costco talking about in store displays and in store retail media programs. I think the in store component is an area we haven't necessarily talked about much today, but I think that's another area where you look at the monitor wall at Best Buy and those televisions, in the back corner of the store, and what a great platform to be showing Adds to people and elsewhere in the [00:45:00] stores. 

[00:45:00] Todd: And I think this, the in store piece of this is one of the things that I think is where I look at and Tom's been super excited about this in his own background, where I look at and go as a digital media guy, I don't have as much experience, but I look at that and go, I think that could be really cool and interesting way to make this omni channel and 360 in ways we haven't necessarily really. 

[00:45:18] Todd: Digested yet. 

[00:45:19] Tom: No, there's no way. There's no way they're going to do it. They're just going to keep Michael McDonald on there. Like they had in 40 year old Virgin. They're never going to get rid of that.  

[00:45:27] Keith Bryan: Yeah. And Tom, we owe, I owe you a make good because I never really answered the in store question you have. That your distinction that you brought up earlier between specialty and say high velocity mass and grocery. Those in store experiences are going to be quite differentiated. They'll both be very interesting and tons of opportunity, but they'll someone who's actually in a sporting goods store or a home improvement store, or even like a Nordstrom, looking at fashion or, or. 

[00:45:56] Keith Bryan: Or inside an Ulta or a Best Buy when they're looking at [00:46:00] something that requires a little bit more on location searching, and now you're actually on a browser or on the app or something like that. I just obviously picked up my phone that's where in store media can help you and make your experience better. 

[00:46:13] Tom: Yeah. I haven't really experienced it yet. . The merchandising that the employees never did. Is it the same thing as like the how to or reviews videos or what's the content that going to flow through 

[00:46:26] Keith Bryan: I'll use a personal example. I know I'll let you cut me off, Tom, because, we've got, you may have to call time, but take Sony. 

[00:46:33] Tom: wait, before this has been, I have, I'm going to call, this is my favorite of the middlemen episodes that we've had. So I'm going to definitely let us go until you have to go. 

[00:46:42] Keith Bryan: The, I will use a personal example that you may have the same one. I know there's a huge amount of people that have been frustrated with Sonos. 

[00:46:52] Todd: Oh God. Recently. Yeah. Oh God. They're like rioting right now because they just 

[00:46:56] Tom: I haven't been frustrated because I don't even try the app. 

[00:46:59] Keith Bryan: Okay. [00:47:00] So I, it's one of my favorite brands. I, I. 

[00:47:03] Tom: I have a bar. Yeah. I  

[00:47:04] Keith Bryan: I've so I had a ton of Gen One Sonos amps, thousands of dollars of Sonos amps in my house, and I couldn't upgrade to the Sono, the s two app, even though I bought, I had bought my wife one of the Sonos Romes, the little guys. And and because it was not backward compatible to SS one, but my amps weren't forward compatible to S two. 

[00:47:29] Keith Bryan: I'm in a dilemma. 

[00:47:30] Tom: I'm going to say, okay. I have no idea what you're talking about, 

[00:47:34] Todd: roughly 

[00:47:34] Tom: that's the point. I think this the  

[00:47:36] Keith Bryan: Now I'm in Best Buy and I'm trying to figure out whether to invest thousands of dollars into new S2 amps, into new Sonos amps that were S2 compatible, Sonos S2 app compatible. I had Sonos's chart. I had to do this on my phone in a store. I had to Google to find the forward and backward compatible page. 

[00:47:59] Keith Bryan: With [00:48:00] Sonos, I'm on PDPs at Best Buy, I'm on publisher sites and I'm talking to a blue shirt trying to decide where things like in store media could help make that. Not a passive video, but an experience that allows me to solve this problem and doesn't leave it all up to, the blue shirt who knows a ton about this. 

[00:48:25] Keith Bryan: Okay, but I'm toggling between browser windows on my phone. 

[00:48:31] Tom: Yeah. It's that merchandising that never happened. 

[00:48:34] Keith Bryan: It's bridging. It's bridging the physical and the digital merchandising for complicated decisions. And that's just one example. That's different than if I'm trying to find a new lactose free ice cream for my son, at Kroger or whatever. But all of those, these are all unique experiences, but they're going to be solved in different ways using the in store media [00:49:00] experience that in many cases is going to. 

[00:49:02] Keith Bryan: Combined with your phone, whether it's because of loyalty programs and couponing or whether it's because of whatever it may be. I think it's just going to be and oh, by the way, it's capital intensive. Okay. Like we are friendly with, many of the big hardware at an ad tech providers on the in store space. 

[00:49:22] Keith Bryan: And there's no doubt that there's Somehow or another, the economics have to work out so that the CapEx investment is covered. You can look at retailer margins and you can look at, whatever, but obviously the money has to come from somewhere. And there are a number of solutions on the table from the industry. 

[00:49:38] Keith Bryan: And, people, we'll see how it goes, but it's going to happen. 

[00:49:42] Tom: Walmart buying Vizio means that will have to happen now, right? Every other retailer is going to have to figure this out, right? 

[00:49:48] Keith Bryan: Exactly. 

[00:49:49] Todd: I think it's fascinating because one of the takeaways listening to your story about Sonos is I can imagine, the blue shirt in the store might not be a Sonos expert, but maybe it's. A [00:50:00] couple states away. And if you could get that blue shirt on the device and talking to you and like there, it's a blue shirt just doesn't have to be there physically, but they can have a device. 

[00:50:07] Todd: You can have a device and you can be connected. And is that experience, quote unquote, a retail media enabled experience or is it just a merchandising experience? I think one of the things that's going to get blurred is what is the where does retail media end and where does the merchandising or you UX begin and they're all interwoven. 

[00:50:24] Todd: I think that's where this is going. And. That's one of the fascinating things about this is, we put things in this bucket, retail media, and your comment going back to beginning is, yeah, actually a merchant, is a key part of the team and the GMs of these retail media folks are really people coming with that background and, their job is going to be, how do I connect all of these resources? 

[00:50:44] Todd: As well. It's interesting because in Tom and my day job is where the ad tech guys often installing this hardware, these platforms into these retail media efforts and, working with strategists like yourself. And I think this is one of the things that, that when we get into these [00:51:00] conversations, we hear dreams. 

[00:51:00] Todd: Oh, I want to be able to connect this in store and this system in store. We're out for do you have an answer yet? But I think where the dreams of this business. Are really fascinating. And I think the user experience is going to be so different five or 10 years from now in a really interconnected way that we're all just beginning to imagine, but we could actually imagine a way that we could actually do it. 

[00:51:20] Tom: Yeah, I think Todd did a draft of what you were saying. I love the merchandising experience with another blue shirt, but what if it's Marcus Brownlee or somebody who's on the payroll of Apple, 

[00:51:31] Todd: right? It could have been a Sonos expert being connected and you in that store. 

[00:51:37] Keith Bryan: And if you really take a. Go up to the 30, 000 foot level, brands have always relied on retailers to essentially carry cost of capital for them and by carrying inventory and things like that, they then as channel proliferate, as shopping channel for proliferation happened it was up to the retailers to build e commerce sites and apps and things like that. 

[00:51:59] Keith Bryan: [00:52:00] Okay. I'm setting DTC aside and things like 

[00:52:02] Todd: Yeah, of course. 

[00:52:03] Keith Bryan: So then the retailers are doing this for the. Commercial, the retail ecosystem and the vendors and brands now commerce is everywhere, right? Because people are everywhere and technology is everywhere and content is everywhere. So now retailers out of existential need have to solve these problems. 

[00:52:27] Keith Bryan: Combine that with the fact that if you examine Amazon's P and L, and you look at the fact that the biggest part of their EBITDA in the mid single digits is coming from web services and Amazon ads, their actual margin off of selling products, Is what less than one percentage point of the, of their whatever, five, six, seven percent EBITDA. 

[00:52:54] Todd: Yep. 

[00:52:56] Keith Bryan: So they have, they're essentially driving margins to [00:53:00] zero, retail margins to zero. That, that is a fact. And by the way, that includes Whole Foods and Marketplace. 

[00:53:06] Todd: Yep. 

[00:53:07] Keith Bryan: So retailers have to provide for their shareholders and for their existential future. They have to create these experiences that we're talking about, whether you're a grocer or whether you're a specialty retailer or whether you're Target or Walmart. 

[00:53:22] Keith Bryan: So they have to make these investments. How are they going to pay for that? One of the ways they're going to pay for that is through a retail media business. It is both. It is both a proactive offensive move as well as an existential defensive move. And so whether it's the publisher acquisitions that we talked about earlier, or whether it's about investing in store experiences that bridge the physical and the digital so that customers can find, lactose free ice cream. 

[00:53:54] Keith Bryan: efficiently in store or, make, four, four, five, six figure purchases [00:54:00] with, expensive specialty items, including fashion, by the way, they've got to solve these problems. So I have no doubt that it will happen. If you want to get back to it, Coliseum strategy exists. To help make it happen and help some of the internal transformations that need to happen between retail media and merchandising with  

[00:54:20] Keith Bryan: data and technology in the middle. That's what we do. We rolled up our sleeves and literally every single one of us was an operator or the lead analyst in the industry, not, not armchair critics, we literally did this work. And so our sleeves are still rolled up to help do that. 

[00:54:38] Keith Bryan: It's on both sides of the Atlantic, by the way. And that's why we're excited about it, but it's, there's a lot of work ahead. 

[00:54:45] Tom: That's great. We did go a full hour on this I want to cut it there, but again, my favorite conversation we've had, got to learn a lot about some stuff that I was really curious about. How do you get out? How do I get outta my own head in grocery, in retail media? It's to talk to the [00:55:00] guy who built one of the, probably the first specialty, if not first retail media networks. 

[00:55:05] Tom: Thank you, Keith, for coming on and talking to the middleman. 

[00:55:09] Keith Bryan: It was my pleasure. It was, it's it's a delight to join you guys. Thanks for having me on. 

[00:55:13] Todd: Thank you.