# S1 E20 - Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously

S1 E20 - Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously 

[00:00:00] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: 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. 

[00:00:20] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Welcome. This is the Middleman's I guess our holiday edition. This is probably the last episode of the year, and I'm really excited that we have Mae Karwowski friend of mine from back in the New York Tech Days. I knew her as Mae Wow. Pro previously. Even before it was co-opted by the Jersey Shore character, she was the original Mayow. 

[00:00:43] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And wow, it's great to be back and, see you. And the reason we brought you on is because not only was your company obviously acquired, obviously it was also named as a partner to Walmart Connect. And I said, oh, it is definitely [00:01:00] time to reconnect because now you are right in the wheelhouse of things that the middlemen like to talk about. 

[00:01:05] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: So welcome to the podcast. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. It's great. Yeah I think I would love to hear a little bit about how, obviously, which is an agency that is now part of WPP how that all came about. How did you, what is your journey? Yeah, so I just really saw that social media was such a bigger, had way more of a huge effect on culture than I think people were really giving a credit for and that not many people were in the space. 

[00:01:36] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: We know when I graduated college, so I started managing Facebook pages. And then I started doing working on Instagram, doing some social media strategy, and then quickly realized, oh, actually the way to make all the numbers go up is to actually work with people who've already built out their own audiences and Branch should really be focused on doing that. 

[00:01:57] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And so I left my [00:02:00] full-time. Jobs started obviously outta my apartment in, in 2013. And from there just really focused on how do we, crack this influencer thing? The, this is we're in like the really nascent stages. Brands are barely spending any money on it. How do we figure this out? 

[00:02:18] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And and yeah, we really we were born from that idea. I didn't really know much about the influencer world outside of being just like an early Twitter person. And so I think I was probably too early to really see the influencer rise and I. What did happen is when I joined Quotient, which is a company I mentioned on almost every one of these podcasts, 'cause that's where I guess I was brought up they, the company had basically bought a ho, which was an early player in retail media influencer or micro influencer content creation and, curation. 

[00:02:55] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Because what they did was they said, okay, we're getting all this traction on [00:03:00] Pinterest and Facebook and elsewhere. Not really TikTok because it was mostly image based, not video based. They basically were creating lifestyle imagery for brands based on putting out a brief to micro influencers, many of whom were just around Cincinnati, where the company was started, and they were getting brands to sign on for, programs where you'd have mainly it was like. 

[00:03:23] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Hey, make sure you take a picture of the target bag when you put the Sera v lotion on your table or something like that. And so it was very early, very simple. But the idea was that type of imagery scored well with the algorithm, so it meant for cheaper paid media. And that sort of was for a couple of years there from say 20 19, 20, 20, 21, maybe 22. 

[00:03:47] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: That was it. And so I want to hear what's gone on since then and how does Walmart connect look, at you guys now and, why are why is this a going thing? 'cause honestly, when we were doing it, it [00:04:00] was is this a thing? Yeah, definitely. So when I first started the company, we were working with Uniqlo and and, we had aism t-shirts that we were just giving to. Let's give them to a thousand creators. The, tagline is Made for all. So let's get like a thousand awesome people who have at least a thousand followers between a thousand and a hundred thousand followers. And we sent them all t-shirts and for the most part, it was the first campaign that any of them had ever been part of. 

[00:04:33] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: We got fantastic content back. We got about 700 pieces of Instagram content back and. In so doing was like, oh wow, this is a really successful campaign. And it was incredibly hard to do. It's really hard. I had to really step up on the number of interns we had at the company at that time, 'cause we were doing it all manually. 

[00:04:51] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: So we actually started we built a platform based off that. So how do we work really efficiently at scale? Of these thousand people you're [00:05:00] working with, here are the here are the 200 you should keep working with. I think that's fascinating to get into, to think about. Working with a thousand people in coming from the land of media, right? 

[00:05:13] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: That Tom and I come from we're thinking of how do I reach millions and a hundred millions of, impressions and millions of people and, what have you, and to deal and also what's interesting in the ad world, right? Which is publishers and, a lot of times you can't work with a thousand publishers. 

[00:05:31] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And that's why networks emerged and ad networks and, things like that because it's too hard to work with that many at a time. And people merging publishers like creators are all in the same space, which is how do I get attention? How do I get these companies to work with me? And it's hard to work with a thousand. 

[00:05:49] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: I'm, it's like I completely can understand. The tables you had set up and the the, acts of t-shirts and stuffing envelopes, mailing people yeah. Oh my God. We have warehouses [00:06:00] we have, warehouses where we send, we'll send over half a million packages this year. 

[00:06:05] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Holy crap. Yeah. So it's just some operation. Yeah. How, it's, how much of influencer marketing. Is still just sending samples of product, is that still the prime? 'cause I, know where the start, right? That's exactly where influencer marketing started. A lot of, product giveaways. 'cause you saw influencers almost begging send me free stuff, send me free stuff like that was like the, or is that still a big component of influencer marketing or creator marketing, whatever is the appropriate term these days. 

[00:06:32] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And maybe it's actually good to understand the transition from influencer to creator and that label. Is it changed, is it still the same thing? Is it different but it, how much is it sending product? You mentioned your. Like you have a warehouse. You're saying lots of products that's still a big part of influencer slash creator marketing today. 

[00:06:46] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Yeah, it's really interesting because it used to be a hundred percent of the work that we were doing was just product like post for product. And then as things were really maturing, and I think candidly when creators began to really understand [00:07:00] their worth and how much how much value that they were how valuable they were. 

[00:07:05] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: They started charging more and the, economy really grew up. People got talent agents, they got managers. They start to really understand the business side of what they were doing and realize oh, I can, I could be making six, seven figures. This is, my career now. I'm gonna build a, I'm gonna build an empire which is awesome to see. 

[00:07:23] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And it's so cool to see all of our, so many of our creators do that in so doing basically. Product just seeding really, wa was quiet for, several years and now it's back in a big way, but it's back in a way where that it's not a, post is not expected. So typically I would say like a industry standard rate is like 20% of the packages you se you send out, you'll get someone to post about it. 

[00:07:49] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: We've actually built out our, own, our own I dunno if it's proprietary, but our own way of doing this. And we've actually been able to get that number up to around like 60, 60 [00:08:00] to 70% of the people that we send product to will post. In the beauty space, in the CPG space that's and really high quality people who are in the Target demo and we can easily show that to the clients via our technology. 

[00:08:15] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: But it's, so that's actually come back and had a real resurgence for us. And in a cool, creative way too, where we actually have really fantastic boxes and creative campaigns. We actually did a Sierra V campaign, the Michael Sra, Sierra V campaign where there's like all this Michael SRA stuff in a box. 

[00:08:31] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Yeah. Though I've seen that ad. It's a clever ad, right? Yeah. And then it was in the Super Bowl and it was so it's, come back in a really creative, interesting way. And so I think it's just, it's all a sign of just the space maturing. And to your point your, question about influencer versus creator. 

[00:08:48] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: I really like the term creator. I think that influencer is a bit like. Diminishing or like diminutive, it's oh, you just influenced people. You just post stuff. But it's actually really [00:09:00] hard to be a creator. It's hard to make content day in, day out. Both of you are doing this podcast. 

[00:09:04] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Yeah we, know this is our second take on this. 'cause I had to use a different system. My other system was down, yeah, exactly. We know the pains. It's hard. And. And it's hard to do that on multiple platforms all the time. Will TikTok be banned? Will it not? How do I do this? How do I negotiate with this brand? 

[00:09:23] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Do I get a talent agent? How much do I pay them? How much do I invest in my business? There's just so many questions. How do I keep my stats up? So I think the term creator is just it's, much more fair and I think it's just a, better term. But that being said, from an SEO business standpoint. 

[00:09:43] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Like 99% of traffic comes in via Google with influencer market influencer agency. Interesting. Because we have to, yeah. So we have to balance it. So I'm like, semantically we, huh? We use both because the brands who creators really wanna do the deals [00:10:00] with. That's what they're searching for. 

[00:10:01] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: So I think it's just like a sign of the space being lopsided in some weird ways. And some people are far further ahead than others, but we're like, Hey we wanna show up in the rankings. Like we we want our SEM ads to be the best possible. So that's really ing. 

[00:10:17] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: That's definitely, yeah. One question we were gonna want to ask is how much of it is vanity metrics versus outcomes and conversions? And I'm assuming as you start to work in more with retail media partners, that you're gonna be more outcome focused. Yeah, so I think it's, that's conversations shifted a little bit in that I think that brands now understand the value of a really fantastic piece of content. 

[00:10:38] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And previously they were thinking it more maybe from a programmatic lens where I'm literally just paying for this thing to get in front of this audience. And now there's the understanding, wait, there's a step in between that, which is usually someone has to make a really compelling video and that person needs to get paid from getting the thing and Right. 

[00:10:57] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Creating the video to actually their [00:11:00] audience. Yeah. To some extent one of the, that was the challenge in retail media was it was so performance based that there was no room for creative, there were no briefs and you had to balance the retailer. The brand and the influencer's, personalities and assets all in the same creative. 

[00:11:16] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And to some extent there is a little bit of an argument to say that influencer is the only place to do real creative briefs. And so that and, we were like, maybe we should be using this same creative brief that we were using for. Facebook and let's stick it in like a digital out of home ad or something like that. 

[00:11:33] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Yeah We've definitely seen and worked with brands who are like, Hey, we're gonna put this, we're gonna put this influencer content on billboards, or we're gonna stitch these together. Let's get all the raw files so that we can make our own commercials. Definitely I say a majority of our clients, like a majority of their paid advertising on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube is, from this, raw content that creators are making. 

[00:11:56] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And it works really well. And I think there's a real place [00:12:00] for super conversion based influencer marketing. Like we have influencers, we know they post, people buy, like their audience just buys what they post about. And then we have, and then, but then there are other influencers who just tell a really compelling story. 

[00:12:15] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And you need that at the top of the funnel too. And you, I need to be able to look up. Oh yeah. What is the best pair of headphones that I should buy right now? And I if I find someone I trust, I'm gonna listen to them. Am I gonna go to Apple directly from there? And are they gonna get an affiliate commission? 

[00:12:28] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Probably not, but it's an important part of the funnel. Nonetheless. How much of the influencer slash creator world. Is affiliate driven versus core creator paying for content driven the paid up front. Obviously Tom and I joked about every time we're on a we're watching someone else's podcast, we're seeing a a, push for hell hell a factor and yeah. 

[00:12:55] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Hello grocer and all these things of Hello Fresh supplements and or Nord, [00:13:00] VPN and, others. And it's if I have to see another one of those, and what's it's crazy is I love astronomy and watch it like. Deep astronomy things and they'll jump into you factor food prep. And I'm like, what? 

[00:13:12] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: It just seems any, anyway, so how much of that is are they getting paid upfront for the content versus affiliate and what's that split generally nowadays? So I think that's a good question. I don't actually know how large the affiliate affiliate is huge. But I think your influencers now in like in terms of supply and demand, I think are really understanding their worth and that they don't have to go the affiliate route if they don't want to, or if it's not a longer term partnership where they're gonna get paid more upfront anyway. 

[00:13:41] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: So I think that just the overall dynamics have changed where they're like, no, I really need to get paid for the content that I'm creating. Happy to use an affiliate link so we can track, our sales together. And then I think podcasting is interesting because I've always thought that podcasting should really be a part of this brand marketing and the majority of influencer marketing. 

[00:13:58] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: That obviously [00:14:00] does, but it's really been taken over by performance marketers and it's very much use this code and let's just get it out through the network in a way that, that is interesting. And I think that there, there's probably some real opportunities to make, just more compelling podcast ads too. 

[00:14:16] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: To your point, it's not great that they're like, oh, I'm so annoyed. I'm hearing this again, de going right? When they're paying for the content, are they, is it $250? Is it $500? To your point about Uniqlo, right? Sending, they're sending out a thousand shirts and they're expecting to pay 500 bucks per. 

[00:14:36] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Call it created video or, post or what have you. You're looking at half million dollars upfront of the cost in addition to everything else. So it's, in terms of the scale, these programs are, it's a meaningful, like a, media campaign including creative would for digital would easily you're looking it's it's own digital campaign now. 

[00:14:56] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: It's own digital budget, like half million dollars. A million dollars [00:15:00] is, a legit marketing program now. Yeah, exactly. A majority of our clients are spending a million dollars plus. And I'd argue if you're an enterprise brand, if you're in the Fortune 500, that's really where your spend should be. 

[00:15:14] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: We do some really interesting mapping where we can actually do a complete competitor competitive analysis on your top competitors. So you choose three, five competitors. We tell you, here's ev here, every creator they've worked with on TikTok, here's every creator they've worked with on Instagram. 

[00:15:29] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Here's what their benchmarks are for success. These partnerships worked really well. We're thinking approximately they paid this amount to work with those people. We think this is their overall budget year over year. Do you want should you be spending more, should you be spending less where is just like the white space for you? 

[00:15:47] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Or, hey, this is really working well for them. Maybe we should like, get in on that and really really try to compete in that area. So I think that's been awesome and I think it's been really revolutionary for a majority of our clients who [00:16:00] are. Using that as the foundation for all the strategy creative work we're doing. 

[00:16:03] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: They're like, oh, okay, this is gonna work on TikTok or we're seeing this work with our competitors. It just you wanna test and learn, but if you can take some major shortcuts in the beginning, like that's how you're gonna have a happy client. And to your point, you don't wanna spend a million dollars figuring it out when when, you could spend significantly less and just hey be on the road immediately. 

[00:16:24] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: But to your point about, pricing. It's highly variable based on the size of the person's audience, the platform. And then I think sometimes the brands don't take this into account, but like the sexiness of the brand, super important. Yeah. We just send a hundred creators to F1. If that's a brand that's I gotta sell this to my followers, I'm gonna get some comments about how this is lame. 

[00:16:46] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Hopefully we can have a creative brief that is like awesome and we're choosing people who actually genuinely love it. But that compared to a really sexy Formula one integration, right? You can, have a different price point. We've actually done some really interesting [00:17:00] work on we build out creator networks for brands. 

[00:17:03] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: So the idea is that one of our clients Amazon would have their own or does have their own creator network. Google has their own creator network. And when you work in that format, you can actually really get much more efficient in terms of cost per post. And you can also get higher quality influencers and actually see higher performance as well on the pieces of content. 

[00:17:26] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Primarily because you're working with people and they're excited to be part of the network. They wanna really perform 'cause they know there's like potentially more work to be done because that network's built around retainers. Yeah so, typically we'll be like an a OR or have a whole slate of several dozen campaigns lined up for the year with a brand. 

[00:17:49] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And then we'll have people apply, we'll reach out to them hand select them and then they know, hey I love this brand. I, love to keep working with them. I'm really gonna take extra time on this [00:18:00] video 'cause I know there's 10 cool things coming up next, which is great 'cause it's really working against the. 

[00:18:05] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: The pendulum swing of so many influencer companies just getting so transactional and Hey, work with them once. But if, you love a brand, if I love Mercedes, I get to work with 'em once, and then I literally never hear anything back. That's also sad. It almost sounds so you're working with real people and so if you tap into that piece of it, I think it is actually like you can unlock, 20% higher performance on TikTok content on the the brands where we built out a creator network versus the ones where we haven't. So yeah it, sounds like you're almost the next version of affiliate programs. To some extent, and we, saw this when we were working in the Shopify ecosystem that there's the publisher world of affiliate programs and then there's very high growth of affiliate. 

[00:18:57] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Basically being mostly [00:19:00] influencer and totally different rules, different measurement. But it seems like it's growing very quickly. And to your point, it sounds like it's how these fans of brands are allowed to be part of, it's almost like you, what we always heard is supposed to happen in the music industry around bands and their following and their ability to have merch and all that kind of stuff. 

[00:19:22] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Yeah. They're, you have creators too who just talking about maybe TikTok shop for a second. You have creators who are just so good at selling on TikTok shop, and that's not everyone. I'd say that's 15% of the creators we work with. And then they have to have an audience who's like excited for that QVC style interaction. 

[00:19:42] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: But, it works really well when you work with them. And touch and some, brands wanna do that but we also have brands who are like, no, it's way too salesy for us. We don't want, we don't want to go there or. Hey, this is just a small segment of the strategy. We have some like really large brand concepts, and we need to choose brand ambassadors who a [00:20:00] hundred percent embody our ethos. 

[00:20:02] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: So it runs it, it's fascinating to watch the rise of TikTok shops and it's become such a big thing when, Tom and I were at, Penta, which is the Shopify focus company that we were at together, and we acquired an affiliate platform called Reversion. And Reversion has like a half a million publishers that they work with, of which publishers, half of those are influencer creators. 

[00:20:27] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And so to, it just, I think, speaks to the scale of this. And what we found is. And getting into ecosystem and more Shopify focus, but a lot of these D two C brands that are launching on Shopify and Amazon, what the, most successful ones are all leveraging TikTok shop creators. Like it is unbelievable. 

[00:20:44] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: If you talk to any and, Tom and I've talked to lots of these private label people and a plug coming up is we're hoping to talk with a really big company in that space on the podcast in the beginning of the year. Is how many of them have leveraged TikTok? If you look at those top [00:21:00] brands in Amazon, ones you've never heard of. 

[00:21:02] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: To your point about TikTok creators being able to sell and move product, I was astonished like if for our listeners of this, we really wanna understand this world. There's whole bunch of discord communities or for these TikTok shop creators. It's an interesting ecosystem to dive into and learn more and how it obviously TikTok is really juicy. 

[00:21:22] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: The TikTok creator traffic, like it's just you, the amount of people making insane amounts of money on that platform as creators is just blown my mind. Yeah. As you, I think a, really important thing to do as a creator is understand what the platforms wanna prioritize, and then see if you can find that as quickly as possible. 

[00:21:41] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: So if you have ever bought anything on TikTok shop. They will retarget, TikTok will retarget and retarget you with that product, like until you purchase it. And so if you're a creator who's part of that program, be too dead. Literally there's one and it's also interesting what products do really well. 

[00:21:58] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: So there's one, I'm sure it's not on either of [00:22:00] your feeds, but it's literally like this black lipstick that you apply. And then it hardens and you rip it off like a mask. That doesn't sound, that's necessarily not in my feed, but I love hearing not my feed. I love hearing about the stuff that doesn't make it to my feed, so that's great. 

[00:22:14] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Yeah, it stains your lips for 24 hours, like you can't take it off. And so it's really oddly satisfying to watch and they are doing so they're doing so much business. It's it's wild and there is constantly selling, and then there's a whole game of selling out and selling bundles. 

[00:22:32] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And when you do that but also interestingly, it, these large brands can't fit themselves in, for the most part unless they get really crafty fit themselves into the TikTok shop mold. It is very hard for a giant multinational interesting CPG to, do it. And for just operations wise, it's nearly impossible unless you hack something together. 

[00:22:57] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: We're actually talking to a few companies about what [00:23:00] those hacks look like. So it's a really interesting advantage you have if you're like a small D two C brand that's like super nimble and hungry it's a, you just don't have the competition that you would on Instagram ads or TikTok ads. 

[00:23:16] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Yeah. Interesting. Now, is this part of the, because the, main mainstream CPGs are part of the sort of boring products that don't fit there? Or is there different reasons why it doesn't fit? It's literally operationally. Okay. So like the, flow to get the product out of the warehouse into your, at your doorstep, that flow doesn't work because they rely on retailers normally. 

[00:23:41] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Yeah. So, they're like we like gets back the legal, team for is we can't do this. We just can't do that. I'm sorry. Yeah. It's built for D two C, so that makes sense. Why. Yeah. And I think that the Walmarts and Targets of the world are trying to have their third party marketplace extend to cover that, but it's, [00:24:00] they're probably not there yet, if I'm correct. 

[00:24:02] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So what's, it's fascinating to follow, to, to follow up on that one point about TikTok and the big brands not gonna be able to do that. But one of the things that from an earlier parts of the discussion may, that's really fascinating to me, is how grown up and mature the creator space influencer space is and Right, in terms of the, way you're talking about it and the sophistication in terms of the scale. 

[00:24:27] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Hundreds of thousands of creators are running millions of posts. And I think there's economics at scale. It's, this is, and the sophistication. I think one of the things that's interesting is I, as I talk with marketers who and, every brand marketer I work with, especially at a, either a retail large retailer or consumer focused goods companies loves the creator space, at least conceptually. 

[00:24:50] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And I hadn't realized how. In until sitting down with you how sophisticated it really is to manage, make it and it sounds and looks like the media [00:25:00] business, honestly. It, it's really fascinating to, realize that and realize like your ability to target, just like you can on the publishing side, I wanna target publishers, a certain demographic, a certain reach, a certain whatever, and you're like, yep, I can, if you wanna target creators, I can come up with a list of the 10,000 best for this different demographic or psychographic variables. 

[00:25:19] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And that's and you, To publish campaigns with start stops and manage it in a very sophisticated way. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, only getting more advanced. So like some of the work we're doing in the B2B space, we can actually tell you like, okay, you want to reach AI data scientists, here are 10 AI data scientists to work with, and then here's what percentage of their audience also identifies or we can say approximately, are also in that field. 

[00:25:49] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Or Hey, we wanna reach dermatologists. 17% of this one dermatologist audience is also a dermatologist, so let's work with her. Even though her, engagement's a little bit less, some of the her [00:26:00] following is a little bit less, but we're gonna hit way more of these people and hit them more aggressively. 

[00:26:05] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: So there's some really, cool things that you can do in, the B2B world, just with the, targeting technology. Yeah. How much of that is what is that like an authenticity score? What are the types of tech are you guys employing to improve the sort of manual nature of all of this? 

[00:26:21] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Yeah, so we're actually able, we're look able to look at all the audience members of a given influencer and then look at some key attributes of those people. What does it say in their bio? What does it say in 10 of their last posts. It used to just be captions, but now it's like images and video as well. 

[00:26:40] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: So the implications around how we're using AI is like a whole nother podcast but really, cool as well. And then who's actually engaging on their post. So you can say okay, here's this one dermatologist, 17% of her following are also dermatologists. And then the people who actually engage and commented on her post.[00:27:00]  

[00:27:00] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Like this percentage, we were dermatologists. So we're really hitting the right demo within her her overall audience. And then you layer on top the paid targeting to hit, to really hit dermatologists you're able to just make it way, way more efficient. Ad buy essentially. That's interesting because someone like really authentically. 

[00:27:21] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Yeah, I'm coming from a world where there was always a thought that social was like the worst in terms of reporting, measurement, things like that. But it sounds like it's incredibly transparent in terms of knowing who the audience is. So that's not just knowing that you know the audience, but knowing who and what they do and all these other attributes that are not part of our, say, like a retailer's registration for a loyalty program form, right? 

[00:27:45] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Yeah. 'cause so much is so much of the information is public. So it's just being able to actually compile that and make it useful. That is super interesting. From a, to go back to Walmart Connect and, the media. Yeah. We barely talked about it. [00:28:00] I know. That's, we need to get there. 

[00:28:01] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Sorry, I'm here. Yeah. No. And part of what in terms of realizing how obviously in yourself. Obviously the company, not obviously the word. Yeah, Are professionalizing this space and maturing it and making it more commercial in a make it work perspective, not commercial, in a selling out perspective and what's the relationship then with. 

[00:28:26] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Walmart Connect. Is it the operational piece of these CPG companies wanting to get in the space and Walmart's a good way to if you need to ship product and they're a big retailer and you probably have relationships with that. Is that the lens you were taking in terms of going into Walmart Connect or is it the sort of the, advertising and the media piece and they're trying to connect the dots of, from a retail media standpoint of extending their, advertising into that community? 

[00:28:49] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: What, sort of, what was your, the background for you getting involved with, Walmart Market Connect? Been, yeah the very beginning we started doing a lot of work with [00:29:00] brands in large retailers and where the KPI is, how do we drive in-store traffic? How do we drive in-store sales in these key retailers? 

[00:29:10] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And that's been going really well and our clients have been really happy with that work. So we're like, okay. And they're asking, is there more we can do with Walmart? Is there more we can do with Amazon? Can we optimize reviews? Can we optimize video on the product pages? What else? 

[00:29:25] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: So we started rolling out this different functionality and then I'm like, oh, there's this all of these brands, or large majority of these brands are really spending significantly on these retail media networks, but because the data's fantastic and also because the retailer really wants them to do but what does that piece of content look like that then is showing up all across the internet being using the targeting from, Walmart's first party data. So we're like, oh we should half of this is really cool, but if we could add the second half, which is the piece of content's really awesome too.[00:30:00]  

[00:30:01] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And the piece of content, like we've got the targeting, but is the piece of content also gonna be really impactful? And so we've been working for yeah, over, over a year and a half with the Walmart team really just getting the right integrations and getting the right approvals. 

[00:30:17] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And we're the second, or the, th one of three agencies currently who have the ability to actually be a Walmart Connect partner and tap into their DSP. And so that's been really fantastic. It's also a way to use JBP credit. On influencer campaigns, which is huge. So many of our very large CBG clients, 'cause they're like, I have to spend $50 million anyway on Walmart, instead of like double spending on influencer, if I can take some of that budget let's do that. You're speaking Tom's language. Whenever he gets to JBP, that is all Tom. So Yeah. I'm trying to, his eyes perked up on that comment, that stuff, this background, I'm trying teaching all the [00:31:00] podcasting AI systems, that acronym is the hardest thing in the world. 

[00:31:03] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: When you edit this stuff they, never under, they never hear it, right? It's hard to say. I always, same thing with app Loving, always like I know it, I deeply know it, but I'm always like, did I say it right? Yeah. So it's the same thing with App Loving. We had a podcast when we talked about App Loving. It comes out as Apple Oven, my favorite. 

[00:31:17] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: But but we digress. So on the Walmart piece I think you told us that it took a year and a half to get this sort of rolled out. Can you give us a little bit more in terms of what it's like, how big a part of the JBP, is it for a big brand or a small brand, or what kind of brands are you working with? 

[00:31:42] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Yeah, so we, we just launched but we have a few very large CPG clients who are really excited about it and are like now in the midst of their first campaigns. And it's been, really exciting to just see wow. Walmart's data set is so fantastic. You can see hey, who's [00:32:00] bought diapers for the first time? 

[00:32:01] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Let's target that person, yeah. Who just picked yoga? They just bought a yoga block then now they just bought a yoga mat. Let's target that person. So I think it's just getting brands to be really knowledgeable and excited about like how you could work with influencers and influencer content in that way. 

[00:32:16] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And then really what's possible longer term with that and how we go even, deeper there. So it's yeah. So you now are you able to see what's in the basket? It sounds like you're saying that you have this larger purview to potentially mine that data and we're accessing it via the trade desk. 

[00:32:34] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Okay. And and then we're, and then we're like finding the creators and having the creators make content that would really pair up with the right. People in that data set. Okay. So then is that an example where the creator content is being turned into an ad that is targeted Exactly. Being trafficked via trade desk to, to target that. 

[00:32:56] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Now being able to use your JPP dollars for influencer marketing has gotta be a [00:33:00] huge win. Are you starting to see, I'm sure you're in discussions with other retailers then who like have other. Retail media programs about doing something similar. Is that something you expect to see a lot more of? Is Walmart so ahead of the curve? 

[00:33:11] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Everyone else is what the heck? And it's gonna be another three to five years before we see other retail media. Hopefully not long programs influence become influencer platforms too. Hopefully it's a lot sooner than that. But yeah we're definitely talking to, other retail media networks and I think they're, excited about that too. 

[00:33:28] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And the fact that we can bring we have so many very large clients. So we're like, Hey, we can bring them to the table. Let's make this, work via year what's fascinating also, we, as we've talked about, the rise of retail media networks. Which is they often get sold in as, oh, we're gonna cap, we're gonna grow the, money from the vendor by 1% of sales. 

[00:33:50] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And they start doing it and suddenly it's 0.1% and they're really struggling to drive the growth that they expected in terms of the sell through of retail media dollars. 'cause look I'm, fine doing [00:34:00] buying end caps, like that's still good if I'm not gonna spend an incremental. 1% I might shift or, unless you're justifying like real attribution, real sales, real whatever. 

[00:34:09] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And to your point of if these brands are investing in, wanna invest in these influencer slash creator campaigns regardless. Then your ability to pull that in and say, Hey guys, I'm the shiny ball over here. If you want to grow retail media really should be looking at touching to my world, touching my world. 

[00:34:26] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Yeah, exactly. 'cause we've been doing so many campaigns just on Instagram, on TikTok, where the overall goal is to drive sales in target, drive sales in Walmart. We have a big launch on this day. Let's get people to know that this is happening. Let's make sure we work with creators who we know can really like get people to go in store and buy or go on the website and buy. 

[00:34:47] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: So we're great at that. So to be able to then come to Walmart and say, Hey, we've been doing all of this. This has been basically happening on your front lawn and you haven't made a dollar from it. Let's actually bring that in the inside the house. [00:35:00] And let's like both make money together. 

[00:35:03] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: I think that's, exciting. 'cause they are they're spending significantly on the retail media side. There's basically been an understanding now, that you're, you've been acquired by WPP. And now that you're partnered with Walmart Connect. The LinkedIn sphere, whatever you call it, is now actually talking about influencer with respect to Mormon's Media. 

[00:35:28] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And you're starting to see E-Marketer the MarTech Weekly, which I didn't haven't heard of before, create these great tables that have you listed in marquee spots. So I wanted to get your thoughts on No, I love replacement on both of these. Yeah. And you're part of the, three big holding company acquisitions, influential obviously in leaders. 

[00:35:49] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: You're also part of the wars between Omnicom and IPG maybe merging and what does that mean in [00:36:00] comparison to publicists who's been very far ahead in terms of retail media? What do, when you see these, what do, what are your takeaways for now for 25? What are you thinking? 

[00:36:11] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Yeah I think that. It's a really exciting time because influencer was so on its own island for so long. It was part of the brand marketing space. And then you'd have affiliate, which was solidly in the performance camp. But now we have brands who were like, okay, like this is media dollars. 

[00:36:29] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Like media dollars are now gonna go to pay creators for this content. And then we're gonna now let's figure out where does that content go? Because the content is really valuable and it converts at a much higher rate. Then maybe brand created or agency created content, which is super disruptive idea, but it's also really panning out in the data. 

[00:36:50] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: So I think you're seeing all the big hold codes say okay, we need this, we need these creator agencies, we need this creator content to really be core [00:37:00] to what we're doing. Because it, is such a connection point between. Between media and between brand and between commerce. And these are just, these are people who are online who are able to create content and reach key audiences. 

[00:37:16] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: So I think it's, I think it's really exciting and I, can't wait to see how it plays out, but I think that's gets to what we've talked about in terms of how this whole space is professionalized and matured. And it is part of the media landscape. Absolutely. And the tools are there to treat it that way. 

[00:37:32] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: The ability to track performance, the ability to track reach, the ability to track pressure equivalence and things like that. And that to me is, I think one of the interesting things about learning about obviously and your background may, is that. It is a part, and these are media dollars and they're part of it. 

[00:37:48] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And I think the other thing that kind of comes from that too there's a community that I'm, in called Sunday Dinner and it's got a lot of, brand marketers and creatives in it, and they all [00:38:00] talk about creator strategy. I. And it's they, you, I couldn't kick them kicking and screaming to talk about media strategies and plans like that. 

[00:38:07] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: That's just not as much as what they're interested. And they love talking about creator strategies and influencer strategies and the campaigns that they can do around that. And it's interesting is that's now part of the media ecosystem. And it's a way of connecting dots like retail, the rise of retail media, the rise of influencers the, rise of, almost the rebirth of affiliate like creators have brought, made affiliate. 

[00:38:30] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Program's. Cool again in, in some regards too, and it's interesting to see these things we've all worked on over the last 25 years, all coming together in an interesting and cohesive and connected way of the all these hot topics, affiliate retail, media creators and influencers and social, it's all happening and I think this is kinda what we imagine the internet being 25 years ago. 

[00:38:52] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Especially in terms of the rise of the, micro creator, the rise of anyone can be a content creator now. And to Eric [00:39:00] C. First point, everything's an ad network. Creators are, you're, you've built an ad network effectively, right? Yeah. Through this creator network and, you're managing it that way. 

[00:39:09] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And so having all these dots connect now is interesting and cool in ways that, that I think we all kind of foresaw, but now that it's actually happening in, in, in meaningful ways. It's, very cool to, to see this come together and to see the work that to hear about your story and what you guys have done in terms of building this out as a real business is, a fascinating story. 

[00:39:30] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Yeah, thanks. I know it's interesting because it's both more performance driven, more measurable, but it's also more human in a very real way. So I thinks good point. Yeah, I think it's very powerful. I think the reason you're getting that humanity coming through is that most of the time when we talk about the growth of retail media, it's been format by format. 

[00:39:51] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And I think companies like the Trade Desk were pushing hard to say oh, you need to be full funnel. You need to do CTV, you need to do this, whatever. What you really need, it [00:40:00] seems from your success. Is you need programming, you need content creation, you need creative briefs. You need people who care about brands to put the content out there in new and interesting ways. 

[00:40:11] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And it may not matter so much what those formats are, but it does need to be hitting those sort of awareness notes rather than just the performance. To your point about not you're not trying to make everything super transactional, even though it's using retail media data, it is about trying to get higher up. 

[00:40:31] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: But it may not be on CTV in 2024 or 2025. It may be you tell me where, are the best sort of places that what are the KPIs of these retail media campaigns? Where are the dollars going? What channels? So I think, the big thing is gonna be matching the content to the right target audiences. 

[00:40:55] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And I think. You could really roll out. And the scale that we can handle is [00:41:00] something, the scale that most retail media networks. And also clients aren't used to so even other brands who are working on influencer campaigns within these retail media networks. Like they, they have they're working with three creators. 

[00:41:16] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: They're like, oh, you get three pieces of content, they're gonna be great. But we're like, no, let's do a hundred let's do 300. Let's do can you handle a thousand? Let's do a thousand. So scale matters. Yeah, the scale and then because you could tell a very specific story that's then gonna targeted exactly to the woman who just started doing yoga and just bought that yoga block with, at Walmart. 

[00:41:37] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: So it, it gets to be a really really interesting place. And I think that we're not, most brands definitely are not there in terms of realizing. Or having the budget to handle that amount of scale. And also conversely, most agencies can't do the scale, so they're not selling it. But I think that's, where this all goes, where you could get very targeted. 

[00:41:58] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: And like me, Mike [00:42:00] Kowski has just started to do Pilates. So here's I'm, it's target me for every single thing you think I'm gonna buy based on all the data that you have, Walmart on, people who are starting their Pilates journey. But yeah those, personalization consumer journeys, I think there's still a lot of people out there in the tech world who are like, oh, we have AI now. 

[00:42:20] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: We can just sub in different color shirts and glasses I'm listening to podcasts where there's like people in the TV world who are saying that they're gonna adjust the creative dynamically. And I'm like, we've gone down that already with regular imagery ads, and does it really work that well? 

[00:42:37] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: What about just using real people doing this and having the the, a hundred flowers bloom that way. Yeah. Or, like using AI to generate the, like the k mood board and concept for, the inspiration. Every single thing that like a thousand different prompts for a thousand different types of, [00:43:00] people who are purchasing right now in Walmart and then the output of all those videos. 

[00:43:04] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: I think that could be really that's gonna be, that'd be cool to work on. Yeah. That you've given us a lot to think about, so thank you for joining us on the Middleman. Yeah, thanks so much. 

[00:43:17] Creators are coming to Retail Media - Obviously's Mae Karwowski: Thank you for listening to the Middlemen. We are very excited to see you in 2025. If you haven't subscribed yet, please go to LinkedIn and search for the Middlemen podcast. See you next time.