# S2 E17 Koddi - Harsh Jiandani

S2 E17 Koddi - Harsh Jiandani 

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[00:00:20] Tom: Welcome to the Middlemen podcast.  

[00:00:23] Introduction & Context Setting 

[00:00:27] Tom: Uh, today we are gonna be joined by Harsh Jen, Danny, who is, president at Koddi. , We met up with him originally at, uh, shop Talk in the Spring. Um, but I think having him on now is great because it's been a year since we had a similar company on, right, Todd? 

[00:00:40] Todd: Yeah, we talked to Keble and James, the CEO, and founder from keble a year ago, and really starting to talk about the potential of programmatic and non-endemic demand in retail media. And it's good to kind of check in a year later and talk to Koddi and get a different pers [00:01:00] or update on what is 

[00:01:01] Tom: he was our first guest ever, by the way. Which is, which is pretty cool. But 

[00:01:05] Year in Review: Programmatic Retail Media 

[00:01:05] Todd: Right. And you know, to me a year later, programmatic retail media is still a dream and not much of reality. And there's still a lot of work to be done to connect the pipes, the demand pipes, the supply pipes. I think it's good to know that the supply side, the Kes and cos of the world are absolutely pushing on this, and it is. 

[00:01:28] Todd: There's still a lot of work to be done. Standardization around formats I think has to happen. Standardization around attribution, like we've heard from others like Marcus, from Media Smith saying, look, the lack of standardization here is still a problem. It still makes the buy side a challenge, and I think the good thing is that. 

[00:01:48] Todd: We're starting to see the buy side more and more interested in cross retail, which programmatic should be a great solution for buying. And so I think it is still coming and, and that's not a complaint, that it's still [00:02:00] coming. I helped build programmatic native as a new category a decade ago, and it took multiple years for it to pull off to become something that was, that was doable, something that there was demand for. 

[00:02:12] Todd: So I think the, the. Koddi's of the world pushing on it is gonna make it happen. I think it will happen. It's just a matter of when, and, and I think that when it does, it will be one of those things that really starts to unlock non-endemic buying because programmatic buying makes it much, much easier to buy cross retailer, to buy, cross publisher, and to run campaigns at scale. 

[00:02:35] Todd: And I think it'll be a great unlock for the second and third tier retailers who are really building out those programs now. Even if I say it's not here yet. It's coming and the fact that the Koddis of the world are really trying to build it out and push on it will make it happen. So is it a H two this year thing? 

[00:02:52] Todd: Maybe not, but it's still coming. And the good news is there's even more growth the future as that demand comes online. [00:03:00] And so retail media still has a bright future. So the good news is it's growing fast and furiously without it. And when it shows up, it should really turbocharge. 

[00:03:09] Todd: The dollars and , do we start to see a lot of growth outside the Amazons and Walmarts of the world? I think that could be a, a trigger for a much broader, deeper growth outside of the biggest retail walled gardens. 

[00:03:21] Tom: I think what's interesting is we may be conflating two different things, like from the retailer's perspective, and we saw this with Kroger. There were. World of where, uh, you know, brand dollars can be coming in. Um, where programmatic might fit earlier is more offsite, it's more, you know, uh, bringing in CTV, things like that. 

[00:03:40] Tom: The in-store, potentially being, , a programmatic, uh, delivery. But where Koddi is sitting and where Kevin was sitting as well a year ago, is the core of retail media, the sponsored product listings like. The thing that requires, to your point about, you know, this is, this is not just a, an H [00:04:00] two, you know, flip of the switch. 

[00:04:01] Tom: It's, it, this is building out plumbing. This is creating, a whole ecosystem that can be traded on in, in very, you know, in nanoseconds. And I think that. Um, it sort of brings up something that came up in the episode where we asked him, you know, specifically, Hey, harsh, what do you think is, like, what is commerce media versus what is retail media? 

[00:04:20] Tom: And he had a really good rule of thumb. He is like, basically if it's skew based, um, it's retail media. And if it's not, it's commerce media. And I think I. I think that can be potentially overdone. Like if you talk to the Kroger people, um, they're probably gonna say something like, our SKU based capabilities enable us to do, you know, much more things out in the programmatic world because we have a really good grounding on the household and personal level for these shoppers. 

[00:04:47] Tom: And we can extrapolate better. Than say somebody who's, who's just using transactions that are not skew based and things like that. So I'm not sure if I'm ready to, to seed the term retail media. 'cause in the past [00:05:00] people have tried to say, oh, let's not focus too much on retail media. 

[00:05:03] Tom: It's a fad. It seems like it's not a fad. , Transactions are very important and the ones that you can understand exactly what the transaction is, what SKU is bought, is probably the highest quality. So. That's sort of where I, I net out on that. But you know, I, I, I'm naming this episode, programmatic Finds a Way because I think if you listen to the vision that Harsh brings to this, it's, we've figured it out in Native, we're figuring it out in podcasting. 

[00:05:29] Tom: We will figure it out for retail. So let's see it. 

[00:05:32] Tom: Hello. Welcome to the Minimum Harsh Janani is from Koddi, and we met earlier in the year at Shop Talk. And, um, we finally got you on the podcast. So I'm excited to have you here. Welcome. 

[00:05:45] Harsh: Thank you. Excited to be here. That seems like a lifetime. 

[00:05:48] Tom: I know, I know. It really was, honestly, when we first talked, there was so much that we went into. I was a little worried about what the topics would be, but recently we had Eleanor Hayden on, and she talked [00:06:00] about how she used a lot of, uh, retail media platforms that were powered by Koddi. 

[00:06:04] Tom: I. I was like, you know what? I think it's time to get him on. And you know, Todd actually forwarded us the state of retail media, 

[00:06:11] Todd: You, it's a state of programmatic retail media report that you guys published, which we read through. And, and I think to dive into that, and one of the interesting threads that Tom and I and some of the, uh, another fellow we work with, guy named Scott Messer, who's well known in, in this space we're talking about is how much of retail media is going to grow. 

[00:06:32] Todd: And you know, there's e-marketer came out with their report yesterday and today reading yours. And Scott's kind of comment was, gosh, I don't know if I believe the growth retail media, because is, are the agencies willing to give up that much control of budgets? And Tom and I's Point was no. Agencies are probably the piling on in a bigger, faster way, especially with think the rise of programmatic retail media. 

[00:06:55] The Rise of Agencies and Programmatic Buying 

[00:06:55] Todd: And I think that's a good place to start, which is how much of a shift have [00:07:00] you seen? Yourselves in terms of the rise of agency's involvement in buying retail media 

[00:07:06] Todd: are we seeing the DSPs plug into platforms like Koddi? Is that finally happen? What's unlocking it? Like what's pushing this trend for agencies finally to start appearing in the world of retail media? 

[00:07:17] Fragmentation & Ecosystem Challenges 

[00:07:17] Harsh: Yeah, I think you have to go back to what's been holding agencies back, really. And I personally think it's the fragmentation in the industry. They're used to having like a number of step platforms that they activate through for every, all their other clients. And when it comes to retail media, it's just tough because there are like 50 different platforms that they may have to log into with various levels of scale, and then they can't feed back into all those intelligence systems they built in-house, sophisticated modeling, provide sophisticated analytics back to their clients. 

[00:07:47] Harsh: So it becomes like a really one-off offer 

[00:07:50] Todd: the fragmentation has come up, like we've looked at, you know, neon, which has come out, um, of Horizon Media and is a, you know, an attempt to do that. We're [00:08:00] hearing. Rumblings of others going to enter the space. Maybe the DSPs themselves show up in terms of Trade Desk and others. Um, and I agree that the Fragmentation's been an interesting challenge is, you know, is that something that is really the responsibility of, like the ad delivery management platforms? 

[00:08:17] Todd: I don't quite wanna call you SSPs or kind of, sort of, but not really that, um, is, do you think that's your responsibility or do you think it's the, the buy side has to kind of do more to, to plug into this? Of, of programmatic or broader retail media. 

[00:08:33] Harsh: So, I mean, I only lean back on my own programmatic experience. I was at AppNexus slash Xandr for eight and a half years, in the world of, you know, traditional programmatic advertising. We don't ask publishers to build their walled gardens themselves. We don't ask them to be media companies and tech companies at the same time in retail. 

[00:08:54] Harsh: We ask them to be retail companies or e-commerce companies, media companies and tech companies all [00:09:00] at the same time. And I, I personally think that that's kind of unfair , um, especially for the, the smaller fonts. So I think there, there's a need for the entire ecosystem to mature. And come together. In the past, like the world of retail, media and programmatic didn't need to come together because retail media was, was powered by search technology . 

[00:09:22] Harsh: And programmatic is programmatic. And so retail media search people were basing their thinking based on like Bing and Google search and Google Ads, that type, that type of ecosystem. And there are only two major players that we needed to advertise on . Now that you have two to 400. We need a more scaled way, whether that's programmatic or not, to access that inventory . 

[00:09:47] Tom: Let's talk a little bit about where you came from. You originally were at, uh, promote iq. You told me that you invented curation. So let, let's hear a little bit about your background and how you got to [00:10:00] Koddi's and then, then we can ground this episode. 

[00:10:02] Guest Introduction: Harsh Jiandani's Background 

[00:10:02] Harsh: Yes, yes. It's, uh, yeah, I know Bold claim to invent curation, but as they say, success has many fathers. So I, I claim to be one of the fathers. Uh, so yeah, I, I started in the world of Pat Tech at App Nexus in 2013. Uh, my initial goal was to be there at like one or two years, learn the world of ad tech and start my own company. 

[00:10:23] Harsh: Company. But, uh, AppNexus was an absolute rocket ship. I was learning a ton, growing a ton. People were amazing. So one year turned into eight and a half. When I joined, we were at, uh, 400 employees and 200 of those had joined in the previous six months. No process, just rocket ship growth. Uh, and by the time we sold to at and t, we were at 1600 employee. 

[00:10:48] Harsh: So it was quite a ride to go through. Um, once we got acquired, we were renamed as Xander. By then, I was head of sales and account management for a large portion of our business in the [00:11:00] us. Um, and I saw a product, I was sitting on the shelves and I said, Hey, this is actually a game changer if we bring it to the industry in this way and productize it in this way. 

[00:11:10] Harsh: Specific way. Uh, so I worked with leadership to build a consensus around it. Worked with product to productize it in a certain way. We figured out how to name it. Um, and then we brought it to market. I pitched it to clients whilst doing my day job. And, uh, the first 30 clients I pitched, I was like adapting the pitch as I went along. 

[00:11:32] Harsh: Uh, 29 said yes, we had a business. The appetite was tremendous. And I think in one year we took it from zero to 30 million in a R for the company. A hundred million in spend. 

[00:11:44] Tom: And this, wait, was this all still part of, uh, Xandr? 

[00:11:48] Harsh: This is also part of Xandr. Uh, one of our early clients was actually Kroger. My career has kind of followed around in an interesting. Um, but yeah, that was my, uh, first taste of [00:12:00] working directly with the retail media platform. I'd worked with an offsite retail media platform years earlier that was way ahead, uh, of its time on giving them a shot at 12 digit 

[00:12:09] Harsh: media. they were the first guys out there doing offsite, and they got bought immediately. But anyway, like fast forward years later, it resurfaced in the form of working with, uh, uh, Kroger on Xandr curate. 

[00:12:22] Tom: So Xandr. And then how did you get to promote iq? Also, Microsoft. 

[00:12:27] Harsh: Yeah, so off the success of Xandr Curate, um, I received a couple different job offers. The first one, uh, was from a curation company itself for a chief product officer role, I accepted the offer and I was all set to join. , And the last minute Microsoft swooped in and made an offer to be CRO of promote iq. 

[00:12:51] Harsh: They needed to bring in someone who had expertise in offsite, uh, programmatic that, uh, to launch that portion of the [00:13:00] business. 

[00:13:00] Tom: That world of promote iq, they were a big player and then sort of that has sort of fallen off as Microsoft moved away from this part of the market. What brought you to Koddi and tell us a little bit about what Koddi did that's different, I guess, than, than what Promote IQ was  

[00:13:16] Harsh: Yeah, that was a, a real adventure and ride short but sweet ride with Promote iq. We did really well in about a year and a half I was there. But Koddi reached out and they said, Hey, we're, we're interested in getting into the world of retail media. And I, I said, Hey, uh, I think you guys are too late . And everyone, all the important clients have been signed. 

[00:13:40] Harsh: I think the winners have been decided it's a winner, takes most market. Um, and the leadership said to me, well, what would need to be true for us to win now? Come in here late and win in this space? Well, here's a list of 10 things that need to be true. 10 big things. And they said, okay, we'll do them. 

[00:13:58] Harsh: And I said, ah, I don't know if I [00:14:00] believe you. These are 10 really big things. And then the CEO said, this is over like a six month period. Uh, we weren't, we weren't sharing that much information because we were working at competing companies. Uh, the CEO finally said, well, what would it take for you to believe ?  

[00:14:16] Harsh: And I said , well, , if you already had signed a large retailer, I would believe. And he said , okay, name one. And I said, well, what about Walgreens, your Best Buy? And he said, no, grocery. And I said, oh, grocery. Interesting. Okay. And I said, Kroger. And he said, yep. And so that was really the start of like me believing and buying into this vision that, yeah, Koddi could be a major player in this space. 

[00:14:42] Harsh: And how ended up joined? 

[00:14:44] Tom: What, what's different about Koddi's platform? Because I think you talked to me a little bit about how some of the capabilities , on like product feed side, like entity resolution. You worked in the travel space so like what was different about the old school? 

[00:14:58] Tom: Retail Media  

[00:14:58] Tom: and what you're now sitting [00:15:00] on top of at Koddi  

[00:15:01] Koddi's Approach & Industry Differentiation 

[00:15:01] Harsh: So Koddi comes from the travel media space. They started out powering like travel media networks, like booking.com, uh, and then they did uh, cars.com. So, uh. To them. Retail media is just another type of entity in the system. It's not designed around this concept of SKUs. While other competitors started out in retail media itself and they built their architecture around targeting SKUs, and that makes, now, that makes it difficult for them or less seamless for them to now go into the world of commerce media . 

[00:15:40] Harsh: So Koddi gets to play really well in both types. Retail and commerce media type companies. 

[00:15:46] Todd: What do you define as the difference? This is a good topic. 'cause even a Cannes this past week we had people trying to conflate the two,  

[00:15:54] Todd: right? Saying, oh, we're, it's now Commerce media. It's not retail media. I was at a three, you know, Michael Kassan talking, [00:16:00] he was saying, you know, calling it All Commerce media now. 

[00:16:02] Todd: And what do you see as the difference between retail media and commerce media? Or are they really one and the same thing at this point? 

[00:16:09] Defining Retail Media vs. Commerce Media 

[00:16:09] Harsh: I've heard all the definitions in my personal definition of it is, uh, commerce media encompasses retail media. So it's retail media plus other things. So the, the simplest way to describe it for me is retail media is SKUs and commerce, media is everything that's not SKUs period. 

[00:16:25] Todd: One of the things that has been interesting, you know, to your comment about SKUs versus, uh, commerce and one of the, the talking points recently, you know, talking Criteo and whatever, like their SKU resolution as being one of the things that's enabling their business to expand, right? 

[00:16:41] Todd: And, and do cross retail targeting, which is to your point about fragmentation would solve that. And you know, by your comment, do you think that that's. Too shortsighted in terms of how we should be thinking about retail media, especially as we're trying to expand the pie and ex make it less fragmented or, you know, is it more we have to, to [00:17:00] kind of get beyond skews to make it more holistic and and cross retailer? 

[00:17:04] Harsh: For, for me, I think, uh, players like Criteo are actually just trying to get to SKUs. So where they've been in the past is keywords and, uh, keywords. You know, someone searches for chips. You are, you have to be targeting the keyword chips for your product to show up as an ad. What if they search for something that. 

[00:17:25] Harsh: Results in your product being shown up in the results, but you weren't targeting that specific keyword you miss out on that opportunity. So keyword, that's the con of keywords. The con of keywords is that you miss out on opportunities to buy and sell inventory because you didn't have the right keyword. 

[00:17:43] Harsh: Its onerous to manage all these keywords , uh, the pro of keywords is that they're very scalable across retailers. The same chip is chips across every retailer. so moving from a keyword based world to a SKU based world is a major advancement in itself. [00:18:00] When you buy from retailers directly, generally they're operating like SKU type options, but when you buy from aggregators, they're operating in the world of keywords because it's just easier. 

[00:18:12] Harsh: So it is good now that the industry is now moving toward this world of students, even at the aggregated level. 

[00:18:18] Tom: Another thing that you mentioned was sort of, and this was kind of the buzzword back at Shop Talk, I don't know if it still is, but it was about being a unified front door, and you're very flexible. You know, if somebody is using gam, they can still use that with you. And so what is a typical relationship between you and say a retailer look like? 

[00:18:38] Harsh: Yeah, so I mean, I, I've always envisioned our platform from the day I started to be both, not just a platform, but a platform and an e. System. So, uh, I looked at the incumbent players and you were getting locked into their ecosystems. You had to use the DSP that they own, right? You had to use the tools that they own. 

[00:18:58] Harsh: , Koddi is [00:19:00] all about having an open ecosystem. So when it comes to ad survey, so that the unified front door represents an advertiser's ability to log in and buy onsite, offsite, and in-store in the same place. It's, the industry has been talking about that since I joined it, but it's still, the full vision hasn't come together at scale yet. 

[00:19:20] Harsh: Even for a company like Walmart, there's still a separate platform to buy onsite and there's a separate platform to buy offsite. But anyway, I digress. So like onsite, offsite, instore and in onsite you have, uh, an ads server that you're buying from, and our system is flexible enough that you can buy from our own ad server for both display and sponsored listing ads. 

[00:19:39] Harsh: But we're also integrated with GAM . So we can work ly where you use GAM for display us for sponsor listing ads and there's still a unified UI to to buy that onsite inventory. When it comes to offsite , we have even a more comprehensive set of integrations. 

[00:19:56] Harsh: The way to look at this is just offset is more inventory itself. [00:20:00] So it's like the equation of like how much, how much inventory can you bring in for a retailer to actually monetize? So, um, we partner with, uh, DB 360. We partner with Trade Desk, which is already by itself, I think, unique in the industry to have integrations with both ready to go for advertisers. 

[00:20:18] Harsh: But beyond that, we go to Google Shopping, which I think as far as I know, Instacart's, the only other, uh. That's like really made that available to their retailers. But we have a Google Shopping integration and that one is like a really important one because it gives retailers more PLA ,  

[00:20:35] Harsh: and then in addition to that, we have meta, we have uh, and we have like partnerships going and works with SnapApp and Fetch and others. So we've really done a lot of work to build up that ecosystem for our retailers and work with whoever they wanna opt into working with. So that's the offsite piece. And then the in-store piece is all about helping retailers like power, the buying of in store inventory of any kind. 

[00:20:59] Harsh: Uh, [00:21:00] so they're an important partnership we have is with ISM in store marketplace, formerly known as omics. Uh, these guys power in store audio. 

[00:21:09] Tom: That's the audio platform. 

[00:21:10] Harsh: have the power for a dozen different retailers, uh, have a really novel offering in this space. Uh, so you can plug in any provider that you're working with into our system and it'll work seamlessly. 

[00:21:23] Harsh: Uh, but yeah, ISM is one we have ready to. 

[00:21:25] Tom: What's interesting for me is looking at sort of where people are placing their bets in terms of the innovation in the space, and so it all. Store and, but you really have, it sounds to me on the product side, your bet is on the onsite SSP that you've built. Right? So can you sketch out the future for me of what does that look like in two to three years? 

[00:21:53] Tom: Like what, what isn't being done that you'd be excited about 

[00:21:56] Harsh: Yeah, I mean this is something that has been my, like, passion project at, at [00:22:00] Koddi, and it's my attempt to unify my old worlds and, and, and my new world just to feel more at home myself, I guess. Uh, but the idea is. You now have these 200 to 400 retail media networks, and you have, you're capturing a lot of like shopper marketing, trade marketing type budgets there. 

[00:22:17] Harsh: Uh, you have your self-serve platforms. You're able to get, uh, a certain amount of brands and agencies to log in and buy there. Uh, and you're tapping into platforms like Sky and Pac View, uh, for aggregated demand as well. But on this other side over here, there's another ocean of demand just sitting there. 

[00:22:38] Harsh: And that's the world of programmatic advertising where a lot of brand dollars are flowing. Um, a lot of agency dollars are flowing for performance and awareness that are committed to those channels, um, that are not going to come through your self service or manage service software. So why not tap into that? 

[00:22:56] Harsh: I think eMarketer shed programmatic funnels, $87 [00:23:00] billion of spend every year. Why not tap into that? I've seen it happen kind of over and over again. So programmatic started out with the usual banner, IB banner ads, right? But then native advertising came along and everyone was like, oh, you can't do native advertising programmatically. 

[00:23:16] Harsh: It's sold on a click basis. The image adapts to the, the page and its look and feel and programmatic figured it out . We came up with like a native spec where you could pass assets instead of banner images, and they would be rendered by the publisher according to certain CSS guidelines. Um, then audio inventory came out and I was there when the first audio. 

[00:23:42] Harsh: Exchange was launched people were saying, oh, you can't do audio programmatically. It's like time shifted. People listen to it on the train without a wireless thing. I'm like, how, how are you gonna do that? And same thing, we figured out how to like preload ads into the, the audio player and record the conversion later on. 

[00:23:59] Harsh: Record the [00:24:00] measurement impression later on . And then video came along and like, oh, you can't do video like that requires a player . Uh, and you have to know how much, what percentage of a video a user watched. And we said, okay, we'll use this thing called bass tags. And then CTV came along like, oh, you can't do CTV now you don't have a cookies. 

[00:24:19] Harsh: You don't have a, and you're like, no, we'll, we'll figure that out as well. So now 75% of all inventory of CTV inventory is sold via programmatic. And I think that's the right comparison for retail media. But you have to look at not banner inventory where there's pretty much an infinite amount of 

[00:24:38] Harsh: a trade desk auctions off 12 million impressions per second . So there's like an infinite amount of banner inventory, but CTV inventory is limited and it's premium, and those are the characteristics that match what's happening in retail media . And programmatic done a great job in monetizing that.  

[00:24:57] Tom: Definitely agree [00:25:00] with that. Maybe we name this episode Programmatic finds a way and put some sort of a juss. On it. But  

[00:25:07] Harsh: yeah. 

[00:25:08] Harsh: if I could do a good goal, would impression, everyone would be in trouble. I, I would just talk like that all the time. 

[00:25:12] Tom: Yeah, I mean, I, I think there's another question that I have related to sort of the future, especially in the onsite world, which is when you, you started to talk about this earlier on, which was if you move away from keywords, uh, you could potentially hit more context or hit more intent. We're moving to an AI or gen AI world where, you know, Sparky, uh, I don't know, I don't like all the rufuss, all the names of the, of the, you know, retailers, LLM, um, they're coming to, to the floor where larger context windows and, you know, totally non keyword based searches are gonna happen. 

[00:25:48] Tom: How are you preparing for that future? 

[00:25:51] The Future: AI, Identity, and Innovation 

[00:25:51] Harsh: Yeah, I, I think, you know, you have to take these things a step at a time. You can have like a bold vision later on, but these technologies are coming [00:26:00] together the wrong thing to do is like, Hey, I'm gonna wait till it's properly scale, and then I'm going to jump in. Because from like a, a competitive startup standpoint, it's gonna be too late. 

[00:26:10] Harsh: So you have to keep playing with the technologies while they're still getting to a enterprise ready state, uh, to be in the right position to actually win. So right now, staying on top of what's the current threshold that's actually enterprise, ready to like test 

[00:26:28] Harsh: and we're going along with it step at a time. So a good direction for us to go next would probably be. Uh, try to power the retail media network for the perplexity or something, right? So the sponsor listing ads that are being shown there, like, how can we help monetize those in some way? Can we do those in our, um, and from there on we build our capability in monetizing generative and, uh, agent content , 

[00:26:55] Tom: todd, what are your thoughts on, uh, on where this goes? Because my, [00:27:00] my thinking is, initially the big worry is a lot of retailers are gonna look at it as like, well, this is my cash cow, my sponsored search is like the way that I do things. How are we ever gonna get them to sort of 

[00:27:10] Tom: move to  

[00:27:11] Todd: I think what, what's. There's sort of two things there. One, only the largest retailers are really experimenting with AI in their sites, right? Walmart and, and Amazon And the smaller retailers probably need to see more evolution on the, like AI search side. Like I don't think it's productized for them yet. 

[00:27:31] Todd: And so I think there's gonna be a longer window where PLA are gonna be. Available or sponsored search, whatever term you wanna use on the retailers. And I think they've got a longer window, whereas you'll even, Amazon isn't experimenting with inserting ads into rufuss. They're AI chat, um, bot. And so I too your, your points. 

[00:27:53] Todd: Um, I, I don't think we have any clue of what that's gonna look like. I think there's gonna be a lot of experimentation. [00:28:00] It's probably the biggest window of experimentation since the rise of search ads with. Go to.com back in the day. Right? And so what that looks like, I don't know. And what's fascinating is retailers are coming on more and more to retail media just at the time when there could be a very existential shift in online advertising. 

[00:28:19] Todd: Maybe to shift it back a little bit, which is, and getting back to the cross retailer, one of the things that that's really driving. Retail media to the point where at can, publishers were almost invisible and retailers were everywhere really for the first time. And Tom and I have been talking about how retail media is the future of online advertising. And retailers and publishers are gonna have to, to link up or especially publish. 'cause I think the, what retail media solves, right? And, and given your background, harsh and, and mine on the programmatic side, it solves the audience problem in a way that I think online advertising has been begging poor for years. 

[00:28:58] Todd: And so [00:29:00] because of that, I think retailers are almost protected from this ai . Revolution because you're still gonna need identity and you're still gonna need targeting. And that doesn't go away. And the logged in experience of retailers really positions the retailers well for the future of online media. And that's to me also why CTV and re RMNs potentially work well, 'cause they're too logged in environments. And so identity linking and matching can be done in a way. That very few places can't. And so I think maybe that's the, the why where the value of the audience and where it can be connected. And by the way, AI search is also encouraging a logged in experience that traditional search never did. 

[00:29:37] Todd: And is that another link up? Because again, I, I can do server to server then the identity resolution works like I think we're the future of retail media in general and the future of online advertising. Around the idea of logged in and and synced experiences and targeting is really gonna be very different than maybe it was for the past 15 or 20 years because of that. 

[00:29:58] Todd: And I think maybe, you know, maybe [00:30:00] it's worth talking about how is Koddi thinking about this world where identity is known and resolved and we're all gonna be sharing these, you know, email, uh, logged in experiences and what does that mean for the future of, of advertising and targeting even. 

[00:30:13] Harsh: Yeah, before I answer that, I think the, the AI portion presents a lot of opportunity and also potential disruptions for retailers as well. So you, just to put like devil's advocate, it's like now you have more and more people shopping through chat GPT and, and how does that disrupt the experience are, and yes, it's a logged in user, but if more people are logging and buying your product Google shopping, like what happens to that? 

[00:30:38] Harsh: So I. Retailers need to be like really on, on their feet from our perspective, identity, the way we do identity. And you know, this was a surprising thing for me when I came from programmatic. Coming from programmatic. You think in the world of cookies, 

[00:30:53] Todd: right. 

[00:30:53] Harsh: if you're a little more involved thinking words of device, IDs and IP addresses, but that's, that's your world. 

[00:30:59] Harsh: Um, [00:31:00] but in the world of retail media, identity has not been that kind of challenge. Everything happens server to server. Right. 

[00:31:07] Todd: Great. 

[00:31:08] Harsh: So, um, the problem was solved. It is, is still solved and it will still be solved. I don't think identity is like the, the big issue for especially onsite, uh, for retailers. 

[00:31:21] Todd: Well, and to me that's fascinating, right? We spent 15 years trying to worry about identity, especially in the world of programmatic with cookies and other proxies, and suddenly, to your point, it's gone. It's no longer an issue. It all just works. And I think we're, we don't talk about it enough in the sense that when, what does advertising look like when identity is salt? 

[00:31:42] Todd: We're kind of there and what business opportunities and product opportunities does, does that open up in ways that like, you know, it's almost like all the dreams we had 15 years ago when digital advertising kind of took off are can suddenly happen and maybe we need to think back to like, oh my gosh, what would this mean? 

[00:31:57] Todd: And can we finally do maybe cross [00:32:00] site targeting in a way and real funnel, step to step nurturing, targeting in ways that we always dreamed about, but maybe now finally can do. 

[00:32:07] Harsh: Yeah, I mean, the funny thing about identity is that especially for cookies, um, it feels salt and yeah, the answer is yes, it is salt. You have like all this inventory from like Apple, that's dark to everybody, but there's still 12 million impressions per second. So even like if you've managed to hold on to the 10% of all the inventory that's available, you'd probably be okay. 

[00:32:30] Tom: Well, I think there was another thing that was in your, uh, state of programmatic retail media that was interesting. It was the case being made about you need an SSP in this retail role because. Retailers actually want control over their inventory. So usually the, the original argument was SSPs aren't gonna be able to get in here because retailers want really strict control of their inventory. 

[00:32:53] Tom: They're not gonna let that a third party be in here. And I think what you guys were making in that, report is an argument [00:33:00] to the other side. So I'd like to hear it from you, sort of what, what that's all about. 

[00:33:03] Incrementality, Attribution, and Measurement 

[00:33:03] Harsh: What we're trying to do is let retailers have their cake and unit too. I think there's like a, when people hear programmatic there, there are certain connotations that it has immediately, people complain it with what happened. What happens in the wall with banners. They complain it on onsite with offsite. 

[00:33:19] Harsh: So, um, I, I think there's a, uh, a lot more that could be done now, uh, that makes it possible for retailers and brands to retain all this level of control for the retailer that they have today, when, uh, they're, they're selling directly and for brands, all the capabilities that they have when they're buying directly. 

[00:33:44] Harsh: And then what are the most important capabilities. And that is incrementality. So today, um, brands have been asking for incrementality from retailers for a while, and certain retailers are starting to [00:34:00] provide it for them. But to me, there are three levels of doing this. The first level is you're not providing any incrementality, right? 

[00:34:07] Harsh: You're sticking to row house. The second is you're providing your own measurement of incrementality as a retailer to the brand. And that is okay, but it's still not the perfect because yes, that may be the first time that user bought that box of cereal through you, but that user may have, a customer might have been buying that box of cereal through another retailer for 10 years. 

[00:34:31] Harsh: They're not actually new to brand . It's not actually an incremental sale . Brands On panel say, I care about your measurement. I want your data. Let me, my own measurement in my MM, uh, so, and same thing I was saying, you know, agencies want that kind of capability as well. And all that stuff is baked into, uh, programmatic innately. 

[00:34:55] Harsh: So like, the funny part is we talk about how retail media has an edge when it [00:35:00] comes to identity. Programmatic has an edge when it comes to doing things like setting attribution windows and doing the types of, uh, analytics. It really puts the, the advertiser in the seat and enables them to do apples to apples comparisons between different retail media networks and do things like even frequency capping in in the future. 

[00:35:20] Harsh: To me everyone talks about having the perfect advertising system . What would the perfect advertising system look like? It'd be one place in advertisement could log in, buy every type of inventory right? That doesn't exist and probably won't for a really long time. 

[00:35:35] Harsh: But , Uh, today, like today you have like tons of different channels and platforms to buy all different types of inventory, but I think there's a gravity towards going to that perfect system and so. To me, they're, and the perfect, the gravity comes from advertisers because of course they, they have to spend, they have the dollars to spend, so eventually they get what they want. 

[00:35:58] Harsh: Eventually, publishers need it [00:36:00] to provide them what they want so they can get a bigger share of budget. So if programmatic turns out to be like the right way for these advertisers to purchase, they will find a place. I don't think it's gonna in any way replace find, right? That has its place as well. But there is a place, I believe, over time for programmatic to play a role. 

[00:36:22] Closing Thoughts & Upcoming Events 

[00:36:22] Tom: Are there, are there other shows that we're gonna be able to find you at for the rest of the year now that we've done can and now that there's been possible End Shop talk and like have we overdone it or are people still gonna leave  

[00:36:35] Harsh: No, there's never enough ad tech. You have to show up, uh, to all the events. I think we're, our company's going to something like 47 events this year. Me personally, I think I'm doing like seven or something like that, but yeah. 

[00:36:48] Tom: Right. Well, I guess we'll have to see you at at grocery. 

[00:36:50] Harsh: Yep. 

[00:36:52] Tom: Well, thank you. 

[00:36:54] Harsh: All right. Thank you for having It's me. The pleasure. 

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