# S2 E29 T49 - Drew Cashmore - Vantage

S2 E29 T49 - Drew Cashmore - Vantage 

[00:00:00] Introduction and Welcome 

[00:00:00]  

[00:00:01] Tom: You're listening to the Middleman Podcast this week with Scott Messer and Tom Limongello. 

[00:00:07] Scott's Return from Japan and Dodgers' Victory 

[00:00:07] Tom: Hey Scott, you back from Japan? 

[00:00:09] Scott Messer: I am back from Japan. It is great to see you again, Tom. I hope you've been well. 

[00:00:16] Tom: Yeah. We recorded this before the Dodgers won, so congratulations. 

[00:00:21] Scott Messer: Thank you very much. I believe we were down three to two when, uh, our guest was commenting of what a new and recent and huge Blue Jays fan he was. 

[00:00:32] Introducing Drew Cashmore from Vantage 

[00:00:32] Tom: So we're talking to Drew Cashmore today from Vantage. Drew's been in the industry a long time, and, he's been at Walmart. He is, been at startups like fireworks. A lot of great perspectives. , But what we're talking about today is something, you know, he's.  

[00:00:46] Defining Orchestration in Retail Media 

[00:00:46] Tom: He's at a company that's early in this concept of orchestration that we've been writing about in our newsletters recently. 

[00:00:54] Tom: We need to sort of define it for people a little bit before this episode so that they're a little [00:01:00] grounded. What are your thoughts about orchestration now that we've had this chat with Drew. 

[00:01:04] Scott Messer: So there was something really interesting that happened during the episode um, that orchestration happens in really two places. One is at the lower level of, um, systems, which is does your onsite and your offsite connect. 

[00:01:19] Scott Messer: Your ad server and your OMS and sort of this orchestration of, um, advertising 

[00:01:25] Tom: Yeah, the, the plumbing of advertising is like, most people would think about it as an operations problem, right? 

[00:01:31] Scott Messer: right.  

[00:01:32] Insights from Drew on Retail Media Networks 

[00:01:32] Scott Messer: Um, and what Drew really brought up to us and makes a, a ton of sense and as a, the neophyte into the retail media world here, I don't think enough about JBPs and how these big retail and brand budgets. Get used across retail media networks and how you have all these different JPBs with different business initiatives and different KPIs, um, and how do you tie all of those together to understand how your holistic. 

[00:01:58] Scott Messer: ADS [00:02:00] program is driving value back for your company. Um, and that was a really powerful thing, and you can, it, it, it always blew my mind of like, how do these retailers or these brands keep everything like track in, in track and how do you know what's working, what's not, what to turn on, what to double down on next year? 

[00:02:18] Scott Messer: And Drew gave us some really good insights to how his platform does that. And I think it's something that everybody should be thinking about and asking How is our platform? Keep track of all this. 

[00:02:28] The Complexity of Retail Media 

[00:02:28] Tom: I think generally when people come from the media world, they're thinking of one, one system that they need to to track. Was I able to gain a customer look at sort of my performance, things like that. And I, I think that retail just blows that out in terms of, more channels, more, more levels of complexity, , more ad tech partners, um, because of all the identity needs and things like that. 

[00:02:53] Tom: I even talked to, other colleagues from the past and they're like, you know, is orchestration just mean connectivity? Like, is it just mean [00:03:00] connecting the dots? 

[00:03:01] Tom: Um, and I'm, I'm starting to become a believer that it's much more than that. And it's a new paradigm in, in the media world. I think this is gonna be a great episode for people to understand. How that works. But it's also a fun episode because it ties together a lot of the other episodes we just had. 

[00:03:18] Tom: Um, it may be one of the best name dropping episodes that we've ever had. Um, he talks about Brian Monahan from Albertsons. We talked about Bobby Watts from ahold. We talked about. Mark Williamson from Costco. Um, I mean, I don't even know if I remember all the people, but many of those people. And I, I, you know, my goal will be to get all of those people together and have a conversation where I'm not even asking the questions. 

[00:03:40] Tom: I just get to sit there and see what they really wanna talk about. So. 

[00:03:43] Scott Messer: I think that would, uh, I think getting 'em in the room together would be fascinating to see. And you know, I think that pulls on on one other thread that. That drew really tugged for me, which is, um, who we're competing against, right? And so we've had a lot of these great conversations and everybody [00:04:00] wants to share and learn and help because what you start to realize is it's not just us versus other publishers, or Kroger versus Albertsons, it's everybody versus Amazon. 

[00:04:13] Scott Messer: And it's every, and in the digital publisher world, it's everybody versus Facebook and Google. The whole point of collaborating here and making better products is so that we deliver outcomes that do better than our competitors. And as you'll hear Drew say, and it comes from his article, uh, if we don't get our collective acts together, we're gonna lose everything to Amazon. 

[00:04:39] Scott Messer: And if you're a digital media publisher, you know this story very well, and I would heed those words greatly. So when we talk about performance and outcomes. 

[00:04:51] Tom: Earlier eras of, of the web were about easy buttons. This is, there's a lot more buttons. And the, the greater goal is omnichannel. So. It's, it's gonna [00:05:00] have to be complex. So let's get to the discussion with Drew. 

[00:05:04]  

[00:05:04] Drew's Journey: Walmart to Vantage 

[00:05:04] Tom: We are here with Drew Cashmore. Drew is a friend,, we met up at Shop Talk Spring and we just weren't really ready for him yet. , He's talking at a high level of orchestration. He had a, a great post on LinkedIn recently, , about trade versus retail media, so we're gonna get into it with him. 

[00:05:20] Tom: But let's hear a little bit about you because you started, at, Walmart Connect in Canada. Does that mean that you're in the area where the Blue Jays might be? Tell us about where you're from. 

[00:05:30] Drew Cashmore: I am from Toronto. I, I, I lived in San Francisco for, uh, about five years back in Toronto. Now, in fairness, I love the Blue Jays. I'm really excited about the last couple of, uh, last couple of weeks. I just found out what baseball was a week ago, so it's 

[00:05:45] Tom: Okay. Alright. Alright. So I'm not, I'm not pitting you against our Dodger fan here. Scott Messer, who watched all 

[00:05:51] Scott Messer: the, the gauntlet has been thrown. I challenge accepted. We are, we are here for it. You know, it's three, two right now for, if you wanna know where [00:06:00] we're at in the series where we're recording. But, uh, you guys are a really nice team and I think you're very good. 

[00:06:07] Drew Cashmore: I appreciate that. Should we, should we record this as if we know what's gonna happen? Let's make a prediction. 

[00:06:12] Scott Messer: I like to make predictions about ad tech, but sports is not my, I, let's say I, I'm, I'm not allowed to make predictions about sports. 

[00:06:20] Tom: All right, we'll it in, um, but I was saying that you were part of Walmart Connect Canada. You went to Firework, which was an interesting, uh, play on vertical video for retailers. 

[00:06:28] Tom: So we, we are interested in hearing your predictions. So tell us about sort of how you got to, to where you're at Vantage now and as a consultant, and let's get into it. 

[00:06:37] Drew Cashmore: I was reflecting on this the other day that there are a lot of people that say they built Walmart Connect. And I will tell you, I was number one in Canada. Um, I was one of the first five, uh, in-house on the US side. I, I started in 2009 at Walmart, Canada to build a small advertising business to offset the cost of e-commerce. 

[00:06:57] Drew Cashmore: Walmart had decided that they needed [00:07:00] to play a much. Stronger role in e-commerce around the world, beyond just the US market, but they weren't willing to fund that. And so advertising became the catalyst for investment in, in ancillary services within the retailer. 

[00:07:13] Drew Cashmore: Uh, over a seven or eight year period, it became a true omnichannel proposition, the largest retail media business in the Canadian market. At the time, and then in 2017, I was asked to move to San Francisco as part of the initial leadership team for Walmart Connect. Um, I took that from zero with some incredible partners. there about 2 billion  

[00:07:36] Drew Cashmore: Uh, that journey took the phenomenal foundation that people like Brian Monahan and, and Nikhil Raj and Neil Murphy had built, um, and took it to the next level. 

[00:07:47] Drew Cashmore: Joined firework because it was a new emerging concept in the US market around live shopping, and we thought we could take. This phenomenal [00:08:00] ecosystem of live shopping from the eastern markets in China and translate that into the US with vertical video. 

[00:08:06] Drew Cashmore: It didn't play out exactly like we wanted it to, but I always had a, real desire to get back into the retail media space. And, and you were starting to see this massive explosion of tech vendors and. Real obsession with the space and, and desire to, to scale it for rest of market. 

[00:08:25] Drew Cashmore: I started consulting in retail media the CEO of Vantage, Aaron Hamilton, and I were working together on a reimagination of Vantage and. I kept saying to him, I wanna build this technology that connects a bunch of disparate systems and tools and creates a unified buying layer. 

[00:08:45] Drew Cashmore: And he kept saying, I've got that. Just come here. And, and so eventually I did and, and, uh, we've been blowing up ever since. And so it's been a really fun ride there. 

[00:08:56] Scott Messer: One note on that, drew, uh, firework I thought was a great [00:09:00] company. It was a little bit early to the market, uh, and I have a hat from them and it's one of my favorite hats, I gotta say. 

[00:09:06] Drew Cashmore: I love it. We had good 

[00:09:07] Scott Messer: on your vertical video still, so I'd love to see that comeback 

[00:09:12] Drew Cashmore: Video works, video drives sales in retail environments, and you could see something like a 12 x increase in conversion by just having video on the site. But the challenge for retailers was getting video on the site and. 

[00:09:26] Drew Cashmore: The, the debate on that and the load time and as it relates to optics of degradation and conversion and so on was too great for them to really wanna play with that. Um, but I, I still believe that there is a lot of room for that space to blow up over time. 

[00:09:42] Scott Messer: I appreciate that perspective. Thanks. 

[00:09:44] Tom: Yeah. And we don't want to short shrift some of the, the great experience that you've had. Um, but before we go into like what Vantage is, and I wanna talk about orchestration, um, I think to set that up. It would be good to talk about a LinkedIn post that you wrote recently.  

[00:09:59] The Evolution of Retail Media and Trade 

[00:10:03] Tom: Um, and you shared specifically an image that I think James Taylor, not the musician, um, brought up from Forrester talking about how retail media is eating trade. 

[00:10:10] Tom: Kiri Masters linked us into that Zitcha discussion that we had with Troy Townsend, we were saying the reverse that trades eating re retail media, but. Whoever's eating whom, um, we're starting to get a lot of perspectives about, there is definitely a need for trade. 

[00:10:25] Tom: In your post, you talk about that as sort of defense or the access point or the retailers, you know, posturing as a buyer say, Hey, if you want to get on my shelves, you need to help me with price promotion. Or we need to figure out how much, much of the shelf you're gonna have. Um, which is very different from retail media. 

[00:10:41] Tom: Why don't you tell us a little bit about, your thesis, related to that. 

[00:10:45] Drew Cashmore: I think it helps to probably go back to the beginning. So there has been this perpetual debate on whether. Trade and shopper marketing and retail media are all fungible. And the thesis that we had going [00:11:00] into retail media is that we could create technologies and, and offerings that would, allow for an influx of net new dollars into the retail ecosystem that brands were investing a ton of money in, in television and the open web and, and in print and so on. 

[00:11:16] Drew Cashmore: And that we could take those monies. With the strong enough offering in retail, convert those monies into the retail ecosystem. And I believe that to be true that all of the dollars were flowing into retail media, or a lot of them were incremental. And I spent a lot of my career trying to prove that as the core point, the James Taylor article and, and, um, and the, the way in which he did the analysis shows that. 

[00:11:44] Drew Cashmore: For the last 10 ish years as we were scaling out retail media, a significant portion of the dollars, about 60% flowing into retail media were actually just a migration of trade moving forward. A significant amount of the dollars [00:12:00] that are gonna go into retail media are not actually net new dollars are not incremental, but are also coming from trade about, I think 70%. 

[00:12:08] Drew Cashmore: 60, 70% of all dollars that are moving into retail media are actually just moving around within the retailer versus net new into that ecosystem. Now I surmise there's a couple reasons for that. If you go back to the beginning of what trade was, trade was a way for retailers that are selling multiple brands in their box, to capture funds, to invest in reduction in price, to invest in new stores, and innovation. 

[00:12:36] Drew Cashmore: And so trade was funding from suppliers to help grow the collective categories within that retailer. And then you moved into shopper marketing and, this was brands really focusing on driving their individual growth within that retailer. 

[00:12:57] Drew Cashmore: And so focusing on driving sales. [00:13:00] Using marketing to drive sales within that retailer. 

[00:13:03] Tom: Yeah, and I'll stop you there just so that you know, you don't have to go on the entire historical journey in one shot. Um, but I appreciate that you're doing it because I think it's something that people haven't really heard is if you, especially you're coming from the media side of the world. What's interesting to me is if I oversimplified what you were talking about, and you talked about this as well, like the miscalculation of trade, is that shopper broke off. 

[00:13:26] Tom: Is shopper, is there an easy way to think of shopper as almost, it's the signage, it's the stickers on the floor, the wobblers and things like that. So I think where the challenge comes up is that as retail media comes in and is like, Hey, this is a measurable medium that looks at performance trade. Could be, you know, if you put a QR code on a sign, all of a sudden you can start measuring it. 

[00:13:47] Tom: Or you could put cameras in the store and see where people are. That whole measurement is scaring some retailers and they don't want to do that yet. Um, but if you more cleanly separated like signage from price, then [00:14:00] maybe, you know, the retail media gets a little bit bigger, and that's the eating part maybe, but it, it can live together where these two goals of getting access to the shelves and, and funding, price promotion versus getting people to know what that product is and potentially, you know, getting to a place where Amazon doesn't have this insane advantage of reviews and other things like that, that the store doesn't have. 

[00:14:22] Tom: Is that sort of the, the future that you would see? 

[00:14:25] Drew Cashmore: I see dollars moving into retail media or, or before that shopper marketing, because Amazon and Walmart and a few others have created mutually beneficial value that is driving the growth of individual brands, and that is not necessarily always true for trader or much less quantifiable. So brands are looking for and getting smarter about how they buy and how they invest, not only with individual retailers, but where they invest in packaging and where they invest in, in broader marketing, where they invest in retail [00:15:00] media all as a whole, but they're getting smarter about where they place their next dollar, and they are looking for quantifiable return on that. 

[00:15:09] Drew Cashmore: Retail media is that much more so than trade. And my core thesis in that article, is that these dollars are moving, whether we like it or not. And in one vein, you can try to. Capture those dollars and stop those dollars from moving like Walmart did in 2015. 

[00:15:27] Drew Cashmore: Or you can embrace this and create mechanisms to be able to collect that shift of dollars and create mutually beneficial value. And in doing so, you're able to keep those dollars self contained within that retail environment. 

[00:15:40] Tom: So operationally, those dollars, whether they fall out of the bucket, I mean the, the discussion of Walmart trying to just kill trade in one shot at, in 2015 was super interesting. It's like the perfect experiment. If anybody wants to read the article, there's actually a. Mark Williamson and Bobby Watts are all talking about what this was like in the industry and it was earth shattering. 

[00:15:59] Tom: If we [00:16:00] look at it, um, from this perspective of what do you do to make sure that you don't have a leaky bucket, um, do you sort of merge the discussions? We just had Brian Monahan on actually, and I didn't realize that you worked with him when you were at Walmart, but that, that makes a ton of sense. 

[00:16:16] Tom: Um, he was talking about specifically how retail media today is allocated, not planned. And unless you have these discussions with trade and retail media in the same room, how do you end up planning? Otherwise, there's a lot of situations where you could be doing one thing in the store versus one thing online and, and subsidizing your competition. 

[00:16:39] Drew Cashmore: What we realized at the, this was about 2017 when we, we started to really think about re-engineering the business model to be able to support, uh, an accelerated growth within the retail media business. In 2017, we looked at our share of retail media at Walmart, and it was a fraction of that, of [00:17:00] Amazon. 

[00:17:00] Drew Cashmore: And so that in and of itself was a competitive threat. Um, but what we also started to notice was that we were under shared as a percentage of, of sales for trade as well. , Um, 

[00:17:11] Tom: mean by under shared? 

[00:17:13] Drew Cashmore: meaning that the trade investments that were going into Amazon. We're much greater as a percentage of sales than what was happening at Walmart. 

[00:17:22] Drew Cashmore: So if Walmart owned, you know, 15% a share of a particular category, and Amazon owned 5%, they might be getting 10% of trade and we might be getting, 5% on the 

[00:17:33] Tom: And that hasn't really changed, right? 

[00:17:36] Drew Cashmore: it's changed pretty dramatically when we brought it together. Um, and, and that I think is the, the underlying point. 

[00:17:43] Drew Cashmore: And so. What we did was start to test what would happen if we went in as a joint ask and looked at could we create a mechanism whereby trade goes up as well as retail media? And by [00:18:00] not infighting, but by actually going into the room together for those dollars, um, you got a clearer picture of how brands were investing on the whole. 

[00:18:08] Drew Cashmore: And you were able to truly manage the flows of dollars into the retailer. And what we saw was that trade went up, retail media and shopper marketing went up. The cost of goods went down because we saw an increase of trade that we could then put put back into price. And sales went up and, and we started to do all of these tests at a category level and almost across the board we saw that to be true. 

[00:18:34] Drew Cashmore: And, and I think that was probably the largest catalyst for a deeper engagement in relationship with merchants, was proving that a rising tide raises all boats. 

[00:18:48] Scott Messer: The, one of the key elements there has to be like the performance of the retail media spend, right? That has to pull its weight and not be a drain on the [00:19:00] performance in the budget, right? So how critical is it that. You're actually moving products off shelves and you're delivering like an outsized ROAS for that. 

[00:19:10] Scott Messer: That retail media that's shifting over. 

[00:19:12] Drew Cashmore: Look, sales growth is, is important. Um, I see retail media if used properly as a flywheel generator. And so these monies are not just about driving profitability for the retailer, but they're about using marketing dollars efficiently to drive traffic in, to drive conversions, um, and therefore growing either the total pie for the advertiser and brand or the total pie for the category. 

[00:19:38] Scott Messer: Like massaging the entire funnel and not just like punching out the lowest funnel opportunity. 

[00:19:45] Drew Cashmore: Which, which we know. I think CVS has some data to suggest that doing, you know, two channels is something like 10 x as effective as doing one channel. I'm, I'm misquoting this, but I, I've seen this in some of the data for some of our partners as well. [00:20:00] If you are using this. As a baseline, onsite and offsite, it actually goes way further than just doing a single channel buy at a, at a tactical level, so yes, I think showing growth overall drives retail media growth, but inadvertently it also drives trade growth because if you're seeing growth in category, if you're seeing growth in in sales, you're gonna naturally invest more in trade. 

[00:20:25] Drew Cashmore: And so it does both. 

[00:20:26] Scott Messer: So if, if a Walmart or a CVS is spending a lot of money across the entire funnel targeting. Very good audiences and driving more sales. Does a, does a brand then have to instruct their agency to sort of clear a lane for it? Does it take performance dollars away from the agencies if they ever were there? 

[00:20:48] Scott Messer: How does it shift from the agency side . You're moving more players into the same channel. So how do you avoid that conflict? 

[00:20:55] Drew Cashmore: I see.  

[00:20:56] The Role of Agencies in Retail Media 

[00:20:56] Drew Cashmore: Diverging roles for agencies in this [00:21:00] space right now. And, and I like how Brian Monahan in, in your, um, previous podcast talked about this and everybody should go back and listen, but from, from my perspective, there are two type two camps here. One is agencies, um. Working to normalize retail media against other channels such that they, it's easier for them to buy. 

[00:21:22] Drew Cashmore: Trying to push retail media businesses into the programmatic space, trying to, reduce CPMs and, and normalize that against, uh, stuff outside of a shopping environment and, and then trying to create measurement that is consistent across both transactional environments and not. And then I also see agencies, standing up support engines for retail media, and that one, to me is a much more necessary beast at this point. 

[00:21:52] Drew Cashmore: Retail media today and likely for the foreseeable future is gonna be really hard to buy. It is a highly [00:22:00] valuable thing for. Advertisers to be in the place where people are actually buying their products. Um, but it is complicated and, and you know, we're working through ways of, of finding efficiencies in that and, , and connecting different pieces of the architecture. 

[00:22:12] Drew Cashmore: But on the whole, retail media is fragmented and so agencies that can stand up, support engines to help brands manage retail efforts manually across all of these different retailers and touch points. Um, and then. Combine things at a measurement level, I think are gonna be, uh, very successful in this moving forward. 

[00:22:32] Scott Messer: That's a great point. I think you're right. It's the, it's the, the support engine is largely like that measurement level . If the agency really owns like the, your holistic KPI and, and that measurement layer, like you have to be funneling all of that back to them. Um, there's, there's a great parallel in here to the, the digital media world and, and something that you said in your article that like, if you're not actively thinking about creating mutually beneficial value for the collection of trade or retail media, [00:23:00] you will lose to Amazon almost every time.  

[00:23:03] Challenges and Opportunities in Retail Media 

[00:23:03] Scott Messer: In the digital web and publishing world. It is not New York Times versus Wall Street Journal. It's everybody versus Google and Facebook. And I think what you're saying here is it's not Albertsons versus Kroger, it's not Costco versus Walmart. It's really everybody versus Amazon. and to go further on that, like if you don't build efficient systems that can. Deliver the value across the entire chain that Amazon can promise, or from the web that just buying Facebook can promise or just buying AdWords AdSense campaigns can deliver that money is going to move and it's going to move past you. So we really have to think about the problems that fragmentation and retail media are creating and like if it becomes difficult. They're simply just gonna put their money in other places, like the 

[00:23:55] Drew Cashmore: and I mean it. 

[00:23:57] Scott Messer: I, I got a long spiel on that one, [00:24:00] my other work about how the open web didn't grow and the rest of the web did, but yeah. 

[00:24:04] Drew Cashmore: It's, it is already difficult, but the expectations are getting greater and, and so I think brands have put up with it to this point. Whilst spending 85% of their investments in Amazon and Walmart. So they put up with it to an extent, but not, not at scale. Um, but I, I agree with you. I think that to move forward across all of rest of market, we need to make it easier and more appealing to buy and easier and more efficient to operate. 

[00:24:29] Drew Cashmore: And when you can do those two things, it allows rest of market to accelerate. 

[00:24:35] The Future of Retail Media 

[00:24:35] Scott Messer: I think that's a good segue into like how do you build. systems that drive performance and you start coordinating across these pieces because it's, you don't just have like a website, right? You have like many stores and many retail places and many channels. Um, one would almost say that you have to orchestrate things across them. 

[00:24:57] Scott Messer: Uh, so I think for our listeners, like what is, what [00:25:00] is an orchestration layer? Let's start there in, in a basic level, and then we'll get into like how orchestration works and where we go. 

[00:25:08] Drew Cashmore: Yeah, I, I think this term, and, and I'm really glad you want to talk about this, this term is, is Ill understood and, and probably being misused on the whole today. Um, as more and more players are starting to adopt it, I see orchestration as both the connectivity between disparate tools and systems into a unified. 

[00:25:27] Drew Cashmore: Retail media tool for all jobs to be done. So everything from CRM to OMS and or order management to, um, campaign creation, buying planning, optimization, billing and reconciliation measurement, all in one tool. Um, but I think it does it a disservice on the whole, because it's not thinking about the bigger picture of retail media as part of overall retail strategy and operations. 

[00:25:54] Drew Cashmore: At Vantage and, and kind of how I, I want the industry to move is thinking about retail or [00:26:00] orchestration and retail media. About less of a campaign manager, um, or all jobs to be done within retail media in one tool, but as more of a. Tool to power retail media as a core part of the overall retail business. 

[00:26:17] Drew Cashmore: And that means bringing in trade investments to understand how all money's flowing into so the retailer are being used most effectively. Um, creating dashboards and measurement to better understand where, um, retailers should work with brands to place their next dollar. Um. Uh, creating metrics to, uh, allow for that, creating visibility, um, into how spends are flowing in and so on for both merchants and retail media businesses, and then creating an architecture to support marketing, retail marketing in their efforts as well. 

[00:26:52] Drew Cashmore: Because, and I'll tell you candidly what, what I see across retail today is retailers [00:27:00] will work with, say, Coca-Cola to run large scale. Programs for Coca-Cola during the holidays to drive the sale of Coca-Cola at the business. But they will pay for those efforts in addition to asking for Coca-Cola to fund additional investment in retail media. 

[00:27:18] Drew Cashmore: And those things could be very cleanly married, um, if done properly, but they're not today because they're done in separate teams and separate tools and, um, with separate strategies. 

[00:27:30] Scott Messer: That's, that's very clear. And um, if I can play some of that back to you at the lower there, there's like two levels of orchestration in retail media. There's the, the lower level of connecting systems that should be connected, your order management system, your ad server, buying systems and reporting systems, and that's like campaign orchestration and, and getting all your things together. 

[00:27:54] Scott Messer: But at a higher level, when you look at retailers that have joint business plans, big trade [00:28:00] budgets, and big, they're, they're really managing a large chunk of spend for these individual brands. How do you orchestrate all the different things that you're doing? And it's not just campaigns, it's as you said, it's um, bringing in the trade, bringing in the other things that aren't as easily measurable directly and certainly have like different languages of performance and then translating them into a single, a single output that says things went up. 

[00:28:29] Scott Messer: Um, hopefully, 

[00:28:31] Tom: Yeah. I mean, I think most people, if they come to this podcast from the media world, they think of the retail media opportunity as just like, okay, it's onsite. Maybe it's offsite. Maybe soon it'll be in store. Um, but I think where you. Have gone with this is to, to talk about it as the retailer's operations. 

[00:28:49] Tom: And I think what was interesting in your article, 'cause we're just gonna keep going back to that, um, is that. You talk about it and it's like not just the money grab that retail media can increase [00:29:00] profitability, which I think, you know, has been talked about. But one thing in there that I didn't, and this is actually because I didn't really come from the, you know, as much as when Todd and I do this podcast, he talks about me as the, the, the retail guy. 

[00:29:12] Tom: I really was a, a mobile media guy first, whoever. So, um. What I was interested in, in learning about was, you know, at, at, at a retailer, you were talking about assortment and con conven. You know, convenience is interesting, but like literally like selection. So how do you see like media and, and, and trade working together so that it actually improves the experience for the shopper? 

[00:29:36] Tom: 'cause I didn't get as far as understanding this increases selection or this increases assortment. 

[00:29:42] Drew Cashmore: First of all, don't tell yourself short. I, I think what you did a quotient, I learned so much from your teams about how this ecosystem actually works. And, and I, 

[00:29:50] Tom: we had, we had no backstop like we were, we were saying that we knew how to do everything, whether it was so. 

[00:29:56] Drew Cashmore: no, I, and, and I mean that truly, and, and I think that maybe I can answer your question by, [00:30:00] by talking about that moment in time, the, the, um. The, the store ecosystem or, or the infrastructure to support advertising at store exists at scale and has for many, many years. The ecosystem to support sampling and couponing and, and all of these things on the periphery of retail has existed for many, many years. 

[00:30:22] Drew Cashmore: And, um, what retail media businesses traditionally do is come in and say, a, this is a digital first proposition. So I'm, I'm gonna sell you search ads and display ads on a, on a website or. B I'm gonna create net new opportunities in store. Like, I'm gonna go source a, a large capital investment to put screens in store, or I'm gonna, um, find some vendor to, to build a giant shelf. 

[00:30:45] Drew Cashmore: I, uh, you get the point, but I, I think where, where trade and retail media truly come together is when you appreciate and understand the nuanced complexities [00:31:00] of. A physical retail environment and that you start to better operationalize the ecosystem that already exists and create a new commercial model for it as to, as opposed to creating net new advertising moments, uh, across that journey. 

[00:31:17] Drew Cashmore: I don't know if that truly answers your question, but. 

[00:31:19] Tom: I mean, it's, it's gonna be something that we continue to look at, these two goals of getting the products into the store, figuring out the price of what that is, and then letting people. O that those products are there or that they should switch or that they, you know, should learn more about it. 

[00:31:34] Tom: Um, and it's just generally like you could broaden it to all media. And that's why I think a lot of people are saying retail media is all media. You can go crazy with that. And, and I think where Scott's point about how do the agencies get involved, if they don't get to be involved, that money won't go there. 

[00:31:50] Tom: So as much as we think it could be there, it needs to be easy enough where they can, they can play the game. 

[00:31:56] Drew Cashmore: I think just to, to add to this point, and I don't mean to keep going [00:32:00] back to Brian Monahan, but he said something really interesting lately that is, um. His obsession with making sure that retail media also works to drive category growth. And, and if the, um, brands can start to see that not only are they able to shift dollars into themselves when they're investing in advertising, but that the category as a whole is growing and therefore. 

[00:32:24] Drew Cashmore: I'm playing a piece in a much bigger pie. Um, I think that's really, really important and that to me is where trade and, and retail media combine is when you can show both category growth and brand level growth and um, and show brands that it, it truly is working. 

[00:32:39] Tom: Well, I think we're gonna have to figure out a format where people like you and Mark and Bobby and Brian all can all like riff and so it's not just us coming up with questions for you. It's you guys talking and. Actually getting to that deeper level of like, what's really going on? That would be fun. I don't know how we're gonna figure that one out, but that's, 

[00:32:59] Drew Cashmore: [00:33:00] I think you're right. Like there's, there's honest conversations. This is tough. This the, you know, the. It is really hard to explain to an agency as an example, how complex the inner workings of a retailer are. Um, and, and frankly the, all of the legacy behaviors that have existed for 50, 60, a hundred years. 

[00:33:22] Drew Cashmore: And, and I think you're right. Like I, I would love for more voices to, to just have honest conversations about some of the struggles they're, they're going through in, in this build still today.  

[00:33:34] Scott Messer: was, uh, you do it, more conversations. Uh, speaking of one, I wanted to bring up one that I heard at Advertising Week, and I was listening to, uh, Delta and Uber on, uh, a LiveRamp panel. And they were both talking about how they didn't see Commerce Media as driving transactional value, but they saw it as deepening their customer experience and that they were [00:34:00] bringing things to their customers. Are enabled by advertising or through advertising to solve problems for them, and that that drove a long lasting, uh, lift in sales and like engagement with the brand. So an example might be that, um, Delta enabled their, their wifi sync. And so you can get like wifi and YouTube and all these things and like, it's gonna come with a couple ads or Uber saying that like, when you're on your way home, we're gonna help you order a meal so that you get your food right as you step out of the Uber at your house. 

[00:34:43] Scott Messer: But it's gonna come with a few ads. Um, and then Scott Howe from LiveRamp actually had another example of Starbucks where they, um, the, one of the biggest problems was the line that you weighed in. They changed their app from just being a loyalty [00:35:00] rewards, like tap and earn points to order ahead and your, your drinks will be ready, but it's gonna come with a few ads and also like a big authentication chain and some very valuable pieces for their thing. 

[00:35:13] Scott Messer: But if you solve problems for customers, you will have long lasting value. And I think that Brian's at the heart of it, like this is about, this isn't about more money necessarily. This is about retaining customers, driving value for them, giving people a reason to shop at that store because Amazon's really easy. So why should I go to these other ones? Because we continue to surprise and delight our customers. And if you can do that with advertising and with media, not through media. I think you have a very long, prosperous sort of journey ahead of you that your brands would love to participate in. 

[00:35:58] Drew Cashmore: I think there's a, there's a [00:36:00] little bit of a dichotomy in what you're saying on one hand you're saying, we're gonna give you free wifi on the plane, but you're gonna get some ads for that. And on the other you're saying, let's use advertising to drive real value and experiences for the customer. 

[00:36:15] Drew Cashmore: And, and I think that your, your ladder is probably the right way to think about it, is we are getting advertising back to a place. Of joy and of creating real value and, and maybe reducing the costs for the customer in an experience or, um, providing them with some unique asset or something like that. 

[00:36:35] Drew Cashmore: I, I, I, I, I don't know. 

[00:36:36] Tom: I think a yes, and here is kind of like one of the reasons I got excited about retail media and why I joined that it was around the time, like 2018 is around the time when people were starting to get disillusioned with retargeting. Um, because retargeting, which a lot of people just sort of say it like, oh, when you do audience extension that you're doing retargeting. 

[00:36:57] Tom: What you're really doing is. Setting [00:37:00] up a way for the audience to be understood well enough for you not to retarget them if they've already bought or potentially be more efficient. So this is the same thing in the world of like the Trade Desk talks about this all the time. The reason CTV could be really interesting is that if it's done right, you can reduce the number of ads. 

[00:37:16] Tom: Maybe you have to charge more for them or whatever, but they're more relevant. You have more space to do more things. And that's also why I thought your, your stint at firework was interesting because the future of ads could be more about teaching you how to cook than it is repetitively telling you that there's a new product of salt or something like that, you know? 

[00:37:36] Tom: And so that for me is getting more efficient with the ability to target people. Brings up new opportunities to make the advertising better. Um, and who better than a retailer? Especially like, you know, and this is why grocery retailers, I think are in the poll position as much as they may not be the most profitable businesses, it's because they see so many transactions so [00:38:00] often, um, and they see so much of a basket. 

[00:38:02] Tom: I mean, it, it's unfortunate that CVS can't do the health side because they know they know even more. Um, but yeah, like that, that to me is where potentially the advertising gets. The convenience, the value driving part of it. 

[00:38:18] Drew Cashmore: And, and as an extension of that point, um, if you look at the broader retail media ecosystem. Um, and you look at the, the, uh, consensus on growth trajectory, we're seeing maybe 120 billion that's gonna be, uh, fully going into this space by 2028. Um, I actually think that's really light because in tandem with that, you've got a lot of programmatic waste. 

[00:38:40] Drew Cashmore: You've got a lot of made for a websites, uh, you've got a lot of bot traffic. You've also got, 

[00:38:45] Tom: Scott's language. So yeah, this episode's gonna go on all night. Just like the Dodgers and the Jays. It's gonna go 18 innings. 

[00:38:53] Drew Cashmore: You've got also consumer, , behavior shifts with, LLMs and, and you know, search behaviors are gonna shift, traffic [00:39:00] patterns are gonna shift and so on. And so I think brands and retailers that can collectively create. This more experiential type advertising ecosystem that is mutually beneficial, that is fun, that is for the customer, are gonna stand to be able to capture what I perceive to be net new dollars that are gonna flow into this ecosystem. 

[00:39:21] Drew Cashmore: Because to your point, retail is one of the best places to be able to create those experiences. I'll get off my high horse 

[00:39:28] Scott Messer: It's great that you say that Drew, like the, the retailers are kind of their own like mini walled gardens. Right. They have to act in that way. They have to deliver results. They have to deliver performance. I think, you know, myopically, we just think of it as like the retail, media, media part of it. 

[00:39:45] Scott Messer: But I think what you're talking about in the orchestration layer, and we talked about the two levels, like there's that higher level of a walled garden. Um, and that was something that really opened my eyes when like, look, I'm a huge acronym fan and a TLA fan, like nobody's [00:40:00] business. But I had never heard of a JBP. 

[00:40:03] Scott Messer: Before until I got into to this sort of ad tech side of retail media and then I started understanding the connection and the relationship. And so like can't lose sight of what you're doing for your customer. And if the left hand isn't talking to the right hand, there's no way that you can beat, uh, a highly coordinated juggernaut. So. 

[00:40:26] Drew Cashmore: Absolutely, 

[00:40:27] Scott Messer: Out there like time to ate and get your, get your stuff together because they're knocking at the doors. 

[00:40:34] Drew Cashmore: and, and actually just as an extension of this point. You cannot orchestrate, orchestrate if it's being done in spreadsheets. Um, and that is what a lot of our industry is, is struggling with today. And so when you can systemize and automate workflows, when you can bring together all of the data, um. And planning and measurement and optimization and that you can truly get to a place where you can efficiently [00:41:00] manage JBPs, where you can, um, understand how monies are flowing in and you can just do a better job at growing the mutual business. 

[00:41:10] Scott Messer: I'm, I'm guessing I'll give you this one. I'm guessing that's what Vantage does. 

[00:41:13] Drew Cashmore: That is what Vantage does. Yes. Thank you for saying that. 

[00:41:16] Conclusion and Upcoming Events 

[00:41:16] Tom: Thank you, drew, for joining the middleman. We're gonna put your article from your retail media leapfrog series on LinkedIn, uh, and that's a newsletter you can subscribe to and put that in the show notes. Follow Drew. He is, he's somebody who's been in this business long enough to know where it's going, um, which is totally evidenced by the discussion today. 

[00:41:35] Tom: This was a really fun one and can't wait to see you at. What's the next event I'm supposed to see you at? It's, is it, is there anything in between now? Yes. 

[00:41:45] Drew Cashmore: Like events between now and C, we should be going all of.  

[00:41:53] ​