# From Casual to Causal: Proving In-Store Works with Liz Roche of Albertsons

## Transcript

You're listening to the Middleman podcast this week with Tom Lemonello and Todd Siki. Hey Todd, we are gonna talk with Albertson today. Second time with Liz Ro this time. Well, first time with Liz, second time with Albertson's. Yeah, second time with Albertson's. We had a great chat with Brian in the Shark Tank at grocery shop and this time we are in their suite at CES.

Yes. And it was a great followup. Liz is helping build out their instore capabilities and placements for Albertson Sins and it's really an interesting follow-up to our chat previously with Sarah Marzano from e-arketer and you know where she made the call like where's the buildouts where's the scale and here's our chance to sit down with someone on the other side you know Liz who is building out the instore capabilities for Albertson's RMN And you know, we really do get a chance to hear their plans and what they're doing and how they are in fact scaling it.

You know, if you listen to the episode, we'll get into specifics of of that. It's it's, you know, I think Albertson's is absolutely, you know, taking the PC from 2025 and doing a real legit buildout in 2026. Like, you know, a significant percentage of the stores will have instore placements and capabilities.

Albertson's is absolutely betting in a big way on this.

Yeah. And they're not they're not just slapping up TVs. They are literally going in and rewiring the stores. So, lots of interesting detail as to like how how much they're buying into this, but I think it's important because um and we'll show you some of the capabilities and the screens that they're working on.

By the way, their screens and what they're building out with Stratacache, it is wicked cool and wicked impressive in terms of the quality of the screens and what they're bringing to market. Like this is you and I have been been, you know, thinking that in store is really going to be cool.

You're for different reasons. We're both interested in this.

Yeah. But when you see the screens in person, you're like, "Wow, this is really cool tech." And this in terms of a platform for RMS in the future.

Wow. Like I'm super excited for what's coming down the pipe.

Yeah. you you sort of opened my eyes to the entertainment value and the and the sort of flashy screens. I was always interested in the price and item and the uh electronic shelf labels and e- in capabilities. Um but they're leveraging both here. um they're doing the high-end capabilities around learning more about the product as well as I think on the measurement side and this is I think an interesting one to to think through if you go back you know five eight years u even 10 years back to the mobile space um a lot of these retailers were pitched by mobile companies you need beacons and your your beacons are going to be connected to your mobile app and it was kind of a bridge too far in terms of you know the retailers didn't have the scale with mobile never really worked like you had to connect the phones they weren't right they were blocking like it just never worked and it was also a privacy nightmare there was all sorts of problems and I think what's really interesting here is what Liz has proposed and is is now rolling out is the ability to have sensors in baskets and so yeah they're putting them in the grocery baskets and we'll b-roll of this for those of you watching on on video um and the cart which I thought was a really brilliant way of solving and and and there's some cool tracking and data they're going to get from this um but It it really allows them to have a true closed loop on what does measurement because you you know in our in our you know discussions at you had at NRF with some of the vendors.

Yeah. Right. Who in the buy side the day job of of helping retailers build out RMs and talking with some of the as they're starting to roll out their own capabilities and starting to sell to vendors and they start pitching in store. The vendors as you know right what do the vendors say?

What do Yeah. I mean the brands are are interested here especially if you can come up with a privacy safe way to do it. you know, they're going to be interested because generally what what did we hear at CES? We heard Walmart coming out with incrementality measurement for search and we heard Albertson's coming out with a plan for incrementality measurement in store.

So really anywhere retail media is making its case it's bringing incrementality measurement. And so eventually I think that's going to be where it all goes. We initially recorded the episode at CES, but I had the chance to go to NRF and I was on uh a panel with Stratacash where we talked to Ace Hardware and we talked to 7-Eleven Gulp Media and the use case there was let's put intore creatives out there and let's not go crazy with the infrastructural costs of doing so.

Let's prove it out. Um, but this with Albertson's, they've done their pilot and they're going in the direction of we're rewiring the stores. We are making this work. Well, and they have the proof to to do that. To your point, at least, you know, Liz talks about that. Um, and you know, I think the the the follow on you had with your panel in RF, which by the way, I heard saw great commentary and sounds like you did a banger job.

So, congrats on running a a great panel at NRF. It was a lot of fun. Yeah, it was a great show. You know, the pictures and everything else look great. I think it looks like you you killed it and and congrats on on having a good panel. It's hard to do. So So good job. And uh and I think so we're at this point where, you know, companies are starting to prove it.

They're hearing the call to scale it out and as you know, Liz talks about what that what those plans are. So listen in for what the plans are for Albertson. But I think it's a great stake in the ground and it's really starting to happen. Um, and for those of you who get a chance to, again, you know, Tom, I think you're going to post some video of this, but for those who get a chance to see it live, it's cool what's coming down the pipe.

Like, there's this is really going to be an impressive platform for ARMs when they as they build out um in store. I'm super stoked, you know, as someone who's been in the adtech industry for a long time. Um, this is cool tech.

Cool. Well, let's not let Liz wait any longer. the fact that people want these experiences and if we can make the store as fun as we can make Disney then like how great is that?

Agreed. And but that's unique, right? It's it's a timeless store and we're seeing I think the rebirth of of retail in a lot of ways. You look at Barnes & Noble coming back, right? They're starting to grow their store footprint again. Microenter is growing their store footprint. So these experiential retail environments are expanding and growing.

I mean just look at at Whiteman's and Publix.

Yeah. like the fandom that they have around their stores. And so there's it's super exciting and we're already live. We're here um at CES with Liz Ro from Albertson's Media Collective. So we're super psyched because we got to see you when we met up with Brian um at Grocery Shop and you have some news today.

So do you want to tell us what your news is?

Of course. Yeah. So we launched our our announcement in at CAN that we were going to pilot some new instore Oh yeah, totally. We talked about that with with uh with Brian a little bit.

Yep. But you have some more news, right? Exactly. So, we're we're now, you know, a couple months into this pilot and we were talking a little bit earlier, but brands are really after how we're going to get results. And I think a lot of us in our gut were like instore must work. We have these big screens in store, they're relevant, they're in the right placements, etc.

Um, but for us, we're really focused on proving that we're changing shopper behavior and that we're driving incremental units. So we did launch our matched market incrementality to measure causal sales lift for our one of my questions. Yeah, I talked about the match market like it was as an incentive back when we met with him um at the end of last year and so you're now it's expanding.

So you're going from from casual to causal. Is that right? I sure yeah I like that. Wow, look at you. You got to have got to have hot takes. You got to have turns and phrases.

Yeah. Otherwise people don't remember it. Right. And look, this is really important, I believe, for retail media to take in-house because we need to assess such a variety of different factors in order to create the appropriate control so we can isolate those causal factors. Um, and that's been that's really what the research that we've been working on and and uh that's why we're so excited to roll out this framework.

So, yeah, to step back a little bit, you talked about there's a pilot. How many stores is that? We're in 80 stores right now, which by the way, I you said that before and I was like, I thought you were eight and you're 80.

Um, that's amazing. And I think you're going to tell us you're about to go to a ton more. Yes, we're planning on expanding to about 800 more stores in 2026. So, that's like a third of your stores or what? Um, it's just shy of half.

Just shy half. Okay, cool. Yeah, that's awesome. Because Sarah Marzano, who has been a guest in our pod before, one of the leading e-arketer analysts, especially close to the space, and she's super enthusiastic about in store, just like Tom and I are, the the call to action has been we need more stores.

We need more stores. And it's awesome to hear like 800 that has to be the largest footprint of an instore media network at this that comes to fruition, I would think, right, for for the types of units you guys are doing. That's one of the largest ones that we've heard of. I I can't speak for other retailers, of course, but I think roughly speaking, as you look at the landscape, I'm pretty sure that's one of the the leading ones.

So, that's super exciting. Yeah, I mean, this scale really uh I think is going to help us bring a lot more precise measurement in. It's also just going to help us test all different types of creative variables, different factors that we can put into play to drive efficacy. We know it works, right?

That that was kind of the test, like will this format actually work? Will it drive results? And is it pure video? Is it a mixture? give some sense of the format you guys are supporting and what it will look like to consumers.

Sure. So, it it is a mix. Um you'd be surprised at how many brand marketers want to tell bigger brand stories on these screens. Uh I think the idea that the store is a fullfunnel experience, especially in grocery when you have a lot of impulse when you're doing a lot of brand discovery.

So, are you seeing like candy and all those guys jump on this? We're seeing across the board we're seeing all different categories jump in. Um, and a lot of our brands see it as an opportunity to crossmerge, right? Uh, just because your product is not crossmerched with something relevant doesn't mean you can't um, crossmerch by way of a 65 in TV screen.

So, tell me what crosser looks like. Is this cross merching with something that's in the same category right right there? Like you can pick it up or is it in the other side of the store? Even an adjacent category. So, you know, think uh think of a a cheese brand being able to uh be featured in the salty snacks aisle, right?

Um these two things go together really nicely. Or consider when you're having some dwell time at Delhi, you might be thinking about um salty snacks or chips to pair. So we're seeing a lot of that type of interest and and from our brand partners. Uh you know, one of the Tom and I, we're at CES um in in January 2026 and we've had a chance to meet with with brands interested in in retail media while we're here and the most consistent interest and feedback was in store.

Like that is one of the things brands are super excited about, which we're excited about because Tom and I have been evangelizing this for the last year. Yeah, Tom's geeked out on the tech. We finally have enough equipment where we can get into the store. Sorry it took us so long to set it up, but we're getting we're getting better at it.

Um, but we'd love to visit the store and do, you know, film some of this and see see what it looks like because I think a lot of people don't, you know, the reason it hasn't really happened yet to in my estimation is that there hasn't been enough examples and not enough creative um, you know, and and we you were already asking questions, but I want to go down that creative rabbit hole at some point.

So I think and and so where I was uh going with with that interest is that you're I'm surprised that it was they're so interested in it because I thought maybe they were holding back and it was like chicken and the egg. Is it demand or is it supply and and maybe a year ago it was a little bit of both but today I think that the brands have all realized that retail is such a unique environment and Tom and I have talked about time.

If you look at time spent in store versus the percent of media dollars or dollars captured infantessly small and over time media tends spend tends to normalized against time spent. So it's a huge opportunity and the retailers own that. You're not going to see it in the social platforms.

You're not going to see it in the walled gardens. It's it's there for the taking for the retailers. And so the fact that the brands are I think realizing this and realizing it's a great canvas to do cross merch, tell omni channel stories and to your point about creative I think shows up.

Before we get to the creative role, I'd love to talk about give some specifics though of the analytics and things that you guys are going to be supporting with this roll out. Is it time like and that's a big question for the brands is how are you going to be tracking this? What analytics are is it dwell time?

How do you measure foot traffic? What's is it impressions? Is it time on screen? like give us a sense of how you're thinking of the the analytics and and what that will look like to the to the buyers of these this is your bread and butter you my bread and butter I mean candidly super relevant I mean we got those questions all day you know today and yesterday and so this is a great to get you know hey this is what we're planning to do yeah and again a lot of this is still really wet clay like we we um partnered with Stratacash we partnered with Blockbase and to get these 80 stores up and running and we've been collecting data from those tests and figuring out what we can actually provide back.

Um because we are getting signal like um ad exposure or likely to see and of course we we're staying really close with IV standards that's really important. We want to make sure the IV standards that kind of sort of are yeah I mean Colin put something out are you are you a you're ahead of those right?

We we've collaborated with with IB on those and we're really excited about that but that also really informs our roadmap right we we want to make sure kind of a give and take on that.

Exactly. We want to make sure that we're we're going to be leaders in the market as much as possible. But I think there's still a lot of a lot of questions to answer like what do some of these signals do some of these signals correlate to sales?

Oh, good point. You know, like in our gut I think in both all of us can probably agree dwell time likely equates to an incremental sale, but we need to actually test those models. So for us, we're still in that building mode of building a lot of these models to test which factors we find to be the most compelling when it comes to predicting predicting lift or predicting predicting.

It's great to hear a retailer do this because when I was on this it was you know as a vendor we had to sell sell sell and so you know we were always like of course it's going to work of course it's going to do all of the things. Um but it would be interesting to see what those results are.

Yeah and I think we talked about this a little bit earlier. Sorry, you you missed out, but but we were talking about how it's about Lyft, right? We we definitely and that's why we launched um this framework. We want to prove that we're changing shopper behavior, but we also want to look at attributed sales and how do we use technology and how do we use um some of that walk-based sensor technology to help inform and we're at CES get into the tech.

really cool actually to the point and and we were talking about this earlier which is describe how you are tracking that and the sensors you're using and and sort of the technology that's enabling that because I think that's super relevant to how this is all going to work. Yeah, so our partner Walkbase we have beacons that go in carts and baskets um and that way we're able to have a receiver near the screen that can then validate an ad impression.

I think the other big challenge in in in storere is um it's often sold on ad play and it doesn't really account for foot traffic like we talked about, but that's not the way the rest of digital media works. Uh the rest of digital media works because people are actually doing things that indicate that they're still in app or they've they've clicked or they've swiped or what have you.

So, um we really want to get close to that uh that verified impression. Um, we think that's going to be key to our inventory management, but more importantly, we think that's going to be key to how we traffic media and drive results. Uh, because we don't want to be screaming into the void, right?

We want to make sure that we're putting the right content on at the right times when it comes to traffic. Well, and what's interesting to your point about beacons in the cart, I haven't actually thought about that because the question that that traditional digital media folks have been thinking about is, oh, we're going to have to track phones.

Yeah, we're going to be it's an SDK and that was that was that's a rat hole. That was a rat hole. and SDKs are red holes or or the maybe it it you know Apple will enable something but they're so privacy first and it would be hard and so I was like god how is this ever going to work if we have to like deal with the phones and then you mentioned the the beacons and the cars I'm like oh hello of course and that's a great like that you control arms length you know from the device of the arms of the device it's it's not it's it's privacy you know first it it is in good you control it so you know it works you can verify it works like it's you literally have a customer journey right that's walking like yeah are you able to track the the actual like cart journey to the stores and being we're able to get yeah we're able to get some signal to inform how folks are or how carts and baskets are are traversing the store.

I think we becomes really interesting is to look at you know things like outlier analysis. Why are some things happening out of the normal right or are things happening in certain stores that aren't happening in other stores? Um, and also how do we create a feedback loop back to our merchandising partners?

Yes. To to really show, you know, that media is offering insight. I think, yeah, it could change the assortment, right?

Like, of course. Yeah. I mean, to me, like this is a really interesting space to play because uh insurreia doesn't live outside of merchandising. It literally lives right next to or on or above the shelf. This is this kind of uh gives us the ability to share data points. How do we create a feedback loop that can benefit the merchanti merchandising teams and how can they bring feedback loops to our media teams to create this synergistic process?

Well, and this is where I'll shoe in uh shoehorn in the uh the creative discussion. Where is that feedback helping you figure out the creative? like are you going to do any audio in this creative or is like you know are people going to be giving you CTV ads that you have to do something with or like you know is it more like web ads that are showing up in the store with animation like what what are you seeing?

We're we're seeing a lot of uh a lot of you know typical video ads um without sound. Uh I think one some of the more interesting ones that I've seen um are recipe inspiration. So, I'm seeing a lot come through for Super Bowl that are super interesting, really appealing, very eye-catching, but also providing that real inspiration for taking a lot of pictures of those.

Yeah, I Yeah, absolutely. And I I think it's also, look, this needs to be additive to the shopper experience, or else it's a no-go, and that was another big part of this pilot process. If we weren't driving incremental sales, then we would know that this is not creating a good experience for our shoppers.

We shop our stores. Um, we're really careful about where we put the ads. We're really careful about how we traffic everything. Um, because we want to make sure that the pro that the whole experience is makes sense. Like if it doesn't make sense for the shopper, then it doesn't make sense for any of us.

So, that's been a huge part of this as well. How do we create a journey through the store by way of those screens? And how do we create journeys throughout the day? And how do we match up to all the various customer missions that they're going on? Is it a stock up or are they just doing a fill-in trip or is there a sick child at home?

There are ways that we can kind of estimate all of these things and hopefully uh be really relevant in those store. Brian mentioned the trips and it was at a point at the podcast where we we didn't really give it enough time and so I actually would love to continue on that. Tell us about like the these missions that you're talking about.

Yeah, the Albertson shoppers are going into store for a lot of different types of missions because we have such a wide assortment. Um, so for us, it's really about trying to figure out what that motivation is and make it easier for the shopper. And again, there are a lot of indicators that show us what might be happening in that sho's life.

If they're dwell, if someone's dwelling quite a bit in the pharmacy, we might know or we might assume that there's a sick child at home, right? And they're and they're making that type of trip. Um or if if you know we see uh if if someone's kind of coming in on a certain day of the week or maybe a certain time that might be indicative of a stockup trip.

Yeah. Um or certain aisles might be indicative of stock up. So um these are all the types of indicators that we're looking at and these are all the things that we want to help our shoppers with. We want to make that trip easier for them and we also want to get an extra skew in that basket during that trip, you Well, actually the reason we wanted to have you on the Middleman podcast was you were talking with Mike Glazer of Pepsi at grocery shop and he was, you know, the news back then was, oh, we have this API that you can use and he was using it for hourby- hour uh measurement in the store.

Um, and so, you know, how does that all connect to all this? Like brands like Pepsi are using your API already. How do they layer on in store? What does that look like? Yeah, I it's been very interesting to hear all of the strategies coming from our CPG partners because they have so much insight into how and why their their their buyers are buying, right?

So, um whether that's uh day parting and or whether that's even weather triggers to own a certain time frame. Um but what's interesting is we again we kind of know how the shopper is is traversing the store. We can almost curate that journey based on those day parts. We know that people come in.

Wait a minute. Sequential ads? Yeah. Start working sequentially. That's some That's what we're starting to test. So, so for example, between 12 and 2:00 p.m. That's kind of peak hunger, peak thirst time. Um, people might be popping into Delhi to pick up some pre-made. They're also going to want a single serve cold drink.

Uh, so we're seeing a lot of that type of you can bring that uh convenience store mindset even at certain times of the day.

Yeah, that's great. Absolutely. It's all about just trying to match up to to those missions because again we want to make it easy. We want to make it relevant and we want our brand partners to be able to have a say when there are boots in the store. How are you to you're talking about day parting and targeting and you're setting up basically ad serving right different ways.

Um how are you pricing it? Like how do you think about optimization? Traditionally ad servers are optimized on eCPMs and and things like that. So how do you think about trafficking and and maximizing the store and what's sort of how are these ads transacted?

Yeah. So I mean today today's CPM model I the whole idea of getting the walkbase data in though is to start getting more real time on the inventory.

Got it. Compression level right almost sounds like CTV pods or something.

Could be. I mean, I think I think it's we're still trying to figure out exactly how to um build the future of this because again, we want to make sure that we're accountable to outcomes. Um but that we're priced appropriately. So, I think there's there's a lot of today it's CPM model, tomorrow, who knows?

Um but we're still we're still really cals already about how should it be priced? What are the metrics and and what does that mean? Should it be based on dwell time or day parting or other and probably all of them will emerge as tests at least in some examples. But what I love is the idea of like Pepsi and Coke battling out for the 1 p.m., you know, cold serving drink, you know, whatever.

And who's going to out bid the other? And that's kind of fun from a longtime programmatic ad guy like myself. That's like the fun dynamics of what we're going to see.

Yeah. And look, a as we're kind of aggregating the inventory and using technology to aggregate this inventory, ideally this is just purchased and programmatic bid environment, right? Like where it's where it's absolutely demand based. I mean, that is that's dream state. Think of where we're coming from.

I'm imagining a world so far down the road. But I'm on Look, I'm with you though. Imagine like the Friday before like the Saturday night before Super Bowl Sunday, Pepsi and Coke battling out to like damn it, I'm going to win that Pepsi. You the Coke buyer and vice versa.

Like this. It's going to be fun to watch. Well, it's like you've got to manage that JBP process where you have, okay, we we sort of upfront bought this, but then you know, I don't know if you have, you know, you have up fronts in videos and TV. It's the same thing versus upfronts and people, you know, pricing affects not going to keep your store open longer or have a overtime, right, to to to add some more inventory if you needed it.

But, you know, like in peak demand, it would be interesting to see what happens.

Yeah. I mean, and I think most most of our digital has moved in that direction, right, to to be responsive to demand. This isn't an unusual place, but our starting point is programmed little playlists on thumb drives shipped to stores plugged into the back of TVs. So, we're moving from that, right?

We're moving from that model into one that's more dynamic and into one that's centralized. Part of building an network and one of the reasons why we did kick off with 80 stores in two different regions um was specifically to test whether we could kind of network this and centralize it and the answer is yes.

The answer is overwhelmingly yes. This works as a centralized trafficked model um which also you know eases some of our operational burden uh but also makes us really eager to scale as quick as possible.

Yeah. And so going from 80 to 800 stores, you just like slap up a TV or is it something like it's a real build?

It's it's complicated. Which is why we're seeing this, you know, as much as Sarah Marzano, marketer division again is like more more you can go back Sarah, I've got to hire crews to come in and this is complicated. So you know on the easy to hard, how what is the the you know the operational difficulty of rolling this out?

Look, there's a lot of complexity here because even all the stores are different. It's not like there is a singular blueprint for all the Albertson stores across the US.

Oh, no. No. Like the my side of the world, the media world, we're like, "What?" You know, this should all be easy, right?

It's not necessary. It's not. So, um, in terms of like getting into a store, we do a site survey with for every single store. And sometimes we'll go in and we'll say, "We wanted to put a screen here, but actually there's a there's a smoke alarm there. We can't we have to move it over." And then and then we might go back and forth and say, you know, if we move it here, if we move it there.

So, we do that with every single store. Wow. Um, and then we're also hardwiring all data to all screens because we're again really obsessed with the shopper experience. So, we want it to be great. No blue screens of death. And if there's downtime on screens, that's not additive to the shopping experience.

So, we've all seen like the broken screens in the back of an airplane, right? Where you see the the rebooting stuff or the frozen screen and how horrible that looks. Somebody in the intore space I remember not remembering who told me it's like yeah there is no interactive uh you know the screen itself needs to be perpetually going with nobody touching it nobody configuring it so that is a you know that's an all year screen that just needs to be on all time not 99.99 right it's 100% exactly so that's a huge operational burden and you know our stores are our stores do what they do best and and we don't want our store operators to have to fuss with screens, right?

Like this is about m this is about again creating a great experience, letting them create the best experience which they already are doing every day. We we want to make sure it's really centralized and seamless for them. So yeah, that's been a big part of it as well. The as you go in and deal with the stores and you build these out, you mentioned the site surveys, does this involve like a general um upgrade in the overall environment as well at the same time to complicate?

Yeah. Is this like a store upgrade, right? Or is it just you can yes we have to send a crew in to put a a screen in or what have you or is it you know in terms of it becomes like it'll we'll see almost this transformation across the retail landscape as these screens show up it's going to be an upgrade of retail in general like it's sort of I call the Disneyification of retail like it's an experiential retail is taking off and all flavors and forms and um it's like Barnes & Noble is growing it store footprint brand MicroEnter is aggressively growing it storefront but these are experiential brands and we're seeing like and even in grocery I think we're beginning to see more of it come back like you're not losing out.

Time spent in stores is not going down with the rise of e-commerce. Yeah, I think um not nec those things aren't necessarily happening in tandem, right? But our stores already we do invest so much in the intore experience because shoppers love going to Albertson's for a reason. Albertson's has great assortment.

Our stores are wonderful. Um and we have great associates working those stores. For us bringing the screens in, we just don't want to create any disruption. It is an overnight process in terms of the install. It's an overnight process. We don't want shoppers to be inconvenience. We don't want our store operations disrupted.

So, it's an overnight process. We wire up um you know, all of the data to each one of the screens. Like I mentioned, they're hardwired in order to keep that uptime. Uh and really, you know, we try to we try to leave the we aim to leave the store as perfect as we find it. Uh just with some new screens.

So, as we close this out, what what do you want the ad buying community to know about what you're doing? I think the ad buying community needs to lean into this and give it a shot, but think about the orchestration beyond just the single screen ad. This I there's a way larger opportunity.

People are in the store for a good chunk of time. Orchestration of the instore experience or even the whole full on channel retail media. Meaning it's you know fullfunnel omni channel like cons. We've heard that too that the brands are interested in it like certainly I want to be able to run a seamless campaign from touch point to touch point.

Absolutely. And one of the other interesting things you kind of popped in my head is you saw that um are you making a call to non-endemic like that's a big interest in a lot of retailers and expanding right their footprint? I mean, I'm almost upset that, you know, my friends uh from the old quotient days are over at Asda and they're doing Stranger Things and Doritos in Asdas in the UK.

I'm like, those are our brands. Why aren't they doing them here? What do you what do you see happening from the non-endemic space? Um, a lot of a lot of interest. And I I'll tell you why. We have placements at checkout, selfch checkckout, assisted checkout, as well as in refreshment zones.

Um and those are refreshment zones are going in beginning of this year. So very very uh imminent. What we're seeing is that they recognize that shoppers are in an absolute buying mindset. They have credit cards in their hands. Uh it's a great opportunity for either local advertisers, insurance, Finserve, uh all of these all of these various players to get a shopper when they're in a pretty receptive pretty buyer ready environment.

Yeah. And I think I remember from the Brian episode that we did that there was a travel uh connection. It was like an Expedia connection or something like that as well. We we do have a partnership with them as part of our loyalty.

Yeah. Great. Well, really want to thank you for taking the time. Finally got to have you on the Middleman podcast. So, um have a great rest of the show and I'll see you at NRF.

Sounds good. Thank you so much for having me. Great to see you guys as well.