Getting clear answers to critical questions about your return on ad spend is, let’s just call it - a freaking nightmare. There are as yet no clear standards to compare retailer media apples to apples, no easy path to ROAS or, even more importantly, incremental ROAS, or iROAS. With the data being all over the place across retailers, and the incentives often at odds, the chain of trust on your media investments is broken. Not irretrievably so, but that’s where we are now. Andrew Criezis,...

Sometimes talking about the Future of Shopping, in capital letters, can be so annoying. Well, thanks for telling me someday we will be flying like the Jetsons, look it up GenZ, but what good does that do me now? That’s why it was so satisfying to talk about the near future of shopping - the cool, impactful experiences that are being created now by early adopters, with Nat Pavic, founder and host of the Salesforce Commerce Cloud Innovations Podcast, and product marketer at Salesforce. Take a...

Every quarter, the ecommerce education consultancy Allume Group consolidates the output of expert conversations, annual reports, and the latest data to create their Allume Insider report, or AIR. It’s chock a block full of the most current insights into the present and future of ecommerce. Andrea Leigh, Founder & CEO of Allume Group rejoins the podcast with the takeaways from Q2 based on their research.

A few weeks ago, Spencer Millerberg, Founding Partner at DetailPage.com was on the podcast talking about the latest in SEO trends in digital commerce. But we invited him back for a deeper dive on Amazon AI, as they are the bellwether of where SEO will go in the next few years. The changes are ones no brand should sleep on, and the opportunities to win market share based on the right product page content to feed that hungry beast Rufus will be considerable. For example, Amazon has added hidden...

The pressure to achieve omnichannel growth profitably is on, and it’s changing the way brands need to operate. Jamie Schwab, now Vice President, Global Digital Commerce at Colgate-Palmolive, has lived through the stages of ecommerce from being the secret side show to its role as a driver of growth at companies like Unilever, Newell, and Dole. Now he leads a center of excellence for the people, process, data, and tech that will achieve the expected profitable omni results through enabling the...

With 25 years in digital commerce, seasoned by tenures at Estee Lauder and J&J, Jennie Alexander has learned the essential ingredient of commerce - always keeping the customer at the center. Easier said than done, and Jennie is now sharing her data, organizational, and humanistic lessons from her work with others through her work as an ecommerce and digital consultant. She joined the podcast to share the fruits of those hard-fought lessons.

Did you know over 70% of traffic to a detail page is organic? Now that you are aware, do you know what you need to do to win your share of that traffic, and hopefully some of someone else’s? The answers to that question have changed right underneath our feet, and winning has become much more of a science than an art than ever before, driven by the power of AI. Spencer Millerberg, who changed the ecommerce game once before with OneClick Retail, is now at it again as Founding Partner of...

When money was free, the term “profitable growth” used to be an oxymoron in the world of startup DTC brands. But no longer. Profitably attracting and keeping consumers has become essential for today’s DTC challenger brands. And it turns out that achieving that is a deep mix of analytics, media, and creative skills that are constantly in a mix of testing, learning, and scaling modes. And it turns out that achieving that is a deep mix of analytics, media, and creative skills that are...

It was Jeff Bezos who first said “your margin is my opportunity”, and the Andy Jassy regime continues that strategy as Amazon continuously adjusts vendor terms to maximize profitability and win the price war. Amazon consultancy Consulterce and our friends at Stratably recently teamed up on a survey of brands about their Amazon relationship. Martin Heubel from Consulterce returned to the podcast to dig deep into some of the best defensive strategies that brands can use to gain some higher...

We are definitely in test and learn mode in AI, and many organizations are struggling with how to structure and focus their experiments to move past the hype towards impact. Well, struggle no longer! Or, at least, struggle less, thanks to the learned minds at firstmovr, who have taken the fruits of their AI strategy engagements with their clients and turned them into a framework called the MAITRIX. Chris Perry and Oskar Kaszubski rejoined the pod to offer you the blue pill that will help you...

The drive towards a more sustainable future is gaining a lot of momentum under the requirements of the Digital Product Passport regulations passed recently by the EU. The DPP will reshape data transparency across the value chain to allow retailers, distributors, and ultimately consumers to select products that match their environmental values. We hit the compliance deadlines for some categories in 2027, and the journey for every actor in the supply chain will be complicated. Raphael...

The criss-cross journey of today’s omnichannel shopper, from digital to in-store and back again, means that your retail media messages of inspiration, value, and convenience must follow them wherever they go. The IAB recently issued a new playbook for in-store media in this omnichannel world, a guide for testing, measuring, and learning in the messy and constantly evolving local store. Jeffrey Bustos, VP Measurement Addressability Data at IAB and Mike Wessel, Director of In-store Media at...

The zig zag shopping journey of the consumer has completely disrupted the organizational silos of brick and mortar vs. digital commerce at many brands. Driving growth requires cross-functional teams to pick omnichannel use cases and devise, launch, measure, and optimize them together. The fuel of that process is data, and Andy Beilke, Sr. Development Manager, eCommerce Strategy & Capabilities at General Mills, focuses his team on delivering the data that enables omnichannel thinking and...

Almost 2 months ago to the day, we had Futurist and Author Byron Reese on the podcast to talk about AI and its possibilities and risks. I warned you all then that I would have him back on to talk about his new book, We Are Agora, in which he sets out to scientifically prove that humans together make a superorganism, like bees make a hive, and what that means for our future and how we should spend our day. Nerdy, inspiring, awesome. He joined Rob Gonzalez and me to talk us through it.

Did you know that of the users who have engaged with TikTok Shop, 71.2% of them have bought a product? Smells like social shopping to me! Their advancements, from getting in the fulfillment game to an affiliate program, are driving some really impressive results with Gen Z, with acquisition costs still lower than other channels. Are you playing? Should you be? What’s working? What’s not? Here we are with Ben Rey, Chief Revenue Officer at Teikametrics, to get all the answers for you to refresh...

The cookie has finally crumbled. Consumers are shopping and buying everywhere they darn well please. Brands and retailers are fighting over margin more fiercely than ever before. Rachel Tipograph, from her role as Founder & CEO of MikMak, is in the center of this generational maelstrom of the shifting rules of commerce, and joins the podcast to share her view of the trends that will matter in the next 18 months. Buckle up, it’s going to be an exciting ride.

Driving growth while cutting costs - the gordian knot of commerce today. Our listeners know that achieving that over the longer term will require deep investments in systematic automation and data, and many of you have struggled with convincing the C-suite and Board of why these investments are key to survival. Jeriad Zoghby, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at IPG, joins the podcast with insights from years of 15 minute CEO conversations that ignite change as well as a new set of research on...

Dave Feinleib has been at the forefront of content and commerce throughout the last decade of the digital shelf, and he is now pouring that knowledge and experience into a new venture focused on the next great unlock for commerce which, it will not surprise you, is AI. At ItsRapid.ai, his new technology and wisdom on the process and people side of content creation and optimization is powering the AI “test and learn to production” timeline for some of the world’s largest brands. Dave joins...

Every quarter, the ecommerce education consultancy Allume Group consolidates the output of expert conversations, annual reports, and the latest data to create their Allume Insider report, or AIR. It’s chock a block full of the most current insights into the present and future of ecommerce. Andrea Leigh, Founder & CEO of Allume Group rejoins the podcast with the takeaways from Q2 based on their research.

Folks, we live in a VUCA world: volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. To thrive in this environment, transformation by inches will simply not be enough. Leaps are required. Seven mind leaps, in fact, according to best-selling author Steve Dennis. His new book, Leaders Leap: Transforming Your Company at the Speed of Disruption is a primer of the transformations leaders must make to be able to drive the vision, course, and speed required to be remarkable. Steve joined the podcast to lay...

A couple of weeks ago, the advertising and communications industry gathered on the beaches of Cannes for the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. In addition to celebrating the best creative work of the past year, there are executives from around the industry connecting to figure out what’s next. Our own Lauren Livak Gilbert was part of that throng, and she returned with some great insights we just had to share, so we put her in the hot seat for a change.

Live from the Cannes Lions Festival of creativity where commerce and retail media took center stage we turned to Jeff Cohen, Principal Evangelist at Amazon Ads to help navigate the changing world of the Amazon Canvas and how brands should be utilizing the suite of options from AMC to Prime Video and beyond.

There are tremendous amounts of trepidation and hope being invested in AI right now, with often trepidation winning out. Is all this angst really necessary? We turned to Byron Reese, an endlessly provocative futurist and author of the newly released book We Are Agora, to provide a long view of transformational technologies through the ages and therefore, the positivity we can take into a sometimes uncertain future. Grist for all the transformation cheerleading you do in your careers and lives.

On today’s episode, we return to the place where commerce started - a consumer, walking through a store, scanning the packaging, looking for what they need - or didn’t know they needed. In the digital world there is more space to tell your story, but in-store, you’ve got three seconds. Michael Keplinger, Founding Partner at Smashbrand, joined the podcast to articulate the modern testing strategy to ensure that the packaging creative you craft is truly what will make the sale - and how those...