Off-site Retail Media & CTV - Andrew Lipsman on Retail Media’s Next Frontier

Speaker A: Retail media is having a glow up moment. But are you still stuck in 2022?

Speaker B: Connected TV is crashing the party. Off site media is running wild and stealing the spotlight. And if you're still measuring success by last touch, Roas, we definitely need to talk. That's like giving the waiter who brings your meal credit for cooking.

Speaker A: And when you weren't looking, Amazon and Walmart, uh, rewrote the playbook. They're playing chess while everyone else is still learning checkers. So where does that leave all the brands?

Speaker B: We're breaking it all down with retail media's sharpest mind, Andrew Lipsman. No fluff, just real talk on what's working, what's broken, and how not to get left behind. If you want to know how to win in the new era of retail media, stick around. You won't want to miss this. You're listening to the Retail Razor show where your expert hosts and their guests cut through the clutter in retail and retail tech. Welcome back to another episode in season six of the Retail Razor show, recently ranked the number one management podcast of the week and the number one marketing indie podcast of the week and month on the Good Pods Top Podcast charts. I'm Ricardo Belmar.

Speaker A: And I'm Casey Golden. Welcome back retail raiser fans to retail's favorite podcast where we cut through the clutter to bring you sharp insights on what's happening in retail today and tomorrow and where we get real about what's driving the future of commerce today. We're diving into one of the hottest and maybe most misunderstood topics in retail media right now. Connected TV and off site media. And yes, this once again means it's my job to hold Ricardo back from making this a four hour podcast.

Speaker B: It's so right on both counts. Kasey. I think one of these days we're going to surprise everyone with like a live stream the four hours long just on on Retail Media to make me happy.

Speaker A: I'll be washing my hair.

Speaker B: Exactly. Well, listeners obviously know this is one of my favorite retail topics. So the retail media game is totally changing now. And we saw this in our season opening episode on the state of retail Media in 2026. The easy growth phase. Yeah, it's officially over and now the big players are looking for new ways to scale. So enter Connected TV and off site media.

Speaker A: But here's the thing. CTD and offsite aren't just shiny new toys. They're essentially tools for retailers and brands looking to reach customers beyond their own website or app while still leveraging their first party data. So the big question is, are RMNs ready to play in the big leagues of national media to capture those big media brand dollars?

Speaker B: Yeah. That is the question for today. And to help us unpack all of this, we are thrilled to welcome back a returning guest and probably one of the most respected voices in retail media, Andrew Lipsman, independent analyst, consultant, founder of media ads and Commerce. He's a leading analyst in media, advertising and commerce and he's been tracking the evolution of retail media since, well, honestly since before most anybody even knew to call it retail media.

Speaker A: So whether you're a retailer trying to build and expand your RMN or a brand wondering where to place your next ad dollars, or just trying to make sense of all the buzz around performance TV and off site media, this episode is for you. But before we jump in, a couple of things. First, quick favor. If you're enjoying season six, and I hope you are, if you've come back to this episode, I feel like that means you're loving it. So why not give us a five star rating and review on Apple podcasts, Spotify or Good Pods and don't forget to like and subscribe on our YouTube channel so you never miss an episode. We'd also love it if you check out our other shows in the Retail Razor podcast network if you haven't already subscribed. We've got Retail Transformers, Blade to Greatness and Data Blades.

Speaker B: All right, with that out of the way, let's get into it. Here's our deep dive into connected TV and off site media in the world of retail media networks with Andrew Lipsman.

Speaker A: Welcome back to the Retail Razor show, Andrew. It's always a treat to have you on the show. We'll be talking about Ricardo's favorite topic this afternoon, retail media.

Speaker C: Thank you for having me. Great to be back.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think last time you were on the show, Andrew, let's see. We talked about in store media, I think is at the time the next evolution in retail media. And of course one of the big challenges there that we covered was measurements. Right. And how do you measure that, the uh, effectiveness of that in store. And we talked about, you know, what technology was, uh, involved in making that happen. I think that was back in.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: That was back in season four, uh, episode five. I think it was late 2024. So a lot's happened in retail media since then. I think there's a lot to talk about.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: So a couple of new areas that, uh, I think are really coming into focus for retail media networks. Uh, connected TV and off site media. You know, I think that's what we're going to focus on today. And of course we've been chatting off or Right. That there are uh, I guess let's say some people out in the industry sounding a lot of alarm bells for retail media because of agentic AI and how agentic commerce is going to upend everything. But we're going to save that discussion for another day because uh, it's always developing and lots of super interesting things coming out in the news every day it seems on that. So we'll see how works out. But in fact we're as we're recording this in March, you have a session coming up at Shop Talk later this month where you're going to be head to head with some other industry experts to challenge that whole notion of what that impact of agentic commerce will be. So by the time this episode releases, you'll have already had that session. So we're going to look forward to having you back on the show and tell us how it went with give us your hot take on it.

Speaker C: Yes, hope hopefully Sarah Marzano and I will be doing a victory lap. But we've. We got some tough competition but we'll see how it goes.

Speaker B: That's right.

Speaker A: So let's get into connected TV or CTV for short and off site media for some in our audience. It might be helpful to start with a bit of history lesson in retail media on how we got here and why it took so long.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I mean I, I remember like just a decade ago, which normally doesn't seem like a long time but I guess in tech years that's like forever. Retail media was barely a thing. And I even remember back in the 2000 and tens pitching in store digital signage technology to retailers and it was a tough sell in those days to be honest. Of course we were usually talking to CIOs and not CMOs and it was more of a tech sale than it was a uh, media play. So maybe that was what led to that challenge. But if you fast forward to today, it seems like every major retailer has a full fledged retail media network now in store screens are become a hot commodity. So render what's changed over the years to really transform those old clunky early digital signage days into today's sophisticated RMNs that really go across stores, websites and now even our TVs at home are, are part of the play. So what, what makes retail media this new superstar?

Speaker C: Yeah, well, so first off I'll uh, rewind the tape a little bit. When it first started to come into my crosshairs. It was 2018 Ed Marketer. It was just realization that Amazon already had almost a $10 billion business. So it wasn't a non existent thing. It was just flying under the radar. And then when I looked around, you know, Walmart had their version, Target had their version Kroger. So every, all the major players were already bubbling up things, but they had to find their way. So it's not like these things got off the ground really quickly. But you know, the, then 2020 came the pandemic. All these dollars flooded online for E commerce. And I think the way that most people, most marketers started to encounter retail media was as this e commerce channel. And since then I would say it's largely been pigeonholed as an e commerce channel. But the real evolution that's happening is that it's both a channel and a layer. And the layer that it is is if you think about when you strip everything else away from retail media, the foundations of it are better targeting. Right. I can target or put ads in front of the right people based on their purchase behavior and not just their random online behaviors. So better targeting data and then close loop attribution and that closed loop attribution roas, like these are the single biggest levers that drive ad budgets. So those foundations are there for retail media across all the channels. And it's just now or in recent years that we've started to see that closed loop apparatus start to underpin all of these upper funnel channels. Whether that's off site media, you know, that's open web, programmatic or social, and then ctv and then now we're getting into the in store digital era as well. But there's, there's kind of, there's a lot of common threads through all of those.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think for me the closed loop attribution has to be one of the big, big reasons why we see so many dollars flowing that way versus what the uh, traditional channels we used to see.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's, I mean sometimes it is that simple. Like decisions get made in spreadsheets.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: It doesn't matter if whatever's being quantified is like that great of a representation. We know that ROAS is a very flawed metric. Nobody really believes that if they put a dollar in, they're getting $4 or $6 out of that investment. And yet we use it. It's a blunt instrument. And so one of the kind of ironies of when I first started to do some thought leadership around retail media, it was this illustration of Calling it the third wave after search and social. And the premise of the thesis behind it was that closed loop measurement is what drives dollars online in a big way. So Google and search did it first, then you had social start to become a bigger thing. But it wasn't till it really became a performance medium around 2015 that that business rocketed up. And then, you know, the closed loop in retail media is, is pretty obvious. But I guess early on it seemed like the third wave was, was a way of hyping the opportunity. It to some extent it is. But the other side of it, the other side of the coin was it was also kind of like a critique of how the digital ad industry works, which is that dollars follow this measurement and if the measurement was going to be there in retail media, it just seemed very evident that the dollars were going to chase it. And so just like any other medium, I believe in the substance of retail media, I think when it's executed well, it's really, really performant. But a lot of dollars do chase lower quality parts of retail media. So you know, there' retargeting or chasing branded search, which not saying those shouldn't be part of the, the toolkit, but that's also the sort of, the exact sort of activations that look good from a ROAS perspective but aren't really driving incremental sales.

Speaker A: Yeah, I've heard you say that retail media is becoming the connective, uh, tissue of the entire advertising marketplace, powering from online display ads to social media ctb, by leveraging that first party data, what we all want, right. For our listeners. Can you put that into a little bit more perspective? Like just how big a deal is retail media revolution in the grand scheme of things?

Speaker C: Yeah. So this is uh, getting back to that premise of the, the closed loop apparatus, right. And, and so again, the foundation of better data, right. Targeting the right audiences is always going to be super important and we're getting better and better audience targeting than we've ever had before. But again, that those audiences can be activated across several other major pools of ad spend. Right. The biggest ones display advertising or social. So it really kind of touches everything. Tv, right. TV is becoming CTV and CTV is becoming performance tv. So basically every pool of digital ad spend today is going or moving in the direction of that retailer data. Doesn't mean that first party purchase data is always the best data source, but I would say like eight or nine times out of ten it probably is. So that, that is the revolution that's happening. And then again, you know, the Measurement piece is so important and you have all of that retail data to show the extent to which it's working. Even if it's not a complete picture of the impact, you do get that validation that you can actually link ad exposure to sales.

Speaker B: One of the things I always find interesting with, with this too is when you look back at before we had these retail media networks and these retail media solutions where the dollars did go and I mean what was the alternative that is being displaced by retail media? I guess this really became important because there was this realization and maybe Amazon is the one who surfaced this. Right. That this first party data existed, that you had access to this data and if you knew how to use it, you could actually build layers on top of it and then offer that to brands as a targeting tool which didn't exist before. With that, I'll use the word accuracy in a sense because you have a new lever you could use to really reach the people you wanted to reach for your product where before was. It seems like most of the other sources you had were just more hope than anything else.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's weird that it kind of took uh, the industry so long to crystallize the realization of how valuable the data is. I can remember going back to working with some CPG brands in digital ad measurement. This is probably about 2010. 2010, 2011 and back then we were starting to talk about purchase based targeting. Uh, it started to become a thing then and I was like, at the time I was like, oh yeah, that's really a good way to target users. If you can actually connect the brand buyers, category buyers to different ad units, that's super powerful. So it was already bubbling up. We just didn't really grab the reins on it until probably a decade later.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And like I was alluding to before when I remember marketing digital signage solutions to retail in that same era we would talk about as part of the pitch, oh, you can work with your brand partners and, and use these screens for in store advertising and that could be a revenue source for you to do that. But the piece that everybody was, how are they connecting that to the customer data? They had to really give the brand a tool to measure it, you know. So yeah, I think it's fascinating that it took this long to get to where we are with that.

Speaker C: Yeah. And measurement's always a progression. Right. I think there are ways right now maybe not to tie every single ad impression one to one to a purchase, but you still can get that person level attribution that's needed at least from a measurement standpoint to know that something's working. But actually when we last jumped on, I was on with James Bauer from Venvee, which is a company that's actually kind of solving that, that problem of being able to close the loop from individual exposure in a privacy compliant way, but basically being able to tie the fact that somebody is in front of a screen and then goes and eventually purchases the brand. You get that nice tight close.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: That's what's going to help drive the dollars into in store, which right now is still a rounding error in digital ad stack. But you know, I have every reason to believe this, this will be tens of billions of dollars.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: In the coming years is a question of how long does it take that, that market to get right.

Speaker B: Right. Well, so it seems like Connected tv, CTV is this new shiny toy in the retail media toolbox. You've noted how this expansion is, could be a mega story for, for this year. We've seen Amazon kind of extend their ad business from Amazon Prime Video into partnerships with like Netflix, Hulu, I think NBC Universal too, giving them access to a huge number of streaming TV viewers as part of their ad network. I think obviously Walmart, another one making headlines by acquiring vio. So they gained an entire surface area that way to supercharge their own connected TV reach. So why, why do we see Amazon and Walmart betting so big on reaching us through our TV screens for their ad network? Uh, what do they have like an inherent advantage, you think, in, in turning television to that performance media channel? And how do you think that might change what TV advertising looks like for brands in general?

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I think both companies are almost perfectly well suited for this opportunity. And it's because they have such a big footprint of data to have very advanced targeting and then also be able to close the loop on the back end. Why hasn't this become a thing sooner? Uh, because these types of partnerships take time. Usually I would say in a major retail media and media partnership, you know, year one is you just make the, the announcement at can. Year two is like connecting the pipes. And then year by year three, it may be finally operational. And most of those efforts with, unless you have commercial alignment between both sides those things, a lot of them die on the vine.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Now if you're Amazon and Walmart, you can, you have the resources to accelerate that. So I would say for both of them, last year was the year of operationalizing and making announcements. This is the year 2026 where it becomes real and the dollars start to flow doesn't mean those dollars like immediately, but you're going to start to see it ramp. You're going to see there's enough interest from the CMO and from brands broadly that they're going to be testing into it with the idea probably of starting to scale things more significantly in 27. What's so powerful? First off, these are TV ads. Right? We all know the value of a TV ad. They can be incredibly impactful. But it's always been known as the least measurable medium.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker C: And now it's not. Right. You can get narrower with your targeting and you can see the effectiveness in sales based on that. Now my concern is that as we often do, we get performance myopia once we have this sort of measurement. And so very quickly we can start to impose ROAS and other performance measurement on this medium that's always been known for brand building. Well, guess what? The brand building doesn't go away.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker C: This is still super important. We can also start trying to target too narrowly just to reach those audiences that have the highest propensity to convert. And so I actually worry that if, if we're not careful as marketers that, that it can actually disrupt much of the value of the media. So we need to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time as performance TV emerges. And, and that means we have to keep doing all the measurement we've always done Media plan across broader audiences in addition to some of those really high value narrower segments, understand campaign delivery against those audiences and then also understand as best you can, the sales effectiveness. But you gotta be able to account for that branding effectiveness too. Because if you're just looking at the sales effectiveness on what is usually going to be pretty high. CPM media.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: And promise you it will not pencil out. Yeah, higher cost media makes ROAS look like crap. So what's happening early on is, well, uh, we have to make ROAS work. Well, how do you make ROAS work? You basically start doing a bunch of retargeting. You just retarget audiences to put the, the ad in front of those ones who are already further down the funnel. That's the only way to make ROAS pencil out. But guess what? You're probably not getting incrementality most of the time. So I want the industry to be okay with ROAS looking bad. Think mhm of ways to incorporate branding into whatever your performance metric is. Focus more on incrementality, but also be okay with the fact that the primary goal still should Be that longer term brand building, the performance is a secondary effect.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And that if, if you, if you just again get that myopia on just the performance effect, you're going to, you're going to steer away from the medium even though it actually gives you more opportunity than you've ever had in TV before.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I think it's interesting too, like brand building. There's obviously the traditional like awareness of a brand and a product. Some of my favorite brand building where I've learned about a product and actually been like huh, huh. I'm. Thank you. Is when they don't have the commercial and they just take the blank space and say this, you know, moment of silence is brought to you by.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Which I find like, it's like the, the anti commercial commercial. But I can't say that I've ever looked at that and been annoyed because it's like, oh, thanks.

Speaker C: Yeah. Well it's kind of like a flex. Right. And this is what good brand building does is that you don't always have to tell somebody how good you are. Right, right. That it's like sometimes you just show how good you are.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And let people realize.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Where it's like, oh well, what does this brand have going for them that they can do that. Right. And then it drives that interest. You actually create a gravitational force.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I think there's a lot more that we can, that can be done on tv. Whether or not it's engaging, whether it's entertaining, whether it's brand building, whether it's a moment of silence to like not annoy you.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: But I do think it's very, it's a great, it's an interesting channel. Right. And it seems like Amazon and Walmart have a head start. Obviously Amazon has prime streaming. Walmart went and bought a TV manufacturer. But if you don't have, if you're not a retailer and you have a built in streaming service or TV platform, like you still have to compete, you still have to enter. And there's nothing worse than a newer brand or a smaller brand than a uh, behemoth. As Walmart and Amazon, the two largest retailers, we're going to get used to it looking like our Roas looking, you know, terrible. How long is terrible going to look so that these other brands entering don't leave right away. How do you see other retail media networks finding, creating ways to get into connected TV maybe through partnerships and be able to compete and carve out a space for them and still be able to say, hey, Roas sucks. But it sucks for them too. But we're going to keep doing this and we're going to find new ways to measure or collaborate. I think Best Buy is working with cnet, Instacart with New York Times cooking. What do you think about these partnership models and maybe third party integrations?

Speaker C: Yeah, well, so uh, on the TV piece first, I think it's cool, critical that the RMMs start to act like a media company first. Um, and, and that's why if you have to choose between performance and traditional media measurement, I'd say go traditional media measurement. Stop trying to impose roas measurement on, on these types of activations because you are going to steer brands away. And by the way, the brands who are going to be making these buys, it's going to be their national media teams, it's going to be the CMO who's paying attention to this and so they speak this other language, speak that to them and then help them also learn the language of performance in this medium and be very deliberate and calculated in terms of how you roll that out. Amazon, Walmart. Right. Very unique in a number of ways, obviously the scale, the targeting and the measurement data. But also they have owned and operated inventory. That's something that maybe no other retailers or very few will be able to do. And so the path for them to, to play in this space is through partnership. And we've seen a lot of partnerships. Roku has pretty much gone down the line and partnered with every leading specialty retailer, Instacart, Best Buy, dozens of others and nbcu. And a lot of them have gone through partnering with, with a lot of the key retail media networks. Now the key there is if Best Buy is a really important RMN for you as a consumer electronics retailer. Right. It's worth going through the front door for your buys from Best Buy, but then you also want to activate across as many relevant platforms as you can. So a partnership with CNET is really useful to get in front of those technology enthusiasts or maybe people who are lower in the funnel on a consumer electronics buy and you also want to reach them through their TVs. So that's the key. And the way that it works and the way that all these other RMNs basically can carve out their own slice of this CTV market is by virtue of that it's really the integrated buy and that that full value proposition if it's just about doing a performance TV buy. Right. Ah, Amazon, Walmart are probably going to be tough to compete with on just that dimension.

Speaker B: Yeah. Where do you see players Like Trade Desk fitting in to all this. And, and then from the RMN's perspective, like how, how do you see them engaging with the agencies that represent all these big brands who are the ones guiding their buys? Right, yeah.

Speaker C: So two good questions. So first, uh, off Trade Desk right there, most of the large RMNs are plugged into the trade desk and that gets you access to the biggest swath of open web display and video inventory and also a huge chunk of CTV inventory. So they're a huge, huge player in CTV in aggregating the market. The bigger unknown there is, there's a lot of lower quality inventory M in in CTV today. So I think buyer beware and make sure Trade Desk tends to be really good about at least with respect to other DSPs in terms of keeping higher quality inventory. But you still need to be careful when you're doing that more aggregated buy. Sorry, the, the second question on that

Speaker B: was, yeah, how RMN's playing nicely with agencies?

Speaker C: Oh, agency. So this is so interesting to me. I, I, I can't believe that agencies frankly seem to be asleep at the wheel on retail media. It's, it's, it's, it's mindboggling to me now. They've, a lot of them have, have amassed assets in the space, they've made acquisitions, they've got technology. So I'm not saying that they're not doing anything. But what you don't really see yet is heavy engagement from the media agencies.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: And those are the ones who are working at the behest of the CMO and national media teams. And that's what's missing right now. And I'll give them a little bit of an excuse and say, well, if the CMO isn't pushing them on this, then they're probably not going to do that. So I actually kind of look at the CMO as having the most responsibility to start making this shift. But we're at a moment where the media agencies and the CMOs can't ignore retail media as it's getting activated today. Performance TV is the one that they really can't ignore. They also care a lot about social. And um, social is evolving with the use of this data. And then, you know, I would argue in store media it's very easy to put it into the shopper marketing bucket and think of it just as that sales channel. No, it's a media channel. It's a really effective media channel. It has a lot of the same value that television does in terms of high quality inventory, scarcity, Scale all the things that big brands should want. So guess what cmo, you're not doing your job if you're not paying attention to these media anymore and media, uh, agencies, you need to play a leadership role on this as well, even if the CMO isn't quite there yet. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Striking stat. For the first time last year, retailers spent more off site retail media ads than on their own sites. Off site retail, including like ads on social media, search engines and other websites using the retailer's data is growing three times the rate of on site media. I saw that like one forecast showed off site media spend to be 42% in 2025 versus 15% for on site. I think that was what emarkarketer data. If off site marketing retail uh, media is projected to like nearly double from like 13 billion to 25 billion by 2028. What's driving this, this explosive growth off site? Is it mainly just retailers having maxed out the ad inventory on their own sites or making external channels like the next frontier?

Speaker C: Yeah, so let me start with the idea of maxing out inventory on their own sites. This is talked about all the time and it is largely not true. I'll say that with some exception retailers are always very concerned about that. But it's usually because it's so hard to fight the merge teams for additional slots of sponsored product space. The problem for a lot of them is that they are way under monetized, they are not using enough inventory available. And part of the the inhibitor there is if you're not doing high quality executions on site, if you're not adhering to really high search ad relevant standards, then it can detract from cx. But there's a reason why Amazon and Walmart can load up the page with ads and consumers don't really seem to care. It's because the search ad relevance is high. So that's the key thing I would say is like every retailer needs to figure out how they have the best possible search advertising relevance. And if you check that box then you can start to roll out more ads and frankly they should do some more higher quality ad units like video. A lot of them are very behind video units above old. Like that's super valuable. There's a lot of Runway for, for most Armins, Amazon, Walmart, those are the ones that are maybe getting closer to saturation and so they have to move off site. Amazon has seen this for years and they have been moving off site so that's driving the market. But in other parts of retail, specialty Retailers have always been heavily off site because their advertisers are big brand advertisers, lifestyle categories and they really value that off site activation. So if you go down the list, most of those specialty retailers are already doing at least 40 and oftentimes 50, 60% of their revenue is coming from off site. That tells you two things. One, the offset is, is more mature than you might think and there's still the vast open space of the open web and, and social to do more of it. But also it reflects the fact that they're probably under monetized with their on site experience.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Yeah. So um, what you know, one question I think about there too, especially around connected tv. So there's so many different ways to, to go there in my mind. So you've got all the streaming services and they're all getting into advertising. Streaming came out where it was the anti advertising but they all hit that ceiling in subscriber growth. So they needed to get advertising brought in so they could lower some subscription levels to get more subscribers. And I guess RMNs have the option they could work out partnerships directly with those streaming guys. They can go through third parties that already have the connect connectivity to those networks. And then you brought up the point earlier about sometimes you have to watch the quality of what's available. But uh, then you have all the fast networks that are just. I see them doing really well from what I read in the, in the news reports, these free services, there's Tubi, Pluto there, there's more and more of them and most of them are owned by another studio or another media company that has their free version that they can put content through. I think Paramount runs Pluto for example and they have their own ad units. Right. So are RMNs hitting on across all of these is there, do you see like a strategic pattern? Is one more valuable than the other for them to get connected to?

Speaker C: No, I mean I think in, in TV world content and networks that are of a certain quality or prestige have more value and that's where the highest quality inventory, where the high CPMs are. And so a lot of the partnerships are happening there. Right. With the NBCUs other world credit to Roku who they get a slice of everyone's content but. But also they have their own inoperated channels as well. So it's kind of a mix of inventory quality. They had the smartest execution strategy in terms of partnering. They did it early and they've really gone and covered all the ground. And then you have these, the fast networks which I will Say they run the gamut. There's a few of them that were surprise hits in terms of getting content, acquiring content that consumers wanted to go back into the back catalog and watch. Some of them are driving some real value. You and I grew up watching the reruns. This generation doesn't really have that in the same way. And it's almost like the need that it's, it's fulfilling but there's also a lot of junk when you get into that tail of fast network. So that's also where it's like you need to really be sure about the inventory quality because that's also where a lot of the ad fraud lives unfortunately.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's dig into to how retailers are acting as offsite channel. I want to talk a little bit about Target's media arm M Roundel because they just had recently at the time of recording, as they recently had their Q4, uh, financial reporting done and it seemed like Rhonda was probably one of the few bright spots and Target had to talk about. But I think they have in the past said that 30% of their, their retail media investment is now going to offsite. Um, compared to what I've seen an industry average of maybe 21%. They have partnerships with Pinterest, Google and Meta. So they're, they're hitting social feeds, they're hitting search results as well as streaming TV shows. So I think they refer to it as frictionless commerce experiences off of targets on property. And then another example I've seen Nordstrom talked about where they recently merged retail and e commerce media teams into one area to kind of present a unified offering across their website and stores and external media. But another one where they're really focused on on off site. So are these, do you see these as good strong examples of that blending of on site and off site media to improve the overall experience, both customer experience, but also the advertiser results and other things like that. And I use those two examples and maybe you have others that are there things that other retailers that haven't gotten into that yet should be learning from this and how they go and expand into offsite.

Speaker C: I think those are both good examples and for, for slightly different reasons. So Target, one of the things, so first of a partnership like Target and Pinterest, there's just a real brand synergy there that works. I'm a huge fan of Pinterest. I think it's probably the most undervalued media company uh, out there. It, it's so it works really well with, with a retail media network like Target. But one of the things that Target I think has done smartly is they've gone for a very curated partnership, uh, experience with, with publishers. And so even when it's not a platform like a Pinterest, they've got partnerships I think with like Hearst and New York Times where they're going for premium quality media and, and not just the vast open web. So I think that works and I think that plays well for, for their advertisers. Nordstrom. So actually Nordstrom I interviewed at nrf, I want to say now, three years ago and on stage there they admitted a Aaron Dunford that I think he said 60% of, of their revenue at the time was off site. So this is very, very typical, very typical of lifestyle categories that you know what you, you would see with department stores, but also in, in some of the other categories and it makes sense to integrate it there when, when the off site is such a big piece of it. And I guess where I'd like to see all of this continue evolving is to get better and better not just in having integrated activations, but in understanding the effectiveness of the campaigns not through measurement silos, but through an integrated measurement. And the reason being that I've done a lot of research over the years and it almost always seems to be true. When you activate a campaign at the upper funnel and lower funnel simultaneously, the upper funnel media helps the bottom funnel

Speaker B: work a lot harder.

Speaker C: So you'll see things like conversion rates go up, you'll see a lot of performance, KPIs work better. And so that's really the strongest case that can be made for doing more off site. And until you have those things integrated, sometimes you don't see it. And I think ultimately that will help drive more investment into the upper funnel media. Once you realize, wow, this is really helping those conversions drop through the bottom of the funnel much more easily.

Speaker A: Retail media was, has historically lived at the bottom of the funnel with sponsored product ads for a quick sales boost. But with off site and CTV in the mix, it seems like retail media is moving up the funnel to more premium brand territory. Are you seeing CMOs to start to treat retail media as a full funnel play rather than just a tactical performance level lever?

Speaker C: I would love if that were the case or if I had seen strong evidence, I have not seen that, uh, yet. I would say what's more likely is that retail media buys are, because they're moving up the funnel are maybe more in the purview of what the CMO and the brand marketers are thinking about so it's entering their world. I still haven't been convinced that the requisite attention and kind of full throttle investment m that probably should be happening is happening. And I have not seen cmos vocally out there talking about this. So I don't know if it's that they're trying to keep their trade secrets or more likely they still have like retail media has a reputation problem with CMOs. I'll just want about it still see it as an e commerce channel that okay, I'm responsible for performance but it's not what I care about. I'm a, I'm a branding person. I'm a creative, I care about TV and social. So I do think that there's an opportunity here to give the branding around retail media a bit of a refresh so that it does get the attention it deserves from the cmo.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, I guess maybe on that point let's flip a little bit to that advertiser's perspective on all this. So how are brands kind of reacting to, to these off site CTV offings? Just mentioned how there's a little bit of a reputational issue for uh, retail media networks being perceived as just that e commerce performance play. But now with you add on these off site and the CTV offerings, how are the advertisers really perceiving that? I mean are they, did you. We've, we've seen reports, you know we had sky on earlier in the season with their 2026 data retail media report and they fel focused a lot on the brand side of it. And we saw in there 50% of the marketers that say they're planning to move ad dollars from areas like open web display into retail media powered DSPs and they want to take more advantage of the purchase data. Retailers have the closed loop measurement. But you know, how do you weigh that with what you were just saying about how this perception issue, I guess I'll call it, of where retail media plays. And maybe the other part to that is I've seen Costco talk about their retail media offering is how they're really laser focused on the purpose of their retail media is really to drive sales. So they're almost like saying forget the metrics like roas.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: It's about if the retail media is not driving sales purchases in the store, then it hasn't accomplished anything. And what's the point of focusing on is almost kind of the message. I hear them um, say nita, if they're not using those Words. Exactly. But how do you see that?

Speaker C: So there's maybe two separate issues at play on the Costco piece. Part of how I heard that discussion was really about how you get media and merchandising alignment which is. Can always be a problem. Right. It's part of why you don't get inventory open up if you're from the RMN team because it's potentially infringing on, on the merchant's turf. What I like about what Mark Williamson is saying at Costco is he's like listen, this is all about driving sales. So you're speaking the merchants language. That is first and foremost which culturally I love this because I think retail media network should be doing more of this and they all part of that message should be. And because we care about moving the needle on sales first CX is paramount. We're not going to do anything to infringe on on the CX and getting in the way of the customer journey and really we should be doing everything possible to elevate that. The beauty of this is that it actually creates alignment because the media merch teams have the same incentive at the uh, at the end of the day they both want to increase receipts. Right. You get more investment from as a media network if you're increasing sales. So you need to be mindful of that. As far as brands saying I think I know the, the question from the sky report that you're talking about and there's basically a shift in investment, growing investment across multiple types of video and retail media. Sponsored brand video. They're going to revisit more in that CTV and so I think that's a really positive trend and I think it's where dollars should be going. In general the proposition of retail media is strongest when you have the highest quality media possible and the most adjacent to purchase. So video is a big part of that. So I do think that that the smart players and, and typically at uh, maybe the, the middle and and lower levels of, of the organization are the ones who are seeing that because they know that sponsored products are pretty saturated at this point. So the smarter strategy is to start to move up the funnel.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Has it worked its way all the way up to the cmo? Not quite but maybe they're you know listen, they, they pulled the strings on the budget at the end of the day. So if, if there is a sense that more investment is going in that direction that then m. At some level they're probably sponsoring that shift.

Speaker A: So when it comes to measurement, I mean I kind of left the retail side, before retail media was like a big moment. It was, it's very easy to tie an impression into a purchase and track conversion. How do RMNS measure the impact of an ad that runs on a streaming service? What's normal and what's really good just for our audience on like how this is being tracked? I'd just be curious on what level is that, uh, even at right now that's considered normal for conversion and measurement.

Speaker C: So basic mechanics of it would be, right, you identify a user, set of users. But let's just talk about one consumer for the sake of argument who's in a specified target that you're trying to reach. You deliver that ad to them and then over the attribution window, 14 days, 28 days, whatever the case may be, you see, did they buy that brand, the advertised brand, through you, and then you can calculate the return on ad spend on that. The issue, well, part of it is one like the closed loop is much tighter if you're on the site showing intent when you're searching already. So it tends to that, that roas will naturally look better than if you just expose somebody to a brand and kind of hope that they convert downstream within that period of time. So already the roas isn't gonna weigh as much in your favor. And then you, you factor in the price of very premium media and the numbers look worse. So what's reality? A lot of times that ROAS number is going to be sub one, right? Which tells you don't, don't keep investing there now what, what, what those who are investing in the medium will quickly learn as well. Why don't we get those buyers who are already searching on the brand or searching in the category at least. And so then you start to get what is effectively retargeting on people who are at the bottom of the funnel. All of a sudden now you can start to push that ROAS number up over one which, which might encourage more investment. But again that to me it's kind of a way of gaming attribution to get more investment rather than taking a more holistic view of the performance that a brand is actually driving.

Speaker A: Well, I mean, I think that's great. Yeah. What is the average like RO has for retail media? Like what numbers are good, what numbers are bad? I feel like a lot of times I always suggest, like when you're working with a media buyer or an agency, they have the purview of what's going on everywhere else. And when you're a brand and you can only see Your own performance, you can't see everybody else's to make those decisions. It's an advantage. So I mean, if you would have told me like, hey, if you're getting, you know, one pat yourself on the back, you that would have shocked me. Kind of just did.

Speaker C: Yeah. Which is, you know, part of the conception I have in my mind is that we need to build in almost like a, a brand roas that you can kind of place on top of the sales roas because ignore it in your measurement, then it's going to totally undervalue. Right. So yeah, I think a much more realistic thing is you, you activate something, you maybe get a one roas but the branding impact is the equivalent of another one and all of a sudden you get, you know, a two two dollar roas which is something that you can invest behind a little bit more easily. The other thing is like we should really be looking at incremental roas here and the calculus is very different there. And I think the numbers on like an Average ROAS in CPG for, for retail media can be a 3 or a 4 for, for on site. That's not the return you're really getting. Like yeah, a good return, incremental return on something like that might be a $50. That's a 50% true return on investment. Assuming the, the calculation is sound and that's where we should be aspiring to. But people kind of get scared off by the fact that they're used to seeing these much gier m roas numbers and that that incremental rose number looks so much lower, but it's real much a lower number that's real than total fake.

Speaker B: It's not real. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Always chasing 6x. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah. Well and it's also like, I mean, I know, I see you talk about why, why are people looking at last touch roas as a, as a metric which I always kind of look at that one too and think, well, I mean I can come up with so many analogies of why the last touch in anything is never representative of the actual process and the performance you went through. Um, so why would you focus on that?

Speaker C: Yeah, ah, it's just, it's harvesting most of the time. And yeah, I mean this is a big, big reason why for example, sponsored brand and sponsored brand video units are undervalued is because a lot of times they actually introduce you to a brand for the first time.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: When you're doing a category search. Mhm. And you may not even buy that time, but down the line you may actually try that brand because of the process that was started and they were able to find a qualified audience that was worth getting the brand in front of. And people aren't as brand loyal as you think. They'll, they'll try new and interesting brands that, that meet their needs. But that value, that incremental value plays out over time. And so it's, it's, and it's not attributed to the last click almost ever. So what ends up happening is the clicks that you buy end up looking super expensive and the ROAS doesn't look good. Meanwhile, all the value that you're actually getting is incremental.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: So uh, there's just a total like roas will lead you not just in the imperfect direction, oftentimes in the exact wrong direction of where your lesson should be.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So glad I didn't listen to my high school counselor that suggested marketing. I didn't end up pre med either. But

Speaker C: the good news in all this that nobody wants to hear, I'm sure, is that all of this inefficiency across this the system is opportunity. I mean, right, like brands are always like, I can't squeeze anything more out of my marketing budget. I Max, I'm like, no you're not. You're misspending half of it.

Speaker B: Yeah, easily.

Speaker C: If you reallocated it to where the value actually exists, you would, you would lap the competition very quickly.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: I mean every market organizations aren't built for that.

Speaker B: Right, right.

Speaker C: Aren't there?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Right. I have to hit a cost efficiency metric because of procurement. So.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker C: Go out and buy crappy inventory just so I can hit that API.

Speaker A: It's nonsensical and there's so much fear if I, if I take money away from a channel and move it, uh, elsewhere for a budget. All of these channels with being directly related to revenue, it's just, well, if I move money, I'm going to lose revenue and I'm not going to, I have to ramp this other channel up and I'm not going to replace that. Whereas before we were able to attach those sales, it was just like, oh, I'm spending money because it'll work. But it wasn't attached to specific number of orders.

Speaker C: Well, we've also seen a bunch of pretty high profile experiments over the years where all of a sudden major advertisers started to see that there was some funny stuff going on or inefficiency in their ad buys and they went dark.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: And, and guess what? They didn't lose the revenue. They didn't lose the conversions. Right. Uber, Uber famously did that. Turned out they were buying a bunch of fraudulent inventory. PNG was that almost 10 years ago now? I think they cut like 200 million in their programmatic spend and unknown.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean it's like every marketer's dream, right, is to have that absolute causality relationship between I spent X and I saw Y happen. But I uh, I also 2x over here and 1 1/2x on this and I don't know which one caused Y to happen. Right. And everyone wants to be able to solve, to solve that one.

Speaker A: So I think, yeah. I almost feel like sometimes it's easier to come up with a case that we need to allocate X amount of dollars into a new emerging channel than it is to rearrange the money with your existing ones.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So that kind of comes into discussing like what's the capability and talent required to execute these new media programs? Whether or not that's like internally, what are your thoughts on, you know, agencies and media running media buys and channel strategy? Retailers are just great at selling to consumers and manufacturing product, but selling to advertisers is kind of a different ball game.

Speaker C: Yeah. What's needed talent wise. So I'll address the sell side with retailers and the buy side. So with the retailers, they need to continue to staff up with media talent. They need to evolve into media companies. The bigger ones are much further along in this process. But even then I would say there are some institutionalized practices that still very much adhere to the E commerce version of retail media and they haven't fully evolved into true upper funnel media. One of the companies that I'm watching closely and I'm curious to see how they evolve is Best Buy Ads because they're led by Lisa Valentino who comes from Disney and lots of major traditional media companies. So she understands what makes a CMO tick and how to get that investment, how to work with media agencies. And you look at how they're kind of revamping their offering around, you know, large scale activations in store. They're creating that cultural relevance, they're bringing scale, they're making it hospitable to non endemic brands, entertainment brands and things of that nature. And so all of a sudden like they are starting to really embrace being a media company and that's cool. And I think others should start to follow that lead. As far as the, the buy side, you know, advertisers and agencies, what do they need to do? They need alignment. I think the Big opportunity now is this stuff is happening and getting activated in the individual silos. But the real opportunity is in leveraging an RMN on a cross platform basis and that requires the organizational silos to be removed. Now CPGs are once again through, going through a lot of reorgs and so all of these are sort of necessary and productive in moving uh, them towards better alignment. So I'm encouraged. But I also recognize that these things take some time to fully get the alignment. Or also sometimes you need to not just have teams talking together but you need to have shared KPIs if you want some of these things to really take off. And then again I think they need full energy and engagement from the media agencies which as of yet I haven't quite seen it. So we'll see, we'll see what happens uh, in the next couple of years. But we're probably still a couple of years off before we start to realize the full vision of what we can get to.

Speaker A: Yeah, sounds like the M M in CMO is going to be moving to media versus marketing.

Speaker B: Might be the cmo.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah. Well Andrew, let's close this out maybe with any additional how forward looking takeaways you dropped. A lot of really useful insight in our discussion here and um, kudos to the restraint on not really referring to anything AI related in the discussion because I know it's almost impossible to do that these days in a retail podcast. But I think that's, that's quite skillful in and of itself to keep the conversation focused. But you know, apart from what we were just talking about, any other things that you would say to any retailers listening about, here's what you should be doing, particularly around CTV and offset, uh, based on what you might not have done yet or should be doing what you'd recommend they do this year to help get them to that next level. And likewise anything you would say to the brand side of it, what you should be looking for in RMN to meet your needs in these areas. Because I think it feels like we're saying the future retail meteorites not just on your website anymore. It's all these different areas, right? It's web, it's in store, connected tv, off site. All these different areas are going to combine to build out a robust rmn. So what, what are your top priorities you would tell someone for, for the rest of 2026?

Speaker C: I would say for both of them. See the opportunity that's in front of you right now. Don't get distracted by a lot of the nonsense that's out there and figure out the key ways to realize the opportunity. So what does that mean specifically for a retail media network? It means start acting like a media company. Don't act like a retailer who's going to strong arm their suppliers into spending money because that money runs out. It means you need to bring your value proposition to more suppliers. Right. Open up a long tail through marketplace. Things of that nature can really help grow the retail media business and make more data available. Don't be so stingy. Data actually enables advertising buys. It's the lifeblood of, uh, media. And so it's just a flipping of the mindset than they've always had. And then they really need to get that talent that will help enable the buys in some of these upper funnel media. And I think a lot of them aren't quite there yet with the talent from the brands. Stop complaining. They love to complain about the retailers and they call retail media attacks and like, well, when you keep doing that you're, you're losing sight of the fact this is one of the greatest marketing opportunities you've ever had.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: So like, you have better data, you have better ability to measure, you have new channels, you have new ways of integration. So as a marketer, this is, it's almost like a holy grail of what it's everything you've ever wanted and then you can't get out of your own way because you still have so much deep seated antipathy with the retailers because they have strong arms. So listen, full size need to concede a little, right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: But they both like, this is a grow the pie motor.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: And they both, you know, can get out of their own way. They can grow the pie and both will do much better as, as, as a result of it.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Well, I know that there's only so much we can cover here, but this has been amazing. If I don't pull the plug, you'll never make it back to work today. And careful because this is Ricardo's favorite, favorite subject to dive into. 2026 is shaping up to be an exciting year to see how retail media develops between brands and retailers. And I am especially excited to see how CTV and off site media take off and shape this year. Thank you so much for joining us and sharing all of these great insights.

Speaker C: Thanks as always for having me.

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, Casey's 100% right. Thanks again. And I mean I would be more than happy to keep talking about this for another four hours if we all had the time because I always learned so much from these conversations. Your expertise in this area is just such a pleasure to walk through and dig into. So thanks again for joining us. I'm already looking forward to next time we have you back on the show. Before we close, do you have any upcoming research you want to make the audience aware of? Uh, or if anyone wants to reach out and learn more from you, you know, what's the best way for them to contact?

Speaker C: You can follow me on LinkedIn and check out my substack. It's media, ads and commerce all spelled out do substack.com that's where I publish on a lot of different topics here, but predominantly retail media. What do I have coming up? Lots of spring speaking season, so I'm going to be covering a lot of these topics in more depth and I would say expect a key through line for the rest of my this year my coverage will focus more on engaging the cmo, engaging media agencies in particular on um, the opportunities with performance TV and in store retail media.

Speaker B: Fantastic.

Speaker A: Well with that I think we're going to call this episode a wrap.

Speaker C: Thanks again.

Speaker A: Love this episode. Drop us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or GoodPods. Hit that subscribe button so you'll never miss an update date. If you're watching us on YouTube like and subscribe before you go, I'm Kasey Golden.

Speaker B: Follow Retail razor uh on LinkedIn, blue sky threads and Instagram and subscribe to our substack for highlights and bonus content in your inbox. For transcripts and detailed guest info, head to retailrazor.com the retail razor show is the original show in the Retail Razor Podcast Network. I'm Ricardo Belmar.

Speaker A: Thanks for joining us.

Speaker B: Until next time, stay sharp, stay human and stay ahead. This is the Retail Razor Show.