Integrate Your Retail Media and In-store Campaigns for Better Results, with Paul Brenner, SVP, Retail Media and Partnerships at Vibenomics and Nate Pinkston, Head of Growth at Microsoft Retail Media

Transcript

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Peter Crosby (00:00):

Welcome to Unpacking the Digital Shelf where we explore brand manufacturing in the digital age.

Peter Crosby (00:16):

Hi everyone. Peter Crosby here from The Digital Shelf Institute. How would you like your retail media or in-store shopper marketing campaigns to result in 40% better spending per household and 50% increased share of category results like that it turns out can happen when you make both those strategies come together into an integrated shopping experience for the consumer? Paul Brenner, SVP, retail Media and Partnerships at Vibe Omics and Nate Pinkston, head of growth at Microsoft Retail Media, spoke with Lauren Le Gilbert and me to bring to life the strategy, execution and measurements of truly integrated agile and performative in-store and retail media campaigns. So Paul Brenner and Nate Pinkston, thank you so much for coming. Paul, we really appreciate you having you here.

Paul Brenner (01:08):

Yeah, no, it's really fun. We're excited about the conversation.

Peter Crosby (01:12):

And Nate as well, thank you so much for joining us. It's important stuff to talk about,

Nate Pinkston (01:17):

Talk about, yeah, we're looking forward to sharing some of our learnings and talking about the future ahead.

Peter Crosby (01:22):

Yeah, the really exciting moment that we are able to do here on the podcast is bring together not only the focus that everyone's been having recently about online retail media, but also in-store retail media, which is still a huge part of a brand's overall omnichannel strategy. And with 80% of conversion still happening in store approaching a retail media strategy and without your in-store sort of linked into it and understanding how those two things work together is it really leaves a gap in our listener's strategy I would imagine. So Paul, why don't you kick us off first. Tell us how you see brands sort of bringing both sides of this equation together for better results.

Paul Brenner (02:08):

Yeah, I guess I'd do a little setup. I've been fighting to make in-store part of retail media for five years. So it's great to see

Peter Crosby (02:15):

The recognition, oh, that's the scars on your face that explains everything,

Paul Brenner (02:19):

Sides, broken ribs, there's a lot of damage. But I think the time has come, obviously the IB providing that as part of the retail media buyers guide and now and the measurement standard, which both myself and Microsoft were involved with. It's time has come. It's like that recognition of we had this time origin business of onsite, then we switched to offsite extension and now, oh, there's 80% or more of our people are still in the store. And so my job and the role I play with working with Microsoft is really the, we are the physical world company, so we're the trucks and ladders, we're the display screens, the audio amps, all those things that have to be decided. And I turn that world into a black box of impressions and content delivery that is treated as a programmatic space. So that's where I spend all my time is living between the merchant side of the business and the retail media side of the business to bring that to life within the store and then go to Microsoft or others and say, Hey, how would you like to access this? Aligned with the strategy. So a lot of hard work, but definitely the direction I'm seeing is a great acceleration in store adoption by retailers.

Peter Crosby (03:36):

Nate, what do you think of that?

Nate Pinkston (03:37):

Yeah, I mean I love hearing this and from Microsoft's perspective and the technology side, we've been looking for ways to bring together a true omnichannel story for a long time. That footprint of everything you're doing with your brick and mortar stores hasn't really become part of the retail media landscape to date. And we've done some things like bringing in point of sale data from in-store transactions and linking that back to digital campaigns or activating with the in-store moden app. But we've really looked for how the hardware takes shape and looking at a partner like Vibe omics and saying, you've got great technology, how can we bring this whole thing to life and do something that gives brands a clear sense of what that value is, I think is a really important piece of that puzzle. And so as we've started to bring these two sides of the technology and hardware together, what we've been able to do is create an omnichannel value proposition where running some beta tests, we've already seen that you can drive 40% better spending per household and 50% increased share of category versus running either of our tactics in isolation. And the thing is, as we look at how brands are going to expand their investment and bring in-store into that omnichannel strategy, it's so important to prove that value and make sure we're giving them measurement that justifies shifting that media spend.

Peter Crosby (05:00):

Well, because the context that we have right now of course is that everyone's trying to squeeze better performance out of their investments in promotions and advertising, et cetera, because there's just less free money going around these days. And so when I hear those early stats, and correct me if early is not the right viewpoint, but it sounded like, I think you said Bader or something. Yeah,

Nate Pinkston (05:26):

It's still a test.

Peter Crosby (05:27):

Yeah. So 40% better spending per household, 50% increased share of category versus doing it in isolation. Those are pretty good signs I would think, for your customers.

Paul Brenner (05:39):

And I think we look at, so the relationship I enjoy with Microsoft is having an outlet where we can take those results back as the ROI calculator for in-store decision making. So for audio, we're at scale today, 25,000 locations. The cost to implement something like that might be 10 to $25,000 a store for speakers and amps and then a little bit of money for what we do with audio. A display decision could be 10 x that. And so if we're not building these case studies that help the retailer understand, will the brands buy it, will they use it, what's its value? It's going to just prolong the amount of time it takes to make those investments. So that's a really valuable piece to me. The stat is, yeah, it helps the advertiser, but it also helps the retailer understand what level of investments should they make in that hardware, in that experience within the store.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (06:38):

Would you say also for the brands that you're testing with or working with that it really depends on their maturity and a lot of the internal factors around people process and technology for something like this to be successful, are you working with more digitally mature brands or are you seeing brands that are just testing this out? I'm just curious what the inside of a brand org would need to be in order for this to actually take hold.

Nate Pinkston (07:02):

I don't know that the maturity is a critical success factor, but I do think the maturity is an indication of where brands are willing to invest and test and say, this is something that we know is going to be part of our omnichannel strategy, and so we're going to put real dollars there. If you look at, I love the stat that Peter threw out where 80% of conversions are still happening in store, but I don't see anyone out there with a huge pool of money saying, oh, well as soon as I can activate that in-store component, I'm going to dump millions of dollars there. That's to his point, not how people, they're looking to really be more efficient. And so you've got to prove that value. And it is more mature brands, brands that can do an omnichannel strategy and are already invested in multiple channels that see this as an incremental ad, an additional way to activate with their consumers and shoppers and customers.

Peter Crosby (07:57):

And is there a way that you're sort of a direction that you're seeing more of the energy coming from? Is it the in-store side of the house that's going, we got to get on this, or is it the digital side or do you have a sense of where the most pressure is coming from to figure this out? Paul, you want to take that? Do you have a sense?

Paul Brenner (08:23):

It varies retail media to retail media. I think if you've got a mature retail media network who's lived the life of a really high onsite margin and then a lower offsite margin and they're trying to bring in a new way for high margin business, then the digital people are saying it on the other end. You got in-store, people that want to make the in-store experience better customer first, shopper first, and then we'll make the advertisers bring them in. And then there's people in between like a Hy-Vee is one of our customers and they just invest in store innovation with audio, our audio and display because they want it to be a better shopping experience. They create these innovation stores for shopper experience and now they've added red media to help monetize those spaces versus say like a Kroger, they're different, right? They're mature obviously about them.

(09:21):

They had a big announcement recently around DSP and automation. So I think there's really big ends of the spectrum, Lauren, to your point about the investment on the retailer side, you've got Walmart who announced Walmart Radio revised and now this $90 million to do 1500 stores with screens. Obviously they have that much money to do that. And then we have others that, Hey, let's try 200 stores with a pharmacy screen and figure out how to monetize that, take that to say OTC or pharma and see what their interests are. So it's just such a range, such a wide range.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (09:57):

And Nate, I'm glad you mentioned incrementality because I think that's a big question when it comes to something like this, right? When you're looking across both online and in-store, how do you measure incrementality? Who gets the credit for it? What are you seeing from the brand side that they're being able to look at how that incrementality hits their p and l?

Nate Pinkston (10:17):

I'll go back to part of what I was saying earlier is no one has extra money that they haven't invested, and so you've got to justify and prove the value. And incrementality is probably one of the ways and lenses that I think is most critical for brands who want to be more effective with their marketing spend. And so we see it as a huge component of a successful omnichannel or in-store offering. And we think about it as measuring against control groups. You've got to be able to look at what does incremental, not just to your existing spend and existing channels and tactics, how can you bring together that in-store and true omnichannel component and look at incrementality that way? And so what we do is we set up control groups and run tests around could be geographical markets where we can do things where we're only isolating digital display or digital PLA ads, and then comparing that against that in-store on its own, and combining those two against something where we've got no advertising running. And in that fashion, we can actually provide an incrementality metric that will show brands what that spend and the combination of these tactics drives for them because we see that as the way to make this a successful shift in investment. And frankly, I know brands who have to justify incremental dollars by going out and saying it's incremental value and we need to help 'em tell that story. And so going back to which brands this resonates with, it's a big part of how they tell their own story to get more dollars from marketing.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (11:50):

And I love the way that, sorry, go Paul.

Paul Brenner (11:53):

No, no, I was just going to say there was a written interview with Melanie Babcock from the Home Depot, I think it was published yesterday or last night, and she was, the two 10 poles she had were standardization and incrementality and how the retailer is the most likely to be able to tell you what that true incrementality is because of the data they have. And what Nate's describing path to purchase last week put out a note that said their study was, I think it was only 51% of the things on the list are exactly what someone bought when they go to the store. So it just means so much to what we're doing with Microsoft to show giving cross credit right in store to digital. That's the way you're looking at incrementality is what they may have done in their digital experience, did it come to fruition in their physical experience and vice versa. And comparing that as true incrementality, I think that's the reason that some of the stuff we're doing is so valuable

Lauren Livak Gilbert (12:52):

And that's the way that the consumer is shopping. And I think that's what resonates the most for me here is that the consumer isn't just going in store, they aren't just going online. They aren't just using, let's say social commerce or all the other channels. So it really kind of takes into account how the consumer is shopping. And I also really like the way you're approaching testing. So we talk a lot about test and learns when it comes to e-commerce and trying to figure out what's changing, what's valuable, where we can see the incrementality. But I think that matches a lot with how a lot of the brand manufacturers listening are approaching their digital shelf as well. And so I think that that way of thinking is helpful as you think about retail media as a whole and how as a brand can you work with your retailer to build out those tests to understand where's the incrementality in store versus online and how are we mapping those two together. So I think that approach is also super valuable, and I hope you're hearing that from brands too as you're going

Nate Pinkston (13:50):

Through. And I think it's really important to highlight, brands are looking at what this investment is going to get for them. And so it is because we hear it from them that we did approach it in this fashion and set it up this way. And I think it's so important for retailers listening to make sure they are hearing their brands and listening to the way that brands want to invest. It's not enough to just say and put out, you have an offering and to do that in isolation and not compare it to how every other channel is already performing. And I think every marketer out there will say, yes, I cannot triple count my sales dollars. I need to understand what goes where. And every multitouch attribution model is going to have some flaws. But the more you can do to provide cross channel comparison and look at what we talk about retail media everywhere, how consumer shops and what that journey is and what the incremental value of each dollar invested in marketing and each channel you're making an investment in, that's really important to help brands understand where they're going to get value.

(14:57):

And if you can't provide advertising and marketing solutions that drive that value, you don't warrant that investment. And that's something we are trying to listen to brands about.

Peter Crosby (15:08):

And if I could just ask, I'm trying to understand the collaboration between your companies and then how these programs get set up. So you mentioned earlier, Paul, you mentioned HEB, is it HEB saying, Hey, I want to put together a package of retail media plus in-store and sort of present it to my brands? Or is it each of you have relationships with brands and you're saying, Hey, maybe this might be, what's the direction of all these things and where does the data actually come from? I'm just trying to figure out sort of this whole universe.

Paul Brenner (15:45):

I kind of give the first part. Then Nate on the data side, he's really eloquent at that. So it really was just myself and Microsoft Vibe and Microsoft coming together and saying, this is an idea. This is something we really think is necessary. And then together we went to a large retail media network and said, Hey, we have overlap between the two of us. What do you think about this? And they were like, yes, of course we would love to do this, but you're going to have to find the brands to be involved, right? Yeah. Isn't that, oh, would love the results. We really want to see those. Go do it on your own.

(16:26):

And then so we solicited a lot of different brands, agencies and brought those together. Nate and I, we would submit those as an idea and then kind of develop from there the feasibility and the way the control test needed to be designed. Because remember, we're doing this across onsite and in-store as one control test. So this is like PLAs are off or on, audio is off or on. It's kind of a matrix of control tests for the first time. So it took a lot of discussion. And then Nate, of course was the owner of the data and the measurement side. So I'm handing off the baton.

Nate Pinkston (17:04):

Thank you, Paul. We see measurement as a really key component. I mean everything we just talked about in incrementality, it's a real piece of that value and being able to link the different channels and measure this back across the channels. And back to your point of sale data is a key component of making this successful. And any in-store offering I think needs to evolve to provide the same kind of metrics that marketers are used to getting from their advertising spend in general. And so if we look at that historical evolution of what in-store has been, you've got a merchant agreement that provides signage in store, you'll know flight dates, you might know what ran, I mean, but the old school way was you paid an auditor to go out there and actually visit stores and say, okay, well this is actually set up the way we were told Microsoft's perspective is we want to be able to link those things in a digital and scalable way.

(17:57):

And because we're already getting the attribution and doing the attribution on the advertising side for your digital media, we can do that in partnership with vi omics that gives you the same kind of metrics that will allow you to compare across channels. So you can look at impressions, you can look at sales, you've got to overturn in ad spend, you've got awareness, you've got the ability to say, how does this compare against everywhere else that I'm spending? And to us, that is a key component of where the technology enables real scalability. And you can marry great hardware like what Omics does, where you can say you've got audio that can change. I asked Paul about the ocean spray example. I love his content example there. But you've got the ability to change out creative. You've got the ability to run auctions to do competitive things across your placements and link it all back to a measurement piece where we've already got the data, we're already doing the attribution. And if we can tie that together now we tell a compelling story around that data and the value we drive.

Peter Crosby (18:56):

That was super helpful. Thank you. I mean, that really brings it to life for me across all of that and where the energy's coming from and how it's supporting this growing over time, this could really scale to some pretty amazing stuff. So Paul, bring this to life for me in store. What is it like for the consumer? What does this experience create? And any examples? And if you can give it to me from we create this experience so the consumer will have a great shopping experience, find what they want, understand what's available, that, and then on the other side of the house, the receiving end of the results. I'd love to know how this all kind of ties together as an experience for the consumer and the brand. This would be cool

Paul Brenner (19:48):

Today, and this is why Nate and I worked through this, and another gentleman at Microsoft named and Bill Rosenberg, we kind of all teamed up on this together was the audio side because we have the scale, we have programmatic media players in 25,000 locations across the country. We're saturated in grocery and home improvement and some others drugs. So that's really where this test was. And that experience has really to Nate's point about a programmatic approach to it. So not in the old days of shopper where you just heard the same spot two times an hour from open to close everywhere. It's very specific. It might be multicultural content in a bilingual area. It could change one hour to the next depending on this is a morning hour. You need this kind of creative, this is an evening hour. You need this kind of creative and very action oriented. So the experience usually is way finding. So we're driving people towards a location, we're making it fun and energetic. It's just like a creative agency for us. And then using the programmatic to say, let's just pick these stores or only these stores where the product is truly available to be purchased and these kind of things. So that's kind of the audio side of it and I don't know if that's helpful enough for you, but yeah,

Peter Crosby (21:05):

For where sure's kind of where we're today. And I think Nate hinted at a ocean spray example.

Paul Brenner (21:10):

Oh no. So the display site is where it gets a little bit more fun. If you visualize go in your grocery store the moment you walk in the door, try and count every single paper printed element that you experienced from the time you go through a whole store. Try it, try it. It will be thousands, thousands of cluttered screens. And how much money have retailers made from that merchant business? Billions of dollars true shopper marketing. So why can't we rethink how that experience has provided to the shopper and given to the brand? And so we do all kinds of weird stuff like square matte finish screens that look like artwork, but become menu boards, circular screens like the origin of coffee. Let's show videos of beans being ground up, long form signage or way finding that sticks out in this half two thirds static imagery telling you're in the pasta lane. And the one third is a brand that's being highlighted for that period. And it's all very dynamic. And so we're doing all, I could just go on and on about the different things that we've done from Victoria's Secret to Adidas stores with RFID enabled video walls.

(22:27):

It could be a whole show about the stuff that we are doing. That's really cool. And one example I always give with Nate was we're doing these end cap designs now where they're kind of long and tall, right? It's not just, we do weird formats of screens and it's like a person shape. And I always give the example like ocean spray prints, paper cardboard signs. They put 'em in the aisle for drinks. It's the same sign in every store for six weeks until somebody comes back, picks it up, throws it away, and puts a new one on the screen. What if one day a guy in LA is riding a skateboard, drinking ocean spray and singing Fleetwood Mac songs goes viral the next morning? Why wouldn't he be on that screen with the signage of the guy? They're attaching themselves to virally? I think they bought him a truck or something just for being part of it.

Peter Crosby (23:18):

We had them on the podcast. We had the Ocean spray folks on the podcast. Oh, fantastic. To tell us how they did that campaign. I'll have to dig up. I don't even remember when that was, but yeah, yeah, no, I know exactly what you're talking about.

Paul Brenner (23:32):

Yeah, and so I think it's about saying the store has always made money off the in-store shopper. They always have, but it's been paper, signage and printing. What we're talking about is digitizing that. So it can be just as targetable right now. We can create content that is specific to an aisle in a location, has the same multicultural impact, may even be the kind of person that's in front of the screen at the time and driving engagement. I mean words that you've never heard, like a meat bunker. You probably don't know what the meat bunker is. No, I can't say that I do.

Nate Pinkston (24:01):

What is

Paul Brenner (24:01):

That? It's the frozen flat tops where you reach down in to pick up the bacon, right? So that's a meat bunker. So there could be unique screen formats there that when you pick up RFID enabled food, which it is, you might see a video of the food you just picked up in your hand. So how is that not better than a paper cardboard sign that somebody paid $65,000 for it? Probably $200,000 for less wastage, more efficient, more targetable an impression delivered. So we can say how many people were close enough to see the image or how many people were in the store at the time the audio was played right for that exposure. That's the information we're feeding back to Nate to say, this is the effectiveness of that content. And then he can translate that into incrementality and return on Aspen.

Nate Pinkston (24:51):

And I'll highlight just one more thing about the coordination you can do because as brands look across national or regional advertising campaigns, they're running certain creative and certain styles across awareness and social tactics down to their display and programmatic business. And the coordination within store is often not there or it isn't a limited static capacity. You had to have the signs printed months earlier. And here we're offering the ability to coordinate all of this together and link it to what you're doing digitally with the same ability to be nimble and dynamic if there's new creative that you want to provide or run tests and see what works better and then lean into what's working better, it's all

Paul Brenner (25:36):

Change the creative during the campaign. If you want to change the content, you don't think it's working, change the content. You don't have to print a sign and ship a new one.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (25:46):

I also think of packaging changes. That was the bane of my existence when I was a brand, right? Because it's like a toss up as to like, okay, when are you going to run out of the stock that you have with this packaging? And then when's this packaging going to be on shelf? And it was just always so challenging to time again because you had to print everything so far in advance. So I can imagine for packaging changes that could be huge and you could also reduce a lot of that friction with, Hey, my product is different than what I'm seeing on this ad or on this end cap. So that is a really interesting use case as well. I don't know if you've heard that from any brands, but that was the first thing that popped into my brain from a brand perspective.

Paul Brenner (26:27):

I mean, I know we've done content because of packaging changes. I can say that we've been involved in some of those things, or there was, I think it was like an Oreo Lady Gaga cookie that came out. Do you remember? Yes. Yeah, I

Nate Pinkston (26:40):

Remember that.

Paul Brenner (26:41):

Yeah. And so we did audio for them and they were just shocked that we could turn that around so quickly. They just gave us brand guidelines and some instruction and we created a fun thing and we had it in the stores in five days and they were just shocked that we could turn that around and help them with that quick. That wasn't a rebranding, but it was definitely a spin on the brand itself.

Peter Crosby (27:07):

I really wish I was in that pitch meeting to Gaga. You want an Oreo? Absolutely. What

Paul Brenner (27:15):

Will it be?

Peter Crosby (27:16):

Exactly. Oh man, that's amazing. And what I love about this, because Lauren and I and then my other co-host, occasional co-host Rob Gonzalez, who we've built this digital shelf institute together, and we did it from the beginning with the idea that the digital shelf is not just your retailer product page. The digital shelf is going to be everywhere, and you need to consider digital shelves as they show up everywhere in the consumer journey. And this is just another example of that becoming more and more true. And it's not going to stop. It's not going to get smaller. It's not going to draw back. This is the path that we're on and watching this and having you folks put so much energy into making that connection on behalf of your brands is I just think super cool. It really is a sign of where we're headed. And I wanted to ask you, I wish

Paul Brenner (28:17):

We were getting more,

Peter Crosby (28:19):

More,

Paul Brenner (28:19):

I wish we were getting more activity. I mean, I think Nate and I, we feel like we do so many good things that are helpful and then obviously everybody wants to see a result at the end, but we're also just constantly trying to find brands that want to be involved with these testings, what we're learning together. You would think people would grasp the innovation and the early adopter benefit a little easier. But I'm with Nate, they're kind of hamstrung by what their budgets are and what's kind of at this stage, stage kind of status quo for retail media investment. So I mean, that's what I wish is we were going faster. I wish we had six of these going at one time or 10 of these. That would be great, right, Nate?

Nate Pinkston (29:06):

Yeah. I mean more is always better. We're driving for that. We want to bring this to be a scalable standard part of how everyone thinks about retail media. I do think it's an evolution and we are in the beginning phases of that journey. And so it will take more adoption and more tests. What I would say to brands is, if you come in early, chances are because we want your investment, we're underpricing it, which means you're going to get a great return.

Peter Crosby (29:33):

It's on sale, folks. Yeah,

Paul Brenner (29:35):

That's right. That's right.

Peter Crosby (29:38):

Cool. Because we all have been on the forefront of a lot of these things. Been lucky enough to be doing that. And so much of it is education and giving people like our listeners the ammunition to take this idea in. And usually it's jealousy, usually it's like, I want this competition. Exactly. I want what that phrase, FOMO is real Peter. I know I, I feel it. I know our listeners feel it and I'm sure you all feel it so well, we have more questions to ask you about this, but that's what I think this moment is about. And the more you can demonstrate these kinds of results, bring these experiences to life, our listeners have always been on the bleeding edge of things. So yeah. Lauren, I think you've got

Lauren Livak Gilbert (30:30):

Yammering here. Yeah. I think one of the last questions we wanted to ask you is about, you've done this with brands, you've done this with retailers, you've seen the communications that's needed between them. You've seen the collaboration. What is your advice? And I think especially because you have the ear of the retailer and what they're looking for, how can the brand help to push the retailer to do things like this and how can the brand help enable internally some of these things to happen? So we'd love to just hear from you some of the advice or some of the things that you've seen when you work in these conversations.

Nate Pinkston (31:02):

The first thing I'd say is be very aware of what the silos are going to be. Everybody needs to understand on both sides of the house, you've got the brands who need to understand where in-store investments are coming from today. They probably have trade dollars that are helping to fund that. And maybe they're using, they have a set commerce or retail media budget where they're doing that digital side of the investment. So they may need to bring those two parties together to look at how they can do joint investment and not step on each other's toes. And on the retailer side, you've similarly got people who are maybe running their retail media network and the merchants who are looking for a certain amount of investment from trade dollars and need to understand that perhaps there's a JBP that needs to be inclusive of the tests that are going to be run.

(31:45):

And so I think both sides of the house need to recognize where there are silos that need to be broken down and do some of that internal reaching across the aisle to bring the right stakeholders into this. That's a big part of what we do and help coach both our retail media networks on and Saya brands who are interested in this. But the ones that can do that effectively, I think we will see that benefit of the cross channel measurement and will be able to say where there is incremental value that they get. And so I would encourage brands that want to be on the bleeding edge that want to do this to go out and ask your retailers for this and say, you want to be able to test in an in-store environment because your omnichannel strategy demands addressing consumers when they're in store.

(32:28):

And there's a lot of ways to activate in store. And I think retailers are trying to understand what that is. And so a lot of them are also in the early stages of mapping out what is it going to like in store, what is the in-store experience going to be and how does it tie in with the rest of their retail media network? And so it is a test. It is early days, but ask for it and say it is part of your strategy and push those retail media networks to have an answer to it. And there's a lot of ways they may help answer that question. We would happily to Paul's point provide that guidance and frankly happy to do it whether they're a current customer of ours or not, because we see the industry going in a certain direction. We're talking with the IAB around standards and measurement. And it's important we think, for the industry to have a consistent point of view and demand things like clear measurable results and measure things in a similar fashion so you can compare. And so we are happy to be a voice for that as well.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (33:30):

Well,

Paul Brenner (33:31):

Certain, sorry, Paul, go ahead. I think, I mean, I definitely enforce Nate's maybe in-store is not in the JBP, some of our newer retail networks that it is. So we can kind of pursue that a little easier, but if it's not create some flexibility for test budgets and things like that, that was a massive hurdle to get through politically. I think the other learning that we've gotten a lot better at describing is the typical retail media is a one-to-one relationship that's onsite mobile offsite, getting people to understand that it is a one-to-many media to be in the store either for audio or even for visual. Maybe you can use camera sensors to make some better estimates of actual impressions, but it's still a one to many medium. So we really had to get through what that means and adopted this phrase of it's one to many audience with one-to-one measurement.

(34:29):

So long as you can convert that impression. We use placer.ai, which is a very popular brand for location-based data. We work with a well-known camera based technology for screens. We publish impression multipliers, we publish impressions, but at the end of the day, it's all timed back to P oss data transactions, digital experience, like post 14 maybe the exposure converted that person into a one-to-one. And we can tie that into exposure, exposure time and impressions within the store. So that's been a big learning is how we convince a brand that it's a one to many media that's been quite a learning from some of these early tests

Lauren Livak Gilbert (35:11):

And joint business planning. I mean, I'm so glad that you brought that up. I wish we could have a re-envisioning of JBP because we talk about it a lot and we've talked about it a lot on the podcast. And I think the way that brands come to the table in their joint business plannings need to change. And a big piece of that is coming to the table with asks of the retailers and the reason why they're asking for it, and then how they're working internally to be able to support that. So I really like that aspect of what you shared as well, because I think that's something that the brands can take, they can action, they can change, and they can have that better relationship with the retailer in order to be able to do that.

Peter Crosby (35:48):

We hear no go

Nate Pinkston (35:51):

Media networks. Yeah. Sorry. I was just going to say, we hear from our retail media networks all the time, they want to understand how brands make investment decisions. And I kind of smile at that. You have joint business planning and isn't there a joint component to this where you should be discussing what does the brand need to see? What are they looking for that's going to indicate they should be investing more and want to invest more and making that really a conversation. And similarly, when we have our joint business plans with our advertisers and our retail partners, we say, this is what we know what your goals are and this is what it's going to take to enable those or beat those ideally. And we lay out, there's different paths to get there and there will be trade-offs, but we can give and take and there's things we can jointly invest in that makes us both successful. So it's a really key piece of how you operate and making sure that's a joint discussion and not just the one side of thing.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (36:50):

Joint

Paul Brenner (36:51):

I'm the outsider. I'm the outsider, I'm the guy trying to get to the middle of the ring. Nate's on the onsite enjoying that little, oh, of course it's in there. But I think one of the things that I've been observing and learning is JBP, at least from retailer, has a lot of baggage, like the historical supplier side of it that influences a lot of decision making. So the committee of what's in the JBP is complicated versus shouldn't a retail media network be more like, Hey, what are our OKRs as an agency can think of 'em as an A OR? And it's like two different conversations. And I've even seen, I've heard some retail media networks that we may not even include retail media in the JBP. We want it to stand on its own as an agency and let the brand decide how they want to invest. I've heard that conversation more lately, but the reality is that you have to bring together the supplier side and the RN together, and that's where a lot of the pushback comes protecting analog business, protecting legacy money from say a Neptune. And it's like, well, you got to make something change. You can't just watch it go down. Right? You got to make a change.

Peter Crosby (38:10):

Yeah. I think we are at some of these turning points where the sense of momentum downwards is causing people to look for those places where they can say, oh, this could be that return to an upswing. Well, it's

Paul Brenner (38:28):

Declining because retail media is absorbing shopper marketing. They've been assimilated. I mean, they're causing their own kind of decline in that side of it, right? Because you can't see a 60 billion market share. It's got to come from somewhere. So it is kind of a self-imposed decline. But then there are ways, what Nate and I are working on together to demonstrate why it should be shifted in and how you can prove it better than it ever was proved before

Peter Crosby (39:01):

And do it on both sides.

Paul Brenner (39:03):

Yeah, that's the innovation, that's the inspiration for us.

Peter Crosby (39:06):

Truth bombs from Paul Brenner when it comes to joint business planning. Lauren Leach, was that a

Paul Brenner (39:12):

Truth bomb?

Peter Crosby (39:14):

Well, I don't know. I guess we'll find out. So Lauren, correct me if I'm wrong, but at your upcoming Digital Shelf Summit, which is in April in Nashville, I believe you'll be having a conversation around joint business planning. Am I right? We'll be

Lauren Livak Gilbert (39:31):

Correct. This is a little plug. Dean Mcwe from Stanley Block and Decker is going to cover joint business planning and profitability. So there will be an entire session dedicated to

Peter Crosby (39:38):

That digital shelf summit.com folks. So if you're interested in what's happening at the dsis Digital Shelf Summit in April, go to digital shelf summit.com. Sorry to interrupt this with a plug, but I'm going to do this for a while because we'll go. I'll be there. Well, let's have that conversation. So I would like to close by making sure that brands that are listening, that are going, this sounds interesting. Is LinkedIn the best place to either reach you, Nate or Paul? Is that a good place to start? Just to Sure. Somebody that's curious.

Nate Pinkston (40:17):

Mines. You can also get me at nate dot pinkston@microsoft.com,

Peter Crosby (40:22):

Email babies

Paul Brenner (40:23):

Or Paul dot brenner@vibeomics.com. Either way. Well,

Peter Crosby (40:27):

That's as simple as you get. So I just want to make sure that folks had a way to, if they really just had their curiosity tinged and that they have a way to reach you, these are sort of, particularly as we're in planning season and thinking about these things, what are some new ideas you can bring to the table that do create this digital shelf that spans both in store and online? I mean, it is the true promise of omnichannel. So Nate and Paul, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. We really appreciate it.

Nate Pinkston (41:06):

Yeah, happy to be here. Thank you for having us and happy to advise anyone who's interested in talk more about this.

Paul Brenner (41:13):

Always.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (41:14):

Thank you both.

Peter Crosby (41:15):

Thanks again to Paul and Nate for sharing this opportunity with us. A reminder to go to digital shelf summit.com to check out next April's Digital Shelf Summit in Nashville. You won't want to miss it. Thanks for being part of our community.