The Commerce Collective Podcast

Walmart’s digital shelf labels have raised questions about dynamic pricing. In this episode of This Month Above the Fold , Emma Irwin and Danny Hoffman unpack why shoppers are concerned, what the labels can support across store operations and online order fulfillment, and why Walmart’s everyday-low-price model may limit its incentive to raise prices. They also discuss pricing technology failures,...

Gen Z doesn’t always start with a shopping list. Discovery can begin while scrolling, as creator content and culture shape what consumers want to learn about and try. In this episode, Ben Galvin, who leads U.S. omnichannel retail sales and eCommerce for Monster Energy, explains how the brand approaches TikTok Shop as a place for discovery and product research, as well as checkout. Ben shares how M...

As Amazon's Ads Agent takes on more campaign planning and activation, where can agencies make the biggest difference? Live at Amazon unBoxed, Emma Irwin talks with Sarah Iooss of Amazon Ads about how agencies can bring strategic perspective, creative thinking, and cultural insight to AI-assisted advertising. They also discuss Amazon Marketing Cloud as the connective tissue between actions and outc...

In this month’s episode, Emma and Danny Hoffman, VP, Commerce Strategy, unpack three stories shaping the next phase of commerce. Shein’s falling stock price raises questions about whether its ultra-low-cost business model is sustainable and whether American consumers are moving beyond ultra-cheap fast fashion. The holiday season is already taking shape, from Target’s Q2 momentum and Amazon’s Octob...

Winning the shelf used to mean securing placement in store. Then it meant winning the endless digital shelf. Today, the shelf is much broader: it can be a store aisle, a search result, a product page, a sponsored placement, a streaming ad, or an AI-generated recommendation. In this episode, Emma talks with Flywheel experts Michael Rogosa and Ythan Pratt about what it takes for brands to win across...

In the second episode of our Big Shift series, Emma sits down with Phil Camarota, Chief Creative Officer at Flywheel, to explore how fragmentation shows up in a brand’s creative experience. Phil explains why fragmentation is more than disconnected teams or KPIs. It can also break the brand story consumers experience across creators, retail media, ecommerce, stores, and the shelf. He breaks down wh...

In this month’s episode, Emma and Danny Hoffman, Senior Director of Global Retail Strategy, unpack three developments reshaping the consumer relationship. Kroger’s planned acquisition of Giant Eagle and Uber’s offer for Delivery Hero show how retailers and platforms are expanding across stores, loyalty, pharmacy, delivery, data and local commerce. TikTok Shop’s growing use of AI-assisted affiliate...

Commerce is more connected than ever for consumers, but more fragmented than ever for the brands trying to reach them. In the first episode of our Big Shift series, Emma sits down with Mike Feldman, SVP of Commerce at Flywheel, to unpack one of the central themes from Flywheel’s latest whitepaper: fragmentation. Fragmentation is not just operationally frustrating, it is costing brands real growth....

In this month’s episode, Emma and Danny Hoffman, Senior Director of Global Retail Strategy at Flywheel, break down three commerce shifts brands should be watching: what Amazon overtaking Walmart on the Fortune 500 signals about its push to become the everything company, how Amazon’s latest content updates are pushing brands toward cleaner, more AI-friendly PDPs and shopping experiences, and why Wa...

Jon Gibs, Group Director, Media Insights and Measurement, Walmart Connect joins the show to explore how full-funnel measurement is evolving from attribution to creative effectiveness, and what it takes to turn fragmented signals into a clearer picture of business impact. With a unique vantage point across the ecosystem, Walmart Connect helps marketers tie first-party shopping behavior with exposur...

In this month’s episode, Emma and Danny Hoffman, Senior Director of Global Retail Strategy, break down three commerce shifts brands should be watching: How Amazon’s rebrand of Rufus to Alexa for Shopping is embedding conversational commerce directly into the shopping journey Why Prime Day moving to June changes the retail calendar How store remodels are turning physical retail into a more connecte...

Disruption is a familiar force in retail, yet many brands still struggle to plan ahead. In this conversation, Emma and Doug Koontz, Senior Director of retail Insights, unpack Flywheel Retail Insights’ annual Future Retail Disruption report and what it means for brands planning for 2026 and beyond. From value-seeking behavior, affordable wellness, and private label pressure to AI’s role in making c...

Today’s shoppers bounce between retailers, channels, and missions, but they still expect brands to understand what they need. In this episode, Emma sits down with Tiffany Tan, Head of eComm Growth Accelerator at Clorox, to talk about how Clorox is striving toward 1:1, personalized marketing, the data and clean room foundations behind it, and how AI can help scale personalization in a real, practic...

In this month’s episode, Emma and Danny Hoffman, Senior Director of Global Retail Strategy, break down three commerce topics brands should have on their radar right now. Listen in for insights on who is absorbing the cost of ever-faster fulfillment, what California’s case against Amazon could mean for brands and consumers, and why Amazon’s move to brand-agnostic Sponsored Prompts signals a bigger...

Partnership marketing has shifted from a nice-to-have to a real growth lever for brands looking to cut through the noise. In this episode, Keke Strayhan, Head of Partnerships at Flywheel, breaks down what makes a partnership actually work, why authenticity and strategy matter more than hype, and how brands of all sizes can use partnerships to reach new audiences, build cultural relevance, and driv...

In this month's episode, Emma and Danny Hoffman (Senior Director, Global Retail Strategy) break down three commerce topics brands should have on their radar right now: what Joybuy’s launch in Europe could mean for competition and for brands, why more advertising dollars may keep moving toward retailer DSPs instead of other media environments, and how AI is starting to change the way shoppers disco...

What does it actually take to grow on TikTok Shop? In this episode, Deren Baker, CEO of Flywheel Ventures, explains why brands need to treat TikTok Shop as a creator-led sales channel, not just another social platform or traditional marketplace. He breaks down how to match the right products, creators, and content to the way people shop in-feed, and why that shift is critical for turning views int...

In this episode, Emma and Patrick break down three pressure points every brand should be watching. First, they tackle the performance vs. transparency tradeoff in media buying. What's the balance between log‑level data and control, chasing opaque performance, and using transparency to actually change how and where you buy? Then they unpack The Trade Desk’s latest earnings and what its slowdown (an...

Off‑platform doesn’t have to mean more complexity. Emma is joined by Instacart’s Head of Off-platform Strategy, Adam Silverblatt, to break down how brands can use Instacart’s first‑party data beyond Instacart.com. This looks like building high‑intent audiences, activating them via partners like The Trade Desk, Roku, Pinterest, and TikTok, and closing the loop with sales measurement. They dig into...

In this month’s episode, Emma and Patrick unpack what Andy Jassy’s AI comments really mean for where Amazon is betting on growth in his recent "The Information" interview, and how that could reshape the tools brands get for search, ads, and measurement. Next, they dig into Walmart’s latest AI moves with Gemini and the challenge of who owns shopper traffic, as well as highlight areas where Walmart...

In this episode, Emma and Jason O’Toole (Head of Connected Commerce at Hanesbrands) dive into the evolving world of commerce strategy. They cover everything from building commerce-focused organizational structures to the unique challenges of selling apparel online. You’ll hear how Hanesbrands approaches SKU complexity, 3P competition, and brand protection, plus how they’re building connected comme...

Digital commerce is shifting fast, and ten big “trends to prepare for” can feel overwhelming. In this conversation, Emma and Hannah Donoghue (SVP, Commerce Intelligence at Flywheel) walk through Flywheel Retail Insights’ “Digital Trends to prepare for in 2026” report and translate it into concrete next steps. From agentic commerce and data clean rooms to value cycles, priv...

In this episode, Emma Irwinand Patrick Miller close out the year by unpacking Black Friday Cyber Monday fatigue and how Amazon's asynchronous basket building and robust supply chain stand out. They dig into ChatGPT and Google Gemini, analyzing what truly has time, signal, and points of distribution, and how retailer partnerships with LLMs will shape shopping. Lastly, they cover what the potential...

In this episode, Emma sits down with Mike O’Donnell, SVP Innovation and Business Transformation at Flywheel, to break down the real impact of AI-powered search on consumer behavior and brand strategy. Mike shares why consumers are embracing generative tools like Amazon’s Rufus, how brands can adapt their content and measurement strategies for the new world of AI search, and what mass personalizati...

What’s the real impact of your advertising - and how do you know when you’ve reached the point of diminishing returns? In this episode, Emma sits down with Iñigo Gutierrez Fernandez, Analytics & Insights Associate Principal at Amazon Ads, for a behind-the-scenes look at the science powering smarter budget decisions. Iñigo unpacks Amazon’s holistic measurement framework, from pin...