Retail Media Breakfast Club

Here’s a riddle for you: what’s ugly, chaotic, color-coded, constantly changing but absolutely essential? If you guessed the family calendar, you’re correct. But I’m also talking about how brands are managing retail media in 2026. Today I unpack why the best-performing brands have stopped waiting for retailers to hand them a clean, unified dashboard, and are instead building their own operating sy...

I really, really hoped that ads in AI wouldn’t suck. And now… we’re starting to find out. In this episode, I break down what we’ve learned about how ads are actually showing up inside ChatGPT, following a recent interview with OpenAI’s advertising lead Asad Awan. I share instances where my earlier (admittedly optimistic) predictions were right, what genuinely surprised me, and my concerns, especia...

When in-store retail media is done right, it can deliver something digital ads simply can’t: a multisensory brand experience that drives immediate sales and long-term brand recall. In this episode, I’m sharing highlights from my recent LinkedIn Live  with Jordan Witmer from the agency SALT, where we dug into what’s really possible with experiential in-store activations, and why so few brands are f...

A couple of weeks ago, OpenAI quietly made one of the most important announcements for the retail media industry, and I don’t think we’re fully reckoning with what it means yet. In this recap of my January 20 article for The Drum, I break down why OpenAI testing ads inside ChatGPT responses isn’t just an interesting experiment, but a signal that the foundations of retail media are already shifting...

New data from Sensor Tower confirms what many of us suspected but couldn’t yet prove: AI-assisted shopping on Amazon has quietly crossed the threshold from experiment to default behavior. During the 2025 holiday season, Amazon’s AI assistant Rufus didn’t just influence shopping — it captured a disproportionate share of actual purchases. In this recap of my recent article for The Drum , I break dow...

Sometimes I feel like the town crier waving a bell about AI and retail media, proclaiming "the end is nigh!", but there's a reason I keep humming the same tune. AI-enabled shopping isn’t a future problem. It’s already reshaping how consumers discover, research, and decide what to buy,  yet much of the retail media industry is still eerily quiet about it. In this episode, I react to telling stateme...

Today, I'm sharing a portion of a sharp and timely analysis from Deborah Aho Williamson, one of the most trusted voices in digital advertising and platform strategy, on why advertising inside AI-powered platforms is becoming unavoidable for certain industries. The piece is titled Should Your Industry Advertise in AI Media in 2026? from Deborah's wonderful newsletter The AI Ad Economy . Deborah shi...

I start this episode with a story from a breakfast buffet in Taipei that was so over-the-top indulgent it felt surreal. Sushi, dim sum, pastries worthy of Paris. But by day four? I suddenly became picky, critical, and began to calculate value. And in my opinion, this is the mode of retail media today. In this episode I unpack how hedonic adaptation explains the shift we’re seeing in retail media i...

The conventional wisdom says ads will ruin AI assistants i.e. the moment ChatGPT or Gemini turns commercial, trust disappears. But I’m not convinced. Today I'm sharing part of a recent conversation I had with Mike Shields from Next in Media , where I argued that ads inside LLMs could actually be better than anything we’ve seen before. But here’s the catch: if AI-powered ads really do work, they co...

Today I’m breaking down why Costco’s decision to publicly reveal its retail media tech stack sent shockwaves through NRF, and why it matters so much for advertisers, merchants, and retail media leaders alike. Retail media is one of the highest-margin revenue streams retailers have, but what happens when the pursuit of ad dollars starts to undermine the core business? In this recap of my recent art...

Instacart’s advertising business is officially in its third act, and it’s the most ambitious one yet. In this recap of my recent article for The Drum, I break down how Ali Miller, GM of Ads at Instacart, is thinking about the company’s evolution from sponsored products to something much bigger: becoming the infrastructure that powers an entire retail media ecosystem. I walk through Instacart’s thr...

There’s a conversation that comes up constantly in retail media. Challenger brands look at big legacy CPGs and think, “If only we had that budget and analytics muscle, this would be easy.” Meanwhile, those same enterprise brands look at challengers and think, “If only we could move that fast.” In this episode, I unpack why both sides are right, and why they’re also missing the bigger picture. I’m...

Amazon built its empire by disrupting everyone else. But what happens when the disruptor starts looking… defensive. As Walmart, Target, Shopify, Wayfair, and others plug into Google’s universal commerce protocols, AI agents are suddenly able to compare and transact across retailers. Meanwhile, Amazon is still operating inside its walled garden — and that raises some big questions. Today I bring yo...

Today I dive into the 'retail media doom loop' and share seven actionable ways retailers can break free. If you’ve ever wondered why retail media networks stall after initial wins, or how AI agents and agentic commerce are shaking up the industry, this episode is for you. I highlight opportunities ranging from in-store experiences to long-tail marketplace activation, loyalty programs, and even cro...

For the last decade, retailers have done everything they could to keep bots off their websites. But when I was at NRF earlier this month, I heard something very different from the biggest names in retail: bring on all the bots . In this episode, a recap of my recent article for The Drum, I break down why that shift is happening now (and what it actually looks like in practice). At NRF I found  a w...

The retail media conversation is dominated by a handful of giants. But today, I’m analyzing a recent episode of one of my favorite podcasts ( Beyond The Shelf  hosted Dave Feinelib), and making the case that we’re missing a massive opportunity by ignoring the long tail. If you’re a brand focused only on Amazon, Walmart, or Target, what happens to the shoppers you’re not reaching, especially in reg...

In today’s episode I’m sharing a standout moment from a conversation I recorded back in December on Zalando's Inside Fashion Marketing podcast. It captures a shift I haven’t been able to stop thinking about: how AI-enabled commerce is fundamentally changing the shopping journey, and what that means for retail media as we know it. If consumers are spending more time researching, comparing, and deci...

Last week at NRF, I co-hosted an intimate, salon-style private dinner with the sponsor of this podcast, Mirakl Ads, bringing together senior leaders from major retailers. Away from the main stage and marketing hype, the conversation picked up where the conferences usually leave off — candid, practical, and deeply honest discussions about what’s actually working (and not working) in retail media ri...

I spent the first few days of NRF right at the center of the retail universe and somehow still managed to feel behind. In this episode, I’m reflecting on what I saw, what I missed (including a genuinely historic announcement), and why that feeling of being left behind might actually be the most honest signal of where retail is heading in 2026. From agentic commerce and AI-powered shopping, to cand...

This is the final episode of the year, and honestly, I can’t quite believe how far Retail Media Breakfast Club has come since launching back in January. From passing 50,000 downloads, to realizing just how many smart, thoughtful people are paying attention, this episode is a moment to pause, reflect, and share what I’ve learned along the way. I unpack some very personal lessons from running a near...

I’m pulling back the curtain on something I’m asked about constantly: how I actually stay on top of the nonstop flow of retail media news, analysis, and thought leadership. I definitely don’t catch it all, and you shouldn’t feel bad if you don’t either. But I have built a rhythm and a process that helps me make sense of this fast-moving space without completely frying my brain. In today’s ep, I sh...

Agentic commerce continues to spark tension across the industry. Today, I’m diving straight into one of the biggest debates: whether Amazon’s refusal to embrace open agent interoperability means agentic shopping is doomed. This conversation was inspired by ad industry analyst Eric Seufert, whose skepticism about agentic commerce I genuinely value. But as I explain, there are several key assumption...

In this episode of the Retail Media Breakfast Club, I reflect on a recent conversation from the a16z Podcast and the surprisingly relevant lessons that venture capital can teach retail media networks. Listening to Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and Margit Wennmachers talk about how a16z deliberately broke VC’s long-standing “code of silence” reminded me so much of the paradoxes I saw back when I r...

In this episode, I expand on my latest column in The Drum , where I unpack new data showing that Amazon now averages 25+ sponsored products per page load—far more than Walmart or Home Depot. Despite fears that ad overload would harm the customer experience, Amazon maintains near-universal ad coverage while keeping relevance high, even on complex long-tail searches. That level of performance is onl...

In today’s episode, I dig into one of the biggest internal conflicts inside retail organizations—the clash between merchant teams and retail media teams. One side is incentivized to fill every available ad slot, the other is responsible for driving product sales, and shoppers are the ones caught in the crossfire. As Charlie Munger said, “Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome,” and re...