In this episode of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast, Kerry Curran sits down with retail media expert Mike Feldman, Head of Retail Media at VaynerMedia. Together, they explore how brands can leverage retail media networks (RMNs) to drive revenue and maximize customer engagement by tapping into one of the fastest-growing areas in digital marketing.

Mike takes us through the journey from retail media's early days to its current "Death Star" stage—where seamless access to data, smart automation, and media investment are all aligned to power growth like never before. He explains the benefits of retail data consolidation, offers a behind-the-scenes look at retail media’s rise, and discusses strategic tools that allow brands to personalize at scale and reduce ad spend waste.

Tune in to hear about:

• Retail Media’s Next Frontier: How data-first thinking and smarter media choices lead to better ROI.
• Winning Beyond Sponsored Products: Using creative, organic social insights, and video to engage customers and differentiate.
• Tools and Trends to Watch: From Amazon Marketing Cloud insights to social platform integrations, learn what will redefine the space next.
• For executives ready to tap into new strategies that move the needle, this episode delivers actionable insights for using retail media to optimize every stage of the customer journey.

Podcast transcript

 Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:00.393)

All right, welcome, Mike. Thank you for joining us today. I'm very excited to have you on. Please introduce yourself and share a bit about your background and expertise.

Mike Feldman (00:14.006)

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me, Kerry. I'm Mike Feldman. I lead the retail media practice at VaynerMedia. This is actually my third time building out a retail media practice. The first time is where we originally crossed paths when I was building out the retail media practice at Georgia Pacific. Angel Soft toilet paper, Brawny paper towels, all the very cool stuff.

Since have built out the retail media practice at Dentsu so spent a lot of time there on the agency side working with great agency brands like Merkel 360i prospect and Carat with you know, really large CPGs doing all that on both the buy side and the sell side of the industry And then yes seven months joined the Vayner crew and so in my role here really trying to build out the retail practice as well as you know, I get the fun pleasure of tapping into all the wonderful little things that Gary and Vayner X have going on to create more retail, commerce, other capabilities. So no shortage of things going on.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:13.678)

No, absolutely Mike. Yeah, always, always great to catch up with you because you always have your eye on the key opportunities within the industry and what's coming next. So we have lots to talk about today. So, you know, as you mentioned, you and I have known each other a long time and not, actually, mean, you know, eight years, six years, but in that time, the landscape for e-commerce and retail media has exploded. We were talking about, I think it was 2019 that we were on the stage together at Advertising Week, and we were the only e-commerce or Amazon panel at all of Advertising Week. It was you, me, we had representation from Zaxsys, and then Impact View.


And so, I always think back to that because even at the time we were like, isn't it weird that we're the only ones here talking about this? But now it is like the whole, all that week is ecom retail media, at least last year. And it was all about retail media. So we had a front row seat. It's one of my favorite topics of conversation because it's been amazing to watch the rapid evolution. So talk to me about, know, you're obviously have been a lot closer to it.

Tell me what you've seen and what your thoughts are there.

Mike Feldman (02:40.64)

Yeah, it's awesome finally being one of the cool kids now that retail media is sort of having its moment. You my dad would always say growing up, better luck than good. And so I do feel very lucky to have been so closely involved in the growth of retail media over the last decade. So I'd even say like, where we started to interact and like, even if you go back a couple years before that, I was in a role at Zenith on the agency side and working really closely with Georgia Pacific. And so they had actually at the time, I think it was, they might've been the very first to do an Amazon upfront with like Amazon advertising. And so Dow Bergman, the CMO at the time, really understood that the benefits of retail media outweighed even just the pure retail benefits. And so just how they were going to think as an organization, especially an organization with no D to C.

No real data whatsoever, like how you can use better data to run better campaigns. so worked really closely on the agency side and was then eventually brought in to sort of build out like what is the future of retail media for Georgia Pacific. And I think as like only you know roles can sort of go when you're in the early stages of things. My role is 50% funded as retail media and 50% shopper marketing. And so just like to …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:02.343)

Mm-hmm.

Mike Feldman (04:04.096)

You know, I like to use that as a starting point of like, where, where did it all go? and so in that role, really GP was like, Hey, we're going to make a big bet with Amazon because we might do things with them because of all their data and the way we would think about the growth of e -comm. We might even consider running with Amazon advertising, regardless of whether we sold products on Amazon or not. and so that was sort of the mentality and like, how do we use retail media to be better than where my goal in sort of where I was brought in is to.

What is the next version of that? What is that with Walmart? What is that with Target? What is that with Kroger? And so really that became a big part of my remit. And I really think that's also where retail media has gone. You go from like, hey, we were doing this stuff in shopper marketing. Maybe we were paying a lot, not getting a lot of transparency. Well, like, retail media is more transparent, more self -service, more cost efficient, higher performing. And so we started to see a lot move in that area.


And just frankly, like, catch up to like where they should have been, frankly. You look at things like I remember back when we started interacting, like we were looking at viewability rates for like offsite retail media compared to brand media. And it was like a third. And so like just, you know, you were paying high premiums for low quality. And so I think we finally caught up. It was like that's where shopper marketing then became retail media. Now where it's all going is just like a whole different beast as … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:13.447)

Mm-hmm.

Mike Feldman (05:33.344)

I think like really retail media is just more of all the greatness that marketing has to offer, just more data tied to actual conversion, lots of people. And so it's just been taking all that sort of those principles and exploding it, taking it not only on like the shopper or the retail specific lens, but then like, what does this data do nationally, know, broader and broader and broader and bigger. And that's where it continues to go. And then it ends up in places like that.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:57.991)

Yeah, it's right. It's, it's the, and so, you know, sometimes I look at it, especially having seen the evolution and knowing what else is out there. feels a little bit like a shiny object, like back in the day when people would say we're doing Facebook because we should be doing Facebook. It's like the, the, the new hot thing. Like what do you think that's kind of what retail media is kind of the hot new shiny object or like, what are your thoughts there?

Mike Feldman (06:26.85)

Yeah, I am a little bit. Yes, a little bit. No, I would say there's two charts that I always like looking at. Like one is looking at the trajectory and growth of retail media. And like you see that going 20% year over year. There's another chart and e-marketer that I really like that shows basically how quickly search social and retail media all took to get from one billion to 30 billion. And I think like me, that's really the chart to look at because like, … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:41.832)

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Mike Feldman (06:57.012)

… yes, retail media, there's shiny things, like, you know, there's better data and all this kind of stuff. At the same time for like, you know, a lot of our CPG clients and things like that, like the retail media network or retailer is a necessary evil. They need to be on the product itself. If Walmart is saying, hey, we're going to remove you, you know, that's dramatic to their business. And so anything related to Walmart is just viewed.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:11.986)

Right.

Mike Feldman (07:22.358)

… with a different set of urgency in that organization, whether it's directly connected or not. But I would say like, there's a lot of those reasons. The reason I like looking at that chart in the overall growth is that I would define retail media as retailers monetizing data and properties. And so if you look at it over the course of those channels, like I think retail media will only continue to expand in those channels. Like Amazon has MBA rights next year.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:33.043)

Mm-hmm.

Mike Feldman (07:49.686)

Does that count as a TV spend? Does that count as retail media spend? I would say generally retail media is the evolution of where media is going. Retailers are going to have better data sets than a lot of the partners out there. Really to me, it's like what publishing partners have the best data sets. And to me, it's retailers and social platforms. And so like that's where I would be looking at investments and that's where it would like to continue to grow.

How we define that is like retail media or whatever, whether that's the shiny object in retail media or just the evolution of the industry is up for interpretation.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:21.137)

No, I mean, I definitely agree with you. It's, it feels like, however, if the retail media networks own the data, right? They own the customer data. It's you versus when you go to brand.com, then the retailer owns their own first party data and how much are the retail media networks sharing that first party data? So do you feel like, like that's still, is there more equity in data out there or that it should be?

Mike Feldman (08:50.548)

Yeah, it's a little bit different for everyone. And I'll say like, there's a couple different approaches. I'll say Amazon being the best in that I really do think Amazon is treating it like a media publisher first, a retail marketplace second, in the sense that if you are a D2C brand retailer, you can actually use Amazon Marketing Cloud, work with Amazon, suppress all your loyal existing D2C shoppers, use Amazon to go after new.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:58.551)

Mm-mm.

Mike Feldman (09:18.624)

You can then retarget, bring them back into the D2C experience. so like it's, think Amazon wallets not like, hey, here's all the data. You can plug into AMC and have this one stop shop that fully connects like your data into our data and this nice ecosystem. I would say, as I look at the broader media landscape and lots of consolidation, I could certainly see that happening, not just in the retail media space. Like you look at Walmart, my …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (09:27.379)

Mm-mm.

Mike Feldman (09:45.27)

… take on Walmart is that they should literally give away the Vizio TVs for free because they could make more money on the advertising side. Like everyone gets a Vizio. Yeah, you make a ton of money. And so you can see those ecosystems being created on the more traditional side, like whether that's like a Disney or someone like that, if they can pull together enough of those pieces where it's, we have the DSP, we have the clean room. And so it's like ...

Kerry Curran, RBMA (09:50.538)

Yes. So smart.

Mike Feldman (10:11.286)

I'll call it like the RMN Death Star, where all you need to do is plug in and then you get access to all that good stuff. I know we, you know, we just like before this, we're talking about where the industry is going and things like that. And that's where I do think about the data piece and where consolidation retail media is really interesting because you look at someone like an Ahold and they're starting to test out, like you can get access to your data in a live ramp. And so then … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:15.251)

Yeah. Mm-mm.

Mike Feldman (10:40.128)

… the conversation is really different between the suppliers. Like I'll put on my GP hat going back in the day. So it's like, hey, we can go sell an Ahold and then, you know, we get a, you know, instead of a slotting fee, maybe we have a data fee and the data then becomes ours through a live ramp and we can use it for targeting and measurement on the backend. And like it's a percent of our overall agreement, but it's decoupling data from the media. Like I think as a brand, I would love that.

Like that's again, like if you think about where programmatic has gone in the last two decades, like more self -service, more control, more getting access to things on your end, like more owning it. Where retail media is going is more like the Amazon plug into the Death Star, or actually in a lot of cases, it's not even that interoperable. It's like, give us all your money and we'll control it. But that's saying like the evolution is more to the Amazon Death Star once the technology and pipes are all set up.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:28.499)

Yeah. Are you going to trademark that term, the Amazon Death Star? So I guess it's really interesting because I think of too, specifically with Ahold, are they ever going to have the volume that a broader retailer is going to have? Because with online grocery, yes, there's kind of more like a peapod.

Mike Feldman (11:37.29)

Nah, nah, I'm sure it exists elsewhere.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:02.909)

Kind of capability versus an Instacart. But that's a lot different than the volume of data that a broader multi -category retailer is going to have.

Mike Feldman (12:13.706)

Yeah, that's like me again, I for sure see consolidation and that's where I think that that approach is actually sustainable. And it can go one of two ways like either the smaller partners are going to separate the data from the inventory and things like that. And again, where retail media is growing, let's assume Amazon continues to grow, Walmart continues to grow, Target, Kroger, Instacart continue to grow. There's not, you know, … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:19.485)

Mm-hmm.

If they all grow, that size of the pie is going to be completely knocking everyone else out. So we're going to see consolidation. And that's where even starting to see it a little bit in regional grocers banding up with a ripple or bridge. And so it's like, if we don't have enough clouds to compete, then can we combine enough of these non-competes to build enough of a scalable solution? And so it's like, can they network up to be big enough to compete? To answer your question really pointedly about a whole, like, … 

Mike Feldman (13:11.74)

No, in the US, I do not think long-term they are set up to compete. They will need to band up with other people or, which I really like what they're doing, they will need to separate data from the media offer. And so then it's a significantly easier barrier to entry. Literally every endemic advertiser to you that's selling a product, like you can include a data fee, just like a slotting fee and take some extra margin there. And the suppliers would love it because they get better data for better targeting, better measurement, all that good stuff.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:34.366)

Yeah, no, it's, I love it. It's, yeah, the more sophisticated the data gets, the smarter you can get with your advertising and your targeting. So it makes sense. And it's just like, it changes so fast. So you in your current role, tell us a bit more about what you're doing and what are, so are clients coming or prospects coming to Vayner? Like, what are they asking you or what are the challenges that you're seeing firsthand these days?

Mike Feldman (14:09.674)

Yeah, so I'd one of the things that really excited me about Vayner and coming into the role here, so like previously I have been in relatively media specific roles for the last decade. I mean like client side obviously, you know, did some creative things like that, but I would say my side hustle in addition to media tended to be more like sales or supply chain meetings than like joining the creative side of things. Then Dento was in a media service line specific role and so this was … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:21.181)

Hmm.

Mike Feldman (14:38.018)

One of the things that intrigued me is like, you know, retail media continues to grow. We went from what, 35 billion to like 50 billion and continuous billions of projections. But like, literally no one is investing anything in retail media creative. There's no shops out there that are like, hey, we're great at retail media creative. It's like literally everyone ignores it. And then even more so the way retail media P&Ls are set up.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:52.381)

All right.

Mike Feldman (15:02.4)

I think it's even harder now to fund retail media creative than ever before, because everyone's fighting for dollars between the sales team, the shopper team, the brand team, and more and more dollars are getting moved into sponsored products and media. And where does that come from? Eventually gets cut from agency fees or creative fees or non-working. And so it's set up this world where you have, going back to we talked about SaaS and things like that.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (15:21.136)

Mm-hmm.

Mike Feldman (15:28.61)

Like everyone's like, like I need to find cheaper and cheaper ways to do retail media creative cause like there's more automation and things like that. And what's happened is we've seen 90% plus go into sponsored product spend, which is not long-term sustainable. And so like the question, some of the questions I'm getting from the brands and like what I'm doing in the role. So I'd say one, my role in tasking remit is to like to take.

What Vayner does and brings that into the retail media ecosystem. And so one thing that Vayner does is incredible is our volume model in organic social. So instead of doing like social posts in a month, we're going to do 30 in a week, use the insights that we're getting from the platform to then create new campaign scales, et cetera. The retail media version of that is instead of doing a sponsor brand video on Amazon for a brand a year.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:09.052)

Mm-mm.

Mike Feldman (16:20.386)

We're going to do 30. We're then going to use things like the quick feedback loops of retail media because it's the largest first party data set in the world tied to conversion. So you only need a couple thousand impressions to start to get a read, which like, it's also mind blowing to me that we're spending billions of dollars in retail media with like a finger in the air guess as to what creative or message is going to work where we're like putting out a couple thousand of impressions.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:41.904)

Right.

Mike Feldman (16:45.954)

Feeling significantly more confident with what we're gonna push out with the next couple billion and spend after spending a couple thousand. And so like one, I think that's a massive opportunity. The other is just in general, and I go back to this as sponsored products are just not sustainable. Like if you go back to the way brands were built 30 years ago, it was like, hey, we're gonna dominate in national TV. And then people are gonna like to trip over the product in store because you might have three brands, they're all on end caps.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (17:02.163)

Right. It's going to be giant. Yeah.

Mike Feldman (17:16.186)

You know, the big brands and like they're all fighting them and it's them. It's so different now, especially with the amount of e-comm purchases, like just the trading variables with the customers are so different. And so now it's more of like a conversation of like, how do we like, how do we do that in a digital commerce environment? The answer has been sponsored products, but again, like you can't pay your entire margin on a cost per click. The notion and like the business cases we used to make back in the day when we were working early was like, the repeat and long -term and things like that. But I think we've seen now that e-comm is so mature and that consumers switch a lot. like a lot of the notions have been sort of debugged. And I think heavy sponsored products are helpful to drive volume, not going to be your long-term.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:07.249)

Yeah. And so what trends other than, you know, the multiple iterations, like are you pulling social content into the sponsored product video and ...

Mike Feldman (18:17.898)

Yeah, so yeah, a couple different things like one is multiple, certainly multiple versions in the quick feedback loops. The other is all shout out to Amazon and Amazon marketing cloud. Especially if you look at simple things like sponsor brand video, you can now get post view behavior because of Amazon marketing cloud in the data clean room. Like, literally, you can test product claims through a sponsor brand video … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:29.459)

Mm-mm.

Mike Feldman (18:44.416)

… and then see if people searched against those claims and then see the conversion rate of each individual term to like, does your content then resonate with like the messaging that you're putting? So again, like we can just get so much smarter with what we're doing, not to mention like, I'd say my favorite thing is to look at the path to conversion. Again, my biggest harp is that like sponsored products, like we need to get off that drug. And so.

Like I love looking at a path to conversion. So if we can put out a better message, do we even need sponsored products at the end of the day or someone willing to go by the four other competitors and then click the organic one and not have to pay a couple bucks? Like, you know, some of that kind of stuff seems silly, but like necessary. In terms of your question on social media, like I also, I'd say like one of the questions we get all the time. I'm sure you can appreciate this as an advertising exec, but you know, … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:15.26)

Mm-mm. Yeah.

Mike Feldman (19:33.096)

It's, hey, we want to 3x the business on Amazon. We're not going to 3x the budget. You can get the same budget. And wanting to become less reliant on sponsored products is like generally one of the remits that we'll get. We're like, yeah, no problem. Whatever. Yeah, we totally got that. And so, you know, I'd say that again, one of my favorite things about working at Vayner is that our entire go to market strategy was written in a New York Times bestseller this year. And so day trading attention. So like the way … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:39.684)

Yeah.

Mike Feldman (20:01.738)

… you know, the modern brands are built really through, I would say, organic social. So to your question there, like social and retail media do not go right now. However, they don't go from a technology standpoint. If you get strategists and practitioners, the parallels are extremely easy. So like one of the easiest examples I will give out there is I love using.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (20:22.718)

Yeah.

Mike Feldman (20:28.81)

As a consumer, I actually don't use TikTok that much, but as a business professional, I use TikTok all the time, mainly because there is this tool called Creator Search Insights. And so it's free within the platform, all that good stuff. There's also a tab within there called Content Gap, and it is literally telling you, it's literally TikTok telling you your audience has a higher demand for certain areas of content than there is a supply on the TikTok app.


And so if you then bring that into the CPG world, we can literally look at alll right, your audience, here's the things in the category that they're looking at.


They're craving this type of recipe content. They're craving this type of food, this type of contextual thing going on in culture. And so what we're doing is we pulled together, like basically relevance reports of everything going on in social. We then share that out with the creator. So then things like your product detail page content, we're updating that in the same way that we would social. We're using current insights, current trends going on in the market to then inform.

We're eventually like, we want to go and take things as not only just doing that from a creative or PDP content standpoint, but like think about product innovation. Like, yeah, like, so. You know, certain like in, one that really popped, I saw the other day was looking at like the hair care category. And so over the course of the summer and tick tock, like frizzy hair content was like everyone, all the consumers wanted more frizzy hair content because of summer heat humidity. mean, you can, you know, I got a little bit of that gone.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:31.495)

Yeah. 

Mike Feldman (21:54.682)

And, you know, there's like almost no one on Amazon is really talking that much about things like frizzy hair or curly, coily hair and things like that. So not only like, can we do the creative? then because of the quick feedback loops, if that starts to look good, do we even try product innovation? Do we push a specific new product because of trends that we're seeing in social again, to like where retail media gets really exciting and things like that. Like, do we, are we a three P seller on Amazon? Do we have a tick tock shop? Do I sell?

200 of these items use ratings and reviews to then inform like is there really something there and then we can try to explode that in the marketplace.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:29.831)

Yeah. And I think you're, I mean, you're so spot on Mike and you know what, like we talked about once before is that a lot of those basic concepts of the PDP optimization using consumer insights to inform what your content is going to be and your product development. Like that's the stuff that's not new, but I think that goes back to retail media being a shiny object. Brands are so focused on buying their eyeballs that to your point just made like, there's a wealth of data and information, whether it's coming from TikTok insights, or back when we used to use Google search volume to determine what people were interested in. And it just brings me back to like the years of PDP optimization strategies. like, we you know, you and I both have presented on this, but you know, on so many I said it so many times years ago, and I think...

Always used to start with the fact that you have seconds to attract someone's attention when they're on searching the Amazon results page, right? And to your point, if you can pull in the insights from either review or gap analysis within TikTok and you have that in your title, you have that in your product name description, you don't need to pay for it. You need the click through rate to get the organic ranking, but to your point, like so smart and the data is right there.

Mike Feldman (24:00.372)

Yeah, I would say one trend in retail media that will make that harder is like everything is SaaS automation, things like that. Like I think, you know, the, you know, the challenge I've seen in my career, especially like building out retail media teams. And I'll, I'll just say I'm super biased, but I retail media is the toughest job out there mainly because like, if you look at some of the more junior team members, like they're working in 30 different RMNs at any one given time. And so SaaS automation technology becomes really important just to be able to actually do the thing of getting things in marketing like an accurate way that we're gonna drive them in or whatever. And so that's where looking at some more manual things becomes more challenging. And so like, again, that's where I have a to-do list..

Kerry Curran, RBMA (24:27.997)

Yeah, yeah.

Mike Feldman (24:48.448)

I was excited to join an organization where creative and media were together because I think if you're just making media decisions, automate and everything super, super streamlined. On the creative side, people love to really dive into it and get into the audience. And so I think retail media is best done when you can blend those worlds a little bit. so...

Kerry Curran, RBMA (25:07.004)

Right. Yeah.

Mike Feldman (25:08.802)

Like any ways that we can do to basically take tons of data and get it into a more digestible way. Like I will say the content gap is sort of manual. What I like doing is then pairing that with things like ARA keyword trend data. So if I see something in TikTok and I see that it's starting to have some relevance on Amazon, like that's where we really will go deeper. Cause again, like if you're running in 30 RMNs, like how many big bets can you make? so, you know, nothing to like anyone listening to if you're … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (25:29.395)

Yeah.

Mike Feldman (25:36.128)

… running across a million RNMs, that can be challenging. On the big bet front, there's some ways to narrow it. On the automation front, I think this one's so fun. So a lot of the SaaS partners, especially with Gen .ai, like Amazon trying to get more into that space, doing some testing of like, does Gen .ai automated, creative perform better than what we're putting out there in the marketplace? The early reads I've seen are about the same. I will say.

The reads I've seen from using social-informed creative is significantly better. And so it's like, do we take a better process and automate it a little bit better is where I'm going versus just automate everything and then try to make it as good as possible.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (26:06.909)

Right.

Add to your point, like, I think everything's getting harder, but better. And so it's how do you get smarter to be more effective and more efficient? And with that, to your point comes AI and new tech opportunities and tools. Are there other kinds of emerging technology in the e-comm space or retail media space that you have your eye on? Like, what do you think? What are you testing or what do you think is kind of next?

Mike Feldman (26:44.02)

Yeah, I am in general, like, so right now, social and retail media don't necessarily go hand in hand. We've seen various announcements and trickles and things like that coming out in the marketplace. Like right now, it's just been lots of co-op shopping and things like that. But Kroger working on more of a meta integration has I'd say like to me, that's the ultimate holy grails. If we can get retail media data into social platforms because then you can literally post out things in organic content for free.


You can then use the platform insights to see which cohorts are resonating. You can create retail specific cohorts and things like that. And then like to create campaigns right to the retailer or whatever, like social in general in retail media. Like again, we're using it for insights and creativity. The more that the media ties in together and reports measurement, like that's gonna be super exciting. Other stuff going on like.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (27:34.023)

Mm-mm. 

Mike Feldman (27:39.04)

… the different video units are just really interesting to me in general. Like you can go on the most, again, the most micro level of like, think sponsor brand video on Amazon is such an interesting unit because you only need a couple thousand impressions to get statistical significance.


You're reaching people that are like in your aisle. It's literally like, Hey, I'm searching for toilet paper. I'm here in the toilet paper aisle or whatever. Like, and to me, like, and then getting those insights into Amazon marketing cloud to then push out to like other initiatives, like even …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (27:41.928)

Yeah.

Mike Feldman (28:09.004)

… hey, we're gonna quickly mine through SBV to then find the spot that we're gonna put in our Amazon's first ever playoff football game or whatever. Like we can do that kind of stuff because we have all the data and connections. And so yeah, the video space, especially with the quick feedback loops of retail media, is super intriguing. The last one I'll give is, again, like I think Amazon Marketing Cloud is just fantastic. And so if you look at, if you're a retailer and wanting to work with Amazon, and the ability to do so many different things from an audience standpoint. I already talked about sort of suppressing your existing, maybe more profitable, more loyal D to C shopper using Amazon to go after like incremental audiences.


But then with Amazon marketing cloud, like the ability to create custom audiences based off of not only how they're interacting in terms of like their sales journey, but then media exposures as well is just so interesting to me. We're like.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (28:51.323)

Mm-mm, yeah

Mike Feldman (29:04.192)

You can have a portfolio of companies across multiple things. Like, and if they're exposed to this one thing and they buy this one product, like we can put them in this group or they buy this product, they've been exposed and haven't bought this other product, we can put them into different groups. like just more personalization at scale and retail media, tying it to actual sales is the goal. And like with more consolidation, like if you have brands making a really big bet into the R and Death Star or whatever, like …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (29:25.149)

Yeah.

Mike Feldman (29:33.14)

… I could really see an effective business where you're building up a brand through an organic social, you're launching specific assortment through D2C, Amazon, a TikTok shop, and having like specific needs for each of those, connecting it all through an Amazon marketing cloud to de-duplicate your path to conversion and eliminate a ton of waste. Like, I know those are all the jargon words in one sentence, but also like that is a good way to run a business.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (29:56.01)

Yeah, no, and, but, it gets, again, it just shows how smart you can be with the right data, with the right investment in the right partners and the data. I think that a lot of the challenge comes down to getting the budgets for all that investment. But to your point, if you could, it does then allow you to prove, prove the value and benefit. So …

Mike Feldman (30:17.152)

I think my, where I'm a little curious, where it goes is like, think people generally are on board of the like, we need to get off the sponsored product drug. I personally do not think programmatic display banners are very effective. And so I would say that's generally like the second place we go from retail media. Everyone's like, okay, mean, I have max out sponsored products, spend max out on site or whatever. I want to do something that’s …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (30:35.101)

Like offsite, you mean offsite. Yeah.

Okay.

Mike Feldman (30:42.582)

… counts to my overall JVP commitment or whatever, and it tends to be a programmatic display, especially because video is not going to perform in the short term or whatever. And so I think generally that's going to be a critical point. so RMS can recommend more programmatic displays than just a person in the world. I don't think that is going to work. Whether it shows in an MMM or not or whatever, I don't think that's going to help people's business. And so thinking about things like …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (30:51.518)

Yeah.

Mike Feldman (31:11.294)

… what is the thing beyond sponsored products, features and display in store, whatever. And to me, video needs to do that. That's where the data, the better audiences, custom paths to conversion and certain messages based on where they are is how retail media is going to succeed.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (31:28.453)

I love this. Perfect. Mike, you are the smartest and most enthusiastic expert out there. So I'm very lucky and grateful to have you join today. Always great speaking with you. So thank you so much for joining our episode today, and we definitely will have you back. So much more to talk about. Thank you.

Mike Feldman

Yeah, I love this question because we're starting to see it and it's only going to continue with consolidation, especially around the mid to long tail of RMN. Mentioning all the million other RMNs that are going to launch travel hospitality and all that. But I think with more increased investment in Amazon, Walmart, the bigger players, we're going to see shifts away from mid to long tail. And I think they're going to either go one of two ways. Are they going to band together and network up to compete with some of the larger players?

Or are they going to start to separate data the way, you know, programmatic a decade ago, separate data from the media solution, use a live ramp and put the power back in the brands.

Kerry Curran

Awesome. Well, thank you for, as always, for sharing your insight there. It's great information.