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Stephen Howard-Sarin, MD of Retail Media, Americas at Criteo discusses the trends dominating the retail media space in this MarTech Series interview:
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Hi Stephen, take us through your journey in retail media and the biggest learnings you’ve come away with over the years?
My decade-plus in retail media has centered on building and scaling businesses that sit at the intersection of commerce and advertising. I’ve had the privilege of contributing to billion-dollar retail media businesses at eBay Ads, Walmart Connect, Instacart and now at Criteo. Along the way, I’ve learned that success hinges on three things: making retail data actionable, solving for cultural friction inside the retailer as it learn to “do media”, and always respecting the customer experience. (In retail media, we charge rent on a house we don’t own, so we need to show some respect.) Retail media is still evolving, and I believe the next wave of growth will come from unifying online and offline experiences, advancing measurement and driving innovation through open, transparent ecosystems – all of which I’m excited to help lead at Criteo across the Americas.
What top myths around retail media would you like to bust for modern advertisers and marketers?
The biggest myth is your org structure. Brands have in the past spent money based on a separation between “capital-M” marketing dollars and customer-focused trade dollars, and that distinction is getting fuzzier as retail media capabilities match those found in traditional digital. Within the retailer, the divisions of expertise between media, marketing and merchandising are colliding too. Every retail media success story – from the buy-side or the sell-side – is a story of organizational transformation.
A big myth is that retail media is just about sponsored product listings or bottom-funnel tactics. While that was true early on, today retail media spans a wider funnel, from awareness to conversion, and through channels like video, display and even in-store digital. If you believe that exposure to your product and message compounds over time, then you have to believe that bottom-funnel tactics help brand, and brand-level tactics help sales. The trick is to build measurement and models that capture the influence we all know is happening. The lingering belief that retail media can’t build brand equity and is purely transactional could not be more wrong. (See also: past purchase behavior strongly predicts future purchases.)
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How can modern advertisers make more effective use of retail media channels to drive impact?
Advertisers can maximize impact by adopting a unified measurement framework that evaluates retail media alongside other marketing channels. This ensures campaigns are tied to broader business objectives, from awareness through conversion. It’s really hard to do! Criteo solves a lot of these cross-format measurement within the ads we deliver, which is great, but big brands have more touchpoints than Criteo (of course) and that makes unified measurement harder.
Creative should match the shopper’s mindset and context, and an omnichannel consistency is crucial to motivating consumers across digital and physical touchpoints.
By combining these elements, advertisers can create highly relevant and engaging campaigns that resonate throughout the customer journey – marketing tactics that deliver performance measured by the ringing of the cash register.
In what ways are you seeing AI impact the entire retail media game today in terms of benefits for end users (advertisers) and ad recipients (potential customers)?
Any judgment on the impact of AI will age worse than fish. Things are moving really quickly, and value is popping up in unexpected places as smart agencies and brands experiment. Criteo is doing a little of that, too.
For consumers, AI enables more relevant, personalized experiences that feel helpful rather than intrusive. But like good service at a restaurant, these improvements will not be conspicuous. If people can point and say, “Hey, there’s an AI-based ad!” then something is probably wrong.
For brands and advertisers, AI helps scale performance, improve (or discover) monetization opportunities, scale personalization, and ultimately enhance the shopper experience from product exposure to purchase.
Some thoughts around the future of retail media: what will dominate this ecoscape?
For about 100 years, various parts of the customer journey have been “monetized” and these pieces are all coming together under the retail media umbrella. Outside the store, it was advertising controlled by the brand; inside the store, it was merchandising extras controlled by the retailer; and in ecommerce these lines started to cross. The future of retail media is to unify all these customer touchpoints by applying first-party identity and then measuring all of it at the point of sale. All things in-store that have been monetized, whether physical or digital, will become “retail media”. And much of the advertising we experience outside of a store will also become “retail media,” once it is targeted by retailer data and measured by retailer results.
Five top global brands who have got their retail media game in place before we wrap up.
Five brands that come to mind are Pepsi, Unilever, Kiberly-Clark, Kenvue, and Meta.
These brands have distinctive approaches and strategic discipline. They measure the CPMs, CPC and sales rigorously, but they don’t limit their imaginations to historical media channels and metrics. Fundamentally, their rigor and budgets follow the customer and the data. It makes them tough customers, but they also know how to market to humans through a balanced scorecard of KPIs – audience reach, share of voice, ROAS, iROAS, etc. – instead of just managing what they are measuring. Retail media can measure a lot, but that by itself doesn’t make any ad better or any brand more effective.
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About CriteoAbout StephenAbout Criteo
Criteo (NASDAQ: CRTO) is a global commerce media company that enables marketers and media owners to drive better commerce outcomes. Its industry leading Commerce Media Platform connects thousands of marketers and media owners to deliver richer consumer experiences from product discovery to purchase. By powering trusted and impactful advertising, Criteo supports an open internet that encourages discovery, innovation, and choice.
About Stephen
Stephen Howard-Sarin has spent 10+ years’ operating at the intersection of commerce and advertising and is currently the Managing Director of Retail Media Americas at Criteo. He leads a fantastic team that owns retail media partnerships with dozens of retailers and thousands of brands. Previously, he was VP of Retail Media at Instacart and VP of Strategy & Transformation at Walmart, where he architected the company’s expansion in advertising starting in 2017. Stephen earned his programmatic stripes at eBay Advertising before that, as Senior Director of Sales, Marketing & Analytics. Throughout his career, Howard-Sarin has helped build hypergrowth ad businesses adjacent to core commerce.
Transaction-based first-party data fuels ideal marketing outcomes, but advertising is not a core competency of most commerce companies. There are significant gaps in culture, talent and technology that hamper retailers from becoming great at advertising – and Stephen loves to build bridges across those gaps.
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