Latest / The Retail Podcast / Retail Media in 2026: What Shoppers Actually Want | Michael Schuh, dunnhumby
Transcript
- 0:00You know, 90% of engagement and transaction still happens in
- 0:04store, at least in in grocery and then some of the core sort
- 0:07of retail vertical. But retail media spends is less
- 0:11than 1% in the US, less than 1% of it is in store.
- 0:14I mean, that's completely backward.
- 0:26Hello and welcome back to the Retail Podcast.
- 0:29Now I'm smiling whenever I'm smiling, you know that I've got
- 0:31something special. And I have a very special
- 0:34episode today in partnership with Dun Humby and you make a
- 0:38Who's Dun Humby? But we'll get to that in a
- 0:40minute when we meet Michael Shu from Dun Humby.
- 0:43But the reason why for me it is special is this is a
- 0:46conversation that I've had globally.
- 0:48I've had it at different conferences in New York, at NRF
- 0:52and at Shop Talk in Las Vegas, and it all ends up around the
- 0:56same. What does the data say?
- 0:58What are the customers actually want?
- 1:00So when I had the opportunity to partner with Dunham B and have a
- 1:05grown up conversation based on data, I jumped on it.
- 1:08So Michael, without any further ado, if you don't mind, just
- 1:12sort of telling us a little bit about who you are, what you do,
- 1:16and then we'll dive into what the date is telling.
- 1:18Sure, Alex. Thanks for having me click.
- 1:20Great to be here. I'm Michael Shue.
- 1:22I'm the Global Head of Media at Dunham B, where I lead our
- 1:25retail media teams across our consulting and our propositions
- 1:30business for our retail and our brand clients across the globe.
- 1:34For those who don't know, Dunhambey is the world's leading
- 1:36retail data science organisation.
- 1:38We've helped our retail and brand clients for over 30 years
- 1:42drive better customer experiences and commercial
- 1:45outcomes for their business across really 3 or 4 different
- 1:49pillars, loyalty and personalization, a category
- 1:52management, pricing, promotion, assortment decisions, insights,
- 1:55monetization as well as well as retail media, which is my core
- 1:59focus and I'm sure will be, you know, a big part of our
- 2:01conversation today. Yeah.
- 2:03Thank you for that. As I said, I'm going to jump
- 2:06straight in because I know the listeners are going to be
- 2:08wanting to know what is this data?
- 2:10What is this report? The research actually will be
- 2:13launched today on the dunhumby.com website.
- 2:16So anything that you hear, Michael and I talking about,
- 2:19you'll see some graphical material as we talk about some
- 2:23stats. We won't cover all the stats,
- 2:25but please feel free to go off the humby.
- 2:27It'll be in the show notes so you can find out where it goes,
- 2:30but without, you know, without talking too much.
- 2:32Let me get straight into it. So when I had the the privilege
- 2:36of having a pre read of the research, Michael, one of the
- 2:39things that struck me was that 91% of shoppers are comfortable
- 2:44sharing data, which is not new, but only when they get something
- 2:47genuinely valuable back. So the days of here's an e-mail
- 2:51sign up giving me something, you know, I think are gone.
- 2:55There has to be that reciprocity in relationship and retail is
- 3:00sort of having to earn the trust for shoppers who are still
- 3:04making. So making it conditional deals
- 3:08that can just disappear very quickly leads to a disappointing
- 3:11experience. But I'm really curious in terms
- 3:14of the 91 percent of shoppers that are comfortable sharing
- 3:17data, can you sort of expand on that point for us?
- 3:20Yeah, happy to so the the report itself, we thought to take a new
- 3:26angle on retail media. Of course, retail media isn't
- 3:29new by any means, been growing for years and almost everything
- 3:33you read in in the trades, in the media or by having
- 3:37conversations at conferences or events is all about the
- 3:41retailers and the brands, what advertisers need, what
- 3:44advertisers want, the technology underpinning all of that.
- 3:47What we did with this report is we wanted to ask shoppers, what
- 3:50is your experience with retail media?
- 3:52Do you recognise it? Do you see it?
- 3:54Do you like it? How can retail media better
- 3:56serve you? And so Alex, you mentioned that
- 3:59the 9 out of 10 was a surprising sad for us a little bit that it
- 4:02was that high that 9 out of 10 customers were willing to share
- 4:05their data with retailers, but only if they got meaningful
- 4:08value in return. But that really told us as we,
- 4:11as we, we looked into it was that personalization is now a
- 4:14baseline expectation. And we could call it like the
- 4:18Netflix ization or the Spotify ization of everything, right?
- 4:22You discovery is, is no longer something that you're willing,
- 4:26the customers are willing to sort of scroll through pages and
- 4:29pages of content to get to what they need.
- 4:32The expectation that the data they're providing and the
- 4:35algorithms and the models that media companies, ad tech, you
- 4:39know, retailers are able to deploy actually surfacing the
- 4:42most relevant items to the shopper to make it easier on
- 4:46them as they shop, as they experience the overall sort of
- 4:50digital experience online. And there's some other sort of
- 4:53even stats that were complimentary to that too, with,
- 4:56you know, 7 out of 10 shoppers more likely to trust
- 4:58personalised ads versus generic messaging because they know they
- 5:03had, they had input into it right there.
- 5:05Their relationship with that retailer and that brand is part
- 5:08of what makes that experience great and continue to improve
- 5:11over time. Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's an
- 5:15interesting moment because I find lots of specifically around
- 5:18this next point, lots of people, I've been saying this for a
- 5:21while and as a lot of people, we've not had the data around
- 5:24this. Could you sort of expand on the
- 5:26interesting findings around shoppers who respond strongly to
- 5:31personalization when it's part, when it's based on past
- 5:34behaviour? I think, I think that's like one
- 5:36that I've been saying, you know, if I'm willing to give you my
- 5:39data, why aren't we doing more to together?
- 5:41But obviously your data, your research is now saying that
- 5:45that's the point. Could you just sort of expand on
- 5:46that for? US yeah, it goes, it goes back a
- 5:48little bit to the promise of of retail media, right?
- 5:51Retail data is the is the gold, right in this, in this sort of
- 5:56experience, right. And it helps because it tells
- 5:59you not just things that have been used in media and
- 6:02advertising to, you know, create audiences for years, like
- 6:06demographics or where somebody lives or, you know, maybe their
- 6:10age. It actually shows what people
- 6:13buy and how often they buy it, whether they switch between
- 6:16different brands or what happens when they enter a new category,
- 6:19all those different points. And so we heard loud and clear
- 6:23from shoppers in the study that the most important thing that
- 6:27they hear from or they see in terms of retail media from
- 6:32retailers is based on their past purchase behaviour.
- 6:36And so making it easy to check those items off the list that
- 6:39maybe you buy every week at the grocery store or, or even if
- 6:42it's not grocery, it's home improvement and you've got your,
- 6:45you know, I already have a particular brand of tools that I
- 6:48like, right? How do you personalise what
- 6:50you're looking for in that moment based on the things that
- 6:54you always buy that you're frequently looking for to help
- 6:58narrow down the set of, you know, hundreds of choices that
- 7:02are out there? To drive a better experience
- 7:05through that. And to get beyond some of the
- 7:08sort of, you know, generic or aspirational messaging that
- 7:11might be out there to really help the customer, you know, do
- 7:14what they're looking to do. Yeah.
- 7:16I, I, I, it's really interesting because one of the other
- 7:18elements of that ties into that is the fact that familiarity
- 7:23around savings and advertising. Because again, this is another
- 7:27topic I've heard people talk about where they say, are you
- 7:30giving the right person the right discount?
- 7:34And I noticed that you also mentioned that in your research.
- 7:37Could you just sort of expand on that for us in terms of
- 7:40delivering the and and what, what good, what good looks like
- 7:45in that aspect when you tie the two of savings and advertising
- 7:49together? Yeah, Ioffer personalised offers
- 7:52and savings or even generic offers and savings rated really
- 7:56highly in the report as well in terms of what most influence
- 7:59purchase decisions. And, and there was the synergy
- 8:02actually that we saw between, you know, messaging that was
- 8:05offer or savings related and somebody actually seen
- 8:09advertising, right? The, the 2 who sort of worked in
- 8:12unison with each other to drive more relevancy and more impact
- 8:17from the shopper itself. And it's, it's really the not
- 8:21just a combination of those things, but the familiarity that
- 8:24that creates and the, the call to action that that creates for
- 8:29the shopper as well. Now certainly this is going to
- 8:31be different at different retailers who might be everyday
- 8:34low price or you know, ones that are highly promotional driven.
- 8:38But it creates some of that, like I said, call to action for
- 8:41a shopper that combines both relevancy and an appropriate and
- 8:46urgent message that showcases, you know, what that retailer may
- 8:50be offering or a brand may be offering that may be different
- 8:54from what they might see elsewhere.
- 8:55Do what? Just out of curiosity, were
- 8:58there any other elements that were similar to that that you
- 9:01found surprising just from your experience?
- 9:04You know, in terms of familiarity with advertising, I
- 9:08don't know what was there like a list like I don't know top five
- 9:11or three of things that you saw in that area in terms of what
- 9:15consumers were were rating high. Offer and savings were certainly
- 9:19high in there as well. Seeing consistent messaging
- 9:22across channels is something that we often see, you know, you
- 9:26can see a message one place, but we know people's attention spans
- 9:29are short and you've got to see things you know multiple times
- 9:31sometimes for it to stick. So that connection between what
- 9:34might be in store media and you know, online, something you
- 9:37might have seen when you were doing research before you
- 9:40entered the store. There's, there's some elements
- 9:42there. I think the creative is more
- 9:45important than we give it credit for in retail media.
- 9:48A lot of times we talk so much about the data, about the
- 9:51measurement, the brand's message actually coming through and
- 9:54being inspirational in terms of the creative and the imagery
- 9:57that is actually used. And doing that again,
- 10:00consistently across channels, I think is, is incredibly
- 10:03important to helping bring that customer along on that journey,
- 10:08especially as, as they might be considering, you know, certainly
- 10:11if you go outside a grocery where you've got, you know, a
- 10:13more frequent and, and routine purpose where you're making a, a
- 10:16larger purchase that maybe has a longer purchase cycle, something
- 10:19you might only buy once or twice a year, or maybe even, you know,
- 10:22every few years that that consistency is really important
- 10:26as well. I, I, I love that because that
- 10:28sort of lends itself into innovation and technology and,
- 10:32and data where where you were talking about, you know, you
- 10:35often hear again, these sort of comments about customers not
- 10:39wanting intrusive technology, but they want to be known.
- 10:43And so, you know, where technology sort of takes away
- 10:46from the shopping experience or from the consumer experience
- 10:51versus automated retail. I'm just curious as an expert in
- 10:55the field, what you're thinking is between sort of smart retail
- 10:59and over automated retail or if there was anything in the
- 11:02research about that? Yeah, we had some really
- 11:04interesting findings in the research.
- 11:06Our team actually put together a whole list of just suggestions
- 11:10on to ask shoppers, hey, hey, what would you think about this
- 11:14if your local retailer offered personalised pricing, offered
- 11:18tailored health suggestions, offered agentic commerce, like
- 11:21this whole list of things. And so we sort of pulled
- 11:23people's attitudes on all of these things just to get a sense
- 11:26of, of what they thought. And maybe not surprisingly, you
- 11:31know, any technologies got sort of a life cycle, right?
- 11:34You got your early adopters, you've you've kind of then you
- 11:36move down, you start to raise disillusion by a little.
- 11:40And then there's just general adoption down down the line,
- 11:42right. The things that had been around
- 11:44longer that were more familiar for people, certainly those were
- 11:48ones that pop to the top of the list as as things that people
- 11:51were excited about, things like personalised pricing, things
- 11:54like in store screens with product suggestions, things like
- 11:57tailored health suggestions. You know, certainly the the
- 12:00health and and the ingredients in our food, especially as it
- 12:03relates to grocery have become much more part of the
- 12:05conversation in recent years. But then, you know, newer
- 12:08technologies, whether it was a into commerce, whether it was
- 12:11kind of wearables in store, other things like that, you
- 12:14know, where people were less excited about this or at least a
- 12:17smaller percentage of people were excited about.
- 12:20And maybe that's a little bit to be expected.
- 12:22But, you know, it shows a little bit of where shoppers heads are
- 12:26at right now, where they're out on the curb and how retailers
- 12:29can actually meet customers where they are, what the
- 12:31expectation is on what they deliver from a technology
- 12:34standpoint. But also what are the what are
- 12:37the newer technologies that retailers need to be thinking
- 12:39about now, talking to their shoppers about and getting out
- 12:42ahead of to be seen as innovators and seen as leaders?
- 12:45You know, a year or two years or three years down the line when
- 12:48maybe those technologies are a little bit more commonplace and
- 12:51customers are a little bit more, you know, excited and ready to
- 12:54embrace them. OK.
- 12:56There's a point that you made there that I want to come back.
- 12:58Retailers often sort of talk about first party data as a
- 13:04competitive advantage. But if I'm not mistaken, I think
- 13:07your your findings suggest that shoppers only see that value
- 13:11when the data improves the experience in a visible way.
- 13:15Do you think are too many retail media strategies still too close
- 13:20to retailer centric rather than shoppers centric?
- 13:23I don't, I don't know if you if you have any thoughts on that.
- 13:26I don't know if I'd say too close to retail centric, but but
- 13:29it's interesting, you know, we've worked with, you know,
- 13:31dozens of retailers and their media businesses across the
- 13:34globe. And in some ways they're all the
- 13:36same and in some ways they're each unique, right?
- 13:39And so, you know, the, the, the, the power of the data asset that
- 13:43they have and the connection with their loyal customers.
- 13:47Those are, those are incredibly important.
- 13:49And where the media business sits and how it's connected to
- 13:52the core retail business might look a little bit different for
- 13:56each individual retailer. That could be based on, you
- 13:59know, team structures, that could be based on market, that
- 14:02could be based on size and scale, that could be based on
- 14:04competition in different areas. But for each, for each
- 14:08individual retailer, it's about figuring, figuring out what's
- 14:10right for them, what's their core value proposition with
- 14:13their retail business and how does that then extend into their
- 14:17media business and how they leverage the, the customer data
- 14:20asset that they have to make those customer experiences that
- 14:24much, that much better. And so I think it can be done a
- 14:27number of different ways. It can be done successfully a
- 14:30number of different ways. But part of it is diagnosing for
- 14:33that particular retailer for their value proposition, for
- 14:36their place in the market, for their competitive set, for their
- 14:39customer customer set, what is right for them.
- 14:42And how does media be a core driver of not just the
- 14:47profitability of the business, but of the retail business as
- 14:50well? Right.
- 14:50We've we've learned through this study that using that data to be
- 14:54more effective with the touch points with each of your
- 14:57customers drives higher purchase.
- 15:00So that gets one more item in the basket that gets somebody
- 15:02into a new category that drives core retail business growth.
- 15:07So that's, that's some of what I don't think we talked about, but
- 15:10enough what retail media is. Yes, we, you know, retailers can
- 15:13make profit by monetizing the data and monetizing the
- 15:15experience a little bit. They can also grow their core
- 15:18retail business. Yeah, I'd say, again, playing it
- 15:21back, if I'm a retail executive listening to this, what's the
- 15:24biggest missed opportunity then? Is it is it around data
- 15:28execution or is it around measurement then?
- 15:32And I say yes to both of us, yeah.
- 15:35You're allowed to say yes. Yeah, some of it, you know, it's
- 15:39a again, it's going to be, I don't want to, you know, cop out
- 15:42and say it's going to be unique to everybody.
- 15:44But the reality is, I think a big part of it is data getting
- 15:47the, getting the data structures, the data
- 15:49interoperability, the data connection points, right, is one
- 15:52of the one of the biggest challenges we work with our
- 15:54retail clients on because you've got, you know, legacy data
- 15:57assets that have been in play for decades, right?
- 16:00You've got your e-commerce data over here, you've got your media
- 16:02data over there, you've now got exposure piles coming in over
- 16:05here, you got your customer loyalty data here.
- 16:08Those all can't be separate, right?
- 16:09They have to talk to each other. They have to, they have to
- 16:12support insights and audience building upfront.
- 16:15They have to support measurement on the back end.
- 16:17And if you're pulling from all those different sources, you're
- 16:20messing around with a whole bunch of Excel sheets and
- 16:22copying out of PDF files and everything else, nothing that is
- 16:26going to deliver sustainable measurement over time.
- 16:28And so the two are really connected back to your question.
- 16:32And you know, a big part of, you know, as, as retailers have
- 16:36stood up these media businesses over time, many of them have
- 16:40done so with a, a panel and an inventory and a partner focus
- 16:451st. And now we see so many of our
- 16:47retailers saying, oh great, we've scaled our business to X
- 16:51$1,000,000. But now it's becoming really
- 16:54difficult to actually scale further because the operational
- 16:57and the executional aspect of it, we can't continue to hire
- 17:01more people to execute campaigns.
- 17:03How do we actually improve the interoperability, the efficiency
- 17:08of what we can do so that we can scale further?
- 17:10Obviously you have this conversation quite a lot and on
- 17:14a daily basis and I'm putting this, but I don't know if the
- 17:17research sort of lends itself to this answer.
- 17:20But I'm curious in in your opinion, in terms of what what
- 17:23do you think or does the research show you what the
- 17:26market is still getting wrong when they're thinking about
- 17:29retail media or not wrong that can be improved because that's a
- 17:32bit too negative. I don't, you know, in terms of
- 17:35no one wants to be told that they're doing it wrong.
- 17:37But wait, where no research lend itself into, you know, so yeah,
- 17:43what, what, what, what where do where do you think they they
- 17:46could do better? I think it goes back to some of
- 17:48the personalization point that we we talked about early on and
- 17:51just how the, the baseline expectation for what
- 17:54personalization is and how a retailer and a brand engages
- 17:58with a shopper as the bar has been raised a little bit, right.
- 18:01If there's, if there's no personalization, if there's no,
- 18:05if there's no relevancy, the, the message is really just going
- 18:09to get lost in the sea of the thousands of other messages we
- 18:13see every day, right? That's just, that's just modern,
- 18:16modern life. And, and so, you know, we, we, I
- 18:19think we heard in the research from shoppers that those
- 18:21retailers who aren't delivering on that baseline expectation of
- 18:25relevancy and personalization and great customer experiences,
- 18:28they're willing to go shop elsewhere.
- 18:30They're willing to drive down the street and, and, and you
- 18:32know, get, get their goods from, you know, somebody who is
- 18:36meeting that need for them. And so that, that's a bit of
- 18:39what I think it has come out of it and, and where this
- 18:41conversation and it's going to gravitate back towards a little
- 18:44bit. Like I said, it's, it's going to
- 18:45be less about adding channels, adding inventory, adding all the
- 18:48things. And it's going to be more about
- 18:50how do you raise the bar in terms of how you're driving
- 18:53relevancy and connection using insights to actually meet the
- 18:57customer where they are based on what their data and what their
- 19:01that what their purchase behaviour is telling you.
- 19:04OK. I'm just sort of thinking
- 19:06through what you've said if you were going to describe the ideal
- 19:10retail media scenario. So based on and I think I've
- 19:13got, I've got that image in my mind, but I love to hear it from
- 19:16your perspective. So based on the research that
- 19:19you that we've gone through and that you you have released
- 19:22today, if you were going to build that perfect, you know,
- 19:272-3 years down from down the line, I'm going to act on the
- 19:30research. What would that experience or
- 19:33what, what would it look like from a business perspective, if
- 19:36you like and A and a customer perspective, Yeah.
- 19:39I'll start from the customer perspective because I think
- 19:41that's where that's where the research started and I think
- 19:44that's where I would encourage any retailer to start too.
- 19:48And brand, we've got to think about, you know, one of the
- 19:50things you know, I'm here in the US, which is, you know, a little
- 19:54bit different than other markets, but you know, 90% of
- 19:57engagement and transaction still happens in store, at least in in
- 20:01grocery and in some of the core sort of retail verticals.
- 20:03And but retail media spends is less than 1% in the US, less
- 20:09than 1% of it is in store. I mean that's completely
- 20:11backwards. And so you're talking about
- 20:13creating that that. That sort of makes sense to me.
- 20:17Right. So, you know, it makes sense
- 20:19that the size and scale of the stores and the CapEx required to
- 20:21deploy, you know, digital screens and other things too.
- 20:24But you're, you've again back to the research, taking the
- 20:28customer focused view, you've got to meet the customer where
- 20:30they are. If you're not personalising that
- 20:32in store experience, if you're not creating a great modern
- 20:35experience, you're just potentially cluttering the
- 20:37digital experience and not serving that customer as
- 20:40holistically as you need to. And so I think 2-3 years down
- 20:43the line, I think the in store media environment, not just in
- 20:47the US, but globally, it's going to continue to evolve and look
- 20:50much different than it does today.
- 20:52I think people, customers, especially younger shoppers, we
- 20:55heard in the, in the, and the research are, are craving a much
- 21:00more experiential relationship with, with retailers.
- 21:04There's been a lot written about the sort of disappearance of
- 21:06third places, right? And different things.
- 21:08And people, people want that experience, right?
- 21:11People want to be social and engage in, in different ways.
- 21:14And I, I think anybody who can, any retailers and brands who can
- 21:19take that view first on how do we, you know, 2 years from now,
- 21:22how do we create something that customers really fall in love
- 21:25with is going to be really important?
- 21:28And then, you know, to then backtrack into, all right, what
- 21:31does a retailer and what does a retail media business actually
- 21:34need to do to serve that? I think it does go back to a few
- 21:37of the things we talked about already with the
- 21:39interoperability of data with the connection points across
- 21:42different partners. You know, certainly ad tech
- 21:45partners play a major role in all of this.
- 21:47But if you've got six different ad tech partners as part of your
- 21:50retail media business and none of them talk to each other and
- 21:53there's no orchestration layer between them, how difficult are
- 21:56you making it on an advertiser to actually buy from you and to
- 22:00create, again, a consistent customer experience for your
- 22:04shoppers? Really, really, really
- 22:06difficult. And so that's where, you know,
- 22:08whether it's orchestration, whether it's an intelligence
- 22:10layer across all of those. And it's part of how we talked
- 22:13about it at Dunhambee, that that's something that's going to
- 22:15have to evolve and evolve rapidly.
- 22:18And I think the technology and the processing power exists now
- 22:21to be able to do that. But those those retail media
- 22:24businesses that are taking that view and that Longview on what
- 22:27they need to do strategically to scale their business and create
- 22:31the right customer experiences, those are the ones that are
- 22:34ultimately going to win out. I love it.
- 22:36Final question. So what one of the points that I
- 22:40I'm thinking about, where does Dunn Humby fit in this?
- 22:44Where do you come into the process?
- 22:46Like when should I be thinking to reach out to?
- 22:48You. Yeah.
- 22:48So as I mentioned, you know, we're the leaders in customer
- 22:51data science and that applies through many aspects of our
- 22:55retailer and brand business. But in media specifically, our,
- 22:59our bread and butter is, is insights and measurement.
- 23:02That's what we we hang our head on 1st is how do we help our
- 23:06retail and brand clients better understand how and where to
- 23:10deploy their media? What's going on with the
- 23:13customers? Where are you losing customers?
- 23:15What works in terms of the, the media channels based on past
- 23:19campaign execution? What's going on with the core
- 23:21retail business? And how do you reach the right
- 23:23customers with the right message at the right time that, that
- 23:25old, you know, that old adage, right?
- 23:27And then how do you close the loop back through measurement
- 23:30and how do you do it not just for one channel or for one
- 23:33partner, but across all aspects of the business?
- 23:36And so many brands are thinking about holistic investment and
- 23:40you know, it's not just about, you know, attributed spend, it's
- 23:43about what did this actually do for me above and beyond what
- 23:46would have already happened. Whether you own incrementality
- 23:49or call it something else. A core part of our, our analytic
- 23:52offering is, is insights and measurement.
- 23:55And then, you know, we help, we helped out of retail and brand
- 23:57clients with consulting advisory services as well.
- 24:01We've, we've helps retailers design their entire retail media
- 24:04business, for example. We've helped them sell and help
- 24:07them do lots of different things.
- 24:09And we've also help them at different stages in their
- 24:11journey to hey, I want to do this one thing I want to bolt
- 24:14this piece on or I'm stuck. Like, you know, we talked about
- 24:16earlier in terms of the operational aspect of running a
- 24:19media business, yeah, which we've come in and, and helps
- 24:22retailers kind of upscale their upscale their, their operations
- 24:25practise to scale differently and meet the market in different
- 24:29ways. So there's a host of things we
- 24:31do and, and, and it's one of the, it's what I, what I live
- 24:34and breathe every day. And it's, it's fun to see
- 24:37different aspects in different markets or different retailers,
- 24:40bring some of those learnings in to help 1 retailer and reach
- 24:44their own aspirations, which, you know, might or might not be
- 24:49exactly what they, they think they want.
- 24:52It's fun to have those conversations and bring that
- 24:54perspective in and help them. OK, Final question.
- 24:57If I obviously I, you know, I'm a general technologist, not a
- 25:00retail media expert, so I have to acknowledge that.
- 25:03What's the one question I should have asked you that I didn't?
- 25:09Oh gosh. I may have asked all the all the
- 25:12right ones, so if that's that's great.
- 25:15But I'm just curious, is there one question you were expecting?
- 25:18From you did ask all the right ones.
- 25:21The, the, the piece I'm surprised you didn't ask about
- 25:24is just the, the vast amount of retail media networks and retail
- 25:28media companies and businesses out there and whether or not
- 25:32there's going to be consolidation amongst them,
- 25:34whether or not there's going to be more of a network aggregated
- 25:38play across them in certain markets.
- 25:41Generally, that's part of the conversation.
- 25:42It has been for years. But you know, I have a lot of
- 25:45empathy for the reality that friends and agencies have more
- 25:49choice than ever and more to learn than ever having to invest
- 25:54across sometimes dozens of different retail media
- 25:57businesses. Learn the intricacies of it.
- 26:00I love it. Well, if people want to get hold
- 26:03of the report, which is out today, it's LinkedIn.
- 26:06The show notes. You can find it on dunhamby.com.
- 26:09And with that, Michael, thank you so much for coming to have
- 26:12this conversation with me. It genuinely is an in really
- 26:15interesting piece of interest and I look forward to possibly
- 26:19meeting you at one of these many conferences that I attend.
- 26:22Sounds great. Thanks, Alex.