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Retail Media Roundtable - Crowdsourcing the Future: AI in Retail Media · IAB Europe podcasts

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Retail Media Roundtable, the podcast from IV that dives into the dynamic world of retail and commerce media advertising.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: In this special edition, powered by our partners Miracle Ads, we're bringing you fresh insight straight from the heart of the action, recorded live at our Retail Media Impact Summit in Amsterdam.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: So whether you're seeking practical tips, strategic perspectives, or a deeper understanding of this fast-moving space, the Retail Media Roundtable is your go-to for timely and thought-provoking discussions.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: And in these exclusive live episodes, you'll hear directly from the experts and leaders influencing the future of retail and commerce media in Europe.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: So grab a seat at the table and let's dive in.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Marie Claire.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: I am the Senior Director of Industry Development and Marketing at IB Europe.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really pleased to be here with James Taylor from Particular Audience.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: James, introduce yourself, please, and tell us what you've enjoyed so far about the Retail Media Impact Summit.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Are there any particular sessions so far that have stood out for you?
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Other than your own.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: I was going to say it's the one main one I've been to.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think Daniel Knapp's research is was fantastic.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think really thinking about you know sponsored search as a commodity, but uh but actually to do a commodity thing well is is not not so easy.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I think when I we did our survey talk just now, there was a lot of interesting uh uh called an expose on amounts of retailers that still are not doing it very, very well.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously a lot of opportunity there.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um to introduce myself, sorry, so I'm James and I am the founder and CEO of Particular Audience.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we do uh on-site search recommendations, retail media, pricing and promotions, and we we unify that all under one system, and it's it's either one system or it's modules that benefit from the others and uh just improves the customer experience and the revenue the revenue a retailer can make uh overall, including retail media.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: So and we've we've just had a very interactive session um in in the town hall, crowdsourcing the uh the AI and retail media crowdsourcing the future, which I really enjoyed.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I have various takeaways, but for you, what's what's other than retailers are still not doing things very well?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like what were what are the other takeaways from from that session?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was I was uh very surprised to see that the the majority of RMNs are still not doing uh any kind of AI-backed search automation and they're sponsored search.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's still keyword-based for the most part.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh even A-B tests and holdout tests and incrementality testing, yeah, let alone the um the sort of newer synthetic audience testing, um just goes to show just how much upside there is.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And these are some of the leading retail media networks in Europe.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: W why why do you think that is?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a reluctance around we heard like maybe trust governance?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Is it is it that?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Is it the understanding?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what do you think is holding that back?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: I I think in sponsored search, or where you have you know product tiles for products that you already have on your website, the governance and guardrails are already there.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think the main reason is that too many of these retailers are just so focused on in-store and rolling that out.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, you know, on-site's taking a bit of a back seat because you know, too often you you know you get a placement or segment or keyword-based targeting solution in place on the website and you've checked that box and it's doing okay, and you you move elsewhere.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: We're missing a lot of the opportunity.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think they're missing four times the opportunity that they're currently realizing, yeah.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so do you think we are moving kind of, do you think we have a is there a you know, how do we move, I guess, beyond kind of experimentation with this?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because it feels like we're kind of in experimentation mode right now.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we how do we move to it to like it becoming the norm every day, you know, realizing that four times four X opportunity?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um other than using your product, obviously.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: So what's the problem?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: What are the steps that the you know retailers that you have when you're having conversations, how do you guide them for it?
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a transformation piece, you know, it's uh a retailer identifying a gap.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about a big retailer, having a procurement process, running an RFP, yeah.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, an RFP might be broad, which might might sort of create the wrong choice for specific needs, and maybe there needs to be a much more flexible and free approach to saying, well, how can we circumvent the six-month RFP and the integration period?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And like, how do we just in five weeks test something?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how do we get that test and learn culture going?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And in Europe it's especially hard with all of the InfoSec and and governance pieces around data security and PII and are there any are there any like good use cases out there, any retailers that are doing this well that you can maybe maybe not name, but does it does that exist?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, um actually a lot outside of Europe.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: In Europe or no?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Do I know of any in Europe that are doing it particularly well?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think for IAB Europe's Retail Media Impact Summit, the survey data is sort of self-explanatory in that piece.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I can't talk to the the knowledge or expertise uh amongst these media teams.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um I don't know how much they interface and interact with the AI or search and general e-commerce personalization teams.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what the bleed and sharing of information is there.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, there are and have been for 20 years teams that have been hard at work optimizing a user experience.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: All of that needs to be taken and applied to retail media.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it's f through fusing existing technologies they have or using an off-the-shelf product like ours.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like too often you see we're hiring a data scientist to mine data and identify segments.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, guys, you just talk, you're describing a recommendation system, and it's much cheaper than hiring someone and you have it off-the-shelf.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like you don't need to overcomplicate this, don't be afraid of the algorithm.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's got all the protection you need.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: So just the opportunity, break it down a bit for me.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, where what are the top two, three things that a retailer could do today to unlock that forex opportunity?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what are the practical steps that they could take to realise that?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think the first thing is you know, it gets beaten as a drum a lot, but relevance.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you can improve your click-through rate on your on your placements, then it's a better customer experience.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: You might have more permission to expand inventory.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you have really poor performing relevance, you're not going to get permission to expand inventory from the other teams.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: But you also don't need infinite inventory, you know.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that one thing is relevance in search and recommendations in context and uh a customer journey and sort of putting things in front of them that are predictive on what they might like.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the other side of it is, you know, things like moving beyond a manual keyword targeting, which is such a constrained view of the world.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you might search for dog food and a brand might bid on that search query, but they're unlikely to be bidding on a very long-tail query like, is my puppy old enough for tick treatment or whatever.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's its own rich intent.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And a more modern Transformer sort of search, our adaptive transformer search product, for example, um allows you to tap into those long tail queries.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, 4x is a conservative estimate in the sense that if you can tap into long tail search, multilingual search.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: Could be bigger.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's 4x on its own, right?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we I have data, case study data to support that.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: But then if you can double your click-through rates, yeah, you know, I think the uh the sky reported average click-through rate on a sponsored product is 0.39%.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Our average is 1.2%, right?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a material gain.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it's kind of for me, it feels like what what you were talking about in the session, um, you know, that that kind of long tail and what you've just said, long tail of like search queries, you know, it's much more human language.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't search dog food.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: I search I want dog food for my dog that's seven years old and search behaviour.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like flam or whatever.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, search behavior is changing, consumer behaviour is changing.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's imperative that the the businesses that are serving those consumers keep up, um, because otherwise media is going to get kind of stuck in 2026 and we're all going to be in 2029 or whatever.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's really imperative.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of um, from my experience in talking to retailers, there's also some sort of you know jumping ahead of themselves, getting ahead of their skis on the sense that they've now got a chief AI officer and they're focusing so much on you know chat-based interface applications.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think from the survey today, we saw missing such a small amount of uh agentic commerce app, you know, actual realized applications.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And they still have a terrible search or a terrible personalization experience that needs its overhauling as it goes.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that the there's a there's a there's a blip that I'm seeing where teams are emboldened by AI in the sense that they have more confidence to try to build themselves than than necessarily buy from a vendor.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And uh absolutely fine if you can do it, and Amazon and Walmart have obviously always been doing this.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, however, for every other retailer that you know you are not Amazon and Walmart, and people tend to leave your businesses and not stay there forever.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, what IP walks out the door with that individual, and yeah, did you really get the best thing on technology and in the time that it took to deliver it?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And did it keep ahead of the market thereafter?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Probably not.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that, you know, just even if you plan to build in-house, use what's available off the shelf today from a vendor and learn from it.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And if you outpace it, great.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: And and how do you get um I feel like retailers have so you know, we we have quite a few different retailers and retail media networks within our membership and and it and it's great working with all of them.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like they have, you know, a whole laundry list of challenges and things they're they're all working on, and you know, depending if they're brick and mortar or if they're you know more digital first, but how do you get them to prioritize this?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because, like you said, you they're they're kind of maybe leapfrogging and missing some bits.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: How do you get them to go to take a step back and go, guys, you you're kind of make it easy.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Just make it so easy.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like, look, we understand that it's best practice to do API, we understand that your devs have backlogs, we understand you have competing priorities, we understand you have procurement cycles.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Put this JavaScript tag on your site with the governance and privacy controls, etc., that you require, and get a POC up and running in five weeks.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: That quick.
• 11:30
  unknown: Yeah.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Just do it.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: So if they started today, they could be up and running November.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And if it works, which it should it overwhelmingly does, then you can invest your resources in putting it into your dev backlogs and juggling priorities.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: So start with a POC.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Just get it lost.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Just get some data, yeah.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, takeaways.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to kind of wrap up.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: So if there's one thing retailers should take away from from everything we've said, and and even brands as well, what what would those what would that be?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh hold your own internal dev teams accountable and challenge them with alternative options that can move the needle on retail media revenue.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, next month.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Don't don't be waiting for long cycles.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think we've seen a tremendous amount of turnover in retail media leads who were not given what they needed in the first place to actually succeed uh in these slow-moving companies.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, in a in a retail media business, you are a startup, often in a slow moving business with its with its necessary processes, but you just need more agility, otherwise you fail as a startup.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think lots to take away.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: Just very quickly, sum up today Retail Media Impact Summit in three words.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Big, okay, uh, grandiose, nice big building.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Jolly.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Jolly.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, jolly lovely, great.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you so much, James, for joining me on the Media Roundtable podcast.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having us.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, enjoy the rest of the day.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.