0:00 Get started. Welcome in, everyone. I am so excited that you joined us today. We'll do some brief intros while everyone else is is, coming on board here. 0:13 This is one of my favorite topics. I am so thrilled that everyone decided to join today. We are gonna be talking about retail media reimagined as we are starting to see major shifts in the industry, from a an ad inventory perspective and a creative standpoint. 0:29 There's so much opportunity. Again, hands down one of my favorite topics and, I'm Joe Callahan. I'm the VP of client strategy here at Bazaarvoice. 0:39 I spent my entire career in media. I've I was at Unilever for a decade. I also led our in house studio while I was there, so I spent a tremendous amount of time thinking about content and what works, why, where, and how. 0:51 Also did a quick stint at Pinterest for two years. And so, having been, you know, client side, publisher side, and seeing all of this come together, I am so, so excited. 1:01 And I am absolutely thrilled to be with two of my very good friends in the industry today. Dave and Jeff, I'm gonna let you introduce yourselves. Dave, we'll start with you. Take it away. 1:12 Thanks, Joe. Pleasure to be here with you and Jeff today. Incredible panel and, as you said, a great topic. I'm Dave Feinly, founder and CEO of It's Rapid. 1:22 We're a leading provider of creative creative automation solutions. What that means is we help brands like Pepsi, Mondelez, Instacart, many others create retail media banners, videos, PDP content, even sell sheets and catalogs for print and in store. 1:40 So really excited to be here talking with you and and our audience today about some of the challenges when it comes to producing all this creative, but also the incredible opportunity. 1:50 Thanks, Dave. Thanks, Joe and and Bizzare Voice team, and thanks everybody for joining today. My name is Jeff Malmade. I lead the commerce practice at Mindshare. 2:02 Commerce across the board is a end to end ability to connect consumers across their omnichannel journey, whether that's in the physical store or whether that's in a marketplace or on a product detail page. 2:13 And how do we connect with those consumers throughout that journey from a media perspective is what we focus on and help our clients put together overall ecommerce programs that allow us to connect across that omnichannel journey. 2:27 My one of my remits is to understand what's happening in the world of retail media and how it's evolving and how different types of marketplaces are bringing new solutions to the market and how those can impact our clients. 2:39 So, you know, we'll talk about it in much more detail shortly, but the product detail page and the experience of what ratings and reviews brings is extremely important to many of our clients as well as what we do day in and day out. 2:52 Awesome. Alright. Let's jump in. I am I will tell you guys, if you have questions, please type them in the q and a box. I promise we will try to get to them if we have time. 3:01 We have a jam packed session, but we are fast talkers, so good news for for everybody. And if you're watching the replay, just put it in point five speed instead of, instead of two x, and you'll be just fine. 3:11 I'm gonna level set. I just wanna do a quick intro, about the changing landscape, within the retail media space and what we're seeing and some of the challenges that we were facing on the brand side and the publisher side, before we jump in. 3:25 This is just a massive growth space. So we're seeing twenty two percent growth year on year, in media investment for retail media networks. 3:33 And that is not a small amount of spend either because typically when you see tremendous amount of growth like that, maybe it's starting with a small number. And in fact, in less than three years, it's projected that a third of all digital media investment will be via retail media networks, and a fourth of total media investment. 3:50 That is a tremendous number. So if you think about just the size of this, investment, it's just it's it's massive in the industry. 3:59 The other thing that's happening and and the reason that the growth is able to do what it's able to do is that retail media networks are starting to shift to a full funnel opportunity. 4:09 And so where search is still dominating, on-site search is still dominating, in many in many places. As an industry, we're rapidly moving to on-site and off-site display. 4:19 You have video opportunity of social syndication buys, CTV and addressable television, digital in store opportunities, and it it goes on. 4:29 And so this is where we're starting to see some of the content challenges that we're facing. And and the reality is you you get, you know, when you have that multi format, methodology, you really see uplift in uplift in performance. 4:42 So if you're running search and display, you have consumers that are more likely to buy. They tend to spend more money than those who just saw search, for example. And so this multi format, multi objective, retail media buy is is is also a really big play here. 4:56 And so as an industry, we've been spending so much time thinking about what inventory am I buying, what's the placement, which audience am I reaching, valuable first party, high high purchase intent audiences with that retail media, expertise. 5:10 And, the reality is we need to spend more time on what's going inside the ad inventory. If we know that seventy percent of media effectiveness is driven by content and creative, What goes inside that placement is critically important. 5:23 So let's let's talk about it. Jeff, I'll start with you. As as we are seeing this rapid evolution of retail media networks, what's the biggest shift that you're seeing with retailers and brands as they're approaching the space? 5:37 Oh, Jeff, I think you're muted. I am muted. Thank you. I should have learned by now. Great setup, Joe. 5:45 I I do think retail media and what we're seeing in the marketplace is going through a rapid transformation. You know, post post COVID, you saw a lot of dollars start flow into the retail media ecosystems. 5:57 Even pre COVID, you started to see a lot of focus on what's happening in the space. But depending on the retailer, retail media is typically a must buy for many CPG clients in general. 6:09 Right? If you think about it, there's so much, going into capabilities as it relates to relationship, as it relates to the ability to help drive sales, and the ability to measure it. 6:20 And retailers are also seeing that this is becoming a channel that's driving a tremendous amount of revenue for them, so they're building out their capabilities. 6:29 And traditional publishers, and you mentioned it, walled gardens, social platforms, they're also looking to build out. What does my relationship look like with a retailer, and how do I leverage all that data in order to deliver messages that are relevant to consumers at the right place at the right time? 6:45 And this puts a lot of pressure on brands overall. Right? How do I identify how much I should be spending on retail, and how much should I be spending on traditional publishers that I've worked with for for many years, and how do I bring that together in order to deliver the most optimal outcomes? 7:03 And data, obviously, too is a big component of it. So there's a lot of things happening in the marketplace, which is all, positive. Right? 7:11 We're moving in the right direction, but it's it's a it's taking time. Right? And I think that if you look at what's happening now, where, traditionally, brands would drive traffic to their dot com sites, driving traffic to a retail dot com is building brand awareness for many brands in a variety of different ways. 7:30 Many times, consumers are touching and feeling your brand for the first time through Walmart's product detail pages in the palm of your hand through a mobile phone. Right? So the ability to connect with the consumer in that space, leveraging media to help drive back to that product detail page is is tremendously valuable. 7:48 So we're seeing a lot of that shift happening. And then also working with partners from a creative standpoint and building out different experiences that are relevant to them at the right place at the right time and providing that valuable insight that they're looking for when they're searching for your products within marketplaces. 8:06 So as I wanna build on that with Dave because as we're talking, Jeff, about, you know, brand building happening on retail dot com, and we have this new upper funnel opportunity to identify those valuable first party high purchase intent audiences from our from our retailers in off-site environments. 8:25 Dave, what are you seeing from your clients in terms of what types of assets are are being built? How are how are they thinking about being able to leverage those brand building opportunities within the retail media space? 8:38 Yeah. Such a great area, and it's easy to lose sight of the fact that this space didn't exist, just five, six years ago. You know, five years ago, it didn't make an earnings call. 8:49 Today, it's on every retailer's earnings call. They're talking about the contribution of the retail media network, to the overall numbers. 8:59 So in that light, it's really a huge part of the investment for the retailers and therefore also for for the brands and the advertisers. 9:07 And so when you think about the opportunity for the brands, there's, like, a big Bev/Alc brand that we work with. Again, five years ago, they might have thought about a few different services from a national perspective. 9:21 Now they're looking at twenty different retail media networks that they wanna create assets for. So those assets come in all kinds of types, banner ads for display, could be, TV, could be in store. 9:36 It could be print that they wanna do. It could be all the nuances of all the different pile opportunities, for example, on a Walmart or on different retailers. 9:45 So the breadth of the opportunity set and the the volume of the surface is so big now, and they wanna go after all this opportunity, as Jeff was saying, whether it's for brand building or because they have specific campaigns that they're focusing on, that's really this opportunity for the the big brands and what what we see with them, in in our work with them. 10:09 And that's gotta create a tremendous amount of pressure on them. I think back to my time, running u Studio and our creative agency roster back at Unilever. 10:18 And, just the demand for content, the volume of content needed across the entire digital ecosystem, and now you think about retail media network opportunity and even how you create a compelling and consistent experience across all of that environment. 10:33 Are brands, coming to you because they're having, you know, challenges coming up with that volume of content? Are they looking for speed? 10:41 Like, what what's what are you hearing, as as you're in the space? Yeah. We we like to say it's the the trifecta of speed, its scale, and its quality. 10:53 And we've always wanted all three. Anyone who's done a marketing campaign, built a set of ads, you always want those three things. The challenge is how do you execute on those? 11:02 And now, really, brands are seeing the speed of this entire environment, just move at a much different pace than it did before because you do have all this inventory. 11:14 And so the retailers and the retailer retail media case, they have they have a lot of opportunities for the advertisers to act on. So speed is one reason clients come to us, scale, breadth, and type of assets, variations on messaging, variations on product mix and offer, and then making sure it's compliant with the brand guidelines, bringing in things like UGC, with Bazaarvoice, and then the ability to really adhere to those retail media requirements. 11:45 Yep. Amazing. And, Jeff, as you're as you're working through with your clients and and being even on the on the media buying side, how are you looking at a seamless and frictionless shopping experience and opportunity to buy? 11:58 How are these things working together for you? Yeah. It's, it's a very challenging space, and it provides us a lot of opportunity to explore and test and learn and to drive outcomes. 12:11 One of the key components of what we look to do day in and day out is make that is make that overall experience seamless for consumers to effortlessly buy across platforms or channels. 12:22 And when I say buy, I know a lot of people aren't just gonna see an ad and buy right then and there. But there may be a small portion of people that do. So as long as you have different types of components that allow for consumers to do what they want, that's tremendously important. 12:37 Right? So if you even have a traditional out of home ad somewhere, QR codes. If you have an on-site ad that's running off sites if you're if you have a media asset that's running off-site across a variety of different channels, whether it's in social, whether it's in display, have that ability to add to cart is tremendously important. 12:59 The the challenge becomes and the opportunity is, how do I find the right mix of messages and creative assets to deploy across these ecosystems? 13:10 We did a recent analysis, across one retail media network where we found they had a hundred and forty seven different types of ad placements. That's a tremendous amount of ad placements within their ecosystem. 13:22 So when you get back to the how do I operationalize, and what Dave was talking about, how do I make things faster, more effective, and drive outcomes, you know, that's where we come into play and say, these are the best tactics to utilize from a media perspective, whether it's on-site display, search, social, programmatic, video, CTV, you name it. 13:45 What is the optimal mix to then help drive specific outcomes? You know, going back to what I mentioned before about tap to buy, click to buy, driving traffic. 13:55 At the end of the day, if you're still driving traffic to a product detail page, you're helping drive organic rank within that marketplace. Right? Just the traffic alone is gonna help feed the algorithm. 14:05 So the more you could help drive traffic to that product detail page with ratings and reviews that you may have and pushing that out to the market with different types of components of what you're seeing trending within the ratings and reviews and how do you tweak that into your messaging from a creative standpoint, and then how do you amplify that in paid media is also very important. 14:25 So bringing all of that together in a very unified, succinct manner across the omnichannel journey is something a lot of our clients, are excelling at, and others along the journey are at different stages. 14:40 Right? So having partners like yourselves help along those journeys and, you know, provide insights and the ability to to leverage what works well and different types of case studies is very important. 14:53 I love it. And, let's pivot to the role of creator and user generated content, but let's stay on that point you made around the PDP because I have been humbled by the the product detail page. 15:05 As a media professional, I have a whole new level of respect, for the weight that that carries. And you guys have heard me say this a million times. 15:16 You know, Jeff, you just touched on it. This is such an important aspect of the retail media environment because not only is it driving the algorithm, search, discovery, it is the landing experience for so many of those retail media dollars that we're investing in. 15:33 But I think the most important thing I've discovered and why what's flipped my my per my perception of the PDP has been that if you think about sponsored search for a minute, and this is like seventy to eighty percent of total retail media investment is still search, and you think about each of those that appear let's just say on the top of the search engine result page. 15:54 Those are all ads. The content that populates those ads comes from the PDP. It's your product shot. It's your, you know, detail. 16:02 It's your it's your price, and then it's star rating and review count. So if we don't put enough emphasis on how we're showing up on PDP, quality, quantity, recency of review content, then what's populating that ad is suboptimal. 16:18 And so I think the PDP is a critical media asset at this point, and we should put as much rigor into thinking about how we position that as we do a TV asset or an online video or digital display banner, anything else that we're building in the space. 16:36 So I have a new respect for the PDP. I think it plays a critical role here. As we move up the funnel, and and and, Jeff, I'll go back to you on this one for a second, How are you thinking about this opportunity, the next phase of leveraging communities like creators and and social UGC to deliver those authentic consumer experiences with this environment as well? 16:56 Yeah. I think, when you look at the space and the evolution, and a lot of what we do is deal with marketplaces locally as well as global marketplaces because my remit is global. 17:07 How do you bring the best overall voice to that specific consumer who shops at your retailer and your marketplace? And what we're seeing happening, and a lot of times people will say this is a very big challenge because you have so many different influencers in the marketplace, and you have so many different retailers in the marketplace. 17:26 And from a creative standpoint, how do you bring that to life? You know, what what we think is that the ability to tap into a local retailer and then tap into that local retailer's influencers who currently work with them. 17:40 Right? Bringing that to life and bringing those retailers and those influencers together in a social environment and then cascading that ad across all the social platforms and then driving back to the PDP page, Joe, to your point, you know, is a critical aspect. 17:56 So it goes back to the world of I really enlightened today by the fact that people are leveraging search, as you mentioned before, that seventy to eighty percent, whatever that number is, and everybody's gonna have a different stat. 18:11 Social. Right? From a social perspective, I think that's where the fuel is right now. So the search, social, and then a video. 18:19 So all of those combined, those three elements, search, social, and streaming, video is a core component of driving consumers from an awareness perspective all the way back to the PDP page and engaging with them. 18:31 And then leveraging all those audience insights and data components, that's gonna help drive more and more traffic. Yep. And and, Dave, as as Jeff has just said on a really important component in delivering fit for platform social assets within the environment, you know, we work really well together on taking that content and adapting it for traditional ads. 18:52 Talk more about that. Yeah. I mean, the incredible thing is when we we talk to a customer and their first worry is they'll say, I'm just not sure I have enough good content to start with to embark on this journey where I now want to create content and media for all these different services. 19:10 And then when you take a look at what they've really got, they have an incredible amount of content. They've got this really authentic content that's amazing for connecting with the shopper. 19:21 How can we bring that into the story that we're gonna tell? They have brand content that they've built. How can we bring that in? 19:29 And they have their insights that they've developed from talking to their own customers. So how do we bring that data in to this creative process? 19:37 So brands have a surprising amount of content. Now it might not, to your point, be in the right size, the right format, the right aspect ratio. 19:46 It had messaging for a different campaign built into it, but the base is there. And so, really, I think the opportunity and why we work so well with you at Xar Voice is to take some of that content they have and be able to, as you said, make it fit for size across all these different formats and networks and surfaces that they wanna build on. 20:09 And that's really what it's about is how can we more authentically connect with the shopper, and how do we take that content and and just distribute it and produce it in a way that makes that possible. 20:21 Yep. I love the idea of sweating the asset and taking all of this amazing social UGC creator visual creator content, pair it with review verbatim, star rating as your copy, and reimagine the traditional ad. 20:37 I know we did a lot of this work, back in in in my in my in the past, and we saw a really nice twenty to thirty percent uplift in performance when we used verbatims and star rating in some of our display assets, in some of our our social assets, it's really powerful social proof. 20:55 And so, the other thing that I think is really, really important, and I was just reading, a recent piece of research that CreativeX put out, which is, what are the most impactful, levers that you can pull for creative effectiveness? 21:09 And the first, the first one on the top of the list is the human element. And so you think about, building that sense of, like, intimacy and human presence in ads. 21:19 That is what drives the most impact in ads. And if you think about what can creator and user generated content is so great at at its core, it's the human element. 21:28 And so I'm a believer, and I just think it's an amazing opportunity, to resonate with shoppers and consumers as well. Now look. I'm looking at the clock. 21:36 We have three minutes left. We're gonna get kicked out of here. Any parting thoughts from each of you? This has been a blast. I always enjoyed. This is my favorite topic. 21:45 But, Jeff, I'll start with you and then go to Dave. Just, like, sixty seconds of your of of your takeaway. Yeah. I think that the exciting part about the world we live in today, specifically with retail, media, commerce, or however you're defining it within your organization, is you need to lean in and you need to test and learn, and you need to excel in terms of how do I understand exactly what's driving incremental sales across the overall retail media ecosystem, and how does creative play a large role in helping make that make that happen. 22:18 I do feel as though we get caught up a lot in the data behind the scenes, which is extremely important. But what is that message you're putting out to the consumer, whether it's on your product detail page or whether that's in a social asset or whether that's in a connected TV, asset that's running in the market, and how are you driving traffic back to learn. 22:37 So I do think there's a lot of opportunity, and we need to lean in more, specifically from a brand side, agency side, and creative side, as well as folks at Bazaarvoice building out your assets and continuously evolving, and bringing us new insights. 22:53 Thank you. And, Dave? Jeff, so well said. Well, I'll come back to what I said earlier, which is really speed, scale, and quality. 23:02 That's really the the big challenge. And if we can do all of that while also being authentic when we're getting that message through and listen. 23:12 We're all shoppers, so we know when we go to the PDP, what do you go look at when you go to the PDP well, you look at the description, you look at those reviews, you look at images. 23:22 Those those are the elements. And so the more we can bring that to the front and the top of the funnel, the more powerful this connection is gonna be. 23:31 So a great opportunity to do more with, all our brands and retailers. And thanks, Joe. Yeah. That's right. Thank you all thank you both so much for joining me. 23:41 This has been fun. We should take this on the road. Thank every thank you everyone in the audience for joining. I I'm told, it's time now to move back into tracks. 23:51 So as a reminder, the brand track focuses on scaling influence, UGC, and content strategies. And the retail track covers retail media, PDP optimization, and AI driven commerce. 24:03 So moving back into tracks now. Thank you all so much for joining. Have a great day. Goodbye.
