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Welcome to the Json and Scott show this is episode 326 being recorded on Friday June 6th I'm your host Jason retail gig Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo.
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Hey Jason and welcome back Json and Scott show listeners Jason spent about a month since we last had our schedule sync and I had to twist your arm on this 1
what have you been up to for the last month.
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Mostly just been bragging to people that you're back in the Commerce space.
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Ah appreciate it it's been it's been fun to be back everyone,
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you know everyone I talked to number 1 thing they say is they want more pods so so I put the extreme pressure on you to make sure we got this 1
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so thanks listeners for your patient we're we're going to try to at least be monthly I know we even got off that and maybe even every once in a while we'll do a couple of.
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I'm in I'm in as much Scott as I can get I I take.
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Yeah.
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And the have you pre-ordered did you do midnight Menace for your Nintendo switch too that's kind of the latest console drop it's been a while since there's been midnight Menace kind of thing but but seems like it went well based on the reports I saw.
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I know I know so no I did not it will not surprise me if I am eventually a switch to owner but I did not have enough enthusiasm to make any extra effort to get 1 when I can assign my agent to just
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order 1 for me that's probably when I'll get it.
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Yeah we're in a test with 1 of the the Chinese agents to see how it did called Manas m a n u s and it did all this thinking it thought for like 20 minutes and it said you'll like this it basically said your best bet is to call your local Staples.
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Which I thought was interesting because apparently Staples was a big was very involved in this launch which could be a hallucination I haven't fact checked this
but then it said because people don't really think about
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going to Staples to get a game console your your best bet is to call some of those and see if they have them in order so I thought that was interesting.
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It is and my assumption was that that LM was trained on Scot Wingo data and behaviors because I actually think I learned the
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how to get the desirable consumer electronics from the less popular retail channels trick from you.
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It's true and there's a longtime Star Wars fan the best Star Wars toys were at Kmart because everyone was going to Walmart and Tru No 1 thought about Kmart here in the Southeast I don't have those in Chicago.
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Yeah we we certainly did but not not many anymore there's there's this old retailer that no 1 but you has heard of called eBay that I I I heard can be a good good unpopular channel to buy some of that stuff.
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Yeah yep they usually do well I saw that they were up to so it retails there's a bundle that retails for $9.99 and I saw there were going for 6 15 to 650 so that gives you a
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kind of about a what is that like a,
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35% markup is so you know that's the that's the amount of demand that exceeds the supply on the switch to.
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Yeah now the listeners are are super curious to find out you're getting a little you're inching towards empty nest status is that going to actually like increase your your gaming,
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consumption or or are you going to have to cut back when you don't have as good a beard.
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I get really into the Zone on them and I'll look up and it'll be like 5 a.m. and I've done an all nighter unintentionally and then my weeks destroyed so I have to be very careful with my gaming because I get super sucked into them.
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And that is principle number 1 for listeners to learn know thyself.
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Yes yep so I try to try to meter out my gaming very very judiciously.
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That that is fair I can see all my bad gaming habits were passed down to my son so
it's always funny when you're your kid's biggest flaws are the ones that you gave him.
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Yeah it's the just kind of the way it works DNA is a weird thing.
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Indeed it is
so Scott I I know that in addition to trying to get these the the frequency on our podcast up you've been cheating on me with a new podcast.
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It's not cheating it's like when a band has someone it's like when Simon and Garfunkel and Simon went solo for a while because Garfunkel was was traveling amongst clients.
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Gotcha so you're saying it's not cheating when you're a polygamist does that what you're saying.
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That's 1 way of saying it.
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Yeah yeah so as part of my new obsession which is not video games I've directed that to this whole idea of a magentic shopping and have a there's a substack we talked about last time called retail gentic which is a,
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a newsletter where publishing some thought leadership around this new trend and helping people track it and think about what's going on.
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And then start started a podcast as well,
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and it's a more modern the Json and Scott is the OG so it's Audio Only but here we the the hipsters there's these new,
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places I don't know if you've heard of them but there's 1 called YouTube and
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this it's not insta cart but insta and there's no 1 called Tik Tok the there's a video format that's popular so it's both video and audio so people can choose their own adventure
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and then the the secret again this you can take this back to your friends at pubis the secret is these shorts are very popular so you take these big Snippets of the videos and put them out there and they they go crazy.
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So yes we had we had 3 published pods so far I did a little little foundational 1 just kind of talk about some of the.
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Atomic foundational Concepts,
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and then we had a friend of ours our show sutareta and then also Michelle Grant on so I'm kind of harvesting the the Jason Scott show friends to come on and.
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Understand trying to triangulate on what are people thinking about this whole agentic retail is it you know hype reality when's it coming,
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like I have you on at some point would you be so kind and then the
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so it's been fun it's been fun to chat with folks and get that out there also shout out to Scott Silverman and Melissa berdick and all the folks that have been helping me get the word out I appreciate everyone chiming in on that much appreciated.
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Yeah yeah I'm an inaugural listener for sure and it's a super
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fast fascinating and rapidly evolving topic that's seems like it's coming up every day at work right now so it's it's awesome to get some some principles and some some povs out there.
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Yeah and we're going to talk about AI so today's show is a little weird we had like a smattering of news we're not going to talk about
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Amazon earnings like has been kind of our our our anchor for the last
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3 or 4 episodes so there's kind of 2 buckets there's an AI bucket we're going to cover that second but really the main attraction and the reason we know everyone's listening to this is to pick up this,
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kind of online pod.
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Battle Royale between you and Kiri Masters where we're going to talk about retail media networks but before we do we're going to warm up with a couple other topics
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there was 2 I wanted to get your hot take on because I have an opinion and I was kind of wondering what you thought
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number 1 is I'm sure you saw the news that Nike is back on Amazon as a first-party third-party seller I guess first-party with Amazon what do you make of that.
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Yeah I mean I think it's interesting
I think it makes sense for them to be there in general I feel like the.
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All all of the channel battles have been fought and it's to me it's pretty clear that to reach the broadest possible Market which at Nike scale you you certainly have to,
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you have to be on the big marketplaces and you have to be in the big wholesalers and so you know there was this this strong pivot it Nike to to direct to Consumer and I I think,
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their smart to have a direct to Consumer Channel I think they do it pretty well but I think they went.
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2 2 extreme on it and you know now under under new leadership they're they're trying to course correct and get back so so philosophically I agree with all that what I think the interesting nuance.
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That hasn't played out with regard to Nike and Amazon yet but I I cynically have a have a hypothesis
is how.
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How important is Nike going to make marketplaces and wholesalers and by that what I mean is,
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there's Nikki has a lot of mainstream product they have a lot of they won't appreciate this this characterization but they have a lot of commodity product and then they have a lot of scarce desirable product that helped build the brand.
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And it is still true today that the scarce product is predominantly available through Nike direct channels and so as they've come back to wholesale.
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They're they're not doing the new drops in wholesale and you know they're going from zero skus on Amazon to a bunch of skus on Amazon but I'm kind of curious.
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Like what those skis will be will you be able to get the Frontline new drops on drop day will you be able to get the,
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the the main new releases shortly after drop day or will you not be able to get those at all and only be able to get the kind of more
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you know mass mass consumer products on on Amazon I think I think those kind of details are going to be what's interesting about their long-term Marketplace strategy what do you think.
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I think it's kind of the nail in the coffin of this whole you know,
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dnvb and DTC you know we're going to own the customer and just go direct I think,
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that the dnvb were the first casualties in that because they scaled up and they got to hundreds of millions of dollars or or 100 million seem to be where they capped out and then they realized well we're just paying Google you know it made it seem like they're going to
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direct to Consumer but then the reality came that it was really.
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They were inquiring the customer they just would pay Google for or or Google and Facebook all kind of put those they would pay pay the ad platforms,
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attacks so at that point if you're going to be paying the tax.
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Anyway and you're not really owning the customer you might as well be everywhere so so I think that's kind of like the conclusion Nike has come to and
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you know I think D Toc as a part of a multi-faceted strategy and you should have a piece of direct and you should try to grow it but going exclusive is cuts out
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too many of the
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places where people are you got to meet the customer where they are and this is this is kind of proof that the customers on Amazon and if Nike wants to get to them they're going to need to now they're you know there is going to be this strategy where you don't you're not going to put your hot drops on there that's
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that's the Gold Dust you're going to use to drive the direct strategy but that's not what makes all the margin the what makes the margin is the.
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The third generation you know the Air Jordan that's not scarce.
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You know you're going to sell a million of at and you get really great margin on it and and it it's being pulled by the scarcity of the.
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AJ 26 or something like that.
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No I think I I I think we agree and you know that certainly is like every every every business is slightly different but that's certainly my my sort of starting point is these are all channels it's important to have a multi-channel
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multifaceted strategy and anytime you meet a company that thinks that their their whole future is in any 1 channel that's usually problematic,
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I will say I've been surprised I have stumbled across a couple of recent examples of of outliers that like have been,
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successful going the other way and for a while I was really struggling to find them like I you know I always talk about how you can't scale the billion dollars in gmv as a d Toc company and I I did a webinar recently with my friends at Euro Monitor and they they brought the data and
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they brought up an example I hadn't considered like there's a a direct to Consumer pet food company I know you spend a a fortune on Pet Food Scott called Farmer's dog which is this like,
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fresh you know consumer formulation and they're exclusively direct to Consumer and to their credit they've built a a well in excess of billion dollar a year business doing it so so it is possible I still I don't think that's the.
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The happy pass for the vast majority of Brands and I don't think that's the path to maximize your Revenue.
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Got it
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and then the other type of that was interesting is someone from 1 of The Wall Street analysts contacted me and he's like hey have you heard about this weird thing going on between Amazon and Google and I said no I haven't and
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apparently this is from you may know what this is but median tenuity client
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there's some data set out there from you know someone in the ad world and they basically look at the they they have enough ad spend going through whatever platform they have to know
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the impressions of the big advertisers on Google shopping so we're specifically within the Google shopping part of Google
and around,
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May 21st Amazon.
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Impressions went from maybe 60% of the time you would see an Amazon product to sub 30 so the implication is Amazon has pulled back dramatically on this spend most their spend is on.
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And this excludes AWS and Kendall and Alexa and you know that we're talking just the retail part of Amazon
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the book of the retail part of Amazon spend is on Google shopping as makes sense because it's driven by product searches and
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it feels like they've pulled back about half of what they were spending their or more and
so I didn't really have,
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I mean I I have a universe of what it could be and I was curious what you thought was going on there.
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Yeah so also don't know what it is I do know what tenuity is it's it's 1 of these these data panel that that tries to estimate add spend on Google on Google I I saw that that report,
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and I think it's too early to give very excited about it here's here's what I'm guessing a the the fundamental underlying thing here that people don't realize or forget that super interesting to me is.
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The main Amazon's main business and by far their most profitable business is eyeball Arbitrage.
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So as we've talked about a bunch of times on this show their their most profitable business is is their retail media business that it it it's you know approaching.
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It it's way higher margin than anything else and and in terms of operating income contribution it it exceeds AWS and anything else,
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but what people forget is how do they get all those eyeballs all those eyeballs do not organically go to Amazon I'm sure they get a very healthy chunk of organic traffic but Amazon is also the largest Advertiser in the world and as you just pointed out,
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the place they buy the most ads is on Google so so the real business here is Amazon buys eyeballs from Google
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they sell something to those eyeballs on the Amazon 1p and 3p Marketplace and they they they they monetize that that sale and then,
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they sell and add to that eyeball to someone else
for more money than they bought it for
which is a awesome business right so.
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That's their their sort of Baseline business that that's been super successful for them and continues to scale and grow great.
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So now you've got all this crazy economic uncertainty you've got all the these tariff threats you've got all these import threads.
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The the the half-life on all of these Channel strategies is about 3 days right now right because every every 3 days circumstances change,
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and the 1 of the first ways that companies react to these potential,
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headwinds in their business model based on regulations and based on taxes and tariffs is they cut back on the customer acquisition they cut back on the media spend and so to me.
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It feels like
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when Amazon you know Amazon waited as long as they could they had a bunch of product in their Channel they didn't have to pay tariffs on but when you know it started looking like they were really going to meaningfully have to pay a significantly enhanced tariff on a
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significant portion of their sales they slowed down their advertising right and.
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The the tenuity data like only has 1 week of of data where the,
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the spend has way dipped down and so you know the magic question for me is 2 months from now are we going to see,
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is that lower advertising rate The New Normal at Amazon and are they are they cutting way back and being more conservative
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is it going to bounce right back in 2 weeks you know a bunch of the the most feared tariffs got delayed yet again and so it wouldn't surprise me to see,
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them kind of you know return to their normal advertising levels but I to me it likely this likely reflects like Amazon making some fast Corrections you know based on the complicated macroeconomics that are playing out right now.
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Yeah we probably won't know until the announced Q2 but so Wall Street kind of had a couple of possibilities there were they were thinking well maybe it's the tariffs starting to hit the business and and,
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pulling the emergency brake on spending another 1 was they're going to absorb some of the tariffs and it's hitting margin and they're going to have to pull back some ad spend so those are kind of like.
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2 sides of the same coin
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and then you know another 1 was at this point maybe they're tuning their customer acquisition engine and they already have so many customers they
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they decided that this the ROI on this particular Channel isn't great
so those are some of the things out there.
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So we don't we won't know until we kind of see how the earnings and I've I remember Amazon did this 1 time and then they just kind of came roaring back to,
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you know like in a week so sometimes they're just playing games out there.
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Yeah and as as you.
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It could be a test.
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Yeah exactly and as you pointed out sometimes they just they're they're engineering a particular outcome for for their quarterly earnings right and so you know.
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It it's not beyond the realm of possibility that they decide they just need to be like less in market for a particular week.
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Yeah and we are you know positional awareness we're kind of like almost at that midpoint of the quarter so they they've got you know 45 dates of data for the quarter that we don't have that that they're searing the ship on
the the other the other
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conversation topic what's this mean for Google is this bad for Google and you know
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the thing that's interesting there is it's not a zero sum game for Google because it's an auction right so let's say Amazon
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comes out of the auction totally the under bidders are just going to come and get that traffic but it is you know it actually could start to be material because you probably had in this chart and we'll put it in the show notes
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Walmart is is holding steady but this 1 they they intend they they actually had Teemu and shien on here and Amazon and if you
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look at the trend of those 3 things is down in the right significantly so at some point Facebook and Google are going to feel it with these
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biggest Spenders taking some money out I'm not sure there's enough backfill to come fill all of that but it that's going to be another interesting thing here in Q2 to see there there's some some knock-on effects I think Google's and we'll talk about this later Google's
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biggest risk is AI and and I'm I'm I'm squarely in the camp that well we'll talk about when we get there.
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All right um I I will say that this this whole conversation about like what happens when a big Advertiser pulls out has come up a lot recently like there's,
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you know Amazon's the biggest Advertiser so that's a you know very meaningful if they're slowing down and particularly they they slow down for prolonged period it would have a.
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Prominent sort of head effect and a a tail effect on a bunch of things.
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You know the other big advertisers that have been out there for a while are the Chinese direct to Consumer businesses right and.
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They they are a big players on Google they're even bigger players in the meta ecosystem and you know tariffs are most directly impacting them and the changes to Dominus so they have.
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For sure pulled way back on their advertising investment and in fact like in the case of she and they moved all those dollars to Europe and so we talk a lot about well what does that mean for,
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people on meta like if if you know the highest bidder pulls out like our you know our our cpms improving on meta.
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As these big advertisers leave and it turns out the answer is way more complicated and uncertain than you might think because the.
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The wrinkle on all these things we we like to think of of these bidding on ads as a as sort of a product with scarcity and that you know people multiple people are bidding for the same terms but there actually is unlimited inventory of these things so it's not like.
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There's there's more inventory and they're they're all using these complicated.
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Auction system you know second price auction systems these like the the terms of art are like the victory card Groves auction system is is the.
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The foundation of the meta advertising platform bidding platform and and so.
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It does lower the winning bid when a a major Advertiser pulls out but but only very nominally so it's it's it's kind of interesting to see what the the long-terms impact are like certainly like it impacts.
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The advertising platform's Revenue
but it but it may not have as.
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Have to do what was this called we'll have to do a whole show on This this term of art you just use.
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Yeah yeah I feel like you you should be the um you're this is going to be your deep deep dive that's going to cause you to realize it's 5 a.m.
is is you know they in the old days of auctions it was like whoever had the highest price.
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When the auction and that's what they paid right and.
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Yeah and I've heard of like a Chinese auction there's like a lot of different flavors I've never heard of the 1 you said.
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Yeah so so like most of the world has like moved to these second price auctions where like the you know the winning bid pays like a fraction more than the second highest bid,
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and then all of these economists have come in with these like changes to that auction system to to make it even more efficient and more maximize the the revenue for the
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the platforms and I think these are the names of the economists so I think like,
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I think there there was a system called the victory auction and a system called The Clark auction and a system called a gross auction and,
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uh meta in particular their actual bidding system is a black box which has a lot of advertisers kind of up in arms because you like,
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you can't actually do the math to know what you're going to pay,
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but but they they basically said that their their algorithm is an amalgamation of these of these 3 documented bidding systems so they call it a victory card Groves auction system.
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Hmm okay with a a hint of maximizing Revenue to meta.
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Probably more than a hint.
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A touch a scooch.
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Okay now for the main event the retail media Network Battle Royale
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so the way this started is on May 6th about a month ago we did episode 325
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and Jason you just jumped right out there and said you know I'm kind of burned down on retail media Networks,
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here's 4 reasons why I think they're kind of meh I'm not super excited about them and I said,
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Jason be careful you're going to get Carrie really fired up and carry Masters is she ran a agency sold it and then.
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Bob Squad marketing.
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Yeah there you go I didn't even know the name and then now,
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now she does a variety of different Consulting things and she has a excellent podcast and and newsletter called retail media Breakfast Club.
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And
she as the name would imply the first 2 words are retail media she spends a lot of time in this world of retail media Networks
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and sure enough less than 2 days after we posted that on May 8th she had a rebuttal the beginning of rebuttal that basically said hey Jason says retail media is actually kind of quote unquote mid
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does some kind of fancy term the kids use today
and then she sent a call out she kind of highlighted your for for criticisms if you will and,
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areas for uh Improvement we'll call them and then
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21 days later the industry rallied and provided her with a lot of data and she kind of flushed out her argument so here we are June 6th and I'm going to tee these up for you and see what you're so you've had your argument she had her counter and now we're going to have the Jason counter to the counter
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so
is that a fair setup or do you want to change any.
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Yeah yeah yeah no I think.
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I think that's mostly Fair like a fun fact I'm not sure if you fully realized Scott but like what you and Kiri have exactly in common is you,
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you both were like awesome and successful in the Commerce space you both foolishly thought there'd be something interesting outside of the Commerce space and then you you subsequently realized that the Commerce space is the best and came back.
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Um and so so I I feel like you might be kindered spirits and I.
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1 of the problems with doing a podcast for 11 years for someone like you and I have been doing now is I sometimes forget we record these things so it probably wasn't that smart for me to like.
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Take a a position that maybe isn't super popular at my employer that sells a lot of advertising that that thing goes on the podcast and then
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cury to help we amplify it wrote this awesome article Jason Goldberg says retail media is mid and so so there there was a day in pubis where like that title is was.
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Was thrown around pretty liberally on our on all of our teams chats and I I had to quickly explain to everyone and I I think this is fair this is not a reinstatement like.
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Retail media is awesome for the biggest players in the ecosystem and and as a huge business for for Amazon and Walmart and pendwa Duo and others the,
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I'm I'm more concerned about how profitable retail and how big a deal retail media can be for the longer tale of retailers and particularly
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specialty retailers and Regional retailers so that that was kind of my position so some of the people like chiming in on Curious Thing are like Jason's crazy don't you know how big amazon is and.
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That's that's not my position I do know how big amazon is and I think they can get a lot bigger in their in their advertising business um so so that
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Kiri understood that and like her arguments are are more targeting the
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the stuff where where she and I probably legitimately disagree but it's awesome because she's super smart and I'm happy to hear her position and I'm happy to to learn that I'm wrong I gotta be honest so far she has not convinced me.
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Okay you're somewhat biased but let's let's let the listeners be the they're they're going to call the balls and Strikes so and I'm just the moderator in this whole Wacky World.
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No you're just the the pot store is what you really are.
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Some say arsonist but yeah I'll take poster that's a nicer version okay so there's basically 4 areas of disagreement and we're going to go through them,
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pretty quickly here so your your initial position was and you just recited it that it's really
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concentrate on if you really zoom out this is basically an Amazon thing and,
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you basically said that Amazon has 76% of the ad spend and then you have Walmart is the next biggest at 8 and all the rest is basically 16%.
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So that's your argument curious counter is she acknowledges that Amazon's dominant but she does highlight.
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The longer tail and she kind of throws Walmart Target Kroger and a bunch of others in there they offer unique inventory and different formats
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and if you look they're growing faster than Amazon in many cases and over time they're going to start to pull away from Amazon what is your counter to the counter.
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Yeah well they are all growing faster because they're they're wildly smaller and the the law of large numbers plays out but it's still like Walmart is almost certainly twice as big as the next biggest retail media Network and so,
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the you know if if their directionally around 8% and they don't disclose their number so we're just we're using some
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some third-party estimates if their directionally 8% of the market and Amazon's 76% of the market the the third largest add retail media Network which is probably like instacart,
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is less than 4% of the market so it they could grow really fast and still never be meaningful it's it's for sure true that some of these platforms all have
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unique ad formats and unique audiences in the main argument they're all going to make is we don't have the scale of the big ones but we have better eyeballs right like you can't buy near as many eyeballs from us but you can buy more targeted eyeballs from us because we know our customer better and our customer picks us because we're special and so you can buy that special eyeball and in general I think all those are
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arguments are true it's still just doesn't add up ever add up to enough dollars to be meaningful right and if you're you're the.
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The the main media spender at a huge fast moving consumer goods company say Your Mark Pritchard at at Procter and Gamble,
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you don't have the luxury of working really high to buy
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super special eyeballs for 2% of your audience like it just it just doesn't economically make sense like you need you need to buy hundreds of millions of eyeballs to to move the needle and make your comps.
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Yeah but let's let's say,
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so for instacart for example yes it's small in this larger thing but it's big enough for them that it basically makes all the margin like if you're your argument is these Regional ones are you know you're not sure it's going to work but it doesn't have to be that big for them.
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You know it will be teeny tiny compared to Amazon but it doesn't have to be that big for them because it's pure margin to move the needle on the the ibida so.
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Yeah now but in true fair and that that like that,
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potentially Jim argument it would be better if you could make that argument for HEB than instacart because I actually said like in the
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episode 5 325 that instacart is probably big enough to be profitable too
at at 4% of the market right so I actually think you're right they,
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safe enough squarely on the other side of the chasm to still win but the magic question is can a regional grosser win can a you know.
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A specialty retailer for for uh nutritional supplements when can these these kinds of folks have a big enough retail business,
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to justify the effort and this is going to get conflated with with the next argument but the.
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I I think there's not a lot of great examples of them already winning so that you you have to believe some future potential and you know time will tell.
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The ones that have the most the biggest numbers have the biggest numbers because.
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Reclassifying a bunch of Revenue that they already had right so the so part of my argument in 325 was,
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when you when you get down when your HB which I'm using HB as an example HB is the best grocery store in Texas right they're great people love them but they're only in Texas they're not huge they don't have a huge audience.
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The.
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When they launched a retail Network and lean into it and then there's public reporting on on you know estimating how much revenue they're getting a big chunk of that revenue is,
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the trade dollars that they've been getting for the last 50 years in their store and when they hired,
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a VP of Revenue to launch a retail media Network the first thing he did is hey instead of buying
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the the store circular and the floor decal from your your merchants in your joint business partner meeting you're now going to buy those those advertising opportunities from me through a website and I'm going to count that Revenue.
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Mhm
yeah so you're just moving dollars from the.
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So if you take those dollars out I haven't seen any any of these like specialty retailers are really small retailers even that are great at what they do I haven't seen them generate enough Revenue to.
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To justify the the effort.
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Gotcha.
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All right argument so Jason says show me 2 very specific things being successful and then I'll call you when this is what you do to me on predictions
you you make the success criteria this little pinhole that's impossible.
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Yes yes keep moving moving the gold post and shrinking them.
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This teeny tiny little gold post
uh.
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57 words in my title is strategist.
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I was wondering if you've been picking up my uh yeah I'm not sure after this episode retail media is going to still be in your title or not I may have to take that 1 out.
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Yeah I feel like you had Michelle Grant on on your your new podcast that you like better than ours and I I think she officially has 2 times as many words as me.
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You need to get to work Buddy stop stop throwing your strategic stuff into the Buster.