Life in Programmatic Digital Out-of-Home
00:14:04 · Dan Larden, Jon Mundy
[00:14:04] S2: So question actually then, so when you're because we're seeing this as well. So when we speak to the likes of Nectar or Dunhumby, they say that an awful lot of their conversations are direct to the brands and a lot of their buyers are speaking to them directly and buying directly. When you see out of home under the retail media spectrum, are you seeing that coming more directly from the brands themselves than through the agencies? Because I think within this conversation, it's really interesting to understand the role of the agency here in the retail media space. [00:14:38] S1: My experience is that it's still very much agency focused. We work more closely with the agencies, the specialists still, you know, hold court and all that sort of thing. But there is a change happening, and I think Programmatic is is part of that change. You know, it's with... It's changing people's perception of of out of home as part of that. And when it becomes available to the teams that wouldn't traditionally have bought it, then you'll start seeing more revenue coming from brand direct because they'll find out that, you know, they're buying through Trade Desk or whatever for their in house team. They'll be like, Oh, we can buy we can buy the bus stop outside. Can we? We could tie that into the campaign we're doing at Tesco. Oh, okay. So there you go. And then it becomes, you know, and I think that that shift is something that is starting to happen and will only accelerate.
00:15:31 · Dan Larden
[00:15:31] S2: Yeah. That's where it's very interesting for our industry in general. And probably for the majority of people that will listen to this podcast, right? There'll be media people. Yeah. But actually, when I speak to a head of shopper at a big effort team, they're so used to going directly to all of their supermarkets. They've got global deals with all of the big, the Walmarts and the Tesco's, etcetera. They've been buying cardboard since the 70s to sort of do a price promotion thing. So they are coming into our world within this because they're saying, I don't really understand the media world, and there's quite a lot of different pieces of the media world which are coming in, I. E. Infrastructure, measurements, attribution, all that sort of stuff, which we're really okay with. But equally, you've got this idea of the media guys who suddenly have no idea about price and promotion and cardboard and real estate, really. So I think that role of the agency piece is going be very interesting because if the shopper trade and ecom and these guys who previously have not really ever known the media side suddenly control, it's going be really interesting.
00:16:44 · Jon Mundy
[00:16:44] S1: Yeah, that agency is suddenly waking up to the fact that they have to start talking to retailers as media owners, as sources and as data partners is fascinating. Actually, it's already happening. If you look at the stuff that Publicis has done with Carrefour in France and that sort of evolution, is an absolute shift. Every major agency group has got a head of retail and a severe focus on retail and a strong focus on retail media. And it's not just a you know, it's not the same old same old sort of media buying thing. It is very much a focus on the sort of the shopper marketing story. And I think we do get consumed by online retail as a story, and it's been the thing. But actually, it's that point that the biggest opportunity is in bricks and mortar. It always has been and always will be. It's not going to go away. I remember ten years ago, everyone was talking about, oh, the death of the high street. And the high street's changed, but people still like to buy things in person.
00:17:51 · Dan Larden, Jon Mundy
[00:17:51] S2: I think that's right, but I'm gonna challenge you there a little bit because I like to, you know, There is definitely two worlds emerging in retail media. And again, this comes down to definitions, but I think we're moving to if you think about the area that we're in, in terms of anyone can spin up a TikTok shop, anyone can spin up a Google Ads account, anyone can spin up a Meta shop, but just a credit card. People can do a bit of marketing here really quickly on these platforms. People can set up a shop and also do all the logistics. So to be a challenger D2C and sell to people, you could argue you'd do it in a day and you can arguably... You no longer need to be a CIPD accredited marketing professional, and you no longer need to have a big load of money to start logistics. I think some people would argue retail media is being actually the biggest boom of retail media is Amazon, being able to sort of being the sort of big 80% of facilitating that and potentially the social media platforms in the shops. But I... And so this is where the things get conflated and the way it's really hard to have this conversation just in a sort of, you twenty minute podcast because that world seems to be growing a huge amount. And, you know, you'd add Google into that as well. You've just... I think they just reached 200,000,000,000 revenue in a year sort of thing, and Amazon is crazy. [00:19:13] S1: And they like Shopify.
00:19:13 · Jon Mundy, Dan Larden
[00:19:13] S1: And they like Shopify. [00:19:16] S2: And they're a massive part of it. But I do think what you're saying is also true in that there is I think there is a premium retail media ecosystem which is sort of developing in its own right and very interesting for big brands and for big supermarkets and for people like yourself who have really great quality infrastructure on performance. And then there's this other world, is developing, which is fast direct to consumer shopping, which is also retail media, like it or not. And I think that's really interesting because I think Unilever, they've just lost 30% of their workforce. And I'm not saying that it's directly related to the fact that you've got lots of these different B2C challenges coming up who are now selling similar products to them, but it's not hard to say that it's a little bit linked. So I do think you've got this very interesting. In the next ten years and probably beyond, gonna have the brands are gonna have to really figure out, okay, how do I make use of this incredible brand? And how can I make use of this the out of home piece and the traditional broadcast bit, but make it more sophisticated and retail and data driven? Because you know that the person that's doing the DTC challenger, who's just set up their TikTok shop in half an hour, they're not gonna be a buying out home. That's what I think is a very interesting conversation. And you'll definitely be part of that conversation, I imagine, a lot because it's it's a premium retail media ecosystem, which definitely has out of home versus this
00:19:16 · Dan Larden, Jon Mundy
[00:19:16] S2: And they're a massive part of it. But I do think what you're saying is also true in that there is I think there is a premium retail media ecosystem which is sort of developing in its own right and very interesting for big brands and for big supermarkets and for people like yourself who have really great quality infrastructure on performance. And then there's this other world, is developing, which is fast direct to consumer shopping, which is also retail media, like it or not. And I think that's really interesting because I think Unilever, they've just lost 30% of their workforce. And I'm not saying that it's directly related to the fact that you've got lots of these different B2C challenges coming up who are now selling similar products to them, but it's not hard to say that it's a little bit linked. So I do think you've got this very interesting. In the next ten years and probably beyond, gonna have the brands are gonna have to really figure out, okay, how do I make use of this incredible brand? And how can I make use of this the out of home piece and the traditional broadcast bit, but make it more sophisticated and retail and data driven? Because you know that the person that's doing the DTC challenger, who's just set up their TikTok shop in half an hour, they're not gonna be a buying out home. That's what I think is a very interesting conversation. And you'll definitely be part of that conversation, I imagine, a lot because it's it's a premium retail media ecosystem, which definitely has out of home versus this [00:20:49] S1: But it's fascinating.