Join us Dec. 1-3 in Nashville for the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit
Walmart, Albertsons execs discuss the promise of AI and opportunity for marketers to more fully embrace retail media at Possible
Digiday is at Possible giving you the latest industry news out of the event in Miami. More from the series →
Retail media networks and the powerhouse retailers behind them took the mic at the inaugural Possible conference and expo in Miami yesterday, extolling the value of RMNs. Notably, Kristi Argyilan, senior vp of retail media at Albertsons Media Collective and William White, CMO of Walmart, talked of the imapct of artificial intelligence — a strong theme throughout the conference — on RMNs, while offering guidance on how to convince skeptical marketers to get in on the action.
But RMN-related news broke beyond the walls of the Fontainebleau Hotel where the conference was being held. Disney today announced a deal with Kroger (with which Albertsons is hoping to merge next year) to bring that retailer’s shopper and purchase data insights to Disney streaming beginning with Hulu. The companies quietly launched a beta program to activate purchase insights in streaming, working with PepsiCo., which alpha tested the program.
Argyilan discussed the role AI can play in helping RMNs more effectively work. “Think of a lot of the tasks that humans still have to touch — simple things like optimizing campaigns — and how AI can accelerate that and get us to a place to do more optimizations in any given campaign,” Argyilan said.
White said his main message to marketers skeptical of RMNs is that “if your marketing remit is to drive growth for your business, then you’re probably going to want to play in the retail media space. The way that we’re able to reach customers who are in the moment of buying really helps drive brands forward. I’m not really sure what there is to be skeptical about.”
More in Media
How a sports betting creator drove 200 million short-form views of his podcast
Zach “Mystic Zach” Hirsch has figured out how to maximize engagement around sports-betting content while staying brand safe.
As publishers await click data, Google’s AI visibility push complicates the opt-out decision
Google is moving on two fronts: working up the U.K’s Competition and Markets Authority-mandated search opt-out publishers have long sought, while enhancing AI Overviews in ways that could make opting out less appealing.
WTF is the AI training opt-out policy token?
Major AI companies are backing a new AI training opt-out standard proposal for publishers, but it exposes deeper tensions over AI scraping.