Retail media didn’t become strategic overnight, but the inflection point is here. Margin pressure, privacy resets, and changing shopper behavior have exposed a hard truth: retailers can no longer outsource their future.

What was once treated as “found money” from ads is now a critical system for funding growth, improving the customer experience, and strengthening collaboration between brands and retailers. As discussed on the First Mile Podcast with Neerav Vyas, VP of Data & AI at Capgemini, the strongest retail media networks are entering a second generation.one defined by ownership, composability, and proof.

The retailers pulling ahead are not just selling impressions. They are building durable platforms by getting three foundations right: inventory, identity, and insights. When these elements work together, retail media becomes more than an ad channel, it becomes an engine for sustainable e-commerce growth, even in a low-margin, high-expectation world.

Retail Media’s Shift From Side Hustle to Strategic Pillar

Retail media sprinted ahead because both the math and the shopping journey changed. As third-party cookies fade and paid media efficiency declines, first-party data has become the most valuable asset retailers own. At the same time, brands are demanding more accountability, proof of ROAS, incrementality, and long-term value.

This combination has forced a rethink. Outsourced networks and black-box platforms may deliver short-term revenue, but they limit differentiation and slow adaptation. Second-gen retail media networks move in the opposite direction: they own their data flows, control their technology stack, and collaborate more deeply with brand partners.

The upside isn’t just higher ad margins. It’s sustained e-commerce growth, tighter brand relationships, and a better experience for the customer, who ultimately decides whether the whole system works.

Foundation #1: Inventory That Serves the Shopper

The highest-performing retail media networks start with inventory designed for shoppers, not advertisers.

On-site sponsored listings and native placements can generate three to four times the margin of off-site impressions—but only when they feel helpful. Too many retailers underinvest here, relying on static banners buried in the digital shelf instead of embedding relevance into search results, category pages, and even the cart.

When inventory reduces effort, helping customers find the right brand, size, or promotion at the right moment—it increases both conversion and trust. That same principle applies in-store. Digital surfaces like end caps, cooler doors, and aisle screens can extend retail media into the physical world, but only with tight coordination between media, merchandising, and operations. Stock reality, store flow, and context matter.

Done right, retail media doesn’t interrupt the journey. It assists buying.

Foundation #2: Identity as the Backbone of Second-Gen Retail Media

As cookies disappear, identity becomes the connective tissue that holds retail media together.

Leading retailers are investing in privacy-by-design identity spines that keep first-party data clean, consented, and controlled from the first interaction. The goal isn’t aggressive tracking—it’s continuity. Stitching unknown-to-known journeys across web, app, email, and in-store touchpoints without forcing logins at every step.

Tactics like email-to-web continuity, authenticated app sessions, and event-level data control help maintain that continuity while respecting consent. When the value exchange is clear, faster discovery, better recommendations, fewer dead ends—customers consistently choose the personalized experience.

The lesson from Amazon and Netflix still applies: generic experiences feel broken. Relevant ones feel like respect for the customer’s time.

Foundation #3: Insights That Prove Real Business Impact

Retail media only earns long-term investment when it proves outcomes.

Too many programs stop at spend, impressions, or CTRs, or treat retail media as trade promotion 2.0. Second-gen networks go further, connecting exposure to sales lift, incrementality, and customer lifetime value across on-site, off-site, and in-store channels.

Clean rooms and privacy-safe collaboration frameworks allow retailers and brands to match first-party data without sharing raw files. The result is cohort-level measurement and closed-loop reporting that both sides can trust.

Partnerships with streamers and publishers extend this even further, delivering full-funnel visibility, from awareness and consideration to conversion at the basket. That proof unlocks higher CPMs, deeper joint business planning (JBP), and increased non-endemic demand.

Why Composable Technology Wins on Speed and Control

Technology choices determine how quickly retailers can turn ambition into reality.

The old decision, build everything in-house or buy a rigid monolith, has given way to composable architectures. Today’s leaders assemble best-of-breed solutions for identity, ad serving, audience management, and measurement in weeks, not years.

Composable systems allow retailers to swap components as needs evolve and policies change. Partners handle the undifferentiated heavy lifting—data collection fidelity, consent orchestration, cross-device stitching, while internal teams focus on what differentiates them: category expertise, unique experiences, and shopper trust.

This is where owning the first mile of data matters most. Retailers that control how data is collected, transformed, and routed can adapt quickly without rebuilding their entire stack.

Organization and Governance: The Final Unlock

Even the best technology fails without the right operating model.

Retail media teams must work in lockstep with e-commerce and store operations to protect the brand and the basket. Incentives should reward shared outcomes, conversion rate, basket size, member value, not isolated ad revenue. Governance must prevent clutter while enabling fast, disciplined experimentation.

Ambition also needs to be explicit. A focused $100–200M program at modest margin requires a very different roadmap than a billion-dollar-plus network with deeper measurement, identity, and brand responsibilities. When leadership aligns on the goal, resourcing becomes clearer and overpromising is avoided.

Second-Gen Retail Media Is a System, Not a Channel

Second-generation retail media is not about chasing short-term revenue. It’s about building a system that links inventory, identity, and insights—powered by owned, first-mile data—to deliver durable growth.

Strategy is a choice.
Execution is a system.
Excellence is the blend of both.

For retailers ready to move beyond “nice to have,” the message is clear: own your data, design for the shopper, and prove value without breaking the experience.

Full Transcript:

Dom Burch: Welcome back to the first mile podcast with me, Dom Burch. This is the podcast where we explore the very beginning of the digital journey where every click, every conversation, every interaction first takes shape. Now, retail media networks have gone from a nice to have to a board-level priority in just a few years, driven by margin pressure, privacy shifts, and a fundamental change in how consumers shop and how they consume media. And today's guest has had a front row C to that transformation. NERFES is helping build and scale commerce and retail media capabilities inside some of the world's most complex organizations, from hyperscalers to retailers, and now at Cap Gemini works with brands and retailers navigating what comes next. Now, a year ago, NERF was already talking about retail media entering its second generation, moving beyond outsourced free money models towards own platforms, composable architectures, and real collaboration between retailers and brands, all under growing privacy and identity constraints. So ahead of NRF and a session that he'll be hosting there in a few weeks, we wanted to step back and explore what it really takes to turn retail media ambition into operational reality from data foundations and identity to teams, technology, and time to value. All right, let's dive in. Nereth, thank you so much for coming on to the First Mar podcast.

Neerav Yvas: Dom, it's a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Dom Burch: Well, no, my pleasure. Absolutely my pleasure. Right, let's get stuck into it, right? A year ago, you described retail media, or retail and commerce media, let's get it right, as entering a second generation, moving away from outsourced, managed service models towards something far more strategic and owned.

Neerav Yvas: So looking back now, what's changed most and what's surprised you I believe the number of individuals that are starting to rethink that transformation journey has accelerated tremendously in the last 12 months. I think, you know, a year ago when we were having these conversations, I think a lot of folks were still under not quite understanding why. Um, but now more and more organizations are feeling that pressure to say the category is growing at a 20, 30% kager, why are we not doing it? The category has a 70% margin, why are we sub-50%? Why are we stagnating? Right. And I think the second element is that, you know, that first generation retail media, a lot of folks were coming in at a viewing it as a nice to have high revenue stream. And now when we think about the growth in retail, particularly happening in e-commerce, but the fact that e-commerce is a bit of a loss leader, the ability to leverage a high revenue margin stream to subsidize your e-commerce journey, or maybe offset some of the inflationary pressures that consumers are facing and provide kind of that additional value to your consumers or members, right? I think it's becoming more of a strategic imperative, right? And so that's the major shift in my opinion.

Dom Burch: And and that margin thing's interesting, right? Because it's gone from being margin only. I mean, well, let's put it this way, right? The margin only materializes if retailers actually build the right foundations, right? So, in your view, what's the biggest misconception leaders still have about that retail media growth that you're alluding to? Because it's the holy grail, right? I remember 15 years ago back at Asda, we were like, we need to get into this because our grocery home shopping site is losing money. Let's sell media to prop it up, right? But the foundations were pretty poor back then.

Neerav Yvas: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can't think about it as three major building blocks, right? We've got the inventory, the ad units themselves, both on and off-site, right? The individuals, right? So the household and the contextual understanding of the journey around that individual on their household and where they're at. And then most importantly, the insights itself, right? I think too often the media networks are not understanding that I need to truly link the insights and the outcomes for my suppliers, right? To be able to understand the value in it. I think too often many retailers sometimes think of it as a version of trade promotion 2.0. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, but I think even in a modern world of TPM 2.0, that connection to ROAS, that can take connection to the return on overall investment becomes important. And if we don't have a linkage across all three of these things, right, then you don't have the right foundations to share value. And you're going to be viewed as more of a commodity player rather than a different differentiator. And that has an implication on the willingness to pay higher CPMs, the willingness to invest in larger upfront deals or JBP agreements, right with you.

Dom Burch: I remember being inside the retailer and running the retail media network and going, we have to remember, like our primary focus as a grocery retailer is to sell our customers groceries at great value, be available, you know, have what they want on their list. And the retail media is assisting them in that journey. It's prompting them to buy things that they probably want, but they didn't realize you sell, or to signify a promotion that's coming. As soon as you start behaving like you're just a media player, disconnected from the purpose of that foundation in the first place, that's you can really divert off course quickly, can't you?

Neerav Yvas: Absolutely. And I think there's an interesting point that you're making too, right? Which is, you know, retailers didn't grow up in a media landscape, right? They didn't grow up in a typical technology landscape, right? As the Walmart probably being the exceptions to that rule, right? Um, and so understanding that media expertise, understanding the technology expertise, but also linking that back into the experience piece, I think is a major shift also from 12 months ago. And what I mean by that is in some ways, if you do retail media right, you're solving for the business, right? And some of the business challenges that you have. But if you really want to differentiate yourself, you almost need to think through and say, how do I solve for the consumer and the experience itself? How do I potentially use retail media to drive better experiences, a better value proposition for my members? And if I do that, I'm truly kind of bringing all three of these pieces together.

Dom Burch: Now you've said previously not every retailer should try to be the Amazon or the Walmart, right? And so how should leaders be thinking about which retail model is right for them before they start investing in the technology?

Neerav Yvas: Yeah, I think the aspirations for your retail media network are really important. Like if you're gonna be in a hundred and two million dollar range, you're using this to augment trade promotions, you're gonna have a different set of objectives uh and grow goals that you're gonna go through. And that's not a bad thing, right? But if that's your view, then you've got to go to your board and have a conversation and say, we're probably gonna be sub 50% margin, right? We're gonna be in this $102 million range and we're gonna basically stay there and that's it, right? And that's a good thing. It's $100, $200 million I probably wouldn't have had. And at a 10 to 30% margin, right? That's still, you know, 10 to 30 million or 10 to 60 million, right? That that's in your pockets. That's gonna help drive and fund some initiatives. I think as folks look to drive differentiation, start to get into that, you know, 500 million, billion plus range, you just have to start thinking about it a bit differently. And it's interesting because uh we get asked a lot on what is good and great begin to look like. And the Walmart Amazon model of building or acquiring a streaming company or a TV company is one mechanism, and there's an MA component associated to that. But I think a lot more retailers are gonna use partnership and collaboration models to go through, right? Uh, I think about partnering with the streaming platforms, the Disneys, the NBCs, and the peacocks of the world and providing really unique measurement and audience capabilities, that can be really valuable and differentiating and almost simulate full funnel analytics for your CPG partners, right? Um, and provide a lot of valuable insights because then I can track that top of funnel journey all the way through mid and bottom funnel. And I do that through partnership, right? Recognizing that again, I'm not gonna be a media company, but I do definitely need to partner with these media partners. And on the same point, right, it provides a ton of value to the Disneys, the NBCs of the world, because you're licking that ad spend into ad dollars, improving the ability to do targeting, and also providing those very same brands that are advertising with them, right? That connection back into that transaction, right, that they've typically have been disintermediated from.

Dom Burch: I mean, consistently we'll come back, won't we, to data and analytics being at the core of this, right? So as cookies disappear and privacy expectations are uh clearly on the rise, right? Some of that driven by legislation around the world. Um, is identity now like the hardest and most underappreciated part of building a sustainable retail media network?

Neerav Yvas: Um, yes and no. Uh I think it's one of the most important and critical. And I think many organizations would view it as being very difficult, right? But um, you know, we've worked with the team at MetaRouter on an with a number of large clients. And the ability to actually take a problem that was very, very difficult and solve it and make it a bit make it an order magnitude easier, I think is really important, right? Um, and I I was at Apple's Guinea Pig for ADT deprecation three years before ATT was announced for at large, and being able to leverage that technology, right, to orchestrate experiences in a privacy-compliant manner, to stitch journeys together and to have full ownership of that data was invaluable for me at that juncture. And I think that that becomes the playbook for customers moving forward, which is there's certain solutions that are undifferentiated heavy lifting for the organization, but drive a tremendous amount of power. A lot of the identity spine is a key to that. So let's accelerate the ability to understand the consumer, understand their journeys, and orchestrate them in a privacy compliant manner while also augmenting and accelerating our journey and our goal for driving personalization and hyper contextualization. So absolutely think that it's critical, right? And but now that we've got a bit more of a playbook, right, to not have to have the full burden of solving the problem ourselves.

Dom Burch: Yeah, and I think that's key, isn't it? I mean, it's a little bit like you were saying earlier about that collaboration point. There are some really, really smart folks who have already figured out some of this stuff. How do you do it so you're compliant, whether it's GDPR over here in the UK or other regulators? How do you do that match? How do you find out more about your customer using the signals that are coming in? But also then to organize that data in such a way that everything else that comes next is going to be higher quality. So, regardless of other tech stacks you've got, I mean, it's the old adage, right? Good in, better out, right?

Neerav Yvas: Yes. Absolutely, right? If we if we clean up the data collection, fidelity and validation early on, right, then it solves a lot of the problems downstream in terms of trust in the data, trust in the audience, but also to your supplier partners or advertiser partners from a commerce media network perspective, it's gonna give them a lot more faith and fidelity in the uniqueness of the audience or the uniqueness of the contextualization of the journey that you're looking for. I think there's one added benefit as well, right? Um, is in that ability to stitch that journey between unknown to known really well. We also give our experienced teams a number of more tactics associated with that, right? We don't want to force people to log in to do an e-commerce transaction if they're gonna be browsing, right? And so email to web as a tactic, right, is quite common. And my ability to link that email transaction to the web without forcing someone to authenticate, but still on knowing who they are, right, in a privacy compliant manner, right? I think that's really, really valuable because it helps to enable frictionless experiences while providing value to the consumer.

Dom Burch: And that's what the consumer wants, right? I mean, at the end of the day, when I flip from my phone to my tablet to my laptop to back to my phone later in the day, I want you as the retailer to know it's me because I'm like halfway through doing something. It's not your fault. I got distracted by work or Instagram or the wife coming home and saying, Where's where's the tea? You know, so those that like this sort of, I used to call it back in as a days like, would I do it? Does it pass the would I do it test? And then also, are you making it easier for me? And that's you know, that's what companies are striving for, right? Taking away those barriers, making it more seamless, making it easier for the consumer.

Neerav Yvas: Absolutely. I also don't think about it from the perspective of, you know, many organizations are like worried that consumers are not going to give them consent, right, to kind of utilize their data. But think about it from the perspective of logging into your Amazon homepage, right, in an authenticated state versus an unauthenticated state, or logging into your Netflix profile, right, in uh in the profile where you've had established interactions versus go create a new Netflix profile. The minute that you create a new Netflix profile, it's a terrible experience, right? It's very generic, it's very bland, it doesn't know you, and it takes some time for that to come in versus a profile where you've already been established. There's a value in the recommendations and the personalizations coming in. So I have no problems and palms with being authenticated in within my Amazon profile, within my Netflix profile, because the experience that's being engendered, right, drives a ton of value. So I absolutely think the retailers need to understand that not only in terms of being in the midst of a transaction, but if we're providing that personalization, that recommendation, there's a ton of value. And I think sometimes they think that the advertising gets in the way of that. But if you're actually bringing a product to my mindset that I didn't know I was looking for, but I can't live without, I drive a serendipitous recommendation, you're providing a tremendous amount of value to me as well as to the advertiser or supplier that you're working for.

Dom Burch: 100%. You're taking off that to-do list that's in the back of their head they didn't realize it was there, and you've just lifted a load, right? It's gone. Uh and they move on. You mentioned earlier about data collaboration and how that between retailers and brands is finally becoming viable technically and commercially. What's changed in the last few years to make that more possible now?

Neerav Yvas: I think the the rise of kind of collaboration technologies, right, like clean rooms uh and those collaboration spaces have made it more open for organizations to be part of that uh and to facilitate that. And I think it's just become a bit more of a necessary state, right? Because, you know, before we knew all the problems with third-party cookies, we knew the fidelity of the ecosystem wasn't great. If anything, it was probably quite poor, right? But it was easy, so we just lived with it, right? Now that that option has gotten and deprecated significantly, right, the easy option isn't as viable or as attractive anymore. And so it's forcing us to kind of think through those first-party relationships. And I think as you mentioned earlier, the the overall privacy landscape having become more constrained and more regulated, I think it's forcing folks to say, hey, I'm not going to just throw flat files over the over the shelf, right? But there's a ton of value in there. And I think that the the evolution of the collaboration framework, collaboration landscape, and the collaboration experience, right? Um, and and the mental models that are now sitting within organizations provides a ton of value for commerce media because, you know, yes, your suppliers are going to be your low-hanging fruit, right, um, to work with, but that growth on the non-endemic side of the house is tremendously valuable. That's exponentially where we at Amazon saw, where imagine that you with the team at ASDA saw something very similar. And so if we build these systems and these experiences right, there's a ton of value beyond just my supplier ecosystem that I can be providing value to, but also you're helping to bolster right the overall business model for my media network.

Dom Burch: Now, one thing that doesn't often get talked about enough, I guess, is people and structure. So, from what you're seeing, how do retail media teams need to be organized differently going forward and compared to traditional marketing or or e-commerce teams?

Neerav Yvas: The biggest challenge that I see within the organizational structures is the lack of dependency or interaction and alignment with um your different teams, particularly your e-commerce teams and your in-store teams, right? So I don't think it's new news to anybody that, you know, on-site ad inventory in my e-commerce experience, my mobile app experience, and I drive significantly higher margin, right? Three to four times higher margin than off-site does. But very few organizations really delve into on-site well, right, um, and expand their on-site programs. You know, they throw it over to a managed service provider and they've got one static banner very buried very deep within it, but not any type of a truly personalized experience on like sponsored listings like Amazon has or Walmart has, right? And because that's because you need a lot of interaction and coordination with my e-comm team. Um, and then, you know, there aren't a lot of folks that are doing that in-store on like cooler screens or or digital out-of-home within the store itself, right? Because again, that requires coordination with my my physical team, my merchandising teams, et cetera. But there's a ton of value there. So I'd say from an organizational perspective, that alignment across those teams, I think is absolutely critical. And for those e-commerce teams or those in-store teams, I think they increasingly need to think about how do you integrate the ad inventory in in a way that represents the brand, but also helps to elevate the overall experience. And I think there's a lot of opportunities to do that and do that well. But it's generally not like the initial starting point, right? That those teams are coming at it.

Dom Burch: And from your perspective at Cap Gemini, where do partners add the most value today? Like not just in implementation, but in helping retailers evolve their retail media capabilities over time.

Neerav Yvas: I think you know there's a couple key areas, right? Which is, you know, five to seven years ago, right, the Amazon model, the Walmart model was very much everyone has to go build everything from scratch, right? Or go buy uh, you know, an ad-serving technology like you know, we did with Seismic, right? But now the technology landscape has evolved so much that to your point early on, composable solutions are incredibly viable, right? And they're easier to implement. So you're not talking about a 12 to 18 month implementation period, you're talking about weeks and months, right? To put a core technology into place and have it showcase tremendous value. So I view that as the key element of the partner ecosystem, which is right, it's not build versus buy, it's how much do we build, how much do we buy, how much do we partner. And we've got a lot more flexible options associated with that. And I think composable architectures make it a lot easier to provide value. And that's where I think the partner ecosystem has been so helpful in kind of providing those suite of composable solutions, right, that make it easier for us to provide value faster.

Dom Burch: We've only done like 20 minutes and we've covered so much ground, right? But I want to look ahead a little bit, right? So we're coming into Christmas is coming, and then suddenly it'll be the new year, and then suddenly everyone's gonna be in Vegas and then they're gonna be in New York, right? So looking ahead to the session that you're hosting at NRF in a few weeks' time, now you're gonna have some leaders who are deep in this space. What's the one conversation you think the industry still isn't having but needs to?

Neerav Yvas: I think evolving their technology and their transformation suite to drive those better experiences and how identity is core to that, and how doing that in a privacy-compliant manner and orchestrating it, I think that's critical. It's just the number of organizations that are still throwing too much of their solution over to kind of traditional partners within the ecosystem, I think is a huge challenge. And so I think if some of the conversation that I hope Nikhil will be having, right, around NRF is incredibly valuable because it's showcasing a blueprint for evolution on like how Walmart, Asda, and Amazon did this, right? And how folks can accelerate their own transformations and their own journeys, right? And the fact that again, it doesn't need to be a laborious exercise. So I to me, I mean, I'm I'm always ecstatic uh to speak with Nikhil and hear his words of wisdom and his experiences. But I think that's the most important for me because I think that starts to help shepherd folks on their transformations and their journeys quickly.

Dom Burch: Now, before Cap Gemini, you were on the other side of the table, right? So you were the customer, you were making real buying decisions with real constraints. And, you know, to be fair, you were an early adopter of MetaRouter. So looking back now, what problem were you trying to solve at the time and what mattered most in that decision that you made?

Neerav Yvas: Yeah, so uh for a little bit of context, um about Four and a half, five years ago, um, Apple decided to do ATT deprecation with the children's category first. Uh, and I was part of a company called Homer Learning. We were basically the Uber of the children's category. We were the largest spender um by far for both Apple and for Google. And we basically saw the deprecation uh first-party identifiers as a critical blocker to being able to drive growth-oriented uh marketing for us, right? And we were we were startup thinking thinking about raising our Series C just as this announcement came in. And so for us, not finding a solution to be able to orchestrate identity to match that attribution back into our acquisition funnel basically would have prevented our ability to raise money, right? Uh the company would have folded. And so part of that was solving that. And I worked with the Apple team with the who's who in the ecosystem to replace our stack in a privacy compliant manner. And the benefit that we saw with MetaRouter was not only A, did you hate um meet the standards and exceed the standards for privacy that Apple set, which is a very, very high bar to begin with, right? But being able to orchestrate and integrate you into our mobile apps and our and our websites very, very quickly, we did it in a matter of wee weeks and basically rebuilt our data platform around you guys. And literally, I think it was about five and a half weeks, and most of that was contracting, right, was immensely valuable. But then the fidelity and the strength of the solution, again, despite the fact that we were a mobile app company, we were building mobile apps for Legos Esme and Mattel, right? We had billions of events coming in through day, you know, tens of millions of consumers that were interacting with the app, and particularly during COVID when parents were looking for a solution for education for their kids when they were out of school. So the ability for you guys to provide a solution that was quick, that met Apple standards, right? And could meet the demands right of the volume that we were seeing and scale with us, right? In especially at those surge peak moments we had during COVID, that was invaluable.

Dom Burch: Just based on the conversation we've had, like this event at NRF is gonna be like a real, I'm gonna say humdinger. I don't know if that translates across the pond, right? But it's gonna be a good one. What are you looking forward to about that and why should people come along, tune in, and check it out?

Neerav Yvas: I think listening to you and hearing from industry leaders who have both been in the shoes, right? Building these solutions, building these media networks across variety of capacities, have also worked and partner with a lot of both retailers, but also travel hospitality companies, like media companies, like the NBCs of the world. That provides a lot of value because you understand that there's a lot of synergies in the experiences that folks have done, but also that the transformation that's happened in the landscape provides a lot of answers so that you don't have an infinite set of permutations that you need to go through. There's a few tried and trusted ways to make these things work. And they do have trade-offs in terms of like how you want to work, what responsibilities you want to take on. But I think I'm hoping that folks will find that conversation to be tremendously valuable to say, okay, there's there's a two or three playbooks in here, and I can easily begin to customize and tailor them to meet my needs, right? And then take that to have a strategic conversation with senior leadership of my organization with the confidence to know that it can be executed well, right? Because I'm not reinventing the wheel here.

Dom Burch: Perfect. Listen, Erif, we could chat all afternoon, all morning for you, but thank you so much for coming on to the First Mile podcast.

Neerav Yvas: It was a pleasure. Happy holidays and look forward to meeting everyone at NRF.

Dom Burch: So there we go. What really stands out in that for me is that retail media works when it's not because of a single platform or tactic, but it's because the foundations are right. The data is intentional, identity is handled with care, teams are set up to learn and adapt, and value shows up early enough to sustain that momentum. I also love the perspective that Neref brings when he's having been on both sides, right? The builder, the buyer, and now someone who's helping organizations scale this responsibility. It's a reminder that the hardest problems in retail media often aren't technical in isolation. They're about decisions, trade-offs, and operating models. This, and they're going to be talking a lot about this when they come to the stage at NRF in a few weeks. And I know this conversation will give you a useful lens before they get there. But for the time being, thank you for joining us on the First Mile podcast. And to our listeners, if you found this useful, make sure you subscribe and join us next time as we'll continue exploring the very start of the digital data journey, where every interaction begins and where the biggest decisions often get made.

‍

‍