Unpacking the Digital Shelf

Love starting out with facts! Did you know, 47% of shoppers now start their buying journey on marketplaces. And 63% of consumers prefer buying from marketplaces? Seems like this 3P thing ain't going away, particularly in chaotic times when having channels and listings that you can turn on and off, that you can control, can come in handy. Jordi Vermeer, VP of Revenue, North America at ChannelEngine, joins the podcast with the Why, What, and Hows of designing and executing a marketplace strategy that works for you.

Times of chaos and uncertainty do have an uncomfortable but necessary side effect of focusing one's mind both on what is important and what is within one's control. This is certainly true in the zoom rooms and boardrooms of any company in commerce. For our guest Colin Kaster, President of Strategy, Digital Advertising, and Operations at Equity Commerce, an e-commerce agency optimizing Amazon and omnichannel sales, much of the answers lie in understanding the real unit economics of every SKU you sell and then optimizing your business around where the opportunities for maximum profitability lie.

Winning search and driving conversion are the two ecommerce victories that get the attention of the Amazon algorithm and drive the flywheel. Turns out, when brands struggle with those metrics, the cause often lies way, way down in the detailed depths of Amazon Vendor Central. Justin Leigh, CEO at Workflow Labs, joins the podcast to talk about strategies to identify the root causes of friction in your Amazon funnel and how to fix them.

Listeners of this podcast are experts at thinking about the consumer who is shopping in a digital context, and how to do their best marketing to win over those consumers in the moments of discovery and conversion. Tim Wilson, Chief Revenue Officer at ProductWind, thinks that you ought to marketing at another customer that you may be neglecting: the algorithm itself. Winning at that marketing motion may be more extensive, and more winnable than you think. Tim joined the podcast to explain.

Risk vs. reward. Does it always need to be a binary choice? Do you and your legal teams always need to be at odds? Well, there's a new lawyer in town. And Josh Jacobs, Legal Director at North America Core Reckitt and his team have invested a ton of time and effort in building out a process of collaboration, education, and intense communication to change that paradigm and make his Reckitt legal team a powerful partner in lowering risk and increasing the rewards. Josh joined the podcast and laid out he brings an innovative mindset and strong empathy for business objectives to the challenging areas of risk management, brand protection, and consumer privacy. It's a really fresh perspective, and a competitive advantage. And he brought along Mr. Mucus!

Welcome to our first cross over podcast with eCommerce Braintrust. I joined Jordan Ripley & Julie Spear from Acadia as we chatted with Jon Harding, CIO of Conair about the latest DSI research report. We dug into how IT and the rest of the business need to collaborate to see success in 2025!

So when Lauren invited Heather Campain, VP, CPG Integrated Go-to-Market Strategy at Epsilon, onto the podcast I immediately went to her LinkedIn, and here's what I saw below her name: Unified Commerce Leader | Silo Slayer | Possibilist | Omni Integration | eComm| Marketing | Retail Media | Joint Value Realization | JBP | Product Dev | Data+Analytics | Transformation. That plus 10 years at JnJ, Head of Strategy for the Walmart Business at Pepsico, and now at Epsilon. I thought “this is going to be good.” And it was.

The MegaSales of the big retailers represent both risk and opportunity, and the size of both are constantly changing. Today's guest, Sunava Dutta, Chief Product Officer at Pacvue, brings a ton of insights around overall strategic organizational and process best practices and a dive into the data and what it portends for this season of the Prime Days and the Walmarts Deals. It involves all the rooms of your house and a lot of math.

“How Can We Get More Product Content to the PDP Faster”? That question is top of mind every day for Carolan Di Fiore, Digital Content Deployment Manager at Hershey. Drawing from her prior experience in Ecommerce and digital roles at other global companies like Bimbo Bakeries, Carolan hit the ground running at Hershey a year and a half ago, and joins the podcast to describe the strategies that she and a cross-functional group of marketing, sales, data, and technology leaders are implementing to deliver answers to that core question. And in doing so, speed time to market, accelerate performance, and delight the consumer.

Three hundred freakin' episodes of Unpacking the Digital Shelf! We celebrate by bringing together the 3 co-hosts to squeeze out the lessons learned from our generous and brilliant guests, and highlight where we think you'll want to put your energies to make sure you, and your organization, are ready for the opportunities to come.

Loyalty is one of the most important components of love. It can also be one of the greatest drivers of your competitive advantage and growth in financially challenging times. Chris Perry, Chief Learning Officer at firstmovr and our own Lauren Livak Gilbert teamed up to dig into the best new practices of loyalty and describe them in a new research report, 8 Love Languages of Shopper Loyalty. We dive into their advice on how to most effectively build your relationship and turn your best customers into even better customers and, ultimately, your advocates.

Retail media has been around long enough now for some clear trends to develop in terms of the best practices that lead to the best outcomes from your investment. Russ Dieringer, founder and CEO of Stratably, has returned with a refresh to their “How Brands Do Retail Media” report, which uses both quantitative and qualitative data from more than 70 large to medium-sized CPG brands to separate the leaders from the laggards, and illuminate the path to greater ROI on your retail media investment.

In the 2024 holiday shopping season, use of AI chatbot shopping rose 6,000% over the prior year, according to Adobe. Those are searches driven by the intent of the shopper, and many never even make it to a product page. Winning your place in those shopping journeys will require mastering the new capabilities of generative engine optimization, or GEO. Max Sinclair, Founder & CEO at Ecomtent, joined the podcast to provide a primer of what's changing and what's possible to start seizing the opportunity faster than your competitors. Early mover's advantage is at stake, and the answer won't be more keywords.

Brian Yamada, Chief Innovation Officer at VML, says this era of AI innovation could be best described using the title of the Oscar Winner for Best Picture at the 2023: Everything, Everywhere All at Once. So Brian joined the podcast to take some of the craziness out of it all by digging into the 3 waves of AI innovation - content, experience, and agents. How you should think about them and how to work through them within your organization and with your partners.

After a decade of rapid growth and experimentation, ecommerce for many is moving into a more mature phase, while of course still being incredibly dynamic. Many companies are finding that the new opportunities for category growth lie in establishing the best practices for omnichannel execution and then scaling those capabilities while adapting it to each local market. Vivian Valks, Global Ecommerce Acceleration Manager at Arla Foods, has been at the front lines of that ecommerce growth curve at Mondelez and at Arla. She is now leading Arla's efforts to bring together the crossfunctional collaboration across teams and in every market to improve the consumer's omnichannel shopping journey and drive better results. She joined the podcast to lay it all out.

During her 35 years at Mars, Angela Mangiapane has been a leader in the front office, the middle office, and the back office, most recently as President of Mars Global Services for the last 9 years.. She has been a witness to, and a driver of, the digital era. And from those experiences come great wisdom and principles that should be guides to the coming generations of digital and technology leaders, as well as human beings in general. Rethink Collaboration. Get Your House in Order. Unlearn to Relearn. As she prepares to “rewire” instead of “retire”, Angela generously agreed to join the podcast and pass along some of her observations and encouragements to our you. Listen up.

I'm assuming all of you listening are human, so I also assume all of you, like me, struggle with beliefs about ourselves and our capabilities that hold us back from our full potential. If you're not human, please connect up with me on LinkedIn, because I have questions. In the meantime, though, for us humans, and because of systemic barriers, particularly women, we need to find ways to rewire our brains to SNAP out of it and pivot to beliefs and actions that help us achieve our goals and lift others up with us. Today we are joined by Erica Anderson Rooney is the author of Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors, in which she details a neuroscience-backed method for altering the subconscious beliefs that hold us back.

When it comes to the promise of Social Commerce, we have the Social part down, but the Commerce part is still very much a work in progress. We have news on that front. Andrew Criezis, President at NIQ, recently returned from a trip to China with insights, data, and experiences that foretell new social commerce experiences and formats that might just make the leap across the pond this time. And yes, of course, it involves AI.

The best part of being in the digital commerce community is how we are all continuously sharing with, and learning from, each other. It's especially helpful when an independent, unbiased organization like say, firstmovr, creates an opportunity to find the best and turn it into best practices. And then share freely. That's why firstmovr's Chief Learning Officer Chris Perry is here today, to share the results of the first ever ENDCAPS awards - celebrating and elevating brands for best-in-class digital merchandising and PDP activation, and explaining how you can turn it into action - and maybe join next year's honorees!

Digital shelf talkers, virtual try-ons, AI warehouse robots - these were just some of the technology that Andrea K.Leigh and I saw at NRF 2025 last week. We are at a critical time in our industry where technology can fundamentally change how we do business and enhance the consumer experience. Tune in to hear how brands and retailers are using technology to create more personalized, seamless and blended experiences both in-store and online.

The digital data ecosystem is constantly evolving and changing as new data sets become available and brands work to connect the dots between each piece of the ecosystem. The important element for brands is learning how to navigate the complexity, break down silos in their organizations and turn insights into action at every step on the consumer journey. This is an audio rebroadcast of a webinar focused on just that, led by Lauren Livak Gilbert, with guest experts Tim Caggiano, Head of eCommerce Reporting & Analytics at Nestle, Salim Bachatene, SVP Global Sales, Ecommerce at NielsenIQ, and Michael Nunes, Director of Product Strategy & Operations at Pacvue.

Technologists who work on DTC and retailer.com sites spend a lot of time doing things like building personas, creating customer journey maps and service blueprints, and conducting usability studies. But if you're a brand selling your products on a retailer's platform, you don't need to worry about that, right? After all, you don't control the user experience.... or do you? While it's true that brands don't control the User INTERFACE of retailer eCommerce platforms, their product content, product data, and advertising interacts with it to create a unique User EXPERIENCE and ultimately shapes the path to purchase. This is an audio rebroadcast of a webinar focused on just that, led by Lauren Livak Gilbert, with guest experts Amanda Wolff, CRO at Jenda, and Bailie Duncan, Lead Product Owner at Jackson Family Wines.

Consumers' shopping behaviors are ever changing and they are rewriting the rules. Brands who understand their consumer preferences and desires, what channels they prefer and how they want to receive their products will be a step ahead. This is an audio rebroadcast of a webinar focused on just that, led by Lauren Livak Gilbert, with guest expert Jeriad Zoghby, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Interpublic Group (IPG).

In an ever changing eCommerce environment both brands and retailers need to collaborate together in order to align on initiatives and goals that are beneficial for both sides. Many of these conversations happen during Joint Business Planning (JBP), but it is often not standardized across retailers, and brands might not know the right questions to ask or data to bring to the table to have the most beneficial conversation. This is a podcast rebroadcast of a webinar hosted by Lauren Livak Gilbert and featuring Lynsey Sweales, Partner & Global Omni-Channel Strategist at Cognitive Union. Listen in as they discuss best practices for JBP planning and how to prioritize working with your retailers.

G'day Mates! That's right, listeners, today we are going down under, to dive deep into the intricacies and opportunities for brands in the Australian market. Our expert on the ground is Teresa Sperti, Founder & Director at digital commerce advisory and education consultancy Arktic Fox, and even if you're not considering Australia as a market you'll want to listen for her super sharp commerce insights and amazing accent. And be introduced to a little AI sprite called Olive.

For our listeners who sell direct to their consumers or buyers, a composable tech stack is pretty much a necessity these days to keep up with the buying experiences your customers expect. And in the next era, it will be essential to achieve the kind of more niche and personalized experiences that will be necessary to drive growth and win market share. James Semple, Product Management Director at Salesforce and self-proclaimed “Evangelist of the Composable Ecosystem, joined the podcast to discuss the current and future states of contextual omnichannel commerce.

Our listeners have a love/hate relationship with retail media and every organization continues to wrestle with how to organize, execute, and measure it while keeping up with the vast amount of change coming from the big players in the market. And what about all the others? We invited Russ Dieringer, Founder and CEO of Stratably, back on the podcast to use data and his brain to prognosticate what the retail media market is going to look and feel like in 2025. Heads up: it don't seem like it's going to get much easier on you and your teams in the year to come.

Product innovation has been around for centuries, ever since cave dwellers invented the first club to make dinnertime easier. In this new commerce era, however, with digital upstarts, algorithms, influencers, and other disruptors of consideration sets and shopping journeys, product innovation must change as well. Ash McMullen, Head of Ecommerce at Advantice Health, works with internal and external partners every day to redefine how product innovation is executed, starting with an understanding of audience and content that inspires the product, not the other way around. She joined the podcast to unpack this vital process transformation.

Getting clear answers to critical questions about your return on ad spend is, let's just call it - a freaking nightmare. There are as yet no clear standards to compare retailer media apples to apples, no easy path to ROAS or, even more importantly, incremental ROAS, or iROAS. With the data being all over the place across retailers, and the incentives often at odds, the chain of trust on your media investments is broken. Not irretrievably so, but that's where we are now. Andrew Criezis, President at NIQ, joined the podcast from the front lines of this battle for clear omnichannel ROI, and offers his best advice for how brands can organize and optimize for measurable omnichannel success.

Sometimes talking about the Future of Shopping, in capital letters, can be so annoying. Well, thanks for telling me someday we will be flying like the Jetsons, look it up GenZ, but what good does that do me now? That's why it was so satisfying to talk about the near future of shopping - the cool, impactful experiences that are being created now by early adopters, with Nat Pavic, founder and host of the Salesforce Commerce Cloud Innovations Podcast, and product marketer at Salesforce. Take a listen - maybe the next best thing for your company is nearer than you think.

Every quarter, the ecommerce education consultancy Allume Group consolidates the output of expert conversations, annual reports, and the latest data to create their Allume Insider report, or AIR. It's chock a block full of the most current insights into the present and future of ecommerce. Andrea Leigh, Founder & CEO of Allume Group rejoins the podcast with the takeaways from Q2 based on their research.

A few weeks ago, Spencer Millerberg, Founding Partner at DetailPage.com was on the podcast talking about the latest in SEO trends in digital commerce. But we invited him back for a deeper dive on Amazon AI, as they are the bellwether of where SEO will go in the next few years. The changes are ones no brand should sleep on, and the opportunities to win market share based on the right product page content to feed that hungry beast Rufus will be considerable. For example, Amazon has added hidden fields to fuel some of this new SEO. And only 7% of brands have them filled out. Sure, SEO is just a game, but this time rules are REALLY changing. Spencer joined the pod to talk about what's happening, and what's ahead.

The pressure to achieve omnichannel growth profitably is on, and it's changing the way brands need to operate. Jamie Schwab, now Vice President, Global Digital Commerce at Colgate-Palmolive, has lived through the stages of ecommerce from being the secret side show to its role as a driver of growth at companies like Unilever, Newell, and Dole. Now he leads a center of excellence for the people, process, data, and tech that will achieve the expected profitable omni results through enabling the best omni consumer experiences. It's an exciting and challenging journey, and Jamie joined the podcast to share the details.

With 25 years in digital commerce, seasoned by tenures at Estee Lauder and J&J, Jennie Alexander has learned the essential ingredient of commerce - always keeping the customer at the center. Easier said than done, and Jennie is now sharing her data, organizational, and humanistic lessons from her work with others through her work as an ecommerce and digital consultant. She joined the podcast to share the fruits of those hard-fought lessons.

Did you know over 70% of traffic to a detail page is organic? Now that you are aware, do you know what you need to do to win your share of that traffic, and hopefully some of someone else's? The answers to that question have changed right underneath our feet, and winning has become much more of a science than an art than ever before, driven by the power of AI. Spencer Millerberg, who changed the ecommerce game once before with OneClick Retail, is now at it again as Founding Partner of DetailPage.com. He joins the podcast with the facts and figures around the changing game of Ecomm SEO.

When money was free, the term “profitable growth” used to be an oxymoron in the world of startup DTC brands. But no longer. Profitably attracting and keeping consumers has become essential for today's DTC challenger brands. And it turns out that achieving that is a deep mix of analytics, media, and creative skills that are constantly in a mix of testing, learning, and scaling modes. And it turns out that achieving that is a deep mix of analytics, media, and creative skills that are constantly in a mix of testing, learning, and scaling modes. AJ Patel had a career at Unilever spanning those skills and modes, and he has now leapt to the startup world at U Beauty. He joined the podcast to share some of those learnings and how he and his team are applying those in a startup context across every shoppable moment.

It was Jeff Bezos who first said “your margin is my opportunity”, and the Andy Jassy regime continues that strategy as Amazon continuously adjusts vendor terms to maximize profitability and win the price war. Amazon consultancy Consulterce and our friends at Stratably recently teamed up on a survey of brands about their Amazon relationship. Martin Heubel from Consulterce returned to the podcast to dig deep into some of the best defensive strategies that brands can use to gain some higher ground with the world's everything store.

We are definitely in test and learn mode in AI, and many organizations are struggling with how to structure and focus their experiments to move past the hype towards impact. Well, struggle no longer! Or, at least, struggle less, thanks to the learned minds at firstmovr, who have taken the fruits of their AI strategy engagements with their clients and turned them into a framework called the MAITRIX. Chris Perry and Oskar Kaszubski rejoined the pod to offer you the blue pill that will help you make order from chaos and align the organization on a meaningful AI path.

The drive towards a more sustainable future is gaining a lot of momentum under the requirements of the Digital Product Passport regulations passed recently by the EU. The DPP will reshape data transparency across the value chain to allow retailers, distributors, and ultimately consumers to select products that match their environmental values. We hit the compliance deadlines for some categories in 2027, and the journey for every actor in the supply chain will be complicated. Raphael Gutierrez, Director of Global PXM and Product Strategy at Valtech, joined the podcast with a primer on the Digital Product Passport and how to build the foundation for compliance starting now. No surprise, it starts with people, goes to process, and ends up at technology.

The criss-cross journey of today's omnichannel shopper, from digital to in-store and back again, means that your retail media messages of inspiration, value, and convenience must follow them wherever they go. The IAB recently issued a new playbook for in-store media in this omnichannel world, a guide for testing, measuring, and learning in the messy and constantly evolving local store. Jeffrey Bustos, VP Measurement Addressability Data at IAB and Mike Wessel, Director of In-store Media at Kroger Precision Marketing joined the podcast to walk us through the playbook's takeaways.

The zig zag shopping journey of the consumer has completely disrupted the organizational silos of brick and mortar vs. digital commerce at many brands. Driving growth requires cross-functional teams to pick omnichannel use cases and devise, launch, measure, and optimize them together. The fuel of that process is data, and Andy Beilke, Sr. Development Manager, eCommerce Strategy & Capabilities at General Mills, focuses his team on delivering the data that enables omnichannel thinking and behaviors across the organization. Andy joined the podcast to walk us through the transformation of processes and data science that are driving growth. Following this episode, you will want to google the word “gonculator”.

Almost 2 months ago to the day, we had Futurist and Author Byron Reese on the podcast to talk about AI and its possibilities and risks. I warned you all then that I would have him back on to talk about his new book, We Are Agora, in which he sets out to scientifically prove that humans together make a superorganism, like bees make a hive, and what that means for our future and how we should spend our day. Nerdy, inspiring, awesome. He joined Rob Gonzalez and me to talk us through it.

Did you know that of the users who have engaged with TikTok Shop, 71.2% of them have bought a product? Smells like social shopping to me! Their advancements, from getting in the fulfillment game to an affiliate program, are driving some really impressive results with Gen Z, with acquisition costs still lower than other channels. Are you playing? Should you be? What's working? What's not? Here we are with Ben Rey, Chief Revenue Officer at Teikametrics, to get all the answers for you to refresh or create your TikTok Shop strategy.

The cookie has finally crumbled. Consumers are shopping and buying everywhere they darn well please. Brands and retailers are fighting over margin more fiercely than ever before. Rachel Tipograph, from her role as Founder & CEO of MikMak, is in the center of this generational maelstrom of the shifting rules of commerce, and joins the podcast to share her view of the trends that will matter in the next 18 months. Buckle up, it's going to be an exciting ride.

Driving growth while cutting costs - the gordian knot of commerce today. Our listeners know that achieving that over the longer term will require deep investments in systematic automation and data, and many of you have struggled with convincing the C-suite and Board of why these investments are key to survival. Jeriad Zoghby, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at IPG, joins the podcast with insights from years of 15 minute CEO conversations that ignite change as well as a new set of research on where some of those opportunities lie.

Dave Feinleib has been at the forefront of content and commerce throughout the last decade of the digital shelf, and he is now pouring that knowledge and experience into a new venture focused on the next great unlock for commerce which, it will not surprise you, is AI. At ItsRapid.ai, his new technology and wisdom on the process and people side of content creation and optimization is powering the AI “test and learn to production” timeline for some of the world's largest brands. Dave joins the podcast to bring that timeline and its lessons and benefits to life.

Every quarter, the ecommerce education consultancy Allume Group consolidates the output of expert conversations, annual reports, and the latest data to create their Allume Insider report, or AIR. It's chock a block full of the most current insights into the present and future of ecommerce. Andrea Leigh, Founder & CEO of Allume Group rejoins the podcast with the takeaways from Q2 based on their research.

Folks, we live in a VUCA world: volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. To thrive in this environment, transformation by inches will simply not be enough. Leaps are required. Seven mind leaps, in fact, according to best-selling author Steve Dennis. His new book, Leaders Leap: Transforming Your Company at the Speed of Disruption is a primer of the transformations leaders must make to be able to drive the vision, course, and speed required to be remarkable. Steve joined the podcast to lay out the core tenets in his clarion call of a book.

A couple of weeks ago, the advertising and communications industry gathered on the beaches of Cannes for the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. In addition to celebrating the best creative work of the past year, there are executives from around the industry connecting to figure out what's next. Our own Lauren Livak Gilbert was part of that throng, and she returned with some great insights we just had to share, so we put her in the hot seat for a change.

Live from the Cannes Lions Festival of creativity where commerce and retail media took center stage we turned to Jeff Cohen, Principal Evangelist at Amazon Ads to help navigate the changing world of the Amazon Canvas and how brands should be utilizing the suite of options from AMC to Prime Video and beyond.

There are tremendous amounts of trepidation and hope being invested in AI right now, with often trepidation winning out. Is all this angst really necessary? We turned to Byron Reese, an endlessly provocative futurist and author of the newly released book We Are Agora, to provide a long view of transformational technologies through the ages and therefore, the positivity we can take into a sometimes uncertain future. Grist for all the transformation cheerleading you do in your careers and lives.