🎙️Interview with Kiri Masters of The Retail Media Breakfast Club

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Welcome to The Ecommerce Braintrust podcast, brought to you by Julie Spear, Head of Retail Marketplace Services, and Jordan Ripley, Director of Retail Account Management.

As we return from our holiday break, we're taking the opportunity to step back and reflect on where the ecommerce industry has been—and where it's headed next.

To guide that conversation, we tapped into the insights of a dozen former podcast guests, including industry analysts, technology providers, and brand leaders. We asked each of them two key questions: what had the biggest impact on the industry over the past year, and what they're most excited about in the year ahead.

To help us unpack these perspectives, we're thrilled to welcome back someone deeply embedded in retail forecasting and strategy: Kiri Masters, former host of The Ecommerce Braintrust and current host of the Retail Media Breakfast Club.

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"Retail media will likely see some consolidation as expectations come back down to earth. We may see retailers come together and collaborate more, offering stronger audience insights to media buyers while dialing back the exuberance around retail media growth."

Kiri Masters

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Key Survey Data

• 82% of respondents identified AI as a key theme shaping the industry

• 64% of respondents explicitly mentioned profitability, margin pressure, or growth discipline

• 55% of respondents discussed incrementality & measurement challenges

• 45% of respondents discussed channel diversification beyond Amazon
  
  

In this episode, Julie, Jordan, and Kiri discuss:

• The Dominance of AI in E-Commerce: AI remains the headline story, with a huge spike in expert mentions. The team breaks down how AI is shaping advertisers' ability to personalize at scale, the shift from keyword to audience-based strategies, and why AI-powered personalization is becoming fundamental rather than a standout trend.

• Shopper Experiences and Search Evolution: Innovations like virtual try-ons (Zara app example), the rise of agentic commerce, and the blurred lines between upper and lower funnel marketing as AI tools start to both recommend and transact for shoppers.

• Amazon's Defensive Stance and Retail AI Partnerships: With new protocols like Google's Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), retailers like Walmart and Wayfair are collaborating with AI platforms—while Amazon remains a walled garden, raising questions about its evolving competitive positioning.

• Retail Media's Maturity and Profitability Pressures: How retailers' rapid build-up of media businesses has led to ambitious targets, scrutiny around true ad spend sources, and a likely shift toward more creative, collaborative brand partnerships. The market is moving away from "growth at all costs" toward more sustainable, margin-aware strategies.

• Breaking Silos in Measurement and Data: As brands push for unified data across channels, third-party aggregators and traditional data players are filling the gaps that retailers haven't solved with standardized metrics.

• Looking Ahead: The ongoing challenge for brands to keep up with fast-changing tech, automate where possible, but also stand out with original thinking as AI-generated content becomes ubiquitous. There's consensus that both AI innovation and industry corrections will shape retail into 2026.

Thank you for an incredible 2025! 🎉

We are grateful for such an engaged community of listeners. To celebrate, we're re-releasing 3 of our most popular episodes of the year. This week, we're bringing back "The Maturation of AMC for Sponsored Ads" with Ross Walker and Carlos Sastre.

We hope you enjoy it!

Thank you for an incredible 2025! 🎉

We are grateful for such an engaged community of listeners. To celebrate, we're re-releasing 3 of our most popular episodes of the year. This week, we're bringing back "Winning Search, Unlocking Reviews, and the ROI of Content" with Mike Black.

We hope you enjoy it!

Thank you for an incredible 2025! 🎉

We are grateful for such an engaged community of listeners. To celebrate, we're re-releasing 3 of our most popular episodes of the year. This week, we're bringing back "Vendor P&L Proliferation - Why It's Happening and Why It Matters" with Armin Alispahic.

We hope you enjoy it!

🎙️News Review with Armin Alispahic and Ross Walker

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Welcome to another edition of The Retail Round Up: your monthly recap of the biggest headlines and developments in the retail world.

Today, we're joined by Pat Petriello, Director of Retail Marketplace Strategy, who will be co-hosting this week. As always, we have Armin Alispahic here to dive deep into operations and organic industry trends, and Ross Walker to walk us through everything Media.

This marks our final Retail Round Up episode of 2026, but we're not slowing down. There's no shortage of major industry developments to unpack, so let's dive right in.

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"It's a reward system in a way—if you're compliant and doing well, your score will be up, and you'll be AHA eligible."

Armin Alispahic

KEY TAKEAWAYS

In this episode, Jordan, Pat, Ross, and Armin discuss:

• Amazon's Seller Challenge: Amazon's new "Seller Challenge" allows eligible sellers to request enhanced reviews for enforcement decisions, offering a better shot at resolving account and ASIN-level issues.

• Account Health Assurance (AHA) Eligibility: Discussion around Amazon's scoring system for compliance, how sellers become AHA-eligible, and the limit of three seller challenges per six months.

• Latest Updates in Amazon Fulfillment: Changes to Seller Fulfilled Prime eligibility by size tier, the rollout of FBM Ship Plus, and improved delivery date visibility for customers.

• Vendor Side Enhancements: Early dispute options for vendor shortage invoices—the team shares both excitement and current issues with the new dashboard.

• Amazon Media Upgrades: Deep dive into Amazon's partnership with Nielsen for DSP advertisers, increasing measurement transparency and making programmatic media buys more competitive and accessible.

• Sponsored Prompts & AI in Retail Advertising: Discussion on the emergence of AI-powered ad placements like Amazon's sponsored Rufus prompts, the larger landscape of chatbot monetization, and how other retailers (Walmart's Sparky, Instacart's ChatGPT partnership) are responding.

• Looking Forward: Reflections on how advertising and ecommerce are shifting toward streaming, AI integration, and better data measurement.

🎙️Interview with Ross Walker & Danilo Alvares of Acadia

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Welcome to The Ecommerce Braintrust podcast, brought to you by Julie Spear, Head of Retail Marketplace Services, and Jordan Ripley, Director of Retail Account Management.

We're diving into a big topic this week: programmatic media buying through Amazon DSP, and the many different ways brands can leverage it. If you've been wondering how to get started with ADSP or how to access the right inventory to drive real results, this episode has you covered.

To help us unpack it all, we've invited two of our in-house experts: Ross Walker, Director of Retail Media, and Danilo Alvares, Senior Retail Media Manager.

Tune in to find out more!

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"The key, I would say, is balancing scale and transparency depending on what the brand is trying to learn and achieve."

Danilo Alvares

KEY TAKEAWAYS

In this episode, Julie, Jordan, Ross, and Danilo discuss:

• Ways to Access Amazon DSP: The difference between the traditional Amazon Managed Service, agency/tech partner "seats," and brands owning and operating their DSP seat in-house.

• Evolution of DSP Access: How Amazon has opened up the DSP ecosystem, making it more user-friendly and accessible for agencies and self-service buyers.

• Buying Models - Crawl, Walk, Run: The progression from open auction (crawl) to private auctions (walk) to preferred deals and programmatic guarantees (run), describing the level of control, complexity, and inventory at each stage.

• Aligning Deal Types with Brand Goals: How brands should approach DSP deals based on their growth stage, goals (reach vs. efficiency), and market maturity.

• Custom Deals & Working with Amazon Supply Desk: Insights on negotiating custom inventory deals that align closely with brand audiences, often requiring a strong relationship with Amazon's supply desk team.

• Latest Updates – Project Deal Builder: The team discusses Amazon's new (beta) Project Deal Builder, which aims to democratize custom deal-making for DSP buyers further.

• Transparency and Measurement: Examination of how transparency, reporting, and measurement vary across different buying models—and how tools like AMC (Amazon Marketing Cloud) help unify data analysis.

• Favorite Types of Buys: Both Danilo Alvares and Ross Walker share their excitement around mixing precise audience targeting with creative formats and leveraging new inventory opportunities like streaming TV.

🎙️Black Friday & Cyber Monday Data Breakdown With the Acadia Team

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Welcome to The Ecommerce Braintrust podcast, brought to you by Julie Spear, Head of Retail Marketplace Services, and Jordan Ripley, Director of Retail Account Management.

We're coming to you late in the day on December 3rd, less than 48 hours after the whirlwind of Cyber Monday has wrapped up. The dust is barely settling, and we're diving straight into what really went down.

To help us make sense of it all, we've gathered a powerhouse panel.

• From the operations and organic side of the action, we have Gavin Farnan and Celina Arbelaez from our Account Management team, two people who've been in the trenches all weekend.

• And bringing the media perspective, we're joined by Hyunsoo Park and Ross Walker, ready to unpack the wins, surprises, and standout trends of the season.

Let's dive in.

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Over the BFCM weekend, we saw a 1.5x lift in sales, and then over the 12 days, a 1.6x multiple compared to last year's BFCM.

Gavin Farnan

KEY TAKEAWAYS

In this episode, the team discusses:

• Personal Recaps: The group shares what they bought during the sales

• Shift in Shopping Patterns: The panel discusses how consumers are increasingly buying earlier in these tentpole events, with a higher share of sales happening in the initial days of Turkey 12, and why waiting for bigger deals later doesn't always pay off.

• Data & Sales Insights: Client data showing a 50–60% year-over-year lift in sales, and the group explores trends in daily sales spikes and the spreading out of purchases across event days.

• Cross-Channel Promotions: The challenges and strategies around promo consistency across Amazon, D2C, and other retailers like Target and Ulta, and the importance of deal badging on Amazon for visibility.

• Event Differences & Glitches: Insights into new Amazon features like improved deal badging, the impact of glitches (like PPD discount badge issues), and increases in category discount depth.

• AI & Discovery: The growing importance of AI-driven discovery with Amazon's Rufus and how brands must optimize content to be surfaced by these tools, despite the limited data currently available from Amazon.

• New Ad Tech & Sponsored Content: The rollout and mixed success of product video ads, sponsored brand video priorities, and ongoing Amazon ad platform updates leading right up to the event.

• Q4 Holiday Advice: Practical tips for brands to close out the quarter strong, like maintaining bestseller rank, doubling down on winning products, leveraging creator campaigns and off-Amazon traffic, and keeping content fresh and responsive to new search behaviors.

• Team Takeaways: Encouragement to focus budget and effort on high-performing keywords and channels, and reminders not to slack off as shipping cutoffs approach.

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Welcome to The Ecommerce Braintrust podcast, brought to you by Julie Spear, Head of Retail Marketplace Services, and Jordan Ripley, Director of Retail Account Management.

Today, we're excited to welcome back two familiar voices: Ross Walker, Director of Retail Media, and Pat Petriello, Director of Retail Marketplace Strategy.

They're here to help us unpack the wave of announcements that came out of unBoxed 2025 and break down what they really mean for brands.

Let's dive in.

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It's a trap! Every single one of our brands that has said, 'Forget about it—go upper funnel. Go conquest new territory. Go get new customers.' That's been the more effective use of dollars.

Ross Walker

KEY TAKEAWAYS

In this episode, Julie, Jordan, Ross, and Pat discuss:

• Overarching themes from Unboxed: democratization and simplification of Amazon's ad products and tools

• Unified reporting: Merging Sponsored Ads and DSP platforms for easier campaign management and deeper, cross-platform insights

• Creative Agent: Amazon's advanced AI tool for quickly generating and testing high-quality video and creative assets—especially impactful for brands without in-house creative teams

• AMC Agent: Making Amazon Marketing Cloud more accessible with natural language queries and easier data exploration, streamlining technical work for agencies

• The evolving role of agencies and partners: How AI-powered solutions shift agency focus from tactical execution to strategic guidance and validation

• New ad formats: Sponsored Product Video and other SERP-based innovations, plus the impact on conversion and brand visibility

• Sponsored Brand Reserve Share of Voice: Its potential uses, strategies, and when it makes sense to invest

• Upcoming and lesser-discussed features: Project Complete TV for streamlined top-funnel investments and new full-funnel campaign capabilities