If it's hard, why is it hard to define?

It is hard to define.

I think that McKinsey tried to define commerce media a couple of years ago, and I think that they created a lot of interest in commerce media because it broadened the tent from retailers to any publisher or... banking institution, travel company, anybody with first party data.

But if you just say anyone with first party data, it's a little loose and it doesn't enable commerce media and retail media to work together well.

And so the way that I define it is probably through a retailer lens because it's where a lot of my experience has been.

And the way that I defined it a few weeks ago on shopper missions, which is my sub stack, was to say Retail media really looks to monetize its own assortment.

And so when you think about it from a retailer perspective, if I sell the product as the retailer, retail media can be used to drive traffic and sales through that.

What's your emotional sense of kind of how excited or optimistic we should be right now?

What else did you pick up that wasn't like an overt sort of thing that they said, but something that was maybe telegraphed through who was there, the programming, any sort of like subtext that you picked up from those other executives?

Yeah, there were definitely some subtext.

I mean, I think in terms of understanding how the merchants play a role, there was very directly explained collaboration that I didn't expect to see there, which was that there is a concept of a retailer reach program, which is enabling those brands that are participating in retail media to get help with distribution in stores.

Now, if you think about Ace, they are a 5300 store chain in the US with 2800 owners.

And so it's a very entrepreneurial co-op model.

And so one of the challenges for both merchandising and retail media is how do you get in enough stores? And so I think that they have that pain point a little more strongly than most retailers do.

And so I think they've had to innovate in that way.

interesting what would you say was sort of the balance from the day of um sort of trying to trying to sell more into bigger brands versus trying to tap more into the smaller brand and activate them