Grocery Shop 2023: A Deep Dive into AI, and the Implications of Instacart's IPO with James Tenser and Ricardo Belmar

Are you ready to wrap your mind around the future of retail? Join BrainTrust members, James Tenser and Ricardo Belmar, as they explore the compelling conversations emerging from Grocery Shop 2023. 

Uncover the transformative power of artificial intelligence as it shapes this landscape.  This isn't your typical event recap; we're delving into the nitty-gritty of practical use cases, inflation, pricing challenges, and the rise of private labels. Buckle up for insights that could redefine your understanding of the retail sector!

Ever wondered how robots can optimize white-collar jobs? Join us on this mind-boggling journey into the AI revolution at Grocery Shop 2023. We're not just talking about mundane task automation; we're discussing the exciting potential of AI-enhanced decision making, the elimination of "junk work", and the unprecedented career opportunities arising from this shift. Plus, find out why strong data governance is a non-negotiable for businesses eager to ride the AI wave.

Finally, we turn our gaze to the Instacart IPO and its profound implications. Ponder on how Instacart could redefine the retail media network with its unique access to customer data across multiple brands. Then, imagine the thrilling possibilities of streaming services and connected TV in the retail media landscape. As we wrap up, don't forget to visit RetailWire.com and join the conversation. The future is here, and it's more exciting than we ever imagined!

RetailWire is the retail industry's premier source for news, analysis, and discussion. With a focus on the latest trends, technology, and consumer behavior, RetailWire provides a platform for industry experts and thought leaders to share their insights and perspectives. Whether you're a retailer, supplier, or service provider, RetailWire is your go-to destination for staying informed and ahead of the curve.

Be sure to leave us a comment and let us know what you think. You might even hear your comment read on the next episode!

To learn more, or to join our Daily Discussions, visit RetailWire.com.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey, thanks for tuning in to the Retail Wire podcast. This episode was recorded live from grocery shop 2023 in Las Vegas, featuring two of our Brain Trust members, James Tenser and Ricardo Belmar. Listen to hear their insights and key takeaways. We hope you enjoy this episode.

Speaker 2: 0:23

Welcome everyone to another Retail Wire Live. I'm Ricardo Belmar, I lead partner marketing for Retail at Microsoft and I am here today with a good friend and a fellow Brain Trust member, Jamie Tenser.

Speaker 3: 0:35

Greetings. Glad to be here. As ever, working with you, Ricardo, on this is one of the privileges of the job.

Speaker 2: 0:42

We are here at grocery shop this week once again and we're going to go through our notes on how things are going at the show, what the hot topics are this time around.

Speaker 3: 0:52

Very good. Maybe we can start with a few thoughts about the tone of this event. These Las Vegas events, grocery shop have always had a lot of excitement, energy and can argue, at times hype about technology innovation. I think my overall observation is that that's a little toned down the last day or the first half of the show. It feels like a more practical conversation we're having in many cases, as opposed to infatuation with the next news.

Speaker 2: 1:26

Yes, If we think back to past events, the one that we are often, I guess, these days, somewhat chuckling about was then infatuation with Metaverse, which, even at the time it first started popping up at a grocery shop, tom Talk, which everyone we talked about. It was a lot of hype and everyone was jumping in on that. I think that one's completely gone off the radar.

Speaker 3: 1:47

I haven't heard the word mentioned once. That's not to dismiss its potential in a larger picture, but I think folks are really focused on some more, let's say pressing and current opportunities and pressers. I think.

Speaker 2: 2:02

I think so. Yeah, I think we both noticed that in tone. You were saying the technology components we're hearing about it's less about what's the art of the possible from that technology and more about here's what we've done as a brand so far with this technology. Here's where we think we're going with it in more of a practical use case.

Speaker 3: 2:22

I think practicality is the term I would use too. These are things we actually are doing or can be done. It's great. I'm a big fan of use cases and we've heard several presentations where folks really talked about things that are accomplished or they're in the process of accomplishing. We'll address a couple of those today. Gosh themes on our list.

Speaker 3: 2:45

One, clearly, that seems to pervade every conversation. Maybe it's a reason for the more I'll use the word silver tone of the event, compared to some in the past, is the overarching concern about inflation and pricing challenges in general. I think it's coloring the whole industry. It seems to come up in some respect in just about every presentation and many of the conversations I've certainly had on the exhibit floor. Inflation is slower, but not gone. A lot of price increases have been taken in the past couple of years. Consumers are changing the way they shop to a greater or lesser degree because of it. We've heard a number of comments about how that's happening. I really think that that's why there's a little less focus on the next new thing and a little bit more about all right, let's make sure we have our groundwork laid properly.

Speaker 2: 3:44

I think that's one. Every keynote that I went to there was at least one comment made about changing consumer buying habits. I think this time last year what we were probably hearing a lot of what were the post-pandemic buying habits and what we're going to stay, which weren't going to stay this year, I think it's more changing buying habits because of inflation pressure. I think that's true. I think that's taken over that one. I know I'm thinking back to the opening keynote with the head of Kroger. I think he mentioned specifically things like switching to private label as an example of buying habits that they're well aware of and how they serve different price points with different brands. I've heard that mentioned a few times.

Speaker 3: 4:26

Because I think we're rounding up from what he believed and I hope I quote the stat right. But he was saying that they are percent into private label. Sales across the Kroger system is increasing and and they and it's actually a matter of strategy for the company. I Hope the numbers right. Was it 30 to 40 percent? I think that's right?

Speaker 1: 4:46

Yeah, I think I was 40 percent there.

Speaker 3: 4:47

Maybe it's about 30 percent at Walmart. These are numbers I heard secondhand repeated today, so so that that's Notable. But it's also a way of helping preserve margin for those companies and it perhaps suggests something about how private labels are perceived by shoppers as well. During covert they had opportunity, or perhaps a Due to lack of alternative, a reason to try private label products that they might not have considered before and Learned perhaps a greater comfort, at least with some of those. In fact, ron Bernacci, who's one of the executives from Rouse's markets in in Louisiana, actually made pretty much that comment this morning at a conference and I sat in on.

Speaker 3: 5:26

So store brands are not a stigma. Shoppers are happier with the quality of the products. Door brand products almost across the industry are quite comparable, in a few instances better than some of the branded products and Retailers are. I recognize that that's one of the responses that's happening For shoppers, and not the only one, though they're also shifts in the product choices or the category choices. In some instances we heard about shifts from Prepared food products to ingredient products, shift in behavior between restaurant meals or delivered restaurant meals and meals prepared at home, and that that's one that's kind of flip flopped a couple times in the last year and a half, but my delivery has had a good bit to do with that too, so the door dashes.

Speaker 3: 6:14

I'm great the ability to get a prepared meal sent at home, sometimes in the same Delivery trip as some of the grocery items that were shopped On the same time. So retailers are they're they're challenged to do this right and and and also to price right. So brands have taken some Pretty significant price increases in the last couple of years. It is not in their nature to roll them back right, although we could say that the egg crisis was a was an exception to the rule. But that had a reason and the reason resolved. So the consumers some at least are feeling the pressure, and retailers feel the pressure to respond to that by trying to provide a good value story and, at the same time, preserve the margins that they so desperately need to Keep their businesses healthy In a couple trends I was a hearing kind of relate to that, the business aspect of it and then maybe the profitability there were comments about and this came up again right in the Kroger and Kina.

Speaker 2: 7:13

You know what. What happens when Kroger and Albertsons merge, what, what to? Should everyone else who's here think about that? How should, what, should they expect? I think we heard a lot of things that I would expect to hear if you're asked that question. You know, for example, right, well, we, we think that you know the little immediate effect would be lower prices Right on things, and I think I think that's the answer they have to give, in my opinion, and whether that happens or not, that's the answer they need to be giving that's what you tell the regulators.

Speaker 2: 7:39

right, exactly, so I think that remains to be seen, but it might.

Speaker 3: 7:43

I mean, buying power of the combined company. That was the real story there. Yeah, is a factor whether that you know that may. Well, I think I'm a little bit acidic about that sort of thing in general, but you know, I'd like to see it true. I mean, let's say we could argue that the buying cloud at Walmart is one of the reasons that for their price, for their prices to be.

Speaker 3: 8:01

Where they are, you know maybe other players want to want to try and compete as close to their level as possible. I hope that's true. Yeah, I would say that Kroger is at least saying some of the things I would hope to hear from a enlightened company about the impact of their, of their merger, and Mr McMullin, this morning I'll be yesterday morning had some things to say about that. I clearly he's. I think he's still the sounds okay, they still selling it a little bit, a little bit. Yeah, yeah, right, right, exactly, yeah exactly.

Speaker 2: 8:31

So then I think other other things. So we're on this, this theme. Right, you had those comments. Then there I hear more comments from Different speakers on finding the right ways to make Online grocery, digital grocery channels, profitable. Try is still an issue. I think I've seen less on the contents, on the session perspective, on delivery, than last year. Right, that's probably right, but, and then at the same time, I think, on the show floor, I saw, you know, I think related to this, what we were talking before about robotics and where. Where is the robotics theme? I don't see it in the sessions, but I've talked to a few of the vendors on the expo floor. There's still, you know, in the context of automation and automating the picking and packing through a warehouse and using robotics.

Speaker 3: 9:17

That's still there, I think there's, I think that's become a competitor. Yeah, so we tend to see more robots that look like rectangular objects that are sliding around, moving up and down, then robots with arms and right, and there are a few examples on the on the exhibit floor today. I could I could rattle off a couple cupping names, but a company called fulfilled, the Vinci, phonomic, all of which are providing Really bins, if you will, bins with wheels but, but but there's smart bins with wheels that work together.

Speaker 3: 9:44

That efficiency and fulfillment is Is really important because the film and cost retailers so much money, right so so they are trying to find ways to shave that expense.

Speaker 2: 9:56

Yeah, and then there's one I would add. I would add to that I talked to vc robotics who's doing a Still in the in store robot but they're trying to tackle issue of shelf replenishment After hours. So they are introduced robot similar in the typical tower. So we've seen of other in store robots but with a robotic arm that has enough precision that it can take, you know, a multiple boxes of, say, can goods, for example, and place them with precision exactly the way you want them by planet gram on the shelf. I'm desert with more precision, more accuracy than a person would.

Speaker 2: 10:28

But interestingly, you know when you hear the story it's not geared to be a labor replacement, it's meant to be a labor augmentation. So they said in retailers they're working with they don't see them having fewer people, that because they're focused on this replenishment happening after store hours when there are no customers around, their view as well. If you're a store you're trying to do replenishment overnight, how many employees are you going to have that want that shift overnight? Me, you know you might not be able to get five employees to do it, to restart maybe you can only have two. So if you have two, when you have three of the robots, then you get the job done overnight and all your cells are replenished.

Speaker 3: 11:01

So those people are kind of minding or directing the robots and you can't really expect those I mean robot that detects a void Would have to go and retrieve the item that is going to use to replenish. I think you need some people in the mix to make sure that they have access to the product and then you send it on their way to do its task. So I haven't seen how that works in practice, but it's an interesting idea and I think there and also that badger is here as well the notion that there'll be certain special purpose robots, roaming aisles and retail stores, while it I think no, it's not being given up on. I think I think there's going to be applications, maybe the first and even second generation of these things. We're about working out the kinks. I think there are still some opportunities to.

Speaker 2: 11:45

I mean, it comes down to run the stores efficiently as you can write and it kind of like to point your brother before about the practicality being the under tone, the show you're. One of the comments I've heard from the robotics folks is look, the early use cases were all about robots running, moving down the aisle, scanning right. Be a line on computer vision, scanning and generating data. Then you. Then you use that data to decide to replenish, doing or do whatever I need to do. The RI on that ended up not being as strong as it needed to be, given the cost of those robots. Even though you had the time efficiency, it was still too much cost to overcome.

Speaker 2: 12:20

So now the message I'm hearing from them is you need to tie other things to it. So I think the one example and I think they've been on stage at every single grocery shop is not markets Right. So they've done I think the one, the one sort of the textbook deployment right. That makes sense of I don't. But I don't just have the robots. They've deployed I OT sensors and things so that they're not just scanning one thing when the robot goes down at I, let's get in multiple things all at once so that they're maximizing that time efficiency, they're maximizing what they do with the data it feeds information back to their mobile app. I think they're doing it now near real time, so that you're a shopper and the robots happen to do a pass, the data in the app gets updated. So there's all those things. I think you combine them. Now you start to see an RI that makes sense.

Speaker 3: 13:05

It's a lot of it's a lot of pieces of tech working together right now. Shucks has a long history being innovative about these things and, and for my own interactions with them years ago, I know that there's a High level concern there about implementation in the store being optimized to extend possible, and so I it has never. It hasn't surprised me that they've been on the leading edge when it comes to testing these things. I don't know if these are the Methodologies that that that persist long term, but, you know, give them some credit for for for being inventive, being at the well intrepid right. Yeah, try these things out.

Speaker 3: 13:39

And it is kind of great. Yeah, so, so, so, anyway. So robots don't have human faces on too much anymore, despite the early hype some years ago. But robots have a degree of artificial intelligence embedded in many cases and the conversation absolutely is continuing here at this event, again with it colored a little differently in some respects. So, but AI is everywhere. I think people are a little bit. People seem to be talking about in, in, in, well, what's really good for how we really going to implement it, but nobody is saying we're not going with a, we're not using it right, it is right, it's clearly. It seems to be a technologies times come, it's a question working out.

Speaker 3: 14:21

So you know, I both had the same reaction to the comment by from heritage grocers in the session this morning when she talked about the evolution of artificial intelligence in his perspective. You said but at the very beginning the promise was about finding ways to reduce blue collar jobs. We are replacing with artificial intelligence. It's evolving quickly. He suggests to the notion of enhancing or optimizing white collar jobs.

Speaker 3: 14:48

Artificial intelligence not for substituting for tasks, but rather for making decision making better, making and and and I was, I would add to that and, since my own editorialization eliminating the junk work, the, the, the judge, decision making, a bogs down the knowledge workers and companies, because they can trust the tool to do a large portion of that for them.

Speaker 3: 15:12

Free their minds, speak to deal with the issues that humans must deal with in the mix. That he said it better, but he's not the only one. The only comment I heard the last couple days where people were talking about that the notion of Enhanced decision making right, a number of different realms and retail, whether it's merchandising, whether it's promotion planning, whether it's got you, I think even comes down to staffing decisions, things like that, that, and certainly content For the ads, the I can be, a is a tool and I and and it means the nature of the jobs and retail are going to change. Maybe it's not just some people can do the tasks. Sometimes it's gonna be the people who can direct the I to the task right, and that's a new skill set and likely a great career opportunity.

Speaker 2: 15:57

And I definitely agree. There's been many, many speakers mentioning how this isn't about replacing something, that's it's augmenting, it's increasing speed Efficiency. To your point about the decision making it's making better decisions more rapidly with the having surfaced the right insights from the data that you have. I also heard mentioned a few times to the idea that it's one thing to say you're going to invest in AI, but then it's another thing to say, well, is your data ready for that? So I did hear a couple of speakers talk about you know how they introduce new data governance teams and and and uh teams are are focused on making sure that they have clean data and the notion that you know, if you supply your a? I with data that's not clean and not good, then the outcome can't be trusted.

Speaker 3: 16:45

I'm not you train and I'm not official intelligence train them with that information, you train to make bad decisions, exact work as astrosphere is worth so in. And there were a couple comments Over the last couple days to that effect that you cannot put these tools to work and and it takes time to train and set up the systems right, without working in your data governance first, without getting that, that, that that foundational work. It's part of, it's part of the digital transformation process and many companies have been engaged in. But now, with the, the urgencies even accelerated because you know that's basic bad data just gonna compound it with a I you're not, it's not just gonna be right to be a lack of improvement and make it work.

Speaker 3: 17:28

Make it work so, so they people get that, they realize that it's. It's a significant task. I've seen master data management. Those kinds of disciplines have been a conversation for a long time, but maybe there's a new urgency.

Speaker 2: 17:40

Right? Yes, I think so.

Speaker 2: 17:42

How how, how they have to get on the stick with it and I think related to that again. This is another comment that's a provosh what do you mention about how you know? He made a point of highlighting that you can just do this on your own right, so that what they found is you know, really working your technology partner network of suppliers and providers to Make sure you have a strong grasp of what are they doing today, where they going to be doing, what's coming next. You work that into your plan. You mentioned that multiple times how that's impacting.

Speaker 2: 18:10

In fact, when he was asked you know, what do you? What do you think this looks like five years out? You know. First, you said why you know. Given the rate of an estimate we've seen the last few months, it's hard to predict anything five years out, but I can you send me the key was what's gonna determine how rapidly that changes? It's those technology providers that are doing this and delivering that technology. So you need to be on top of what they're doing so that you can understand what are the capabilities you can leverage two months from now, three months from now, six months from now and it's a mistake to think that that you have it all mastered right.

Speaker 3: 18:40

In fact, that's probably the minute you think that you're probably in trouble. That that's true a lot of realms for a long time.

Speaker 3: 18:46

Right, it's certainly true here. Right, a lot of intricacies. I need to rely on the On the know how of the folks, that folks on your own teams, but also that you work with. So that that's, that's a story, but we're gonna be talking about this again and probably again and again future. I have to say the core argument about what we call generative idea, the idea that we're gonna take a lot of data, we're gonna feed an agent, intelligent agent and use it to help make better decisions, to perhaps Increase work capacity, which I think it's something. It's not said that often, but I think that it's fundamentally a very sound idea, and artificial intelligence feels like it's. It's like burst on the scene in the last two years, but actually it's been I think that's been in development for quite a long time. So I guess I'm a fan when it comes down to it and I'm not really like to worried about, you know, robots from the future coming in the tax right yeah, I don't think that's really what it's about.

Speaker 3: 19:46

I think it's really about enhancing, and you know, when we talk about decision, support is another element to that. That haven't been said much, but I think it'd be quite important. When human decision makers are time limited in the activities are involved in whether it's promotion, planning or merchandising or store operations they basically have to rank, order their list and cut off the bottom so they can handle only so many matters in a given amount of time and you have to quit. Hey, I can extend that reach. And so in a company, in a business, what's looking for another penny profit and but is not able to undertake the activities that are gonna give it no opportunity to find that next, next bit of advantage, the extra capacity that a trustworthy artificial intelligence can provide can possibly be a way to stay competitive in a very tough market. So it's not, it's not just about no nice to do better way to do things, it's also a bottom line imperative.

Speaker 3: 20:48

Yeah, and the best retailers are gonna find ways to use it that way. So, among those decisions that are challenging folks, let's segue to the thing that we decided to finish with it because it may be the most on on trend topic of the day at the retail media. Absolutely, and there's an area where there's gonna be a lot of decisions.

Speaker 2: 21:07

support needed as well, but you're mentioning something happened this week that was very much Well, yes, definitely popped up and very timely was the instacart IPO and I think what you're going by the media reports. Right, I'll use the word revelation. I'm not sure that, following this, it should come as a revelation, but the the notion that their business has a very significant portion tied to advertising as a retail media platform and you know that clearly, the direction that seems their Business plan will strengthen that and go deeper into retail media capabilities and then at being an advertising solution and that's what's gonna make give them a sound business plan true and when, when I'm If you see no appeared here a year or a year and a half ago to talk about her plans for instacart something that's as resume with me.

Speaker 3: 21:56

That she said at the time was that their delivery business was not profitable on its own but that she expected the retail media contribution to be Virtually all the profitability for the company. And because of the scale their delivery business they had an audience that was big enough to actually have some clout in the market. That was a prediction a year back. It seems like perhaps They've come through on that prediction and we'll see how the market treats the IPO. I think I've actually been a little bit won over by Instacart. I never liked the way they Intermediated the shopper relationship very much for retailers because I'm kind of a I guess I have a bias about the, about the grocery business and the consumer relationships. But here's a case of a company that's that's making a shift, I think, to become a technology and and data supplier to the industry as well. I got, I got a hand it to them. They seem to, they seem to be making a transition.

Speaker 2: 22:55

That's, I would think, not easy to do and We'll see if the IPO, if the investment community agrees because, yeah, I'm very We've seen, we can say, I mean they have a good data position because, right, thinking about it, they're, they're providing customer data across multiple brands and that positions them as probably one of the only, if not the few, who can do that within a single retail media network and paint a picture of a consumer across those multiple brands. That's gonna be appealing to, to CPG brands and other advertisers for that and and I think currently that's really just based on product search, right, you know, if you see them now layering on they've shown before. Right, you know what, going back toward point on generative AI, you know, today most people, probably in the app, are looking for a specific product that either put it in by name or they're looking within a category. But now, if you imagine, well, what if I'm just gonna search by?

Speaker 2: 23:47

Here's my end result. I want, I want to put together this kind of a meal. I'm like I want to shop for specific ingredients. Let the app, let Instacart, tell me the ingredients that Could potentially provide me. I can just see this as the evolution, right, that could provide from yet another.

Speaker 2: 24:01

Advertising unit that they could offer to brands within that, which is not quite the same as the search, but still sort of all right.

Speaker 3: 24:08

Well, let's come back to that. That also because another thing we were talking about about retail media is the, is the, the divide between the very largest retail media networks and other retailers, and Instacart's in an interesting place for that. So there's pressure obviously on all but the top 10 or 12 Retail media networks and grocery right now to find their place in this market and to be able to compete for the attention and ad dollars of the large, of the largest brands. And the largest brands, for their part, have been with Limitations where they only perhaps have enough time to to to interact with those largest platforms the Walmart's, the Kroger, the Albertsons, targets and a handful of others. So this is, this is a challenge how do, how do, how do others play? How did the, the, the really strong, the, the outstanding regional grocery chains compete? How do the Networks, the IGAs compete if they can only deliver a fraction of the national audience?

Speaker 3: 25:06

But the brands do understand even if they run out of bandwidth Maybe they need an AI to help them that that they they're not catching the entire audience if they only deal with us top few retailers. So they, only they. They can, they can Create campaigns, maybe tell me they're using them and then kind of figure out another way perhaps to reach the, the folks who are devoted patrons of Myers or or Publix or or Wegmans or HB in these other. You know their markets and I think that's not been worked out that well. Those retails are challenged to put up comparable offerings.

Speaker 3: 25:44

So it's it's an area of a lot of evolution. So why is Instacart interesting here? Because they cross over all of those retailers and perhaps provide another point of access for those shoppers. I don't know if that's you the thought process behind them, behind their present move or their strategy, but in the end brands still care about reaching their entire, at least to call it the ACV, their all commodity volume. They want to reach the shoppers everywhere that they sell their product. And it's probably counter to strategy to say, well, we're only going to direct our advertising campaigns to the stores that are easy to buy media.

Speaker 2: 26:22

Right, right. But I do think and that's one that I'm not I'm not sure just how much I expected to hear more in the context of retail media about. You know, in store in my mind, is sort of the next growth area there. I'm going to be curious to see how Instacart plays to that one, because they're going to have to leverage the I think the retailer relationships they have. I mean, I know they've got the in store platform offering the cards and the cards it's going to be, a matter of adoption of that.

Speaker 2: 26:46

Yeah, yeah, but that's where I think you know you mentioned the shelf label, electronic shelf labels, right, that's comes into play as a evolution piece and the I've heard this not so much here but in other places you know the neck. I think a future battleground, if you will, for retail media is the connections to streaming services and connected TV. As I'm yet another growth area for that, that's a. I think it'll be really appealing to brands.

Speaker 3: 27:09

If the shoppers are using those services, it's an opportunity. If the issue is which shoppers on which occasions, that's always the issue. It's always the issue. You know which channel?

Speaker 2: 27:19

which shoppers.

Speaker 3: 27:20

So another related, related I think we'll wrinkle in all of this. That's been mentioned a number of times in the sessions I was in the last couple of days. It's the need for standardization of the ad units and the measurements themselves. Yeah, when you have one off platforms by the largest retailers and a number of different intermediaries, it is, it seems, unclear. How do we, how do we compare a media, a media purchase, one to one? How do we understand their performance? I think that is vexing right now to the folks who are spending the money, right, yeah, and and and even to the agencies who are trying to help them do it. So it sounds like there's a lot of work there. I understand there are efforts underway.

Speaker 2: 28:02

Yeah, yeah. I have heard in there that there's some new standardization I guess approaches that released by IAB that's expected to kind of help with this. I mean again, I guess you know this presumes that you have retail media networks will adopt those standardization writing.

Speaker 3: 28:16

Well, and and the and the, the advertising I forget which Federation now, but the ad industry, the traditional ad they have their own opinions on this Right. This is starting to feel like there's a lot. There's more work to do on this than perhaps people originally assumed. Let's put it that way.

Speaker 3: 28:32

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's it's, it's feels easy, let's get that money, yeah, and for incremental revenue. But now, now the brands have to justify the spend, and so that's. That's an interesting, in my opinion, area where there's I feel like we're one tenth of the way down the road. Yeah, yeah, so so early, so early on that one.

Speaker 2: 28:47

I think that's a generally generally so so.

Speaker 3: 28:48

So another issue related to that how you know where do. Where do they spend the money? As I as as which dollars are going into retail media buys, and there are a couple of references I heard now that surprised me. I think there is perhaps a something of an acceptance among some retailers that some of those dollars are going to come out of trade money that they used to think were sacrosanct, and it used to be that retailers would say, yeah, I want those grand dollars or those consumer promotion dollars, but don't you touch the allowances, right, you dare.

Speaker 3: 29:22

I think the retail media conversations now are in some cases, becoming part of a comprehensive negotiation and and and I confess I I think I've started to be one over to the notion that you know, if a, if a trade marketing investment produces less return for the, why not move it? Why not move it to something more return? Absolutely Now, from the perspective of the retail that's putting up the network, they've incurred a large expense and effort to create this new channel and the last thing they want is for for the money just to be transferred from one pocket to the other while their expenses go through.

Speaker 2: 29:58

I think there's some and I think the I think some of the risk to that maybe gets diminished as the measurement standardization gets worked out, because one of the ways you solve that right is to have a consistent, reliable way to get a true measurement of. Is this more valuable in this bucket or this other bucket over here for as the brand for me to spend the dollars and depending on that result, that might convince me to say, well, I need to put more dollars to it to.

Speaker 3: 30:20

In total, no, perhaps so and and and it's, as I said, the first part of this conversation. I'm going back a year or a year and a half about retail media, where it really started to to really bubble up to the top of mind. It seemed like this is easy. It was, it was going to be easy. We're going to get the new funds. It's going to help offset our cost of fulfillment in our, in our digital grocery sales. This is this is going to create, it's going to save us. Everybody's going to be happy and the more they looked into how it actually has to happen, the harder it seems to get Right, so complexity is going up, yeah Well exactly.

Speaker 3: 30:55

So that's probably a normal learning curve, but I think that's why it is. It's on the lips of just about everybody that we've certainly the retailers prefer, but there's been reference to, I think in every session I've attended at some to some degree. Yeah, I think that's true. So that's true. So there we are, so anyhow. So we'll be back talking about retail media again.

Speaker 2: 31:16

I'm sure, again and again, I think, yeah, I think so, absolutely it's going to keep coming back. Well, I think that's a good one for us to to close on for this, for this grocery shop. So I think we'll close it out by telling everyone you know, if you haven't been to retailwirecom, to please give a visit, where you'll hear discussions like the ones we just had kind of play themselves out, and three different discussions a day, every day there's some smart retail wire.

Speaker 3: 31:39

We're lucky to be with them, you know, I think so.

Speaker 2: 31:42

Absolutely.

Speaker 3: 31:43

Absolutely. You learn a lot from that and it's been a privilege to be part of it, in my case for years, and yours too. Yeah, I agree, I agree, yeah, so it's great and it's. You know, if I'm smart enough to be on this webcast, it's probably because I've been participating in retail wire for a long time and learning from the rest of the brain trust.

Speaker 2: 31:59

So yeah, 100%, 100%. So definitely check it out if you haven't been to retailwirecom and we hope to see you soon again on a future retail wire live.

Speaker 3: 32:08

I can count on and, Ricardo, it's always a pleasure working with you. I'm Jamie Tensor via Send.

Speaker 2: 32:13

Strategies and I'm Ricardo Balmar, the partner marketing for Microsoft for retail in the Americas. Thanks for joining us, thanks for joining us.