The Commerce Collective Podcast

Hannah Donoghue, SVP Consulting at Flywheel breaks down everything that’s going to shape the commerce landscape in 2025. From supply chain transformation to social commerce to retail media to AI, listening to this episode will leave you prepared for what’s to come.

In this episode (our last episode of the year!), Patrick & Emma cover what happened during BFCM 2024 and what it means for brands and retailers - think personalization vs. discovery, low-cost marketplaces, and the competition between the biggest retailer players. You'll want to stick around for the end - where we get into a rapid-fire style, full-year recap. Happy holidays and we'll see you next year!

Matt Leigh, VP Retail Operations at Syndigo breaks down the current state of digital content in this episode - looking at increasing regulatory pressures and how brands need to adapt, what motivates retailer data upload methods and requirements, and the need for sophisticated and specialized content data management and expertise.

You might hear "retailer earnings" and think about investors, but you shouldn't underestimate the power of understanding the important pieces of a retailer earnings report and how each quarter's performance can impact your business. In this episode, Eamon Kelly of Edgewater Research Company joins us to teach us how to decode the critical elements of these reports as a brand or agency and understand what actually drives share prices for retailers.

This month’s episode is continued coverage on the competitive low-cost marketplace environment. Patrick and Emma discuss Shein’s struggles to IPO, Temu’s mission to sign on as many merchants as possible while navigating a potential end to the De Minimus tax exemption, and Amazon’s shadowboxing to stay in the game. But with prices so low sellers will have to determine when it’s time to invest in growing as a brand (or not).

In this episode recorded live from unBoxed 2024, Gabe Fishbein, VP Product at Flywheel covers the power of Sponsored Ads across the full funnel, which has come to life in new ways due to changes in how Amazon calculates advertising eligibility. This change forces advertisers to re-evaluate their profitability matrix and ad type mix, which overall provides an opportunity to further seek deterministic measurement all the way down the funnel.

Recorded live at Amazon unBoxed 2024, this episode features Kiersten Smith, Director of Marketing at Megababe who covers how Flywheel helped strategize a full funnel approach to increase NTB sales, marketshare, and brand awareness utilizing a variety of Amazon Ads products. Listen in for how this challenger brand, in a tough category, with finite resources was able to meet its goals.

In this quick episode of the Commerce Collective Podcast’s unBoxed coverage, Donte McCrary-McClain gives us a speedy overview of multiple new product launches related to AMC, some of which Flywheel had the opportunity to beta test prior to the conference. We’ll cover bid boosting for SP and SB with the help of AMC and a variety of measurement enhancements to AMC itself. Tune in to learn more about what these products are, how to strategically use them, and how Flywheel has been able to bring these to life for a few advertisers via our early testing access. 

Recorded live from unBoxed 2024 in Austin, we talk to Kelly MacLean, VP Amazon DSP at Amazon Ads about finding relevant audiences with ADSP, what we mean by relevance, and the power that exists for advertisers when AMC audiences and APC signals overlay - and we’ll even touch on all of that in relation to CTV buys. You won’t want to miss listening in to this episode, and be sure to check out every episode we publish from unBoxed 2024!

eB2B is one of the fastest-growing ecommerce channels - currently growing faster than eB2C itself! This means that now is the time to research this channel, seek out opportunities, and begin investing in test and learn opportunities. Nick Everitt, Director of Consulting at Flywheel teaches us about the foundations of eB2B, the main platforms, and how brands should be approaching their eB2B channel strategy.

This month’s episode is a brief yet deep dive into a critical element of advertising measurement that everyone in commerce should have their heads wrapped around - and that is determinism vs. probabilism. How do these two concepts differ, and what approach is the best for a multifaceted enterprise brand? Tune in for your monthly dose of topical ecommerce insights and walk away ready to impress your colleagues with this new and/or enhanced knowledge.

Sri Rajagopalan - who you might know from The CPG Guys - joins the Commerce Collective podcast to talk about the trend of ecomm investment slowdown that he has been observing from brands, specifically across retail media. What is causing brands to pull back and shift who leads the retail media charge? And is this a mistake? Listen in to hear Sri’s take on the matter and his advice for brands considering what could be a significant missed opportunity. Pulling back investments is easy, but recovering missed progress can be hard.

In this exciting episode, Aaron Jones, VP of eCommerce and media at Liquid I.V.® (a Unilever brand) discusses the origins of Liquid I.V.® and how growing up in the digital sphere has allowed the brand to invent and continue to own the powdered hydration category. Aaron also highlights what has led to incredibly successful Prime Days the past two years (Liquid I.V.® had the 3rd highest-selling product on Amazon in terms of units sold this past Prime Day), and provides insight into treating each deal event as a unique way to reach customers where they are. Every brand should listen in for a story about innovation, agility, and CPG boundary-pushing.

Fall is almost here and it’s M&A season. This month Patrick and Emma dig into three proposed mergers and/or acquisitions - Mars and Kellanova, Instacart and Uber, and two Amazon aggregators - Branded and Heyday. Why have these acquisitions come into the spotlight and what could these outcomes could mean for the retail industry?

With TikTok Shop, shoppers can now go from inspiration to purchase within seconds. This emerging marketplace unlocks a huge opportunity to drive incremental growth. In this episode, Molly O’Bryen and Deren Baker discuss what sets TikTok Shop apart from other marketplaces and the creator economy. Plus they share tips on how to build a winning strategy.

Recorded during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Jacquelyn covers how brands, retailers, and agencies should best work together to solve the needs of the consumer - who at the end of the day is the start of it all.

In this episode Kelly Miller, VP Commerce, EMEA at Flywheel highlights her research on declining POs and decreased weeks of cover in the EU and what it means for vendors adjusting to Amazon’s rebalancing now that stable profitability has been reached for the first time since the pandemic.

This month Patrick and Emma dig into Flywheel’s findings from Prime Day and what questions brand should really be asking to determine investments into future deal events. Additionally, Google’s announcement that it will not part ways with cookies is touched on.

The ecommerce industry usually dreads the process of AVNs, but in this episode, Russ Dieringer of Stratably provides a counterpoint on how AVNs can actually be a good thing when you’re prepared. Listen in to learn more about the purpose and significance of AVNs, what Stratably’s research uncovered from this past year, and recommendations for how brands should approach the next round of AVNs.Read Stratably’s report here: https://stratably.com/deep-dive-2024-amazon-avn-wrap-up/

This month’s episode of Above the Fold is a special edition covering Flywheel’s recently published whitepaper titled “The Big Shift.” Patrick and Emma cover the inspiration for the report, highlight key points, and discuss recent announcements that tie back to the paper. You can download the paper here (but be sure to listen to the episode for additional insights!).https://www.flywheeldigital.com/guides/the-big-shift-retail-power-dynamics?utm_medium=announcementemail&utm_source=slack&utm_campaign=the-big-shift-whitepaper&utm_content=deckworthy&internal_company_id=2021A1

The Commerce Collective Podcast is back in Cannes and is excited to launch this episode featuring Brian Tomasette - Director of Product, DSP, Amazon Ads that covers the future of addressability. We break it down into three segments, creating relevancy in a cookiesless world, simplification of controls for transparency, and upper funnel solutions for an increasingly fragmented landscape.

Andrea Lennon, Chief Client Officer at Omnicom joins the podcast to discuss what clients want, what clients need, and how clients and agencies can best work together to achieve their shared goals. What clients want can be broken down into three key themes, and Andrea educates us on how Omnicom approaches large client relationships at the holding company level.

The Commerce Collective Podcast’s monthly series, This Month Above the Fold, covers the most important eCommerce headlines each month broken down by none other than Patrick Miller, co-founder of Flywheel. For May 2024 we cover Instacart partnering with Uber Eats for restaurant delivery, SKU sharing across marketplaces, and the fate of TV advertising.

Jill Smith, VP of Sales at Kroger Precision Marketing joins us to educate on the power of Kroger's unique dataset, KPM's advancements within the offsite/programmatic space, and KPM's ambitions to eliminate ad waste for a more sustainable future.

What makes understanding the opportunity of ecommerce so difficult is that finding a global single source of truth can be incredibly difficult, but we think we have the closest answer. In this episode, Michael Rogosa of Flywheel Consulting joins us to showcase how Flywheel’s Consulting team approaches helping clients understand the opportunities that await and how to set ambitious enough goals that will drive their businesses forward.

The Commerce Collective Podcast’s monthly series, This Month Above the Fold, covers the most important ecommerce headlines each month broken down by none other than Patrick Miller. For April 2024 we cover Walmart’s affluent customer, Amazon’s grocery do-over, & an earnings preview.

In the second episode from the Commerce Collective’s trip to Europe, James Hanscomb, EMEA DSP & Omnichannel Lead, educates us on omnichannel media strategies across the EU. The fragmented retailer ecosystem in Europe means it can be tough to understand where it makes the most sense to invest in the developing retail media networks especially considering the differences in consumer behavior and shopping options throughout the EU (think smaller format grocery stores vs. Walmart and how a media strategy needs to be different based on both physical inventory and retailer capabilities). 

The Commerce Collective podcast is off to Europe for two special episodes featuring our EU digital commerce experts, and in this episode Mark James, Senior Director EMEA, covers the nuances and strategies for success for brands when looking specifically at Amazon’s place in this regional ecommerce landscape. The EU market is complex and both regulatory and consumer behavior differences must all be considered when determining the level of investment to attach to an Amazon strategy.

The Commerce Collective Podcast’s monthly series, This Month Above the Fold, covers the most important ecommerce headlines each month broken down by none other than Patrick Miller. For March 2024 we cover what we’re working on to solve for MFA junk inventory, Google’s offsite retail media capabilities, & retail media from the Wall Street perspective.

The Commerce Collective Podcast is back at Shoptalk for another year of live recordings! In this episode, we jump into how fragmentation is impacting the commerce media landscape with a special focus on implications for retailers. With the number of retail media networks on the rise and the desire for standardization and efficient measurement alongside it, this episode will touch on the importance of a more unified retail media approach.

The Commerce Collective Podcast is back at Shoptalk for another year of live recordings! In this episode we discuss how consumer journeys are more complex than ever and are increasingly difficult to measure and target efficiently. Walmart, a true omnichannel retailer, has a unique advantage when it comes to understanding the consumer path to purchase based on their owned touchpoints and full-funnel media capabilities - but how should brands be thinking about their media strategies on Walmart.com knowing that the consumer journey interacts with multiple channels?

The Commerce Collective Podcast is back at Shoptalk for another year of live recordings! In this episode we talk about advancements in Instacart’s technologies for retailers and how Instacart is empowering retailers to embrace the opportunity of an owned retail media platform - which then opens up the door to growth for advertisers.Be sure to tune into all of our podcast content from Shoptalk!

It wouldn’t be the Commerce Collective podcast if we didn’t bring you a new episode on incrementality in 2024. Incrementality is still a made-up word, but in the year since we last covered incrementality we have decided to rephrase how we think about the concept - shifting away from funny estimation math to a true academic exercise looking at the long-term value of net new to channel customers and how much it costs to acquire these customers utilizing none other than clean room technology. You’ll have to listen in for Gabe Fishbein, VP of Product at Flywheel’s take on the future of incrementality as a business-driving factor.REGISTER FOR FLYWHEEL RETAIL INSIGHTS' "FUTURE RETAIL DISRUPTION" WEBINAR ON APRIL 9TH HERE: https://events.bizzabo.com/587928?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=future_retail_disruption_webinar&internal_company_id=1929A1

The Commerce Collective Podcast’s monthly series, This Month Above the Fold, covers the most important ecommerce headlines each month broken down by none other than Patrick Miller. For February 2024, Patrick covers Walmart’s acquisition of Vizio, the state of the ad market and its appeal, and current happenings and outlooks across Alibaba and Amazon’s share of Chinese sellers.

In this episode, Flywheel's Amber Chen, SVP Strategic Partnerships & Global Account Development, APAC, is back to catch up on key ecommerce topics relating to both China & China’s influence on the West. Head back to our APAC Masterclass to learn more about China’s key marketplaces and listen in here to discuss how China’s marketplaces differ from Amazon in terms of data sharing (think AMC) and how Chinese manufacturers like Shein and Temu have taken the US market by storm.

If you aren’t prepared for the shift from third-party observability to operating within walled gardens when measuring advertising efficiency, you’re falling behind. In this episode, our Chief Technology Officer, Keerat Sharma shares his perspective on the upgrade we’re seeing in how we measure advertising efforts, embracing the walled gardens and utilizing clean rooms to tie marketing efforts more closely to sales. Tune in to learn about how the industry got to this point, how to understand what is happening now, and how to prepare for the future (with the help of Flywheel of course) of the movement to first-party walled gardens.

The Commerce Collective Podcast’s monthly series, This Month Above the Fold, covers the most important ecommerce headlines each month broken down by none other than Patrick Miller. For January 2024, Patrick covers Omnicom’s acquisition of Flywheel and what the future of marketing holds, Prime Video officially launching ads, & updates on global marketplaces seeing growth such as Temu.

It's 2024 and Flywheel Retail Insights has all of the predictions for the year that your brand needs to know. In this episode we deep dive into three of the 8 predictions, those being omnichannel as a key player, generative AI, and social commerce. Listen in to see where we predict these key elements of commerce to go this year and how your brand can stay caught up in the quickly changing landscape. Get in touch with the Flywheel Retail Insights team here! https://www.flywheeldigital.com/contact-us

Bill Hildebolt, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman of Influencer Marketing agency gen.video shares his insights on the landscape of influencer marketing and the intricate process of developing efficient campaigns across retailers. Where does a brand begin? Where is performance tracked and what metrics matter? How does influencer marketing tie into a larger media strategy? All of this and more (such as who could influence you to buy Dove soap) will be answered in this episode so be sure to listen in and walk away with a deeper understanding of this exploding segment of commerce.

Streaming TV - or more commonly referred to as STV, is a growing area of ecommerce and for a good reason. In this episode, Gloria Steiner and Kim Reisin of Perpetua teach us about the logistics of STV, when to know if investing in STV makes sense for your brand, and how to measure the success of your STV campaigns when looking at full funnel performance measurement.

Peter Bond, Partnership Acceleration Lead at Flywheel (and, of course, co-host of the famed CPG Guys Podcast) joins The Commerce Collective Podcast to discuss what he’s seeing - as one of the most “in tune” people in the industry - as the major points of discussion and elements of change in the fast-paced ecommerce landscape for large manufacturers. Peter will also share what the purpose of our Partnership Acceleration Team is at Flywheel - a must-listen episode!

Retail media is a well known concept to all of us in ecommerce, but we usually go straight to thinking about digital retail media. What about retail media within the stores that we walk into every day and the future opportunity that the digitization of these stores might hold? Andrew Lipsman, former Principal Analyst at Insider Intelligence educates us on how in-store advertising is no new concept, but the potential for in-store retail media to be the next reach medium driving both branding and performance is immense should retailers and advertisers be able to close the loop with measurement.

The Commerce Collective Podcast’s monthly series, This Month Above the Fold, covers the most important ecommerce headlines each month broken down by Flywheel’s experts. For November 2023, Patrick Miller, Co-Founder and Co-President at Flywheel covers the largest shopping event of the year, Black Friday / Cyber Monday. How did the event turn out? Did it meet expectations? How did the longer lead-in impact the overall event and did we see any deal fatigue? Tune in to hear it all!

Retail media can be complex and shows no signs of slowing down, but Criteo’s experts are at the forefront of retail media growth - educating brands, retailers, and podcasts with their expertise. In this episode, Ryan Britton, VP of Sales at Criteo, discusses the next wave of retail media growth and how advertisers should be organizing internally, budgeting, and measuring success.

In this episode of The Commerce Collective Podcast, we’re continuing our Amazon unBoxed coverage and getting the rundown from three of Flywheel’s speakers at Amazon unBoxed, Joe Rideout (Chief Product Officer, Perpetua), Gloria Steiner (Director, Data Intelligence, Perpetua), and Rob Kearns (Senior Director of Programmatic, Flywheel) who will be covering their sessions and digging deeper into AMC and upper funnel advertising all around. Tune in to hear Joe cover how to reach your audience at the right time, Gloria discussing the hands-on-keyboard AMC experience at unBoxed, Rob covering all things upper funnel/programmatic, plus a bit of coverage of Amazon’s new product launches related to AMC and DSP.

The Commerce Collective Podcast’s monthly series, This Month Above the Fold, covers the most important ecommerce headlines each month broken down by Flywheel Digital’s experts. For October 2023, Patrick Miller, Co-Founder and Co-President at Flywheel Digital covers the three most important product launches he has from one of the industry’s largest events that took place this month, Amazon unBoxed.

In Part 2 of our Amazon unBoxed Partner Podcast Junket Series recorded live from Amazon unBoxed, we talk to Kelly McLean (VP Amazon DSP) and Miranda Chen (Director of AMC Monetization & Growth) about product launches related to DSP and AMC such as the Amazon Publisher Cloud, Cross-Channel Planner, AMC Lookalike Audiences, & AMC Template Analytics.

The Commerce Collective podcast is excited to bring you two special episodes recorded live at the Amazon unBoxed Partner Podcast Junket - a round robin-style interview series with 5 Amazon executives covering the event and the new product launches announced. In this first part, we hear from Jeff Cohen (Tech Evangelist, Amazon Ads) for an overview of the product launches, Teresa Uthurralt (Director Partner Development, Amazon Ads) on key partner priorities in the now & near future, and and Ruslana Zbagerska (VP of Technology and Product Development Amazon Ads) about product innovation, development, and Sponsored TV. Make sure to listen to Part 2 for DSP & AMC!

In sync with the release of this episode, Flywheel has announced to the world the coming together of the Ascential Digital Commerce brands as one unified, more powerful Flywheel. Tune into CEO Duncan Painter explaining the rationale behind this initiative and how the unification of our brands & launch of the Commerce Cloud sets us up for unparalleled capabilities and services for all of our customers and clients.

Everything good needs a tune up here and there, and Mastering Metail is no different. Flywheel is excited to announce the renaming of Mastering Metail to The Commerce Collective Podcast by Flywheel. You’ll have to listen in for the details, but we are excited for where our ecommerce education and thought leadership content goes from here! But don’t worry, we’ll still always be a little bit “Mastering Metail.”