Unpacking the Digital Shelf

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.

On today’s episode, we return to the place where commerce started - a consumer, walking through a store, scanning the packaging, looking for what they need - or didn’t know they needed. In the digital world there is more space to tell your story, but in-store, you’ve got three seconds. Michael Keplinger, Founding Partner at Smashbrand, joined the podcast to articulate the modern testing strategy to ensure that the packaging creative you craft is truly what will make the sale - and how those lessons can be applied across all your channels.

The growth in content required by the hungry beast of the digital shelf has been exponential, and is showing no signs of slowing. It is more vital than ever for content and commerce teams to collaborate at scale to make sure they are delivering relevant, differentiated content that performs. Warren Daniels, CMO at Bynder, joined the podcast to deliver insights on the ways in which leading brands are upping the game of their content machine to compete and win in this next decade of the digital shelf.

Digital transformation is in Leah Carlson’s blood. From the first outside employee at a family-run business, to leading technology and web projects at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, to 6.5 years building out global creative, content, and growth capabilities at McCormick, and now at digital marketing agency Velir, she has created a way of working across global teams to implement technologies and best practices that drive efficiency while still enabling local control. Leah generously joined the podcast to share the most impactful lessons from her journey.

Are you tired of wasted ad dollars and subpar consumer experiences? Of course you are! The DSI partnered with Stratably to interview digital leaders and found that 71% of digital leaders from 78 consumer brands say Product Detail Page (PDP) quality significantly influences their ROAS. What to do about it? This is an audio rebroadcast of a webinar focused on just that, lead by Lauren Livak Gilbert, with guest experts Russ Dieringer, Founder & CEO, Stratably, and Claire McBride, VP Research & Education, Stratably.

As we shift from stopping climate change to Mitigation and adaptation, retailers and brands are increasingly making Net Zero commitments and digging into the practical ways they can have an impact. And, it turns out, that those who do are enjoying the side impacts of lower costs and higher search views and conversion. A win, win, win. Keith Anderson, Founder & Principal Analyst at Decarbonize.co, joined the podcast to shine a solar-powered light on the ways that brands are organized around turning their commitments into action and positive outcomes for all.

For a company that has been around since 1911, Mars has a reputation as one of the most visionary companies in the industry, particularly when it comes to building global capabilities that scale and flex to serve the needs of the regional lines of business. It’s not any easy feat. Celia Van Wickel, Director Omnichannel Digital Commerce Analytics at Mars, drives building out their global digital commerce analytics strategy, and works closely with the business to design, test and scale capabilities that deliver efficiency, measure results, and identify opportunities for growth. She kindly agreed to join the podcast to share the art and science for enabling digital commerce analytics to every region around the world.

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 Q1 based on their research.

Ecommerce in Asia is such a vibrant mix of unbelievable scale, rapid innovation, and distinct cultures that together become a fascinating source of case studies for other markets to mine for opportunity. Not everything translates, but there is a deep well of experimentation and execution to learn from. Rebecca Xing, CEO of Trustana, joined the podcast from Singapore to share with the DSI audience the trends and opportunities in the Asia market that deserve the attention of brands looking to experiment with new consumer experiences and perhaps even expand to the Asian market.

Our 250th Episode, LIVE from the 2024 Digital Shelf Summit!

The annual CAGNY event in New York, is a rich opportunity to get the pulse of CPG CEOs and CFOs, and identify business trends and areas of focus that will impact the industry up until the next CAGNY. We had a secret correspondent in the room to capture all the details. We are delighted to welcome Russ Dieringer, Founder and CEO of Stratably, back on the podcast to summarize the shifts we can expect from some of the largest companies on earth, and the takeaways for you.

Standing out in a crowded beverage market takes creativity, endless energy, and, at least in one case, a passion for murder. I’m talking of course about the brand Liquid Death, which has grown from an Amazon listing in 2019 to a massive online presence as well as showing up behind 110,000 brick and mortar doors. The bond they have created between the Liquid Death brand and their “humans”, as they call their consumers, is truly remarkable. Natalie Cotter, Sr. Director of Digital Retail at Liquid Death, joined the podcast to share some thirst-quenching details on how they continue to kill it in the beverage aisle.

Accurate, complete, reliable data is the enabler of all business operations, and particularly so in commerce. The trick is to create a set of people, processes, and technology that is set up for for success every day, month, and year. After spending more than a decade at the center of the data governance process at Georgia Pacific, Lindsay Savage, their Sr. Director, Business Platforms & Data Governance, graciously agreed to join the podcast to share the organization, process, and community that she has helped build to make a value-driven data governance process a critical part of her company’s success.

There’s a distinct sense that we are at the precipice of another era-defining change in commerce, business, and even societies. A moment where leaders will be called to envision and enable the big transformations necessary to survive and thrive through these changes. In business, we call that making Big Bets, and getting good at them is more critical than ever. That’s why John Rossman, author of The Amazon Way and Think Like Amazon, has co-authored with Kevin McAffrey, former strategy head at TMobile a new business playbook called Big Bet Leadership: Your Transformation Playbook in the Hyper-Digital Era. John joined the podcast to introduce his clear, concise, and actionable treatise for driving the change your organization needs for the next era.

More and more retailers are bringing their retail media networks online in 2024, which is both a management and measurement challenge for brands, but also a significant potential early advantage for those who figure out how to manage it. Andreas Reiffen, CEO & Co-Founder of retail media supply side platform provider Crealytics, joined the podcast to share how brands can tap into solutions and providers that can ease access and management, and brings insights into how, as ROAS dies, more blunt but more accurate forms of measurement can be deployed.

Content is understandably a key focus for digital leaders: it's the first thing consumers see and a key factor in their decision-making. Brands have placed a renewed emphasis on creating best-in-class content, but they're also questioning what content levers they need to pull to sway potential buyers. After extensive research and in-depth interviews with digital leaders, The Digital Shelf Institute & Profitero have found that it takes much more than producing great content to effectively convert shoppers. This is an audio rebroadcast of webinar featuring Mike Black, CMO at Profitero, Shazer Baig, Ecommerce Director at L’Oreal,, and Kathleen Harrington, Vice President, Digital Merchandising at Hasbro, who joined Lauren Livak Gilbert to talk through a new framework for managing and measuring content maturity.

Well, folks, this is it. 2024 is actually the year the cookie finally dies. No more reprieves. And that means you need to get really serious about the steps you need to take to build out the new data that tells you what’s working, what’s not, what to test, and where to invest. Jeff Greenfield,CEO at Provalytics, has done these deep dives with hundreds of clients, and came to the podcast armed to the teeth with advice and best practices about how to prepare for the cookie’s funeral.

The opportunity to take full advantage of growth opportunities of the next few years will come from evolving your strategies and tactics to be fully omni - yes, it’s time for OMNIGEDDON! Chris Perry, Chief Learning Officer at firstmovr, joins the podcast to share new research around the best practices in omnicommerce that will make sure your organization is set up to take full advantage of what he calls Boomsday. (instead of Doomsday, get it?) Anyway, Chris joined the podcast to explain just some of the key principles and practices that will guide you to Boomsday.

The data is clear - in the age of authenticity, user generated content is a critical component in driving higher conversion rates, satisfaction, and loyalty on product pages and social media channels. Executing it at scale can be the challenge. That’s why we invited Tom Logan, Co-founder & CEO at content generation and testing platform provider Cohley to join the podcast and share some best practices around testing, scaling, and maximizing the sales impact of your user generated content strategy.

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 ecommerce predictions for 2024 based on their research.

The data sources that the industry has used to measure the performance of media are disintegrating around us. Basically, attribution is dead. And the slowness, expense, and limitations of media mix modeling is not up to this moment of needing to drive both top line and bottom line growth with media investments. What will replace it? Meghan Corroon, Founder and CEO Clerdata, along with her mighty team of statistical modeling and data science brains, have a very compelling new SaaS-based, real-time answer to that most difficult question,, and she joined the podcast to share it.