Retail Ad Tech Innovation with Kroger Precision Marketing's Cara Pratt

Sri:
Hello folks and welcome to this special episode of the CPG Guys, episode 300. I'm of course one of your co-hosts Sree and when you can do check out my daughter and singer-songwriter Ria Raj's music at www.riaraj.com and follow her on all social media platforms. When Peter and I started podcasting in May 2020 we never thought we'd hit 50 episodes leave alone 300. But here we are. We're here because you showed us the love for which we can't thank you enough. The direct messages, LinkedIn comments, emails have all helped us shape the show and who we have as guests and what topics we lean on. In the process, our mission of providing education for brands, retailers and connecting all to relevant service providers has made us all much more stronger as stewards of consumers in the consumption journey of the CPG industry. That mission of education will never change here on the CPG Guys. We also stand for equality as supporter partners of NextUp. So with a heartfelt thank you, I will turn it over to our two co-hosts, Peter Bahn, Partnerships Acceleration Lead at Flywheel Digital and Brian Guildenburg, Managing Director for North America at Retail Cities and founder of Confluence or Commerce. You're in great hands with them as our special guest is none other than a personal friend of the show, the Senior Vice President of Kroger Precision Marketing at 8451. And to discuss all things retail media, here is Kara Pratt. with the CPG guys.

PVSB:
Thanks Sri for that terrific introduction. This is PVSB, one of the CPG Guys. and when I'm not podcasting, I serve as the partnership acceleration lead for Flywheel Digital, a managed services company that helps brands grow their e-commerce businesses. We're recording today's episode from Chicago at the commencement of the path to purchase Institute. retail media summit where the CPG guys family will be presenting in, I can't believe it, five different sessions. We can count that high. The keynote in there. That's not us. That's the smart one. That's the smart one, Andrea, but we'll get to that in a second. We actually want to thank Path to Purchase Institute for generously providing the space for us to record today's podcast episode. If you're not familiar with this organization, that's dedicated to providing consumer product marketing executives and brand managers. holistic 360 degree view of the shopper journey. Check them out at p2pi.org. There's a link, a hyperlink in the digital liner notes of this episode. And as Shree mentioned in his opener, this marks our, what are you doing, drum rolls? Is that sound effects? That was expensive. High quality. I didn't put up the license to drum. That is true. This marks our 300th episode of the podcast, which we started just over three years ago. I joined for today's episode by A whole bunch of people all rolled into one. He's the CEO of Confluencer for Commerce, managing director of North America for Retail Cities. He's hosted the CPG Guys Fast Forward Podcast, the Gildenberg Omni-comment video series on our LinkedIn page, and of course he is the third CPG Guy. Please join me in welcoming my dear friend Bryan Gildenberg. Hey Bryan, so can you believe it? 300 episodes. 

Bryan:
It seems remarkable that all of this started with you two on a YouTube video. What was the original title of this podcast? 

PVSB: 
Consumer engagement in an omni-channel world. Wow. Doesn't that just roll off the tongue? 

Bryan:
That's hot. 

PVSB:
I know. 

Bryan:
So maybe we should change it back.

PVSB:
 No, I don't think we should. 

Bryan:
And yeah, as one of the early audio guests of the podcast, once you decided that I was unfit for video, it's a pleasure to be a part of the team and pleasure to be a part of episode 300. 

PVSB:
We were so glad that you joined us. You were one of our first two guests. You have been our most frequent guest up to date. And at some point we just said, well, we got to roll them into the enterprise. 

Bryan:
So why don't we just make them? It was just too expensive. They're going to be jackets. 

PVSB:
I know you kept demanding more and more of the varsity letter jackets. So we can't do that. But anyhow, Bryan, thanks for being a part of this momentous episode before we get to our very, very special guests. We wanted to make it a big guest for today's episode. I want to ask our audience to take a couple of actions in celebration. of our 300th episode. This is how, these are the gifts that they can give us. Because we've given you 300 episodes. We don't ask much in return. Here's what we'd like. Every 300 episodes. Every time we ask something. Because it's 300, there are three asks. Someday, I'm gonna ask you for a favor. I'm gonna ask you for a favor. All right, first, whatever platform you choose to listen to us on, make sure you're actually subscribing. So click the subscribe button so that it automatically downloads the episode. You don't have to think about it. There it is waiting for you when you. open up your mobile device and you can listen to us. Number two, particularly if you're on Apple or Spotify, give us a rating and a review. That's important. The rating is important because it drives the algorithm for finding us in search and it promotes us within the episodes. We gotta feed the algorithm. But the review's also very important to us because we wanna know what you're looking for from a content perspective so we can invite on really interesting guests and talk about topics that are interesting to you. So. Please do that. You can also go to cpgguys.com on the navigation bar at the top. There's rating and review. Click there and just leave us a review. We would really appreciate it. And the last thing is, if you're not already doing so, please go to our LinkedIn page and follow us there. So you open up the app or go to LinkedIn.com, search for CPG Guys and click the blue follow button. That way you can join 23,000 other interested and engaged industry professionals. and follow all the content we produce on our website each and every day of the week, seven days a week. And, if you're a Beatles fan. Eight.

Bryan:
indeed, yes. 

PVSB:
All right, and I would be incredibly remiss if I didn't make mention of how proud Sri, Bryan, and I are to be formal sponsors of NextUp, whose mission it is to advance all women in business and promote gender equality in the workplace. We recently had Lisa Baird, the new CEO, who you spoke with. That was great. And we're excited. We're also going to be a little... little news break here. We're going to leave a little tidbit. We're going to be involved in the big summit later this year in September in Chicago. So we're very excited to be talking about allyship and the contributions to the advancement of women in business. In any event, links to our website, our LinkedIn page, our landing page on NextUp. You can find them all in the digital liner notes of this episode. So let's get to the work at hand, Bryan. When we started thinking about who we should have onto the cast for episode 300, we knew it had to be one in Industry Luminary. Yeah. And since our favorite topic on the CPG guys is, what is it? 

Bryan:
Well, it's either baseball. 

PVSB:
No, okay, yeah, could be. But it's hard to find the Industry Luminary baseball too. So we went with our second choice, which is retail media. 

Bryan:
Oh, that one, yes. 

PVSB:
So we had to have someone from retail media. 

Bryan:
Oh yeah. Let's do that. Let's do that. 

PVSB:
Stands a reason that our guest would be a subject matter expert in this exploding field, Brian. I think we're delivering on these goals. I met our guest 13 years ago this week in the Queen City of Cincinnati. At the time she was she was interviewing me for a job at dunnhumby where I would end up working with her for the next four years. Her prior career has included experience at Nielsen, now Nielsen IQ, IRI, now Circana and dunnhumby. In 2017 she joined 84.51 the retail data science arm of Kroger where she now serves as the senior vice president and head of Kroger precision marketing Kroger's retail media platform which helps brands make meaningful relationships directly with Kroger customers. 

Bryan:
We should have done this like a game show where we just like put little tidbits about her and then maybe the audience would guess who it was. Oh yeah. Like what's my line? Oh. To tell the truth or? 

PVSB:
To tell the, yeah, I think that's exactly what it was. So anyhow, but please join Bryan and me in welcoming to the podcast, Cara Pratt. Cara, welcome to the podcast. We're so pleased to have you here for episode number 300. 

Cara:
What a special day. Thanks gentlemen for having me. Listen, you guys have been doing incredible things over the last few years, bringing together people curious about the industry and impact. And I'm grateful to be here on the special episode. So thank you. 

PVSB:
Well, Thank you for that, Cara. We've had quite a number of your colleagues from 84.51 on prior episodes and some LinkedIn Live sessions. We thought that for episode 300, having you join us to share all of the terrific activities going on at Kroger Precision Marketing and to share that with us, and your thoughts on the transformation that's being driven by retail media as brands seek to build meaningful and measurable relationships with shoppers, this is the perfect time to have you on. So thank you for that. Hey, before we get to the questions Brian and I have prepared, why don't you give our audience a high level overview of Kroger Precision Marketing within the 8451 division of Kroger? 

Cara:
Happy to! What an exciting time in the industry where content and commerce are converging. Brand meets demand, and we can do so in really productive, influential ways to inspire engagement, inspire purchase and really influence behavior. Kroger Precision Marketing is five and a half years young. We are early on our journey in relative form with respect to the digital industry, but there's no doubt in my mind that retail media is absolutely transforming the advertising ecosystem. Our focus at Kroger Precision Marketing is about creating those meaningful touch points, delivering on those brand goals in the most performant way, whether it is on our own den-operated Kroger as a publisher, or absolutely influencing off property inspiration as well. And that's through the Trusted Bridges we've created over time, a recent announcement with Disney, specifically about audience and measurement standards and bringing that forward within the Hulu platform for them. Snapchat roughly eight months ago, Roku, Pinterest, Meta. There's... Programmatic, holistically, there's this incredible opportunity to influence behavior in the most productive ways and Kroger Precision Marketing is ignition and fuel to support that promise on behalf of brands. 

PVSB:
Thank you for that foundation to our conversation today, Cara. We're going to include in the digital liner notes of this episode links to your LinkedIn profile, A451's LinkedIn page and Kroger Precision Marketing's website. It'll make it easy. For our listeners, 90 plus percent of them listen to this episode on a mobile device. So you can just toggle over to the episode, click the liner notes and their hyperlinks. You don't have to write down everything. That's the easiest way so people can learn and multitask as they're listening to, as we describe it, the melodious tones of our educational and entertaining conversation. Right, Bryan? 

Bryan:
Yeah, sure. That's exactly how we're described by others. 

PVSB:
Okay, and we're legends in our own minds. 

Bryan:
We are self-claimed melodious people. 

PVSB:
All right, so now, melodious, yes, we'll go with that. That's a euphemism describing at least Brian and me. So let's get to our questions. I'm gonna start us off. Let's go back in time, even as far as 20 years ago. Most people think of retail media today as personalized content that's delivered to customers through digital platforms, apps, websites, even offsite. But Kroger has actually been in the personalized media business for two decades. Would you share with us how that started through what we've come to know as snail mail, direct mail, right? Yeah. And why that format was the first foray and Kroger's ability to scale that so that they can enable brands to achieve engagement up and down in the marketing funnel. 

Cara:
Yeah. I appreciate that level setting. Cause the reality is, you know, we at Kroger have been connecting with customers in relevant ways and driving the right connection and incentives. Brian take that call. That's cool. Alright, so here's what I'm going to do. Marcus, we're going to stop. I'm going to cue it back to Karen. She's going to be able to do it from her things. Just make sure you're on... Actually, I always do that when I'm on the phone. When we're doing this on the web, I just make sure my content do not disturb. Alright. So I'll blah, and enable brands to achieve engagement up and down marketing. I appreciate that anchor point question because the reality is we have been at personalized connection influencing behavior, right? Igniting and delighting for the last 20 years. It started more low funnel from a loyalty marketing standpoint. How do we incent increased buy rate among brands that have a connection but have degrees of loyalty among a consumer base? And 20 years ago, the most common currency and connection point was mostly anchored in mail. direct mail, mail to homes, and guess what? The open rates, the utility of those offers were really powerful and drove incredible sales to cost returns, they still do. And now, as we think 20 years forward, there's an opportunity to ignite that curiosity more fluidly across more digital touch points. It's just, it's an evolution, a continued evolution. And so we're excited about continuing to bring these opportunities to the forefront and really connect with customers. through the devices, through the mediums, and through the channels with which they're engaging. 

Bryan:
And that sounds great. I think, so as we continue along the journey, this week, the superhero origin story, if you're old, go to Precision Marketing. So post-radioactive spider bite now. We're into that. 

PVSB:
I would have gone with the red sun about to explode. Okay, well, they're also... You're a Marvel guy, I'm a DC guy. Also, also... I know we're getting obscure guests, I'm sorry. 

Bryan:
Yeah, anyway, back to 2015. 2015, Kroger bought its retail data science capabilities in-house with a formation of 8451. What's the origin of the division name? I always thought it was Van Halen's second best album after 5150. But why has it been successful in driving measurable growth, both for both Kroger and the brands that sell their products on the channel businesses? 

Cara:
Great question. There are some questions, right, on what's in a name. So I'll do, I'll share that story and the context points into why 8451. Before doing so, 8451 is a wholly unsubsidiary of the Kroger company. We're the data analytics and activation engine of Kroger. That name is really powerful and really important for us. And actually, if you rewind into the 1700s, it has a connection into seafaring. The opportunity to ride across the seas, to do trades, the latitude line is really easy for sailors to understand. Thinking about the stars, the sun, the moon, you could use those different elements within nature to understand your latitude line. The most difficult was the longitude line. which caused a lot of shipwrecks, which was a very challenging environment. So that's back in the 1700s. In the 1730s, a gentleman named John Harrison was starting to come forward and try to develop what ultimately was the clock, a lot of different testing and learning. You went to the 1800s. There's a lot of data points across currents. There's a lot of data points across where the sun was. There's a lot of data points that was starting about every five degrees lat-lon to understand positioning, which then, of course, we move into today's environment. 8451 is the longitudinal line of our home office in Cincinnati, Ohio. So it's a connection into the data that's really important to understand behaviors over time, how we can test and learn and how we can, you know, understand behavior and take action. And so that is the story behind 8451. 

Bryan:
It's got to be reassuring to the employees, you know, that you'll never move the office. So you'll have to change the logo, all kinds of things. 

PVSB:
All right, so we're wed to the name, that's okay. So Kroger's customer insight platform is called Stratum. What exactly is Stratum? How are brands using it to guide their omni-channel strategy at Kroger and beyond? Specifically, how are successful brands leveraging its customer segmentation, audience identification to support their investments in Kroger Precision Marketing? Yeah. 

Cara:
The power behind the most performance scalable retail media platforms anchors in data. It anchors in consumer understanding. And Stratum is a BI-based platform that we have hundreds of brands that are engaging in. And that allows them to understand aggregates of behavior and behavior changes over time, whether that is low grain looking at skew performance, looking at... investment from early adopters and trial and repeat across flavor varieties, looking at cross purchase behavior, looking at share gains and share losses and where that might be going. That's a critical influence into understanding what is the brand promise, what is the brand challenge, what is the opportunity and how do we connect this audience curation into understanding the right content, the right creative and the right channel to make a difference. So Stratum provides a really great baseline of understanding for our brand partners about their business. Now, as we think about the optimization levers and the audience curation techniques and understanding what is based off of a budget that a brand tends to have, based off of a KPI that they're focused on, whether they're focused on awareness, consideration, conversion, we're going to optimize for different audiences to deliver against that promise. we're going to curate the right recommendation across the media portfolio that we have on and off property to deliver against that brand promise. And that's where the seeds of consumer behavior come in to create a real powerful omni-channel activation recommendation for brands. But retail media and the power and the potential of driving meaningful change. is really anchored in data. And Stratum is an awesome package that allows our brand partners to understand consumer behavior in an aggregate form over time. Now, the evolution continues forward, right? It's not just about Stratum, but collaborative cloud, about cleanroom technology and understanding those behaviors more holistically, about the integration of this understanding of human behavior and the instantaneous ability to activate. within a media platform. So, you know, we're early days, five and a half years in, and it's definitely an exciting time to be on the business. 

Bryan:
I have this, a couple of interesting things that we're gonna talk about, especially this one, if we don't get back to the collaborative cloud later, we should have a whole separate conversation about that, because that was part of the early conversations that Omnicom had with the corporate decision marketing about partnering on some of that, which was fascinating. And I also think that just the other, I'm curious if you thought on this actually. Brands have been working with that stratum data for so long, right? Even before retail media was a thing. Yes. How do you see that as an advantage that Kroger has in this world? Because your brand partners are so familiar with some of the core parts of the data asset. Do you find that makes them more amenable, more adaptable? They find that data set easier to work with perhaps? I mean, I don't know what you would compare it to. use my brand's for me a little bit more effective with it. 

Cara:
Yeah, well at Kroger, we've always wanted to put the power of insights and intelligence into the hands of our business partners, right? It makes us as a company stronger, us as a company more performant, and us as a company more agile. So that definitely is an important anchor point, an important promise we've had for decades of how we work with our business partners. Now as we think about the utility of that asset holistically, end to end, full path to purchase. We've got a lot of teams across the shopper organization, category management teams leveraging that asset. We've got this kind of fusion of talent for that. We've got e-comm talent, we've got shopper marketing talent, we've got brand talent, we've got agencies influencing the full scale. So the accessibility of that information and the utility of these different data points, we need to show up differently and create more seamless access to helping brands understand who, how. when, why, how much should they be investing to deliver against their brand ambitions? And that's where this kind of ecosystem really comes together in a powerful way. And then let's fill them out for a second. So there's obviously tremendous growth in e-commerce during the pandemic. So if you don't say pandemic, I'm going to work chat to you on the podcast. We lose all license to podcasts. It's a terrible thing. It's a real thing. Obviously. Yeah. But so from that, you've now got way more on-site traffic than you would have had three or four years ago. and a transformational amount of transactional volume going through that. How do you set about building best in class on site we can communicate abilities, we'll start there, to fuel the demand and how does Kroger Precision Marketing guide brands in investing for success within the context of the root of sites and in mobile apps? Yeah, the coordination and connection with the Kroger Precision Marketing team, with Kroger's tech and digital team, with Kroger's digital merchandising organization, with Kroger's more holistic marketing and media organization. is incredibly strong. I'll start there. In the end, every retailer has choices to make on the density of ad load that they want on their site, on the business logic that's being fueled from organic returns and paid returns. Those are choices that companies make. And I'm really proud of how we've anchored consistently in our five and a half years on focusing on customer outcomes, focusing on conversion, focusing on discovery for brands in really powerful ways. So to your specific question on owned and operated, we've created an environment where we wanna focus on conversion, we don't wanna make it more difficult for customers to find products that they wanna add to their cart while... igniting inspiration. So that's where personalization and paid have to come together in really powerful ways. And we can work that algorithm productively to understand what's meaningful to a customer and what's meaningful to a brand. For us and our environment, 90% of our search terms are unbranded search terms. Customers are coming in looking for cereal, looking for ice cream, looking for crackers, looking for yogurt. Rarely are they coming in for a brand. Now, Let's use the intelligence we have and understanding of their behavior over time to make it easy for them to find items that are common and not have that be a paid investment for a brand. That's pretty irrational, right? Let's not create a moment where brands have to invest to protect against competitive conquesting. Let that make itself shine in our personalization science, but let's also create an environment for inspiration where we can bring forward other products that we believe these households. may have interest in and are likely to buy, are likely to click, are likely to convert. And this is a digitally constrained shelf. You all know it, right? You're shopping online too. It's a digitally constrained shelf. So we have to be really choiceful in the placements that we come out with. On search, four out of 10 clicks are coming from households that are new to brand in the last 26 weeks. In our display advertising, it's even higher. 75% of our impressions are coming and getting exposed to customers that would be new to brand in the last 26 weeks. That's a choice that we've made. because we fundamentally believe it's important to protect and ignite and support the personalization sciences of what natively customers are bringing forward with and not have that be a paid investment on behalf of a brand, while we also want to ignite inspiration, discovery, and curiosity for our customers. Those are choices. 

PVSB:
A reminder audience that Bryan and I are speaking today with Cara Pratt, Senior Vice President of Kroger Precision Marketing at 84.51. So thank you for describing your approach to on-site. Traditionally, people think of on-site retail media as more middle to lower funnel. To your point, people are entering a search tunnel and they're already in the frame of mind that they're there to buy something. But there's a lot of interest for brands to move up the funnel. So Kroger has enabled brands to do exactly that through off-site partnerships. You made reference to them during your opening. Can you highlight in a little bit more detail those partnerships? and what brands are able to do with Kroger audiences through those partnerships. 

Cara:
Absolutely. Listen, to influence advertising at scale, you have to influence the full funnel. And the exciting part for me, as I reflect on this moment that we're in, where retail media will disrupt advertising, end of story, the exciting moment we're in is it's being influenced by two separate factors that both have a meaningful influence on the future. a market driven space. It is around cookies. They will go away. It is around supporting the privacy commitments that we have and need to have for our customer base. It's around the dynamics about automation and the technology investments that are going to strengthen the ability for creativity to flow through more seamlessly on the market side. On the consumer driven side, we as people expect seamless commerce. We expect organizations to know us better than they knew us, you know, five years ago. Marketers expect a different level of accountability. So there's the human side, there's the technology, kind of framing side, all of those are coming together in powerful ways. When we ignite that through unified technology and the right trusted bridges across partners, it absolutely can influence the funnel. It started for us five and a half years ago solely with managed service display off property. Today we have direct relationships with Pinterest, with Meta, with Roku, with Disney, with Snap, with Pandora, and with self-service offering into the programmatic ecosystem where we can curate protected audiences and hands-on keys buyers can go out to the marketplace and they can work in their DSP and they can activate, they can work their frequency caps, and importantly, we can measure the business impact on the backside of that by understanding impressions. We understand the frequency and we understand the behavior before and after we flagged those impressions to the specific consumer. So that's the power. It does run the full chain. It does necessitate trusted bridges with partners that we have similar ideas on the opportunity and the impact ahead. And fundamentally, we're just getting started. 

Bryan:
I think what's interesting about this is as you start moving up the funnel, a lot of the have to reframe their thought about the conversion aspect of the experience. Like when you're doing on-site retail media, I've got to imagine almost a majority of the conversions occurring very quickly, within probably two hours of being exposed to the advertising. When it's offsite and they're not in a frame of mind, the conversion period is substantially longer. And I've got to imagine that how you calculate the... the conversion window to analyze is fundamentally different for offsite versus onsite advertising. 

Cara:
Well, it's a great point with respect to in modern marketing today, the success measures are looking a little different. We have to get beyond the vanity metrics of the past, which is counting, counting likes, counting impressions and effective CPMs and modeling the potential likelihood that that's impacting sales. what can impact sales. But the KPIs need to evolve to the future too. And this is where we can still have 14-day look back windows for attribution. But we might be looking at long-term value differently. We might be looking at unit incrementality and sales lift differently than the direct attribution that will happen post-click when you're on an undone operated property. But that's where. We need to think differently as an industry. We have to organize ourselves differently. We have to set different KPIs and set different expectations and unify that end to end. Shopper and brand need to come together, break the silos that have existed in the past. Brand KPIs and performance KPIs. We shouldn't have distinctively different KPIs that are setting the stage with distinctively different teams. We need to be more fluid and fuse organizations together. That's gonna drive the biggest impact for consumers and ultimately. the biggest impact for brands. Confluence, if you will, between these different egos. 

Bryan:
Confluence, I like that term. Yeah, no, I think this is, this is a lot in that. So I think we're gonna come back to measurement in the question a little bit later to try to unpack that a little bit more. I do think it's interesting when you went through all the, one, the phrase trusted bridge is really cool. I think the other thing that you went through, the assets that you're connecting to, whether they are connected to the assets or Pinterest or Snap. Yeah. Meta post-IDPA, they're all kind of weirdly imperfect assets, right? Like, you know, connected TV has a host of issues that are not the topic of this podcast in terms of what it, what it, the role it plays in the market today. Um, you know, Pinterest, God bless them for years, has struggled to figure out exactly what its role is involved. Um, so a snap, you know, medicine, and I really do think there's a really, I think there's going to be a very interesting hybrid of these assets with retail media platforms where. not only is it going to transform marketing, it's going to kind of be marketing, right? That's just some of the old things that we've done with linear TV and with over the air stuff and some of the classic search and digital things. There's just so much more power here in taking some of these assets that can obviously engage the upper funnel in kind of a really interesting and personalized way and tie them to assets that can measure that all the way through. Well, on that note, you know, it's like make no mistake, retail media is media. It's not a different channel. It's enabling the unification and the activation and impact across channels. And it's awesome to see the evolution take shape with all different shapes and sizes of CPGs that are in different spaces within that journey of recognizing that. And recognizing what needs to be true on how I as an organization unwind past practices. unwind P&L structures and different hierarchy alignments, etc. Well, in essence, it's like if you ever see like a strategy house, something's always like the last pillar in a strategy house, and eventually it turns over and becomes the thing that goes sideways across all the columns. That tipping of the column is going to be, I think, a big one. One of those other areas, though, that I do want to make sure we talk about today is the in-store component of retail media. So, the in-the-physical store, not the digital store. Though, obviously, those are connected and related. I do think it's wonderful that everybody's discovered that physical stores are places where people make decisions in the past. They do. It's a fascinating revelation that Kroger's known since the 19th century. But that's awesome. What do Kroger's capabilities look like in store today? How do you see them evolving? And how should brands be thinking about the solutions, both in terms of what you talked about before about how critical personalization science is to your overall proposition, how you see personalization science coming to life in store? 

Cara:
I think that's a great question. I think and or is in store something else that might be more in the end like linear TV which is huge reach you know effective but maybe not as personalized. You know the physical environment is a really special place to influence too we're on a journey of that on modernizing our in-store environment modernizing the different experiences that we want our customers to have whether it is on screens in our stores whether it is through the app. right, and the utility of the app, the Kroger app specifically, as our shoppers are walking the aisles and how we ignite inspiration in that way. So there's no doubt, you know, we have 11 million shoppers come onto our physical and digital properties every single day. And to your exact point, there's no doubt when people stand in front of the shelf, choices are being made. And there's a real unique opportunity to bring more consistency and the power and the purpose. behind a one to many in many cases, unless it's coming through the app experience for our shoppers. On screen strategy, there is an opportunity there. And we need to create the right moment and create the right environment at scale that inspires shoppers in the right way. We don't need screens and ads to be a distraction. But there is an opportunity to inspire through that technology in our stores. And we're on a journey. 

PVSB:
Excellent. So you made mention of the fact that retail media is media. So to that end, as Kroger seeks to attract more brand marketing budgets for media, how does performance measurement play a role? How do clean rooms play a role for brands being able to get at that performance marketing measurement? And what do you make of the growing chorus from both sides of the equation, advertisers and retailers? aligning around definitions, metrics, and the like to make it easier for brands to holistically measure their investments across all the different platforms that are of interest to them. 

Cara:
Yeah, there's a lot of sparks there in a great way, right? As we think about the role that retailers have and can play and need to play to level up the industry and thinking differently about performance, this is a real opportunity and frankly a responsibility that, you know, the most performant retailers need to lead, need to lead through that change. We've been members with the Interactive Advertising Bureau for several years now. I'm a big believer that it's really important for a trade association to help influence and establish some of these new norms with the intersection points from parties at the table to understand the capabilities and assets that exist. You know, we are at the table co-authoring what those standards should be with critical partners in the agency space and across the IAB. And my focus here on behalf of not just Kroger Precision Marketing, but a wave of change that really is in front of us within this industry and this opportunity and this responsibility is to level up the playing field, which means there's an opportunity that retailers to get in the game are going to have to hit a minimum standard for how they engage, how they showcase their capabilities. And we do need to create that environment to bring a little more, a lot more consistency into the retail media space. It's on the horizon. There's work to do in that space, but it is really important. We need to drive a thread of consistency. I do not believe it's healthy for this industry to go down to the lowest common denominator. We need to raise people up. into a minimum expectation and then it'll be up to them to be able to deliver against that expectation in the industry. I think the value prop in the end is you are providing measurement potential that outperforms anything that you would have seen in traditional media. What did you have to do with television? You had to do this alchemy called marketing mix modeling to try and tease it out. You have a closed loop mechanism. There's no single goat sacrifice involved in any of this. I know that's really good. As opposed to how the marketing mix ball seems to get. 

PVSB:
Oh my goodness. But at the end, that's why everybody should have a vested interest in this because if they can more readily identify the value that they're getting out of the investment, it makes the decision to shift budgets in favor of retail media that much easier. And the fact of the matter is, you know, I went to the CAGNY conference. this year and what I saw were CEOs getting up actually making reference to retail media and their shift in budgets to support that. That's indicative of these kinds of decisions are going from the trade teams to the national shopper marketing teams to honestly the board of directors at this point. And so that measurement is going to enable that conversation to go a lot more smoothly going forward. 

Bryan:
And by the way, if somebody in this standard setting can somehow explain to people that putting an ad on Thursday Night Football because Amazon owns Thursday Night Football is not retail media, that would be super helpful. That's a personal request, so that makes me nuts. It's like, no, that's a television program owned by a company that sells stuff sometimes. Anyway, so our last poll question before we break down the web or whatever we do is look, you guys are, we're at this retail, that Path to Purchase  Retail Media Summit today as we mentioned earlier. And... Y'all are making a big announcement today as it relates to bringing some of your retail media capabilities in-house. Apparently some knucklehead was quoted in the media talking about it. Hopefully I didn't make too much of a mess of that. So what are the details, why didn't you do it, and how is it going to improve the capabilities you offer to brands that are advertising for your platform? 

Cara:
Yeah, thanks Bryan. Today's a special day for a whole host of reasons. We have been 18 months in the making on assessing... Oh, I bet you meant to bring in the benefits of that. Well, that too, that too. Don't you worry. Oh, and that too. Today is KPM's special announcement. We'll get into CPG guys special, you know, special day too. But now, you know, today is for KPM has been 18 months in the making, right? As we assess the landscape, as we understand capabilities, we understand brand intentionality and interest, as we understand how we deliver on that promise in the most productive, performant ways, we understand the fractured ecosystem with which retail media has kind of formulated itself over the last few years. Holistically, there's a really important opportunity to deliver on that full funnel promise that we've talked about earlier. We need to unify technology to support that. And this is a big step forward for us. So the announcement that we made to the marketplace today was in housing our technology end-to-end, the full tech stack that supports our retail media business. We have a lot of work to do. We'll first release that within search and display on end and operated and in short order that will power the entire stack that we have and through all the trusted bridges that we've created and different ways we go to market, inclusive of creative creation, creative optimization and flight optimizations and more. Why? Why now? Listen, to influence the consumer first future of first party advertising, we need different technology. We need to support the future differently than we have in the past. And this is not about creating higher quote-unquote walls, which have been talked about within retail media. Those bridges are critical connection points. We will continue to have those bridges critically, not just with the publisher ecosystem, but with data onboarders, with DSP partners. As we think about what that looks like with different software management companies that brands use day in and day out to influence investment at scale across many platforms, that will still exist. So this is an exciting time to really focus on the future, focus on unified modernized marketing and enabling that in the most seamless way. And it's just the next beginning, if you will, in Kroger Precision Marketing. 

PVSB:
I think it's appropriate that we were talking about the flight optimization that you're bringing to bear. Particularly important at this event because the Canadian wildfires have... so many people to miss their trips out to Chicago. Everyone is in desperate need of flight optimization, but I think you meant something different by that. Let me remind our audience to visit cpgguys.com to find our podcast on all of the large and small platforms. You can ask your home virtual assistants to play the CPG Guys podcast. It'll work. I probably set off several hundred of those right now by just saying it out loud, if you were listening into on an open speaker. Uh, and of course, while you are on our site, uh, go to the navigation bar, as I previously mentioned, and leave us a rating and review so that we can improve how we're delivering educational and entertaining content to you. And of course, uh, again, thank you to the 23,000 plus engaged industry professionals from large and small companies, brands, retailers, service providers, media, all in between. We are so. proud of the community we are building and fostering. And thank you so much for your fellowship in doing exactly this. Cara, thanks for joining us. Big day for 84.51 and Kroger Precision Marketing at the Retail Media Summit. Big day for us to be able to celebrate that on our 300th episode. We are so glad you came here to talk to us about everything going on with Kroger Precision Marketing. 

Cara:
Peter Bryan, congratulations, 300 episodes, the impact and influence you're having to honestly ignite curiosity, bring people together, collaborate, challenge the status quo is really special. So thanks for what you're doing. Thanks for having me on this special episode and look forward to hopping back in maybe on number 500, 600, you let me know. 

Bryan:
Yeah, I think we'll get you on a little bit more sooner than that. 

PVSB:Yeah, we'll probably bring it back for more time. But we love having We love having Kroger Precision Marketing come and talk about this transforming industry. There's so much more to come. And as you have new things to share, the door is always open. We'd love to have you come back. Thank you. Bryan, it's that time where you seem to... It's that time where I paraphrase so it is way smarter than I am. I know. 

Bryan:
This is great. I love doing this. 

PVSB:
There you go. What were some of the highlights? 

Bryan:
As I've heard, you and I said this characterizer, Cara, just clearly it's going to everybody. I do think there's a couple of really interesting things in here. Number one, and I've been on panels with you over the years, and you're pretty choiceful about words. And I like the way that you talk about inspiring purchase and influencing behavior. Because I think marketers would historically think about, we're gonna inspire behavior and influence purchase. I like the way you're kind of challenging sort of the status quo right out of the gate by getting people to think about inspiration and influence a little bit differently within the context of what it is you're trying to provide people to kind of. force them to bring some of this stuff together. You used a phrase called the fusion of talent, which I think is absolutely, you and I talked about this before, but I think that fusion of talent piece is just a deeply underrated part of the solution here in terms of what the capabilities are that are required. I could listen to you talk about longitudinal maps all day. That was awesome. I do think it's interesting that when you look at the notion of vertical and horizontal, and anybody that's listened to me talk about. this ecosystem knows I'm kind of obsessed with those two concepts and that what you've assessed is that moving people horizontally sort of up and down the category, that's latitude. We can all do that, right? We can all move people from category to subcategory to subcategory item. The longitudinal piece is more about that inspiration. It's more about the broad and as you mentioned, what else do we sell? That's sort of the longitudinal componentry of that, which I thought was really fascinating. I built a ratio out of this, which when you talked about... the need to optimize inspiration while at the same time reducing friction. That if ratio, so I divided by F, and that personalization is free. Personalization science for you, a phrase you mentioned several times, is critical to optimizing that sort of ROI framework, if you will. Maximizing inspiration while minimizing friction. Personalization science is the key, the key variable you're going to use to do that. I love that phrase, trusted bridges, you've used several times. to explain how you view your role in the ecosystem and your role partnering with others. That 11 million people per day, you know, with the, that famous chart can put that in its pipe and smoke it. So for the actual size of, yeah, we did sort of- We are not recommending on this podcast that anybody smoke- What's anything in a pipe and smoke area? No, we don't do that. And we're not recommending the Andrew Lipsman style charts, because we like them. We love his charts. We love his charts, they're awesome. They're a channel with a way of everything. But I do think that just the sheer scale of the in-store opportunity and the way that you're talking about the journey that you're on to figure out what the role is of personalization science and inspiration, but without creating additional friction. And then I think the last piece around standards is absolutely critical and trying to bring together this and then trying to bring together your own fractured ecosystem, you know, or the fractured ecosystem with. with that unified technology. And I was just thrilled because that's basically what I called the reporter. I thought you were about what you were trying to do. So I didn't make an idiot out of myself, which is as always, the thing I try to avoid at all costs that it's really hard to do. But Cara, that was a remarkable conversation. Thank you for joining us. 

Cara:
Happy to be here. 

PVSB:
Bryan, thanks for that riveting summary. I think you did it pretty well. Much better than I would have thought you would have. But in any event, Sri, you missed a solid conversation today. Thanks for helping getting us to 300 episodes. Still shocked about that. We're still going at least. I always love when we talk to Sri when he's not here. It makes him feel like it gives him that sort of godlike quality. Well, we always talk about Sri in the third person. Whether he's here or not. And he talks about himself in that way as well. On behalf of Brian and Sri, I want to thank our audience for your ongoing participation in this community. We've we've cultivated and we look forward to speaking with you on the very next episode of the CPG Guys podcast. Goodbye.