[00:00:00] Phillip: And welcome to Future Commerce podcast, at the intersection of culture and commerce. I’m Phillip.
[00:00:04] Alicia: And I’m Alicia.
[00:00:05] Phillip: Today, we have very special guests. I feel like I should be on my best behavior because I feel like I’m being overseen by, you know, a bureau. Like, I feel an oversight. No. It’s actually an incredible time, because we’ve been talking a lot for the last couple years about the evolution in our industry. In fact, we just relaunched futurecommerce.com to refocus on the evolution of our industry, and how retail media, commerce media has really taken center stage, and how advertising and commerce are now one and the same. And so today, to come talk about how at the center of it all is the IAB, and how we are leading the conversation and bringing standards and best practices around these conversations about retail and commerce media… So without any further ado, he is the Vice President of Commerce and Retail Media at IAB, where he leads the Commerce Center of Excellence and helps shape the standards, research, and best practices defining the next era of the category. And today he leads commerce’s biggest questions: What comes next? What comes after retail media’s growth-at-all-costs era? What happens with AI agents, and when they become shoppers, and how marketers measure that influence in the world. Welcome, Collin Colburn, to Future Commerce.
[00:01:16] Collin: Thank you both for having me. Super, super excited to be here and really looking forward to the conversation.
[00:01:21] Phillip: Yeah. Really, really happy to have you take some time to join us. It’s your first time here, first time to have the IAB join us. You spent a decade at Forrester, you know, and also on the agency side, and now you’re in the standards seat at IAB. You have a really interesting vantage point in the industry. From that vantage point, let’s talk a little bit about what retail media is doing right now, and how, you know, in your perspective, retail media is taking center stage in 2026.
[00:01:51] Collin: Yeah. I do have an awesome seat here. We are really the industry convener, bringing all parties together, and we do have a unique vantage point because of that. And the way that I think about retail media, where it’s come from and where it’s going — it’s really moved from this, like, great expansionary era of “everyone has launched a network,” a media network. Every retailer, every commerce player, whatever you wanna be — travel, financial services — everyone, it feels like, has launched a media network. And now we’re moving more towards an optimization, maturity, building-of-a-larger-ecosystem sort of phase. That’s how I would at least kind of phrase the moment that we are in, which is a really interesting one, because we’ve had five years of really incredible — five-plus years of really incredible growth. Retail media globally, this year, is gonna surpass $100 billion USD. That’s a big — that’s a big number. Here in the US, it’s gonna be about $70 billion. I think that that’s in 2028. So we are a large category these days, and it didn’t take very long to get here. So there’s naturally this — I’m gonna call it a correction. You know, we’re not seeing declining budgets necessarily, but we’re seeing things starting to flatten a little bit, as they naturally do during these explosive, expansionary growth eras.
[00:03:30] Phillip: I saw that McKinsey had a figure — if you count commerce media, if we sort of expand the aperture and count commerce media’s total value, in 2026 it’s as big as $1.3 trillion. I mean, depending on who you’re reading, we’re talking about, like, extraordinary economic value globally, right? And so I think, yeah, standards need to be applied here. And you’ve used the word “commerce media” in a blog post — we’ll link it up here. And you said the word “day two,” which I think is a little bit of a… in this industry, we talk a lot about Amazon’s day one. You said commerce media is hitting day two in this IAB blog post. Tell us a little bit about that, and how we’re past the growth-at-all-costs adolescence phase, and give us a little bit about some of the markers and milestones of what you’re calling a day two period.
[00:04:26] Collin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mentioned, you know, the launching of those networks. I don’t even — no one even knows how many networks there are. It’s not worth counting anymore, right? It’s in the hundreds. It was very much around monetizing the traffic, the customer journeys that you, as a retailer or as a commerce player, had proximity to, and attracting advertisers that wanted to get in front of those consumer journeys. So that was a very natural sort of first day, first era. And now we have a lot of needs around more sophisticated measurement. We’ve put out a lot of work in both the on-site and in-store retail media measurement space, in terms of what does maturity, what do good standards look like when it comes to measurement. And with that, more interoperable measurements, so that you’re not only able to better compare across retailers, but also retail media next to all my other forms of media, whether that is social, search, display, etcetera. The other thing that I think about in this sort of, like, day two era is that retail media was initially built as a bolt-on to the core business of mostly retail, right? And what that looked like was that you had the retail business, which was very — for those who might not come from a retail sort of background — it is a merchant-led business.
[00:06:01] Collin: Merchants control the business because they control product. They control how it is distributed, how consumers experience or get that product. And media, or advertising — whatever you wanna call it — was very much a, “Alright, this is going to be something that’s going to live over here. It’s going to be separate from the business, because we want the customer experience to be sacred and kept the way that we want it to look by the merchant team.” And advertising is kind of, in some ways, conflicted with that, so we want to have it over here. And it worked for a bit of time, but now we’re starting to see those operational challenges and friction points, especially as media starts to enter into the store, which is very much controlled by merchants, IT, store operators, or, if you’re a franchise model, individual owners. And now it’s forcing that conversation to happen of, “Well, how do these two areas live harmoniously together?” So that’s, I think, one of the big underpinnings of this day two, if you will: that operational excellence in terms of how media is woven into the overall customer experience, and how it is additive to that customer experience.
[00:07:23] Collin: That’s the work that’s happening now that’s going to take years to kind of figure out what that balance looks like. And I think it’s gonna mean different operating models. So you’re not gonna have a media network just totally separate over here, in a separate office or in a separate area of the business — they’re going to have to be woven into the broader retail business. And you see that on the brand side as well: suppliers, CPGs, FMCGs that supply products to these retailers. They’re having to reckon with this a little bit too, in terms of — you always had the trade and sales teams really control that relationship with the retailer. Well, now that media spend has grown tremendously with a given retailer, national media teams, shopper marketers, digital marketers have to be part of that conversation and negotiation with the retailer. And that’s making them reconsider, “How do we organize all this? How do we think about marketing in this new way of operating?”
[00:08:30] Alicia: Collin, I want to jump in here because I’m curious — you have this macro view of the industry and all of the different operating models. You mentioned friction points. What are some of the most common friction points that you see emerge as these models and offerings expand? And which have an advantage from an operational standpoint? Because what I’ve noticed, just in my daily media consumption and just being a consumer, is how commerce media is really permeating into areas that didn’t exist a year ago. I mean, we’re seeing it more in CTV; even influencer marketing has a presence in all these different factors. So what are the friction points, and which companies, which providers have that advantage as they strive to recalibrate? Like, what does collaboration and operations look like in this era?
[00:09:28] Collin: Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of friction points. One — probably the biggest one — is the friction between retailers and brands today, and the incentives that drive both of them. So retailers naturally, they want to maximize media revenue, and a lot of that is to drive increased margin, especially in some of these areas of retail where margins are incredibly low. That was the promise of building a retail media network — that it was going to grow margin. And you’ve seen that happen with some of the biggest ones for sure. Now at the same time, the suppliers care about category growth. They care about brand experience. They care about improving the overall efficacy of campaigns that they’re running, regardless of who it’s being run with. And you see this notion in the industry a lot from the brands and agencies, you know, saying retail media has become a tax — like, it is a tax on my ability to grow category. And I can understand why they think that. So that’s probably the biggest one that has come to the surface, and it’s because the category has grown so much, right? Because you see brands being sort of required by some of their retailers to spend X percent more year on year. And the brand is asking, “Well, why should I spend more if you’re not able to show me that you’re selling X percent more of my product, getting it off the shelf, that’s going to lead to more sales for me?” And that’s why — I’m sure you guys hear this term all the time — incrementality has become so critical in the commerce space. And it’s really interesting, because it’s almost like this focus on what is incremental — AKA, did my media drive incremental sales that it wouldn’t have driven if I hadn’t had that media? That has really ballooned the importance of incrementality in marketing and media overall, regardless of channel. You see it being talked about in every corner of our industry of advertising today. And I think a lot of it’s because of this exact friction point within retail media between brands and retailers.
[00:11:55] Phillip: I don’t wanna take us off course, Alicia, but — you mentioned incrementality in a piece with eMarketer on the future of commerce media. And I think specifically, when I’m thinking about, you know, in that piece you were talking about, I don’t know, the future and agentic shelf, for instance. And I think that there is a — as we’re all looking for incrementality all the time, right? Like, I think we spent the last few years very, very excited about, you know, new channel revenue, new opportunities around commerce media. I think maybe now we’re all very excited about the potential of agentic — or maybe scared that agentic might be shifting the type and the nature of a shopper that’s coming into these commerce media channels that we’ve been investing in so heavily. They may not be engaging with the advertising that we’ve been driving our partners to and creating these partnerships around. Give us a little bit of your perspective, and the IAB’s POV, on agentic and how that plays into the ecosystem, where we have been prioritizing attention and trying to monetize attention. Because it is such a key portion of so many people’s strategy right now in the ecosystem.
[00:13:16] Collin: Yeah. I mean, what is more talked about today than AI, and especially in the world of retail, agentic commerce? It is, without a doubt, I think probably the most talked about. If you go to any event in this space, they’re going to be talking about it. And in my view, you know, agentic commerce isn’t changing what consumers buy or want to buy today. It’s changing their decision, their pathway to purchase. And there’s a bit of a difference there. It’s that humans are not making the decision alone, right? The human is making the decision with an agent. And that’s the current state today. And I think too many people often start the conversation with, you know, “Agentic commerce is going to be this agent-to-agent, robots are buying everything for us.” And yes, that might be the destination someday, and maybe it might be sooner than, you know, some far-off year from now. But that’s not the course that it’s taking in this moment. And I think that’s a key part of the conversation to me. So we’re thinking a lot about going into next year, especially — I know, you know, we’re almost in August here, but we’re thinking about 2027 already. And I’m thinking about, how do we define the spectrum of agentic commerce, and what that sort of natural evolution might look like, and what it means for retail media going forward. Because the consumer, you know, they’re not disappearing today. Like, yes, we need to market to agents — you know, you hear that all the time in our space too.
[00:15:12] Collin: But you still have to market to the consumer, right, as well. So it’s this dual mandate, I think, that is important. It’s a nuance that’s important for us to just acknowledge as an industry. The consumer is not giving up control. They’re just changing the pathway that we have been used to recently. I think what that means for things like the shelf — you know, you mentioned the agentic shelf — well, brands have always competed for placement on the shelf, and that’s taken many different manifestations over time. That’s the physical shelf that they’ve had to jockey for; they still do that through joint business planning with their retailers. Then it turned into jockeying for search ranking in places like major search engines, and then it turned into sponsored product listings within retail.coms themselves. So we’re, like, actually pretty well equipped, I think, to be able to handle this, because we’ve seen this natural evolution over time. And it’s not like any of those things that I mentioned have gone away. We still have to actually manage those things. So this is just another part of the shelf that we have to manage for. It just sort of doubles down on — the shelf is not just physical, it’s not just brick and mortar anymore, and it’s not just ecommerce and digital either. It’s both. And now you have the agentic shelf, right? The agentic — yeah, I guess you can call it that.
[00:16:52] Phillip: Yeah, I guess. Yeah. And this is where I’ve made some forward-looking predictions. I guess you can’t do that without being called Future Commerce. And I guess our POV is that, necessarily, if an agent is acting on behalf of a human’s intent, then the intent needs to move up higher in the funnel. And if the human’s intent is based around, like, a needs state, right — and if that needs state is around very specific desires of the human, whether it’s to save some money, or around fit, or delivery time — then the advertising parameters need to move up the funnel necessarily as well, too, so that the agent becomes aware of them. So, like, delivery capabilities, promotions, those things need to be surfaced in ad units so that the agent becomes aware of them, so that it can act on behalf of the human. Whereas today, a lot of our creative is appealing aesthetically to a human’s desire. Now, we do a lot of that in promo and things like “20% off, act now,” but we’re not doing it in a way that an agent can act on it, in other ways that humans are communicating through context.
[00:18:09] Phillip: And so those are things that I expect will probably shift very quickly. Because — and we have a lot of primary research here at Future Commerce, Collin, that shows that, you know, 77% of people we ask in our studies say they still want control. They want to click through and they want to finish the purchase, right? But those 77% of people are extraordinarily motivated to complete the purchase, and they buy only the thing that’s been recommended to them. But they’re being told, “buy it from here and buy this specific thing,” and they’re being convinced of that by an agent who already did most of the shopping and decision-making on their behalf. And so we’re gonna have to figure out that part around, specifically, ad units and ad creative that disintermediates that relationship with the agent on the retailer’s website at some point. And I think the blocking right now — like the shutting down, and the agentic ghettos we’re creating, like “you can’t come here” — that’s gotta stop at some point too. Like, that’s probably a bad practice.
[00:19:10] Collin: I’ll add one more thing. I think you brilliantly said how the upper-funnel experience is changing dramatically because of AI. The other thing that I would add onto it is that the coming reckoning is in the measurement space as well. Attribution was — let’s call it what it is — it is an imperfect science for what our industry has wanted to believe is a perfect, precise way of measuring marketing impact. And what AI is doing is it is making that gap, that difficulty level of being able to be precise that attribution has not been able to live up to — it’s making that gap even wider, because the intent signals are being lost upstream. Because attribution was built for: an ad is served, it is either clicked on or seen, the customer goes to the website and they purchase. And that model does not work well in this new, more agentic-driven era. So it’s actually something we’re working on. My colleague Caroline Giegerich, who leads the AI Center of Excellence here at the IAB — I work very closely with her, as you might imagine. We’re currently working on a blueprint. It’s not really, like, a — we’re not trying to put out any standards. We’re not trying to say that attribution is dead. What we’re trying to say is that this is happening, and we need to think a little bit differently about what are the reasonable signals that we’re gonna be able to retain so that attribution models live on. What are we going to lose? And with that, how should we be thinking differently about measurement and attribution going forward? And I don’t have the full answers yet, because we’ve just kicked this off.
[00:21:16] Phillip: Yeah.
[00:21:16] Collin: We opened it about a month ago.
[00:21:18] Phillip: Opening innings, I think, across the whole industry in general, right? Like, yeah, I think that’s the right move on y’all’s behalf. Best of luck in those.
[00:21:28] Collin: Yeah, we will need it.
[00:21:29] Alicia: Yeah. I can’t wait to see what comes out of that. And I think we hit on the implications of the agents acting on the consumer’s behalf, and what that means contextually for what retailers and brands need to deliver on the advertising side on-site. But I have to ask: are there any implications of what’s going to happen inevitably when advertising goes within these LLMs? I’m always seeing pieces recently about how OpenAI is scaling their advertising division. Granted, there’s skepticism and there are doubts of how this model is actually going to roll out and what it looks like for the customer. But I guess there are two innate questions here. One, how does that impact the seemingly objective relationship consumers have with their agents when they go there looking for sound advice? And what are the implications for the commerce media industry as a whole? Are there any discussions or concerns emerging right now? It may be too soon to tell, but it seems like there’s something ramping up over there in the OpenAI world. So any thoughts?
[00:22:44] Collin: I mean, yeah, a lot of thoughts. I would say it comes down to two things for me, based on the questions you have. One is that there is absolutely focus and concern in the retail media, commerce media world for what more agent-driven advertising, agent-driven commerce means for retail media revenues. Because if the consumer is making their decision increasingly more in conversational experiences with LLMs, they’re doing a whole heck of a lot less searching, clicking on the retailer site, which is going to reduce their ability to monetize that consumer on their site. So that’s a big deal. But the silver lining at the moment is that retailers are actually benefiting from agent-driven shoppers today — agent-referred shoppers today — because those shoppers are more likely to not return the purchase that they made. They actually come with higher intent, so they have higher conversion rates as well. So for now, it’s actually a bit of a boon to retailers overall. Now, the thing that you mentioned before that I think is so interesting is, you know, as LLMs introduce ads into their experiences, that’s gonna be interesting to see how that plays out. Because consumers — I feel like as a consumer at least, and I don’t always like anecdotal evidence, but, you know — AI feels objective to me for the most part.
[00:24:31] Collin: You go to it because it’s kind of like your omnipotent friend that you might have never had, right? And when ads get introduced, it begs the question of, “Am I still going to trust that agent? And can they answer my questions without undermining the consumer trust piece?” That’ll be really interesting to see how that plays out. Now, unfortunately, that’s about as smart as I get in that area, because that’s where Caroline, who I mentioned before, goes a heck of a lot deeper than I do in terms of what’s actually happening. Because we know that there are ads that are being served within LLM experiences today, and they’re doing a whole heck of a lot of testing to see what is that right balance — or, you know, the ability to balance trust with the need that they have to monetize.
[00:25:32] Phillip: It’s so interesting. We’ve never had quite this paradigm in access to, you know, information, recommendation, relationship —
[00:25:44] Collin: Mhmm.
[00:25:46] Phillip: — and infrastructure, right, that is trying to pull off the same sort of switch from free access, venture capital, back to ad-supported revenue, in the same way that we’ve always seen the switch to monetization happen in prior eras, right? But it does remind an old guy like me of things like NetZero that has existed in the world, where, like, you know, NetZero back in the day had a similar infrastructure play, and those things have never quite worked out very well. I think people tend to like to pay — I don’t know, no one likes to pay for anything, but people tend to pay for infrastructure access to essential services. And so when people consider something essential in their lives, it becomes part of their main portion of their budget. And I think that an ad would be friction to the experience, for them to have unfettered access and true access to the, I would say, the unfiltered recommendations that they would have otherwise received. And so potentially that’s the real model there: everybody’s on the $200 plan. I didn’t pay $200 in a month for my cell phone, you know, twenty years ago, and I do now. So maybe that’s our future, Collin, who knows? Because that’s not why you’re here. But, you know, I think that’s a really interesting dynamic in the consumer, and it is something we tend to withstand over, you know, over decades. I do think what is interesting, and something that could come about as we sort of move on — I had this conversation in Cannes a few weeks ago, and this isn’t something that necessarily you might be prepared to talk about, but I do think it’s something that you’re in the seat that I think you are best positioned to have the conversation around. There’s more and more commerce media networks that seem to be emerging that are on sort of the financial services side of the house and the business.
[00:28:01] Phillip: And they are more open to regulatory scrutiny, and they have to live up to higher standards than other retail media networks that we might have seen in the past. Outside of potentially the largest retailers in the world, who might have, you know, antitrust things they might have to skirt around from time to time, true banks have other problems and other issues to deal with. And a lot of the conversations I was hearing behind closed doors were, how do these types of institutions ward off the potential regulatory issues by forming internal consortiums amongst other commerce media networks to self-regulate, ahead of, you know, governmental bodies trying to regulate the industry as a whole. And I’m curious what the IAB might be thinking about. As you are an oversight of the industry — I think that’s your job, right? So I’m curious what your perspective on that might be, to hear that, you know, there are institutions who are also thinking about how they might be working internally amongst themselves to also be thinking about, “How do we self-regulate in this environment,” where they might be getting wind of other government agencies that might be thinking about — now there’s some consumer protections that might be coming down the pike.
[00:29:26] Collin: Yeah. I mean, I think self-regulation is a great place to start. It doesn’t eliminate the scrutiny automatically, but I think it does reduce the eyeballs, or sort of focus, on this particular part of the industry. Now, obviously, as you said, you know, financial institutions have such an opportunity because they see across buying environments, obviously, and that really makes the data piece very attractive. The challenge, obviously, is what they can do with that data and where that data can go. And I think that is why a consortium is potentially really interesting, because rather than saying, “You know what, we’re gonna go on our own, we’re gonna create our own sort of set of standards and create our commerce media network that’s gonna be a new paradigm” — a consortium kind of allows for greater industry-wide buy-in, that I think is very much always looked upon favorably for the most part. I think one more — I don’t know if we’ve mentioned the word yet, but, like, transparency kind of underpins all of our conversation. So far it probably is most important in this particular space, because — I mean, it has to do with AI too.
[00:31:01] Collin: Like, when a piece of content is advertised as paid for — who’s paying for the placement? If AI was used in that piece of media? I’d say that, regardless if we’re talking about a consortium or a specific commerce media network, is critical as a principle. There’s obviously a lot of other things that are really important here when it comes to things like data governance, in terms of where and what kind of customer data is being used, and where is it being used. I think that that is obviously a piece here too. So there’s a bevy of principles, I think, that need to kind of be pillars of any sort of commerce media network that’s in the financial services, or any highly regulated, industry. And, you know, transparency and the governance piece are, to me, the two most important ones, and probably the ones that we focus on the most in a lot of our work.
[00:32:06] Phillip: Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, our perspective is, obviously, these are signs of maturity in the ecosystem. I also think we’re reaching a bit of a tipping point too, where anything that’s an impediment to growth and maturity in the ecosystem — as we do reach… I thought we reached saturation a couple years ago; I was wrong. But, you know, anything that does pose some sort of roadblock to growth, I do think probably doesn’t bode well for the industry as a whole. And so I do like the thinking, and I do want to continue to hear how folks are potentially thinking about working with, you know, institutions like yourself. I think that’s the right way to go. So, yeah, having more of these conversations, I think, beyond closed doors and maybe more in public, is probably the right move. But I digress. Alicia, I know that you have been covering, at Future Commerce, quite a bit around retail and store experience, and how a lot of this really extends this halo. I know we talk a lot about AI, but most of our beat is actually covering how online and offline are becoming much more blurred too. What’s your take on this here today?
[00:33:35] Alicia: Yeah, I mean, I’m glad we kind of brought up other players coming into this ecosystem, because it is getting more and more crowded. And then I think the big question is, for these retail media networks, “How do we continue to compete and differentiate ourselves?” And I think, whether we’re talking about financial institutions, whether we’re talking about hospitality coming into the mix, travel — the one thing that retail has is stores, right? It has a physical embodiment, a place where people can go to really feel and immerse themselves into a brand, not just have a quote-unquote “moment,” right? And you’ve talked about making the store a more fun place through media, and I think that’s the exciting point of evolution. We’ve always had point-of-purchase displays, we’ve always had end caps, but now we have these immersive digital screens where you can see recipes being done in motion, you can see influencer content, you can see ways to connect it with your mobile phone as you’re going through the aisle. We’re seeing some really fascinating movement with vertical dramas and how those are coming to life in store. So I guess, to bring us home, let’s dig into that value prop a little bit further. Like, what does this current era of physical retail and media fusion kind of look like? And what are the opportunities for the future that you’re starting to really see bubble up and really emerge as that differentiator that retail media networks need as they fight to stand out?
[00:35:21] Collin: Yeah. I mean, the opportunity for in-store retail media couldn’t be bigger. And I think it’s been on my radar since I got into the space ten years ago, because the greatest asset that our retailer has is their physical properties. And, you know, I often think about — we tend to talk about 99% of the time within the store, which makes a lot of sense, right, because of some of the things we talked about: making the store a more fun place, a more helpful place to find information, to find product that you might not have gone in thinking about or looking for. So I think that the opportunities are endless within the physical store, but then also I would add, you know, outside of the store as well. A lot of these stores have the opportunity to run media on their exterior that also gets in front of potentially even more people than the physical, in-store environment. So I think that the opportunities are certainly endless. You see a ton of growth in the space in terms of technology providers that are out there, retailers that are starting to scale their in-store media efforts. You also see a lot of non-endemic brands — so non-CPG, FMCG brands — that are leaning into the space as well, simply because of the sheer number of people that still go to physical brick and mortar. And the data also shows that younger generations are just as interested, if not more interested, in going into physical stores than generations… so, like…
[00:37:09] Phillip: Oh, it’s so wild too, right? And I think that’s the pendulum swinging back, to your point of, you know, the endemics and non-endemics. I feel like there’s the endemic digital native versus the non-endemic, you know, Gen Xer. There’s — yeah. Alicia, I think you were about to jump in.
[00:37:31] Alicia: Yeah, yeah. I do have a quick follow-up question about that. I think it kind of brings us full circle to your point about the non-endemic opportunity. What are the implications as more brands outside of the four walls want to come into the store? What does that mean culturally for brands, and how they manage those relationships with the companies that may be outside of the typical partnership parameter? Because I know I’ve had a few conversations with retail media folks saying, like, “Okay, we’ve had to handle certain relationships with kid gloves,” or “We had to bring in certain people from outside of our division to determine which brands outside of our typical partnerships we should bring in.” So I’m curious, are there any standards around that, or overarching approaches that ensure that that side of the business is growing, right? Because that’s the goal — to bring in as many advertisers as you can without inhibiting or damaging the retailer experience, but also those relationships with brands, right? Because that probably gets a little tricky.
[00:38:39] Collin: It gets hairy really quick. And you see a lot of retailers kind of cautious with — you know, they’re, like, optimistically cautious about the non-endemic opportunity, because there are so many that are knocking on their door. But when push comes to shove, it is not as seamless as it sounds, as what I just sounded like three minutes ago. And it comes down to both the retailer and brand relationship, like you mentioned, and also that customer experience in the store. Because the retailer is asking themselves, “Does my customer — if I’m a grocer — does my customer actually want to see a GEICO ad running at the point of sale?” And it’s a good question. And then it comes down to reach and frequency too, of, “Well, how often do they want to see it?” Like, if it’s flashing nonstop and I see it multiple times within my, I don’t know, fifteen, twenty minutes of being in the store, that’s probably not a great experience for that consumer. So you see a lot of retailers that are taking advantage of the opportunity, and then they very quickly go, “Oh, actually, we’re going to put some really tight caps on the frequency management, for instance.” And then that’s a tough song and dance for the advertiser, because they’re like, “Well, the whole point of being here is because of all the people that are, you know, in the store.” So it’s a balance that is very much in the works of being struck. And I don’t think anyone has — I mean, no one has perfected it yet. So there aren’t exactly standards that exist in this yet, but something that I think, down the line, we’ll be looking more closely at.
[00:40:37] Alicia: Yeah. It goes to your earlier point about how it really needs to be holistic, and, you know, several players really need to come into the mix to make sure that all the touchpoints orchestrate well, whether it’s a digital interface or something happening in the store. So it really shows that evolution firsthand.
[00:40:55] Phillip: And then, I think, to our original point earlier this year around predictions in our — I’d say, is “gambling economy” the wrong word to use? But I think we’re, like, verging on a gambling economy right now. Anyone will take almost any brand placement around the sweepstakes. Like, I think we’ve already figured that out. And we have a partner that we work with, Collin, who has had tremendous success at, like, a Home Depot. If you are giving away a Ford F-150, like, it doesn’t matter. Like, people love that. They were all about that. So I do think that there is a ton of opportunity there that, yeah, retailers are probably — they’re probably really highly experimental depending on the integration and the brand. And there is a lot of — yeah, there’s cautious optimism. We could probably talk for hours on this particular subject. Where can folks hear more from you? I think you’re doing a ton of thought leadership. IAB puts out a ton. Collin, where can they get more from you, straight from where you’re publishing?
[00:42:09] Collin: IAB.com. You don’t have to be a member. Anyone can create a login to access much of our thought leadership and much of our work. You can find all the work from myself and my Center of Excellence there. So very much encourage you to go there. We also do lots of events throughout the year. My event, Connected Commerce Summit, is every April, so we’re a little bit away from there. But we do lots of other events as well — around creators, around podcasting, audio, you name it. So look for us with some of our events as well.
[00:42:47] Phillip: Yeah. Maybe we can twist your arm one of these days to get out to our summit at VISIONS. We have one coming up November 3 — as a reminder to our audience, November 3 at MoMA — and we are talking about the impact that AI is having right now on both culture and commerce. So go to futurecommerce.com to learn more about that. But we are just so thrilled to have had you. We’ll link up all of the resources that we talked about here in the description, in the show notes. So wherever you’re watching and listening from, go check it out. Collin Colburn, thank you for joining us here on this episode of Future Commerce. You can find more episodes of this podcast wherever you find your podcasts. And if this conversation sparked something for you — like, follow, subscribe wherever you get your media these days. It helps more people join in the conversation. If you want more of Future Commerce in your world, I’m reaching down here — you can find our print shop at futurecommerce.com, where you get books like this, called Lore. And this isn’t even our most recent one; we have five or six books just like this today. It helps bring beautifully crafted journals, print scenes, and collectibles into your world. Atoms — they last a lot longer than electrons in your inbox these days. Remember, commerce shapes the future, because commerce is culture. We’ll see you next time.
