Unlocking Retail Media is the essential podcast for leaders and marketers navigating the rapidly evolving world of retail advertising. We move beyond day-to-day operations to explore the strategic future of the industry, covering major investment trends, the shift to hybrid marketplace models, and the existential disruption posed by Agentic Commerce. Host James Avery brings in top industry veterans and visionary founders to analyze how ground-breaking technology is transforming customer journeys, influencing product catalogs, and forcing retailers to rethink on-site, in-store, and digital media strategies to remain competitive in the modern age.
Unlocking Retail Media
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18 episodes
Updated Daily
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Podcast Overview
Unlocking Retail Media is the essential podcast for leaders and marketers navigating the rapidly evolving world of retail advertising. We move beyond day-to-day operations to explore the strategic future of the industry, covering major investment trends, the shift to hybrid marketplace models, and the existential disruption posed by Agentic Commerce. Host James Avery brings in top industry veterans and visionary founders to analyze how ground-breaking technology is transforming customer journeys, influencing product catalogs, and forcing retailers to rethink on-site, in-store, and digital media strategies to remain competitive in the modern age.
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Publishing Since
11/12/2025
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Recent Episodes
June 17, 2026
How iFood Became the Fastest-Growing Retail Media Network in the World with Sam James
<p>In this special live episode of Unlocking Retail Media, recorded on stage at the <a href="https://retailmediafc.com.br/">Retail Media FC</a> Summit in São Paulo, Brazil, James Avery sits down with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-james-11211828/">Sam James, VP of Ads at iFood</a> — the dominant food and grocery delivery platform commanding roughly 80% market share in Brazil. Sam breaks down how iFood scaled from basic seller ads to a full-funnel retail media powerhouse, why Brazil is the fastest-growing retail media market globally, and how iFood's fragmented retail landscape is actually creating a massive consolidation opportunity. The conversation covers iFood's offsite media expansion through its acquisition of AI-native ad tech company Advolve, a groundbreaking co-bidding model where iFood matches brand ad spend to drive closed-loop ROAS, the untapped potential of data-driven product sampling, and how AI agents are reshaping the entire ads operation — including a live Databricks-Claude integration that turns week-long analyses into 20-minute insights. Whether you're building a retail media network, a CPG brand navigating LATAM, or an agency trying to capture emerging commerce media budgets, this episode is packed with actionable strategy from one of the most innovative retail media stories in the world.</p>
June 3, 2026
The Shift to Intelligence: AI and the Evolution of Retail Media with Grant Steadman
<p>James Avery sits down with Grant Steadman, retail expert and former President of North America at dunnhumby, to explore the profound impact of Artificial Intelligence and generative shopping on the commerce landscape. Drawing on his extensive 16-year tenure at dunnhumby—the data science pioneer behind Tesco's Clubcard and early loyalty frameworks—Grant offers a rare look at the data-led history of the industry before bridging it directly into the modern era of agentic commerce. They break down exclusive findings from Astra Works AI’s Agentic Commerce Capability Index, outlining how market leaders like Amazon (Rufus) and Walmart (Sparky) are rewriting the rules of consumer discovery. Grant explains why the transition to AI assistants is not an overnight replacement for physical grocery store aisles or traditional e-commerce portals, but a powerful new channel requiring retailers to urgently address the organizational, technical, and change-management challenges of an AI transformation. From moving away from basic keyword-based search to navigating how brand signals are shared across large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, this episode serves as a strategic roadmap for networks aiming to scale their intelligence layers and protect their data moats.</p>
May 20, 2026
Building From the Inside Out: Scaling a Retail Media Powerhouse with Austin Leonard
<p>James Avery sits down with Austin Leonard, VP and General Manager of DG Media Network, to break down how Dollar General is transforming America’s general store into a retail media juggernaut. With more than 21,000 physical locations deeply embedded in rural and suburban communities, Dollar General reaches a critical shopper base that traditional digital platforms often miss. Austin shares the inside story of building the network from a strong foundation of traditional shopper marketing and offsite tactics to a rapidly growing, omnichannel digital business driven by a massive rollout of same-day delivery. The conversation covers DG Media Network's pioneering first-of-its-kind partnership with The Trade Desk to seamlessly unify onsite and offsite programmatic buying, their major expansion into AI-powered in-store audio with QSIC, and why providing outcome-based measurement and true incrementality is the ultimate key to unlocking national media dollars. Austin challenges the industry's default playbooks, explaining why successful retail networks must ditch copy-paste roadmaps, start directly with customer behavior, and scale specialized tools that protect both the shopper experience and brand yield.</p>
18 total episodes available
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Frequently asked questions
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- What is Unlocking Retail Media?
- How often does this podcast release new episodes?
This podcast updates daily.
- Where can I listen to this podcast?
This podcast is available on 4 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
- Does this podcast accept guests?
Yes, this podcast regularly features guests.
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