Inside The Albertsons Media Collective: SVP Kristi Argyilan's Vision For Retail Media

Hello, everyone.

Welcome back.

Somnitak Retail, live from grocery shop 2024 in the fusion group, booth number 8210.

We'll be here for the rest of the afternoon.

There's wine, there's cheese, there's little tiny Kobe beef franks that are being served up on platters.

I don't know how to do it up right.

Anne?

Yes.

However, we are not done yet.

We are going to bring you just a couple more interviews, the next being our first and former target alum and now SVP.

I have to make sure I get this right.

Of retail media at the Albertsons media collective, Christy Argyllan.

Christy, welcome.

Thank you, Ann.

Nice to be here.

Happy to be back with you.

I know.

Hello, Chris.

Hello, Christy.

Yes, we were just talking about.

This is your third time interviewing with us.

Correct.

As Ann mentioned, former colleagues at Target, you were also a mentor of mine as well during my time there, so thank you for that.

I always like to give you a little props for that, too.

You were one of my kindred spirits.

Yes, kindred spirits.

Right, right.

Yes, yes, yes.

Same battles in a lot of ways.

So tell the audience about your background and talk about what the Albertsons media collective is for those that maybe don't know or aren't up to speed on the whole retail media thing.

Sure.

I can go all the way back to born in Aurora, Illinois, also known as Wayne's World.

Please do.

Yes.

What was that?

Channel six or something like?

Yeah, that's great.

Yeah.

So I grew up in the ad business on the media side of it, and really was primarily on creative agency side, then actually went to some of the holding companies in particular.

Probably one of the more formative stops was running Microsoft's media business globally for media brands, and then from there was recruited to come on over to target, initially to run the media capability measurement, social influencer, guest experience.

And there was this new kind of opportunity starting to emerge that centered around first party data and digital marketing and the ability to actually bring that to market in a really compelling way for the cpgs that were major partners and suppliers for Target and was, you know, allowed to bring Roundell to market.

Worked with the executive creative director, Todd Waterbury at the time, and really enjoyed building this big, beautiful brand, but more importantly, an extension of all the different ways that retailers can actually innovate and reimagine how digital marketing works.

So, fast forward.

I've now been brought on board at Albertsons and two and a half years ago.

Two and a half years.

Yeah.

The task was to bring their retail media business in house because they had been outsourcing it.

And I've been on a.

With a very talented team of people and really great partners have been on a tear of driving growth for Albertsons media collective.

Christy, one of the things that I know that you're working on with that team is CTV.

And I wanted to ask you specifically about a tactic that Albertsons, I think, is kind of uniquely approaching, which is this idea of your own Albertsons collective tv.

Can you explain for the audience what that is, why you're kind of doing that as one of the initiatives that you're going forward with, with the team and what you kind of expect to get from that?

Yeah, I think the biggest part of it is that we see that there are three viable solutions in the marketplace that retail media has a right to play in.

Okay.

The first one is kind of CTV as we know it today.

Right.

You go on the trade desk, you can apply our audiences to that.

And now we also have closed loop measurement that is attached to that as well.

Super interesting.

Very easy for agencies or brands or shopper marketers to be able to just execute on their own, get better measurement and proof of sales happening.

Then we start to get into other areas, which are premium publishers, where we can actually bring brands specifically to those relationships.

So if you think of where does the bulk of the viewing with CTV really happen?

It happens.

YouTube, Hulu.

It's a short list.

And so is there a more customized way to bring our audiences and our closed loop measurement to these really big platforms where a lot of the viewing is already happening?

And then the third layer is if you're a media company, yes, you will always sell based on impressions and CPm.

But what if you can start to guarantee some sales results because you actually now start to use a retailer's audiences and their closed loop measurement and show that your linear tv or some of your streaming tv services can actually drive sales as well?

So we call it collective tv because it's multidimensional and it's really designed to be able to serve some of the different gaps that are in the marketplace right now that actually retail media is uniquely able to fill.

Is anybody else doing this or have.

Like, not at that level?

We're all dabbling in it.

Yeah, I think we've been more purposeful with how we organize it.

I also, you know, having come from the agency side, there's a lot of value in creating a lot of chaos and then kind of coming in and organizing it.

Right.

I mean, I was tear it down.

And build it back up.

I may have done that somewhere along.

Great things.

And so to be able to bring something that's kind of in a box and really meant to solve some of the very longstanding problems that have existed in the marketplace and not really problems, but they've just been gaps that now these first party audiences can solve.

Right.

You're kind of thinking like a media company and a retailer.

Yes, yes.

I'm also thinking about where our assets that we have that are really a value in the marketplace versus us saying, we'll give you access to these only if you buy media with us, too.

Cause I think there's some value in figuring out how to unbundle those things.

Yeah.

So, Christy, to that point, then, where does in store fit into that map as well?

And how would you sum up this state of in store advertising under the banner of retail media?

And where do you see the opportunities lying as we go forward here as a grocery industry?

Right.

We were joking with some of our clients earlier today.

We're doing in stores can be vinyl clings on the floor.

Right.

I know that's the thing.

Shelf talkers.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

And all of those things are fun and kitschy.

But I think that there's, if you think about it, the second that a customer walks into our stores, we're the only ones that really get to see what happens next.

And so there is an enormous amount of demand to have a better in store digital experience.

And part of it is going to be what you can do through your app.

Right.

So how you're using your mobile phone when you're in store shopping, but then you also have all these big, beautiful screens that you can now install.

And so how are you programming the store so that as shoppers are going through the store, what are we sharing with them?

What are recipe ideas?

How, you know, how can we provide some of these tools that actually enrich their shopping experience?

The tricky piece is, and you two have been in the space long enough to know, there's one company that does cooler screens, there's another company that does smart carts.

There's a third one that does the digital screens in the front of the store, another one that does them in the back of the store, a third one that does them in the deli, and none of them are connected.

And so really hard to execute.

Like, where's the ad server that goes across all the platforms?

And then the other one is.

Then how do you measure in a way that's believable?

Right.

Right.

And you don't want to be creepy and be, like, following customers around the store.

So you have to find an appropriate way to measure so that it is accretive to their experience, not feeling like, well, who's following me?

Yeah.

And is that a rubric for you in that analysis, too?

Because not all those ones you mentioned can even measure in the same way.

Right.

Or provide the same depth of insight.

So is that something you're looking at very hard and evaluating before you make a decision on what to put in store?

Yeah, I mean, we're already moving forward with pilots, and we're using our existing screens.

So fuel pumps, deli screens, checkout counter, or checkout self checkout.

So we have a lot of screens that are already in our stores.

And so we're working now on figuring out how do we integrate those, and then over time, we'll keep adding more and more screens to what we're doing.

Got it.

Well, Christy, I think you're one of the best people we could have on to answer this question.

Question.

Because you're kind of the og of retail media.

I mean, I feel like you really brought it on.

Well, you did at Target.

It was, it was a concept, and you brought it from, hey, hello, we're bringing in a billion dollars a year or whatever.

It was like, pay attention to us over here.

And then, you know, now you've started the Albertsons retail media organization.

Where do you see retail media going?

Like, what do you think is ahead of us that we haven't, we haven't quite grasped yet, especially when you're starting to talk about the things that, you know, the collective tv that you're working on, those kinds of initiatives, what do you think you and other retailers are going to start doing?

Yeah, I think, I mean, there's a lot, there's a lot going on.

When you consider that there's a new retail media network every hour and every five minutes.

But that probably overstating it.

Very different sizes and scales, too.

It seems very different sizes and scales.

And you know what?

For some aggregators, that's going to be a really great thing.

So think of what someone like critio could do if they aggregate all of the smaller retail media networks and then bring them to market in an organized, easy access sort of way.

So that's interesting.

But I also think retail media in general, there's kind of a debate on are we media or are we what we call kind of the layer?

Are we a layer that can actually enable all marketing.

So when you think of first party audiences, which, you know, heretofore have been known as cookies.

Right, right.

So now you've got these really high quality first party audiences that people can use for their marketing programs.

And just making the switch to that from cookies, we see on average about 20%, just better performance.

And it makes sense.

Right, right.

But then you also have to think about the insights that we have.

You have to think about the measurement that we have, especially if you're a CPG.

But we're also leaning into ways to append our data so that we could offer broader measurements for a non endemic, an automotive, a travel.

Is there a proposition in that?

That's really interesting, too.

So if you look at what our greatest assets are, it's the inventory that we own, but it's also the audiences that we know that have opted in that are first party.

I mean, if we know 50% of the us consumer base on any given day.

Right.

That's a really large audience use for marketing purposes.

And then how do you measure that?

It drove a business outcome, not just that you got impressions.

Do you ever think that there's a time when you could combine with like a hospitality industry or something where you're, like, getting that?

I mean, I just.

You've got me thinking about that.

Like, yes, you have all of our shopping data from things that we're doing multiple times a week.

But I think especially with this new generation really focusing on experiences and stuff, like, do you think there's a world where that could ever conceivably happen?

Where, like, you start to bring in, like, Disney's data or somebody else's data?

Yeah, perhaps.

Okay, perhaps.

No, 100%.

And if you look at some of the most recent announcements, in terms of what United is doing and what some of the credit card companies are doing, they're naturally leaning into this as well.

And I think if there are different ways for us to build kind of data consortiums that could really round out the audiences that we're bringing to market, that could be really interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Credit card loyalty synced up with retailer and grocery loyalty is a really interesting space.

Yeah, really interesting to think about.

So to that point, let's get you out of here on this then.

So, you know, you're about to close up 2024.

You head into 2025.

What are you looking to accomplish?

What are your priorities?

Well, you know, it's kind of a twofold.

Right.

We've got place in the clouds on a foundation of stone is probably the easiest way to say it.

We are scaling so fast, and retail media is scaling so fast that if we're not really careful about being able to deliver, people will be like, and then we're under the next thing.

Right.

Right.

So it's on us as, especially as leaders of the retail media space to lean into standardization to make sure that we're scaling with responsibly scaling and delivering the what our clients are expecting us to deliver.

Then on top of that, you've got all the innovation.

So we're leaning in with meta.

We're leaning in.

We've already done a lot of work with Pinterest.

We've got a lot of new CTV capabilities that just keep advancing the trade desk.

So meeting buyers where they're buying and really bringing our proposition to more off platform channels is a real key component for us as well.

So it's kind of the provide the stability for the amount of scaling that's happening, but also keep on innovating to stay ahead of the marketplace show.

How good is your good, so to speak, to the marketplace, to your clients.

Love that.

Thank you, Christy.

I appreciate the time.

Yes, you're like our retail media oracle.

Anytime you want to come back, you tell us what we need to know and how we need to be focusing on the space.

Thank you again.

Chrissy Arduino of the SVP of retail media at Albertsons Media Collective.

You got it?

I got that on.

Got it out.

Yes.

It's the end of the day.

End of the day.

The happy hour started around us.

Yes, we're still doing interviews.

And we're still doing interviews.

You're powering through.

Thanks again to vision Group.

We'll be right back with one more interview to close out our coverage of grocery shop 2024.

And until then, be careful out there.