Retail Media Breakfast Club

In this episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on what it’s actually like being on the receiving end of PR pitches in the retail media industry, and why most of them completely miss the mark. Inspired by a standout interaction with LoyaltyLion and PR pro Francesca Baker Brooker, I unpack what separates relationship-building from transactional pitching, and why “spilling some tea” is often the difference between getting ignored and becoming a trusted source.
I also dive into how influence in media is shifting away from traditional gatekeepers toward niche newsletters, podcasts, LinkedIn creators, and independent analysts. From fragmented authority and psychographic tribes, to what vendors, retailers, and PR teams should actually be doing to build narratives that land, this episode is a candid look at the new communications playbook for retail media.

This episode is sponsored by Mirakl Ads

Timeline
[00:00] – The LoyaltyLion pitch that actually worked, and why patience from PR pros matters more than persistence
[02:30] – Why I’m sharing my honest perspective on being pitched by brands, retailers, and tech vendors
[03:45] – How the media landscape is fragmenting, and why newsletters, podcasts, and LinkedIn creators are gaining influence
[08:30] – My first rule for PR outreach: know your audience before you pitch
[10:15] – “Spill some tea”: why executives who stick to talking points waste everyone’s time
[13:00] – Why retailer store tours, media breakfasts, and thoughtful event experiences create lasting coverage opportunities
[17:00] – My plea to research teams: stop commissioning generic retail media surveys and start using your actual platform data

Links & Resources
The Agentic AI Revolution is here. The competitive edge belongs to those who move faster than disruption itself. Join Mirakl Ads and myself in New York City on June 10, 2026 for strategies, insights, and connections built for the era of agentic commerce. Save your spot.
Follow Francesca Baker-Brooker, PR @ And So She Thinks, on LinkedIn
My LoyaltyLion piece that Francesca helped facilitate: Loyalty as the Retail Media Backbone
Semrush piece about LinkedIn content: We Analyzed 89K LinkedIn URLs Cited in AI Search: Here's What Drives Visibility
Read my related articles:Standing Room Only: What Shoptalk Attendees Wanted Most Wasn’t on the Main Stage
Writing From the Middle of the Room
Apply For The Damn Award

In Atlanta? Join the Commerce Media Happy Hour on Wednesday June 17! RSVP here
I'm sharing comedy skits on Instagram about retail media! Follow along: @retailmediabreakfastclub
Subscribe to Retail Media Breakfast Club's daily newsletter
Follow Kiri Masters on LinkedIn

In this episode, I unpack one of the clearest real-world examples yet of how AI shopping is reshaping retail strategy. Ashley Furniture is officially experimenting with transactional commerce inside Perplexity, and their approach reveals how major retailers are thinking about AI discovery, customer behavior, and the future of shopping experiences.
I break down key insights from Ashley Furniture’s SVP of E-commerce and Marketing, Nick Lezin, shared on an episode of Total Retail Talks, including why AI referral traffic matters even when it’s still small, why “content hygiene” suddenly became mission-critical, and how AI shopping is creating political momentum inside organizations to finally fix long-ignored catalog and customer experience problems. This isn’t a panic pivot: it’s a calculated early move with potentially massive long-term upside.

This episode is sponsored by Mirakl Ads

Timeline
[00:00] Why I’ve been arguing that product discovery is moving upstream into AI tools 
[00:43] Ashley Furniture launches transactional commerce on Perplexity with PayPal and Stripe integration 
[01:30] Nick Lezin explains the exponential growth in AI referral traffic to Ashley Furniture 
[03:17] Why AI traffic may actually be undercounted because of “dark search” behavior 
[04:48] How AI shopping is forcing retailers to finally prioritize product catalog and content hygiene 
[06:23] Ashley  admits its product content has been too static, and why dynamic PDPs now matter more than ever 
[08:10] Why AI should be viewed as an amplifier for better retail operations, not a shortcut or crutch 
[10:40] My takeaway on why this Perplexity partnership represents a smart, low-risk experimentation strategy for retailers

Links & Resources
Listen to Nick Lezin's full appearance on Total Retail Talks: Inside Ashley's Plan to Launch AI Home Shopping
Subscribe to Total Retail Talks on Apple Podcasts
Follow Nick Lezin, senior vice president of e-commerce and marketing at Ashley, on LinkedIn
Follow Joe Keenan, Total Retail Talks, Editor-in-Chief, on LinkedIn
Read my related articles:‘Dark Search’ Is Making AI-Facilitated Commerce Look Smaller Than It Really Is
Does 'Dark Search' Help or Harm Retail Media?
Dark Search, Broken Signals, and What Comes Next for Retail Media

I am sharing comedy skits on Instagram about retail media! Follow along: @retailmediabreakfastclub
Subscribe to Retail Media Breakfast Club's daily newsletter
Follow Kiri Masters on LinkedIn

Amazon has always operated in contradictions. And in this episode, I dissect comments made on Christine Russo's What Just Happened podcast made by Justin Honaman, AWS's global head of retail, consumer goods, and restaurants, to unpack one of the biggest contradictions emerging in the AI commerce era. 
On one hand, Amazon is encouraging retailers and brands to embrace “off-site search” and make themselves discoverable through AI agents like ChatGPT and Perplexity. On the other hand, Amazon is actively blocking outside shopping agents from accessing its own ecosystem while simultaneously sending its own Buy For Me agent onto everyone else’s storefronts.
I break down the growing tension between agentic commerce, retail media, and platform control, including Amazon’s legal fight with Perplexity, the strategic implications of its DSP dominance, and why this all points to one core objective: owning the customer journey from discovery to checkout. I also explore why brands should pay far closer attention to Amazon’s actions than its public messaging as the next phase of commerce infrastructure takes shape.

This episode is sponsored by Mirakl Ads

Timeline
[00:00] Amazon’s long history of contradictions between customer obsession and supplier impact 
[01:15] AWS discusses “off-site search” and why retailers are being told to optimize for AI discovery 
[02:18] The core contradiction: Amazon’s agents are allowed out, but outside agents are blocked from coming in 
[03:15] Breaking down Amazon’s lawsuit against Perplexity and the real debate around shopper permission 
[04:19] How Rufus and Alexa Shopping generated billions while Amazon blocks competing AI shopping agents 
[05:15] Why retail media is really the monetization layer sitting on top of shopper behavior 
[06:30] Google’s Universal Cart signals that commerce journeys no longer need to begin on Amazon 
[07:30] The key lesson for brands: watch what Amazon does, not what it says

Links & Resources
Listen to the full Justin Honaman episode on Christine Russo's What Just Happened podcast: Justin Honaman, AWS: The Agentic Commerce Roadmap for Retailers
Subscribe to What Just Happened on Apple Podcasts
Follow Christine Russo on LinkedIn
Follow Justin Honaman on LinkedIn
Read my related articles:AI Agents & The Evolving Path to Purchase: How Brands Must Adapt
No Eyes on the Ad
Does 'Dark Search' Help or Harm Retail Media?

In Atlanta? Join the Commerce Media Happy Hour on Wednesday May 27! RSVP here
I'm sharing comedy skits about retail media on Instagram! Follow along: @retailmediabreakfastclub
Subscribe to Retail Media Breakfast Club's daily newsletter
Follow Kiri Masters on LinkedIn

Recently I joined a retail media panel at Loyalty Connect in Atlanta, surrounded by the people who’ve spent decades building and evolving loyalty programs. What became crystal clear to me is that loyalty and retail media are no longer parallel industries: they’re fundamentally intertwined. In this episode, a recap of my article for The Drum, I unpack why loyalty data has become the backbone of modern retail media networks, powering audience creation, closed-loop measurement, and advertiser confidence at scale. From Kroger Precision Marketing and Costco to CVS and Marriott, I share the examples that prove the strongest retail media businesses are built on strong loyalty ecosystems.
But the bigger shift is what happens next. As AI agents compress the shopping journey and consumers increasingly arrive at retailer websites already knowing what they want, many of today’s high-margin retail media ad surfaces are under threat. What survives? Loyalty. I explore why emotional drivers like status, belonging, and access may become retailers’ most defensible advantage in an AI-driven commerce environment. And why the future winners won’t just offer points and discounts, but experiences consumers genuinely care about.

This episode is sponsored by Mirakl Ads

Timeline
[00:00] — Why loyalty and retail media are inseparable 
[01:18] — Kroger’s loyalty data advantage and retail KPI measurement 
[03:56] — Why measurement is the foundation of loyalty-powered media 
[04:30] — How AI shopping journeys threaten retail media revenue 
[05:18] — The emotional side of loyalty that AI can’t replicate 
[08:16] — Why AI agents may disrupt earning points, but not redemption

Links & Resources
Read my full article on The Drum: Loyalty data is becoming retail media’s strongest defense
Read my related articles:Why Agentic Shopping Poses an Existential Threat to Retail Media (Part 1)
Agentic Shopping Poses an Existential Threat to Retail Media (Part 2)
7 Ways to Break the Retail Media Doom Loop

EMARKETER is teaming up again with Bain to survey retail media network leaders for a unique insight into the forces shaping the industry. The survey is intended for people working in-house on retail media teams, and it is global this year! The survey is also double-anonymized. The survey organizers will not know, nor are they trying to determine, which specific retail media network a respondent works for. The goal is to understand broader retail media trends, not attribute responses to individual companies. Please take the survey here. 
In Atlanta? Join the Commerce Media Happy Hour on Wednesday May 27! RSVP here
I'm sharing comedy skits on Instagram about retail media! Follow along: @retailmediabreakfastclub
Subscribe to Retail Media Breakfast Club's daily newsletter
Follow Kiri Masters on LinkedIn

At Xnurta’s Signal to Scale Summit this week, I heard some of the most practical conversations yet about how brands are actually using AI in retail media. Spark Foundry’s Kris McDermott summed up the mood perfectly: “We did AI. To what end? That is not a verb.” 
From Boiron managing 50,000 keywords with a two-person team, to AI-powered creative testing that drove a 29% sales lift, this episode explores where agentic workflows are delivering real operational value, and where they still require strong human oversight.
I also break down why advanced practitioners are moving beyond ROAS as the primary metric, what Amazon Ads is building with MCP servers and Skills, and why Xnurta's new open-source AI evaluation framework could become critical infrastructure for the future of retail media automation. The biggest takeaway: AI can accelerate performance, but only when paired with clear goals, guardrails, and teams that still understand “the gears” behind the machine.

This episode is sponsored by Mirakl Ads

Timeline
[00:00] — “We did AI. To what end?” and the real theme of the summit 
[01:18] — Boiron’s AI-powered retail media workflow managing 50,000 keywords 
[02:00] — AI image scoring drives a 29% sales increase 
[03:30] — Why ROAS alone is not the goal anymore 
[04:15] — The “automatic vs stick shift” analogy for AI media buying 
[06:04] — Xnurta launches open-source AI evaluation framework for retail media

Links & Resources
If you're interested in joining the Agentic Retail Media Council, Xnurta is recruiting members: sign up link
Find all the Signal to Scale 2026 speakers here
Read my related articles:No Incentive To Sound The Alarm
Dark Search, Broken Signals, and What Comes Next for Retail Media
Why ROAS Refuses To Die
AI in real life: how retailers and brands are leveraging AI (real numbers)

EMARKETER is teaming up again with Bain to survey retail media network leaders for a unique insight into the forces shaping the industry. The survey is intended for people working in-house on retail media teams, and it is global this year! The survey is also double-anonymized. The survey organizers will not know, nor are they trying to determine, which specific retail media network a respondent works for. The goal is to understand broader retail media trends, not attribute responses to individual companies. Please take the survey here. 
In Atlanta? Join the Commerce Media Happy Hour on Wednesday May 27! RSVP here
I am sharing comedy skits on Instagram about retail media! Follow along: @retailmediabreakfastclub
Subscribe to Retail Media Breakfast Club's daily newsletter
Follow Kiri Masters on LinkedIn