Hello, everyone.

Welcome back.

This is Omnitalk Retail.

I'm Anne Mazinga.

And I'm Chris Walton.

And we are here once again from the Simbi Booth, number 108 at FMI in beautiful Marco Island, Florida.

Every time we say that, Chris, I think of, like, I'm on the prices.

Right.

Or something like coming to us live from Century City, la.

But instead, we're in Marco Island, Florida.

You know what, I want to call out, too.

That I haven't done.

And I was remiss in not doing this.

I love the tagline that they came up with for us.

Simbian Omnitalk retail, single source of truth.

That's great.

There's no other source of truth.

No, there's no other source of truth.

Come to us.

Come to Omnitalk and Simbi for the single source of your truth at fmi.

I love it, Anne.

Yes.

And we have somebody who believes in that statement here in between us, Julian Mintz.

Julian is the VP of Sales at Albertsons Media Collective.

Julian, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks for being willing to do this and be on board with the single source of truth in retail.

There's no other place I'd go for truth and retail.

For truth and retail.

Right.

Well done, Michael.

Well done.

Oh, my God.

All right, well, let's start off.

Why don't you tell us about your background and your role at Albertson's Media collecting.

Yeah, absolutely.

So I'm the VP of sales for Albertsons Media Collective.

I joined four months ago, so still relatively new.

Honeymoon.

And did about a decade in television before that.

So was part of the founding ad sales team at Roku.

Okay.

And ultimately led their sales team up until about four months ago.

Okay.

Amazing.

Wow.

All right, so.

So what is involved in your role right now?

Like, who are you talking to?

Who are you working with?

Tell us a little bit about the day to day.

Yeah.

So end of the day, our goal is to bring CPGs closer to our consumers and make the consumer and the shopping experience at Albertsons more delightful.

To do that, we're working directly with our CPG partners.

So everyone from your PNGs and your Coke to more smaller, nascent brands.

And really, we see the opportunity around connecting the entire funnel.

So right now, that means talking to various parts of their businesses.

So we work directly with their shopper teams, driving lower funnel performance, helping them measure incremental roas.

But more and more, we're answering questions like, how does television help drive a sale?

How can we move units through a Social media ad, and that requires talking to different stakeholders as well.

So we're building our business to accommodate what we see as the future of retail media, which is really a truly omnichannel experience.

Yeah.

I mean, I think it's so interesting.

And I'm curious what brings you to fmi?

Because I'm seeing retail media people from that industry showing up at the likes of ces.

Like, you're here at this industry, like new places that you wouldn't typically expect to see media people.

But what brings you here, and why do you find value in the show?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

To give you a sense of my January, it started at ces.

You've been busy, I guess.

And so that's the convergence of advertising and technology, obviously.

Very important in retail media.

Earlier this week, I was at the IAB Summit, which is the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

Right.

Very heavy advertising.

And now I'm at fmi, which is where all of our top partners are.

Okay.

Like, simply put, this is where our top partners are.

Right.

It's a great chance to put faces to names, to grow relationships, to share our priorities for the year of which we have quite a few, but also hear their priorities.

Figure out where that Venn diagram is, and then make sure we're designing for growth throughout the year.

Yeah, yeah.

So, like, even your job title, like, sales, Like, I don't.

I don't remember.

I mean, I've been.

I was in retail 20 years.

I don't ever remember.

Like, a VP of sales as a retailer, As a grocer at Albertsons.

So talk to us about that.

Like, what's that transition been like, going from TV to working for a retailer?

It's not that different.

It's not.

It's not.

Okay.

At the end of the day, our goal is to put consumers first.

Yeah.

To focus relentlessly on the consumer and to make their experience with our product better.

In this case, that's either a trip to a grocery store or a trip online.

In television, it's not that different.

You're trying to have the best possible experience for your consumer.

It begins and ends there.

And advertising just becomes a conduit to that.

Okay.

In television, it helps underwrite the content.

In grocery, it helps bring consumers closer to the food that they love.

Food is such an important part of our lives.

It helps nourish us.

It.

We have an emotional connection to it.

And what we're doing as an advertising business within a grocer is just helping people get closer to the brands that they love or help them grow.

Love for new brands.

So the day to day is exactly the same almost.

It's just you're doing it for a different entity.

That's.

That's the takeaway.

I think that's the same thing to say.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right, cool.

What do you think?

Having been in TV for 10 years prior and now being in retail, what do you think is unique and so valuable about having your audience be a consumer in a grocery store versus, like, someone that drives by a billboard or someone that, you know, watches a TV program?

Yeah.

I think for us it is the regular connection that we have with the consumer.

So consistency.

Consistency.

So we see we have 40 million loyalty members, 37 million of them are active monthly, but we see them on average, two and a half times a week, which means there's a lot of chances for us to talk to them and a lot of chances for them to talk back to us.

Right.

A lot of media isn't like that.

Some media is like that.

Right.

But at the end of the day, it's that close connection we have with our consumer and that symbiotic relationship where we're able to bring value to them that really helps drive our business.

Okay.

If you could wave a magic wand, Julian, and you could have something change retail media to make your life better, your customers lives better, what would it be?

I'm gonna answer that from the customer lens.

Okay, smart guy.

Already.

Smart guy.

That's right.

That's right.

It would be standardization.

Okay, tell me more about that.

A lot.

Especially coming from iab.

Like what?

Yeah, well, look there.

The reason I brought them up earlier is they have a big role in that.

So we're working directly with them and we've been able to help lead that project with them over standardization.

There's over 200 different commerce media networks, so.

Jesus.

Grocery space, financial institutions, you name it.

It's all beneficial because they're able to help more drive value in the ecosystem.

But that's a lot for an advertising partner, whether it's a CPG or whoever it else may be to grapple with.

They're looking for frictionless buying and performance.

200 line items on their media plan is the opposite of frictionless.

The definition of friction.

Right.

Standardization will go a long way towards reducing the barriers to entry and driving more value into the ecosystem.

So we think it's really important, that being said, very difficult.

Which is why we need the magic wand.

Yeah.

But also a lot of hard work.

Yeah.

What types of things need to be standardized?

The measurement framework.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

So that everyone's working off the same sheet of music across the industry from.

The same field, able to compare across partners.

That's going to make it really easy and seamless for brands to transact.

Okay, got it.

That makes sense.

That makes sense.

All right, so since you've had a busy January.

Yeah.

I don't even know if you've had time to think about this question, but what are your goals for the year?

Like, if you're standing with us again next January, what do you hope to accomplish?

The big picture answer.

Yeah.

Is to grow the business of our CPGs.

Okay.

And to grow Albertsons at the same time.

All right.

That's the big picture.

Good answer.

That's what we're here for.

How we think we can help doing that is better connecting the funnel for advertisers.

So helping to connect their brand media, their first television impression, their social media impressions, all the way through the shopper dollars that they're spending, whether it's in the store, really connecting their media to the cash register.

And right now we're doing that in a way that no other space in the media space can do.

But there is so far to go there and so many stakeholders to still educate.

And I want to dive a little bit deeper into that question.

Whose responsibility do you think it is to do that?

Like, is that you as the media really provider to be able to provide that information?

Do you think that falls on the brands, is something that they should be focusing on on their side or like, who.

Who's gonna ultimately do that first?

It's a fair question.

We all.

We all have a role.

Yeah.

I think the first step is on the retail media networks.

Okay.

Because I think measurement is the connective tissue that's gonna make soon.

Yeah.

And right now, measurement is down here.

It's the bottom of the funnel.

And it's, don't get me wrong, super valuable.

If we start measuring TV against channels at the bottom of the funnel, it's not gonna look that great.

But we know TV helps drive the bottom of the funnel.

So what's that connective tissue?

How do we look at measurement in a truly omnichannel fashion?

If we can do that and if we can bring that to our partners, whether it's a CPG directly or an agency, that's gonna go a long way towards.

Completely agree.

Completely agree.

This is with you, the retail media network.

Yeah.

No, I was just gonna say shows, though.

Who's going to be successful with their retail media networks when there's over 200 commerce networks happening right now, like those things are going to become paramount as we see these retail media networks continue on.

I mean, look, there's a lot to do.

You have to be good at the fundamentals.

You need to provide a very good roas and an incremental roas.

But there's a lot of white space that we can still seek to drive value for brands.

Awesome.

Well, Julian, thank you so much for taking time with us today and being being up for the challenge.

You passed with FL colors.

Yeah.

I love Albertsons.

We've had, I think we've had a good string of executives from Albertsons on our show of late.

Thanks for joining us again.

Thanks for having me.

Awesome.

Well, thank you so much to Simbi as well for making all these incredible interviews that we've had today possible.

Chris and I are still coming at you for the rest of the afternoon today and tomorrow morning.

Not stopping.

We are not stopping.

Never stop.

Never stopping.

Anne.

Yes.

So until our next interview, be careful out there.