Meet the 2026 Retail Media Award Winners

Chrissy Arsenault
Director of Marketing and Digital Commerce
Pompeian

Chrissy Arsenault has built and scaled retail media excellence that materially elevated Pompeian’s commerce marketing capabilities since joining the company in early 2025. She authored an executive-level e-commerce dashboard delivering clear, channel‐specific performance insights. Her leadership extended to creative optimization, where she refreshed product detail page imagery using AI‐driven insights, resulting in higher conversion rates and scalable learnings across customers. Most notably, she spearheaded a flagship retail media program with a key customer that generated more than $7 million in POS sales, delivered a $22.07 return on ad spend (with more than $4 incremental ROAS), drove 54% new‐to‐brand buyers, and produced record‐breaking online sales days for the brand. 

Operationally, she led the evaluation and onboarding of an e-commerce agency to support growth and introduced quarterly e-commerce briefs to drive clarity, focus and alignment across agency and internal teams. Arsenault also implemented an actuals-vs.-planned spend-tracking methodology, and has fundamentally changed how retail media is understood and executed within the organization. She helped shift retail media from being viewed as a cost of doing business to a strategic, measurable growth engine capable of driving incrementality, new‐to‐brand acquisition and omnichannel impact. 

By introducing disciplined operating frameworks, transparent measurement and executive‐ready reporting, she raised the standard for how retail media investments are planned, evaluated and scaled. Through her strategic leadership and consistent results, she has established a repeatable, scalable model for modern retail media that continues to influence how teams partner with key customers and invest for sustainable growth.

The next big trend in retail media is: High-impact formats like video and true omnichannel ads.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: Incremental sales measurement through closed-loop.

The future of retail media is: A full-funnel vehicle, not just a cost to serve.

Drew Cashmore
Chief Strategy Officer
Vantage

Drew Cashmore has spent the past year shaping retail media both internally and externally as chief strategy officer at Vantage. As a strategic adviser to five large-scale retail media networks globally, and as the strategy lead behind one of the fastest-growing retail media technology platforms in the world, he's been close to some of the most important work happening in the category this year. His work spanned technology architecture, team structuring, change management and go-to-market. 

The impact has been felt across the businesses, with networks that he played a role in reshaping collectively growing at a pace 3 times the market average in the past year, reduced network operating costs by 30% on average, and increased advertiser adoption at an individual retailer level by 6 times. Cashmore’s contribution also extends beyond the companies he advises. Through the Retail Media Leapfrog Series — his content platform that is read by leaders at more than 45 retailers around the world — he's helped move the industry's thinking forward.

The next big trend in retail media is: Orchestration.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: Growth and share capture for rest-of-market.

The future of retail media is: Core to the sustainable growth of any retailer.

Stephenie Cattonar
Senior Director Strategy, Product Management & Analytics
Orange Apron Media (OAM) at The Home Depot

A six-year veteran of The Home Depot, Stephenie Cattonar was promoted to her current post in February. Her work this past year included the launch of a first-of-its-kind orchestration platform for retail media, unifying fragmented systems and tools into a single end-to-end workflow that eliminated operational friction and set a new bar for how retail media networks manage complexity at scale. She also worked to develop an AI-driven media planning and buying module, giving advertisers the ability to review, edit and approve campaigns at the touch of a button, dramatically improving performance outcomes and efficiency. 

Cattonar unlocked omnichannel self-serve capabilities backed by a robust advertiser training program, including access to more than 200 Home Depot first-party audiences, driving sustained investment growth as the business matured beyond managed service. She further expanded into home services, reaching an entirely new category of service providers and enabling them to advertise to relevant audiences within serviceable geographic areas, opening a market that previously had no access point. Cattonar’s work extended to next-generation reporting through share of metrics, giving advertisers real transparency into category-level insights, including online and in-store sales data. 

She and her team have delivered unprecedented transparency to Home Depot by surfacing new visibility layers into supplier engagement across every media touchpoint, and proved to the market that owning direct advertiser relationships — at scale — without sacrificing performance is key with the right platform and engagement model behind it. Cattonar’s work has also positioned OAM as the first retail media network to offer Reddit inventory through self-service, unlocking a high-value, previously inaccessible audience for suppliers.

The next big trend in retail media is: Orchestration and centralized self-service.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: In-store advertising.

The future of retail media is: How AI will change the game on how to take action.

Victoria Cromie
Managing Director
Mars United Commerce/Publicis Commerce 

Victoria Cromie has played a key role in expanding Mars United Commerce’s retail media discipline in Canada by growing both the team and its market expertise to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving retail media landscape. Alongside this team growth, she worked closely with key retail and measurement partners to advance the company’s measurement frameworks and learning agendas for its Canadian brand partners. By prioritizing collaboration, innovation and a strong test-and-learn approach, she and her team were able to generate more actionable insights and help clients better understand the impact of retail media within their broader marketing strategies. Through these efforts, they strengthened their retail media offering in Canada while building a best-in-class team equipped to drive continued growth and innovation in the discipline. 

Recently, Cromie played a pivotal role in advancing the maturity and impact of retail media in Canada by driving both strategic capability development and measurable client outcomes. She led the evolution of the company’s approach from primarily activation-focused support to a more holistic, strategic discipline — embedding retail media more deeply into its clients’ broader marketing and commerce strategies. Cromie also focused on building a best-in-class team. By strengthening both the strategic foundation and operational excellence, she and her team were able to deliver smarter, insight-led retail media programs and position the discipline as a critical driver of growth for clients and the organization.

The next big trend in retail media is: Personalization.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: Omnichannel commerce.

The future of retail media is: Data-driven omnichannel commerce.

Georgina Cunningham
Executive Director, Performance Marketing 
Estee Lauder Cos.

Georgina Cunningham led performance marketing strategy and execution for more than 10 brand launches on Amazon between 2024 and 2026, helping shift the business and processes from launch mode into a more established, strategic way of operating. She developed Estee Lauder’s Amazon tech stack to strengthen measurement, learning and advanced audience strategy, including the cross-functional launch and implementation of Amazon Marketing Cloud, as well as onboarding and activating tools and partners like Skai, Stackline and Amazon Ad Tag to improve how the company plans, measures and optimizes with third-party data. 

Cunningham also recently expanded the beauty company’s in-house media offerings to drive more effective business results through the launch and development of new platforms like Online Video through the Amazon DSP and Amazon's Creator network and its beta, Creator Connections. She also drove significant commercial value through the negotiation of the first North American Amazon Direct Advertiser Agreement. Cunningham has played a key role in helping grow Amazon retail media at Estee Lauder into a connected, scalable and effective part of the business. The biggest impact on its continued success has come from keeping data and connectivity at the core of everything the company does, which has meant building stronger measurement and learning foundations, creating closer connections across media channels, and ensuring retail media is tied to broader business priorities and commercial teams rather than operating in a silo. By grounding the work in shared data, clear frameworks and more connected ways of working, Cunningham, her team and their outcomes have become a more strategic and integrated driver of growth for the business.

The next big trend in retail media is: AI-curated, creator-powered commerce.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: The evolution of paid placements in agentic AI.

The future of retail media is: Data-fueled precision at scale.

Brian DeCoveny
Managing Director, North America
Barrows Connected Store

Brian DeCoveny joined Barrows Connected Store in May 2025, responsible for shaping the region’s commercial strategy and leading client partnerships across the U.S. and Canada. Over the past year, he says a big focus has been scaling the company’s connected store capabilities across Kroger and expanding into additional retailers across North America. He and his team have been able to take what was once a more experimental in-store media approach and turn it into something that’s scalable, measurable and impactful. 

At the same time, DeCoveny has led several in-store retail media partnerships that better connect brands with shoppers at the moment decisions are being made. He and his team have focused on bringing together data, creative and technology in a way that actually drives results, not just impressions. He believes his team’s biggest win during his tenure has been helping move in-store retail media from a nice-to-have to a core part of the retail media conversation. He has worked closely with retailers to align strategy, technology and the in-store experience so it’s not treated as a standalone tactic, but as part of a more complete, full-funnel approach. That shift — making in-store measurable and integrated — is what really starts to unlock its value, he says.

The next big trend in retail media is: Collaboration is going to be the next big unlock.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: For me, it’s still in-store.

The future of retail media is: The future is a much more unified ecosystem.

Ali Dembishack
Head of Omnichannel Marketing
Lactalis U.S. Yogurt

Ali Dembishack joined Lactalis U.S. Yogurt in August 2022 after more than four years in shopper marketing roles at Stonyfield. Named the company’s head of omnichannel marketing in November 2024, she leads strategy, planning and activation across mainstream grocery, club and natural channels, supporting various retail partners. She also works to ensure retail media investments directly fuel both brand growth and customer success. Dembishack has built best-in-class operational frameworks across retail media networks and agency partners, strengthening briefing rigor, measurement accountability and performance optimization. She is proud of her recent success building scalable retail media infrastructure and advancing organizational omnichannel maturity. 

Beyond individual campaigns, she has built foundational processes that have strengthened how retail media is executed across the Lactalis U.S. Yogurt organization. She established frameworks, creative workflows and performance reporting standards that enable her team to efficiently manage complex omnichannel programs across more than 20 retail partners. She has also strengthened strategic collaboration with key retail media networks, fostering deeper partnerships and unlocking new opportunities for innovation and scale. Her leadership has helped position Lactalis as a collaborative, forward-thinking retail media partner while driving measurable business growth across brands.

The next big trend in retail media is: AI reshaping product discovery and retail media network targeting.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: AI agents influencing purchase decisions.

The future of retail media is: Measurement standardization.

Mark Donohue
General Manager, Retail Media
Placements.io

Mark Donohue joined Placements.io in March 2025 as the company’s general manager of retail media. Since, he has overseen the integration of key retail ad sales offerings to enable in-store, on-site and off-site media channels for some of the largest retail media networks. This past year, he also led the launch of the programmatic buying platform, MarketerOS, bringing together ad serving, DSP, social and platform media activation into a single operating system, and the launch of a self-service storefront for retail media buying for endemic brands, in partnership with a large retail department client. He also managed the launch of Placements.io Trading for managed service buying utilizing Placements.io AI suite for planning, media mix management and enterprise resource planning financial reconciliation of media. 

He is most proud of his efforts working directly with 20 retail media network client teams to advocate and execute innovation, channel expansion, measurement attribution, identity resolution and adoption of AI to stay within the mantra of being able to do more with less. Donohue was most recently with Gap Inc. and Western Union, leading both companies’ media networks, prior to assuming his current post.

The next big trend in retail media is: Multichannel performance measurement.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: Automation of buying and media optimization fun.

The future of retail media is: Self-service activation standardized across retail media networks.

Mike Glaser
Vice President, Marketing
PepsiCo

Mike Glaser assumed his current post in December 2024 and has since led integrated commerce media planning and execution in support of driving growth across omni retail, pureplay and marketplace platforms. His leadership has delivered tangible business value for retailers by driving measurable improvements in performance and operational efficiency. Under his guidance, the development, launch and scaling of new search strategies and testing initiatives have directly contributed to reversing previous declines and generating significant growth. By spearheading innovative search tests, Glaser demonstrated a keen ability to identify market challenges and respond with effective, data-driven solutions that enhance both customer engagement and business outcomes. 

His role in transitioning digital media operations from managed service models to in-house teams enabled retail clients to execute campaigns more quickly. He also scaled best‐in‐class search and full‐funnel commerce media capabilities with measurable growth, and advanced retail media success by empowering top‐tier media leaders, deepening retail media networks and technology partnerships, and removing barriers to high‐impact execution. His efforts to democratize access to digital marketing platforms have empowered a broader spectrum of retailers to leverage advanced campaign and reporting tools. Through these initiatives, Glaser has improved retailers’ reach and campaign effectiveness and strengthened relationships with key partners and customers. His focus on delivering value and measurable results underscores his significant contribution to the business success of retail organizations. Glaser has been with PepsiCo since 2021.

The next big trend in retail media is: Modernizing in-store capabilities.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: Agentic.

The future of retail media is: Integrated, collaborative, accountable.

Kristin Hintermeister
Vice President, Business Development
Vestcom

As vice president of business development, Kristin Hintermeister guides the company’s strategic partnership with Walgreens to help brands share their story in a holistic way with Vestcom’s blades and shelfAdz solutions. In the past year, she has worked with Walgreens Advertising Group to expand the in-store media partnership. In addition to shelfAdz tags, the company is offering CPG companies additional solutions including dual-sided blades, beauty sidecap posters and floor standees. These new solutions are driving double-digit sales returns for brand companies and Walgreens, while creating a more connected in-store shopping experience.

Vestcom’s expanded in-store solution set enhances the path to purchase by working harmoniously with digital assets to maximize lower-funnel touchpoints, all the way to the point of conversion. Hintermeister says that with more than 90% of transactions at Walgreens occurring in-store, the reach and relevance of in-store needs to connect to the moment of decision in-store. She is working with Walgreens to transform the store into a multi-touch media ecosystem through the introduction of the new solutions. Hintermeister, her team and Vestcom work to break down retailer silos and bring together merchandising, marketing and media.

The next big trend in retail media is: The digitization of the physical aisle.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: Bridging physical and digital.

The future of retail media is: In-store.

Molly Hjelm
Corporate Vice President, Head of Retail Media
Ace Hardware

Under Molly Hjelm’s leadership, RedVest Media, Ace Hardware’s retail media network, went from zero to fully operational in approximately six months. It debuted with on-site, off-site, in‑store and retailer‑facing capabilities supported by deterministic, Media Rating Council-accredited measurement from day one. Hjelm’s impact extends beyond speed. She fundamentally reshaped how retail media operates inside a co‑operative retailer, designing a model that aligns merchants, marketers and media teams around shared commercial outcomes. Rather than positioning retail media as an incremental revenue tax, she reframed it as a merchant growth lever, tying media investment directly to category performance, store traffic and incremental sales — an approach that has helped dismantle longstanding organizational silos. 

Internally, Hjelm established the operating foundation that enabled RedVest’s early traction: Defining LOI frameworks, incrementality standards, product roadmaps and cross‑functional workflows spanning merchandising, legal, IT, analytics and external partners. Externally, she emerged as a recognized industry voice on measurement, outcomes and retail media maturity, helping position Ace as a credible, differentiated player in commerce media. Hjelm joined the company in April 2025 after leading the ad sales organization for Dollar General Media Network. Prior to that, she served as group director of ad sales for Kroger Precision Marketing at 84.51°.

The next big trend in retail media is: The networks embracing the fullness of retail (in-store, unique ways to add value to their customer, strong embedded merchandiser relationships).

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: AI solving for operational hurdles and further accelerating retail first-party data to make better, more performant media plans, audiences and creative.

The future of retail media is: In hardware.

Justin Jefferson
Vice President of Strategy and Insights
Keen Decision Systems

Justin Jefferson advises Keen's 450 brand clients that collectively manage more than $40 billion in marketing investments, with more than $3 billion in retail media. This past year, he developed industry benchmark dashboards that show each brand how their retail media network investments are contributing to revenue and profitability. It draws on cross-portfolio data and relative performance metrics that no single brand could generate independently. The benchmarks have driven real decisions for Keen's clients. Brands have used them to support executive budget planning, sharpen joint business planning conversations with retailers, and make the case for shifting investment across networks and ad formats. 

Jefferson engages directly with client executive teams in regular consultation calls to translate findings into strategy. His benchmark work this year directly changed how brands across Keen's portfolio allocate retail media budgets. Clients expanded into video, audio and social formats, diversified across retailer networks and shifted investment toward off-site placements. The data also gave brands a framework for evaluating retail media network performance against their total business, moving away from reliance on in-platform attribution alone. Brands measuring true incrementality across retailers — rather than within a single network's reporting — have seen improved ROI and net present value from their retail media investments as a result.

The next big trend in retail media is: Inventory expansion to video, social and audio.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: Analyzing cross-retailer incremental for off-site media.

The future of retail media is: First-party data meets the AI shopping agent.

Christina Klenotic
Head of Retail Media Commercialization, Planning and Activation
Lowe's

Christina Klenotic led the creation of a cross-functional bootcamp that redefined how media insights and strategic recommendations are delivered to top clients, significantly enhancing the impact of quarterly business reviews. She also expanded Lowe’s Media Network’s access to the Lowe’s Creator Network by introducing offerings across micro- to macro-creator partnerships, from product integrations to full-scale project makeover campaigns. 

Over the past year, Klenotic also significantly advanced the evolution of retail media by launching multiple new omnichannel vendor offerings, including sports partnerships and in-store media activations, expanding the reach and impact of Lowe’s Media Network. Klenotic joined the company in January 2023 and built the global media and commercialization offering from the ground up. Since then, her work has enabled triple year-over-year revenue growth and has strengthened Lowe’s vendor value proposition as a scalable marketing platform.

The next big trend in retail media is: Evolution into a true full-funnel brand platform.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: Connecting brands with customers at real-life moments.

The future of retail media is: Seamless integration of media, commerce and the customer experience.

Leah Logan
Vice President, Retail Media Transformation
Inmar Intelligence

A nearly 10-year veteran of Inmar Intelligence, Leah Logan assumed her current post in mid-2025 to help retailers and advertisers navigate the increasing complexity and rapid evolution of the retail media landscape. She has since launched Inmar's Creator Marketing retail media network and has accelerated the company’s Creator Extension offering, securing six new retail partnerships. Her work combines creator-driven content with retailer first-party data to deliver the right message to the right consumer in the right environment with clear performance measurement. By integrating creators as both a media channel and a scalable content engine, she has strengthened campaign effectiveness while unlocking new value for retail partners. 

Logan also launched the company’s Organic Creator Post Attribution Lift, a measurement solution designed to quantify the actual, incremental sales impact that organic creator content drives, often revealing that such posts trigger significant, otherwise untracked sales uplift. In addition, she created new partnerships with Target, Dollar General and Casey's retailer media networks. Logan also released a new podcast, Retail Media Confessions, in partnership with retail and e-commerce analyst Andrew Lipsman. She has been a clear advocate for creating a cohesive, omnichannel approach to the shopper through the use of creator and user-generated content powered by first-party data both inside and outside of social media. Several retail media networks are now using Creator Marketing capabilities, which she has been strongly advocating for over the past three years.

The next big trend in retail media is: UGC/creator on-site video experiences.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: Shoppable content tied to experiential marketing.

The future of retail media is: Contextually connected consumer experiences.

Alice Luong
Senior Director, Strategy and Planning
Instacart

After recognizing there was an untapped opportunity to bring Instacart’s established ads business to a broader range of publishers, Alice Luong led the expansion of the Instacart Ads business into new verticals across marketplaces, online grocers and convenience. Over the past year, she secured precedent-setting Carrot Ads partnerships with Uber Eats, Hy-Vee, Thrive Market, Bottlecapps, Vroom Delivery and Cut + Dry. This gave them access to Instacart’s best-in-class ads technology to help them monetize and provide relevant ad experiences for customers shopping across their digital storefronts, apps and other owned commerce channels. Today, more than 310 grocers, marketplaces and commerce platforms leverage Instacart’s Carrot Ads retail media solution to build or grow their own retail media businesses. 

Luong also contributed to expanding Instacart Ads’ commerce marketing capabilities beyond traditional CPG demand by launching and scaling new solutions that diversify both advertiser types and inventory. She partnered closely with cross-functional teams to help shape in-store advertising capabilities enabled by Instacart’s Caper Carts, as retail media budgets shift toward full-funnel, omnichannel solutions. While some of the new Carrot Ads partnerships Luong secured could be seen as competitive, she saw these partnerships as co-building opportunities and unlocked diverse perspectives that allowed Instacart to create more innovative, robust capabilities, ultimately delivering a stronger, differentiated offering. By making the best of Instacart Ads technology available for partners, she has built an operating model that allows partners to benefit from the strength and proven results of the Instacart Ads business.

The next big trend in retail media is: How AI can be used to power intelligent, closed-loop advertising.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: The ability to reach customers in the exact moments their needs emerge across a variety of verticals and platforms in-store and online. 

The future of retail media is: A unified ad ecosystem where brands can seamlessly run campaigns across channels, retailers and in-store and reach customers in real time at the point of purchasing intent, which is what Instacart is building toward.

Angela Myers
Executive Vice President, General Manager, Brand and Commerce
Goodway Group

Angela Myers has been with Goodway Group for more than two years. Under her leadership, the company’s brand and commerce practice has more than tripled in size, evolving from an emerging capability into a strategic growth engine. She scaled a team and built the company’s retail commerce business, driving significant revenue growth while expanding its retailer network and brand partnerships. Myers partners with executive and account leadership to address retail media network maturity challenges that emerge at scale, including operational drag, margin pressure and execution bottlenecks. Her work also includes leading teams that have redesigned campaign and reporting workflows, realigning staffing models to support profitable revenue growth, and implementing scalable operating frameworks that increased supplier throughput and introduced new features without inflating cost. 

Myers led the addition of new retail partners and an advanced commerce plus consulting approach to support the maturation of retail media networks and more integrated commerce strategies. Over the past year, she has also helped advance operational standards and scalability in retail media by building more structured, efficient delivery models that improve both retailer program performance and supplier investment outcomes. Myers and her team have focused on making retail media more measurable, repeatable and aligned to broader commerce growth. She speaks at industry events, advancing conversations around transparency, performance standards and the future of retail media.

The next big trend in retail media is: Full-funnel commerce and media convergence.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: True alignment of brand and retailer outcomes.

The future of retail media is: To become a unified, accountable growth engine.

Diaz Nesamoney
CEO
DaVinci Commerce 

Diaz Nesamoney launched DaVinci Commerce this year, effectively rebranding Jivox, his 19-year-old company that offered personalized commerce marketing across all marketing channels to power digital commerce. DaVinci Commerce is an end-to-end AI-powered platform integrating creative and media to enable retail media campaigns to be launched in under five minutes across retail media networks. As CEO, Diaz is addressing the operational complexity of launching campaigns across hundreds of retailer networks. 

This agentic commerce marketing platform was designed to automate campaign execution in significantly less time. His contribution to the industry is making a fundamental shift from generative AI to agentic AI. The DaVinci platform uses autonomous agents that understand the unique creative and legal requirements of more than 175 global retailers, compressing campaign launch times. Nesamoney has also written several thought leadership posts on the evolution of retail media and the benefits to retailers and brands.

The next big trend in retail media is: Expansion of retail media into AI conversations.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: Omnichannel — expansion outside of on-site.

The future of retail media is: Conversational and powered by AI.

Erich Parker
Senior Vice President, Integrated Media
Blue Chip

A nearly 13-year veteran of Blue Chip, Erich Parker has held his current post as the senior vice president of integrated media since early 2022, helping bring discipline, scalability and accountability to the category when it is needed most. Through his leadership, he has advanced the discipline by building repeatable, data‐driven best practices that enable brands and teams to plan smarter, activate holistically and prove impact across the full commerce ecosystem, while also strengthening the next generation of retail media leaders. 

With a career spanning agency and client-side marketing, Parker’s work is defined by his ability to bridge strategic insight with tactical execution to help brands thrive in today’s evolving retail and media landscape. He has worked with cross‐functional teams to develop solutions that enhance brand relevance and drive performance in competitive markets, and now leads cross-channel media strategies that connect brands with shoppers and drive measurable growth. Parker’s leadership was validated by Walmart Connect in 2025, which named Blue Chip and its client Bob's Red Mill a finalist in its Partner Network Awards in the “Better Together” category. The recognition from Walmart Connect highlighted the “creativity, innovation and measurable impact” of the campaign.

The next big trend in retail media is: Engaging audiences in the physical store with dynamic targeting, messaging and experiences. 

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: Shifting measurement focus from reporting to in-flight decisioning and optimizations.

The future of retail media: AI shopping agents will influence discovery, fuel comparisons and drive product choices, which means retail media will start to be optimized toward algorithms not just human attention.

Liz Roche
Vice President of Measurement and Media
Albertsons Media Collective

As vice president of media and measurement, Liz Roche has been a key driver of various initiatives, most recently leading Albertsons Media Collective incrementality measurement in January. She also launched the company’s in-store digital display network, a milestone initiative that is redefining how brands connect with shoppers at the point of purchase. Unveiled at Cannes Lions in June 2025, the in-store digital display network marked a significant evolution for Albertsons Media Collective and the broader retail media landscape. 

Recent work also included the strategic implementation of a purpose-built tech foundation for intelligent shopper engagement and closed-loop measurement for in-store activations. Roche’s leadership ensured the platform was not simply a fleet of digital screens, but a measurable, performance-driven media channel capable of proving business impact. She is leading the transformation of more than 2,200 Albertsons locations into intelligent media canvases, where every impression can be linked to action and every campaign can be optimized for results. Roche’s leadership in elevating in-store retail media into a measurable, full-funnel channel — and for setting a new benchmark for transparency and performance in commerce marketing — has delivered a lasting impact on Albertsons’ retail media success.

The next big trend in retail media is: Understanding the incremental value of in-store.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: Measuring longitudinal impact beyond campaigns.

The future of retail media is: Full of opportunity, especially from a measurement perspective.

Adam Ross
Sales Director, Commerce
SiriusXM Media

Adam Ross has spent five years leading commerce and retail media partnerships at SiriusXM. Within the past year, he drove the expansion of audio within the retail media ecosystem by establishing five new retail media network partnerships, most notably including launching as Amazon Ads’ first third-party streaming audio partner. He says this work helped position audio as a measurable, performance-driven channel, enabling brands to unlock incrementality and extend the impact of their retail media investments. 

Ross’ recent work with streaming audio and podcasts has helped unlock true incrementality for retail media by reaching consumers off-site in moments where other channels can’t, such as during commutes, workouts and daily routines. He has witnessed how this has enabled brands to extend beyond lower-funnel tactics, driving awareness, consideration and ultimately stronger conversion performance across their retail media investments. Prior to his current role, Ross spent more than five years as a senior sales executive in shopper marketing working on one of SiriusXM’s brands, Pandora.

The next big trend in retail media is: Embracing AI-powered tools.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: Streaming audio and podcast.

The future of retail media is: Omnichannel, full-funnel, AI-driven commerce.

Vassili Samolis
Vice President, Ad Product and AI Foundations
DoorDash

As vice president of ad product and AI foundations at DoorDash, Vassili Samolis has propelled DoorDash Ads’ growth in becoming a leading retail media network. Over the past year, he designed and launched Smart Campaigns powered by AI to dynamically personalize offers based on consumer behavior and automate performance optimization at scale. He also redefined collaborative marketing for restaurants by launching solutions that enable corporate entities and franchisees to co-invest and activate campaigns together. 

Samolis led his team in driving AI-powered ranking and personalization enhancements to improve ad relevance and conversion while protecting the consumer experience, and he led the development of a unified, full-funnel commerce media platform spanning sponsored listings, sponsored products, sponsored brands and promotions. He and his team introduced advanced targeting innovations, including brand interest targeting and average order value-based targeting, enabling more precise audience reach. He expanded clean room integrations and incrementality measurement capabilities, strengthening transparency and helping elevate industry standards around performance validation. 

Recent work also included advanced off-site retail media integrations, enabling advertisers to activate high-intent DoorDash audiences beyond the app with closed-loop measurement. Samolis modernized the underlying ad stack through unified tech initiatives that enable automation, measurement rigor and scalable global expansion. He also recently simplified advertiser activation through intuitive tools and workflows that reduce friction while preserving performance integrity. Samolis joined the company in November 2021.

The next big trend in retail media is: Omnichannel measurement. As retail media networks scale, it will become imperative for brands to understand the cross-channel impact of their investment.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: AI. Everything is about to change — from how we build products and personalize messages to audiences, to how we optimize campaigns.

The future of retail media is: Distributed. Retail media will power increasingly more content outside of owned and operated surfaces. With that, increasingly more content will be transactable. What if you could shop that bag you saw on the bus stop with one click?

Vickie Shaw
Senior Media Director, Retail Media
Advantage Marketing Partners (AMP)

As senior director, commerce media at Advantage Marketing Partners, Vickie Shaw drives exponential growth for CPG brands by developing and executing comprehensive, data-driven retail media strategies across a complex omnichannel landscape that includes Amazon, Walmart, Kroger, Instacart and more. A core tenet of Shaw’s contribution is her commitment to the advancement and evolution of retail media. She consistently pushes for early adoption of emerging solutions, positioning her team as a first-to-market leader. 

This commitment to innovation is evidenced by her team’s successful high-impact betas and pilots, such as Instacart shoppable recipes, Kroger’s promoted product carousel videos, and Amazon sponsored product videos, often leading to thought-leadership features like her contribution to Instacart’s blog. Her work in this space was recognized by her tech partner Skai, which named her team's project as a finalist for the 2025 ShopABLE Media Awards in Omnichannel Excellence. Shaw also successfully managed and scaled her team, with a focus on operational excellence, leading to exceptional client and team member retention. Shaw has spent more than 12 years at the company and has served in her current post since mid-2020.

The next big trend in retail media is: Incrementality with in‐flight optimizations.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: Retail media becomes a brand‐building channel.

The future of retail media is: AI‐driven, prioritizing decision influence.

Adam Skinner
Managing Director, Retail Media
Epsilon

Adam Skinner joined Epsilon just over three years ago. As the managing director of retail media, he developed a proprietary diagnostic framework that has become a critical tool companies can use to determine if they are prepared to launch or scale a commerce media network. The scorecard assesses readiness across data maturity, audience addressability, tech stack architecture, sales capability, measurement infrastructure and monetization strategy. This tool is now being used by Epsilon’s established retail partners as well as a new generation of commerce media entrants to make smarter, faster decisions about market entry. 

His experience in leading cross-border teams and translating complex international briefs into scalable, multi-market solutions across Australia, the U.S., Asia and Europe ensures that each client-specific blueprint accounts for regional nuance, organizational complexity and commercial reality. He has played an active role in shaping how the industry thinks about where retail and commerce media is going, and works to craft C-suite narratives that help leadership teams articulate their media network's value proposition to investors and advertisers, while advising on the strategic implications of agentic commerce, measurement standardization and full-funnel expansion. 

Most recently, Skinner was the chief operating officer of CitrusAd, which he says is widely recognized as the pioneer and original platform that defined what retail media technology could be. While there, he helped build the foundational infrastructure that many of the world's largest retail media networks still operate on today. 

The next big trend in retail media is: Agentic commerce media.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: In-store as the next high-value channel.

The future of retail media is: Authenticated customer data = potential media opportunities.

Hannah Smith
Senior Analyst, Digital Marketing
Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits

A key focus for Hannah Smith this past year has been strengthening Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits’ digital path optimization and e‐commerce execution by improving how its brands show up across online retail platforms. She led the implementation of streamlined digital toolkits to create more consistent and engaging brand storytelling across key retailers to support new items, programming and seasonal spikes, helping brands like Josh Cellars stand out on increasingly competitive digital shelves. Smith also built a data‐driven framework using Salsify and performance scorecards to measure effectiveness, identify gaps and drive continuous improvement. This work supported both internal teams and retail partners while contributing to increased digital penetration and e‐commerce growth across multiple chains. 

Smith is proud of her work aligning optimized digital content with retail media and shopper experience strategies. By connecting content quality, technology and data‐driven insights, she helped ensure the company’s brands were better positioned to convert shoppers within retailer ecosystems. This approach strengthened collaboration with retail partners and reinforced the role of high‐quality, optimized content as a foundation for effective retail media. As a result, retail media has become a more integrated and prioritized component of the company’s broader digital commerce strategy.

The next big trend in retail media is: AI‐driven shopper recommendations.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: Online‐to‐offline integration of shopper experience.

The future of retail media is: Personalized, occasion‐based shopping experiences.

Selin Tekkoc
Senior Manager, Amazon Performance Marketing
Opella

Selin Tekkoc, who joined Opella in May 2022, led several initiatives over the past year that focused on strengthening the strategic role of retail media across key brands. Her work centered on improving media efficiency, aligning investments with product availability and profitability, and ensuring major campaigns were supported by the right operational and commercial inputs. She partnered closely with cross-functional teams to support the execution of major tentpole activations, helping ensure campaigns were aligned with inventory readiness, creative strategy and performance insights. 

Tekkoc also championed a strong test-and-learn approach, piloting new seasonal opportunities, media formats and activation strategies to continuously optimize performance and uncover new growth opportunities for the company’s brands. Additionally, she helped advance retail media capabilities by optimizing platform strategy, expanding audience reach and developing strategic business cases that secured incremental investment to scale high-performing programs. 

She says her greatest impact this year was helping elevate retail media from a tactical media channel to a more integrated and strategic growth driver within the organization. By strengthening collaboration across media, supply chain and commercial teams, Tekkoc helped ensure retail media investments were closely aligned with business realities such as product availability, profitability and broader brand strategy. She also introduced a stronger test-and-learn culture, encouraging experimentation with new activations, platforms and audience strategies while using performance insights to inform future media and commercial decisions. This approach helped the organization become more agile and data-driven in how retail media is planned and executed, demonstrating how retail media can drive both immediate performance and long-term brand growth.

The next big trend in retail media is: A full-funnel media ecosystem.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: The ability to unite data, media and commerce into one measurable ecosystem. 

The future of retail media is: A fully integrated growth engine.

Bobby Watts
Senior Vice President, AD Retail Media, Digital Merchandising and Marketing
Ahold Delhaize USA

In 2025, AD Retail Media was able to bring forward its own proprietary ad serving technology platform called Edge. As the SVP overseeing this charge, Bobby Watts led the efforts for the platform, which powers on-site display, sponsored product ads and Ahold Delhaize’s emerging in-store digital screen network. Additionally, he and his team stood up its new team structure centered around delivering the best experience to customers by bringing together the retail media, digital marketing and digital merchandising teams to create the Customer Engagement Team. 

Watts notes that one way he and his team were able to impact retail media success this past year involved bridging the gap between traditional retail media approaches and category management business planning. They spent the year integrating more seamlessly across five local brand merchandising teams to bring their “2-in-a-box” approach forward with CPG and agency partners. This approach allows the company to be more holistic in how it drives mutual businesses forward, focusing on short- and long-term growth. It also enables the team to establish media plans that are integrated with commercial plans while understanding the full funnel and building brand loyalty with shoppers. Watts has held his current post since December 2021 and prior to that spent nearly four years as the head of e-commerce merchandising at Peapod Digital Labs.

The next big trend in retail media is: Leveraging agents to reduce friction.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: Real time, 1-to-1 personalized customer engagement.

The future of retail media is: Greater focus on customer lifetime value.

Sydney Whedon
Director of Shopper Marketing and E-Commerce
Horizon Family Brands

Sydney Whedon joined Horizon in April 2024. Since then, she has collaborated on the successful launch of the company’s Horizon Organic clean label dairy creamer, signifying the brand's entrance into a new and highly competitive category. She guided her team to partner closely with sales to enable best-in-class sell-in and cross-functional execution, recruiting the company’s integrated marketing team into the retail media ecosystem to drive more closed-loop, full-funnel activations with its key retail media partners. 

Her work this past year has also included building and commercializing a comprehensive strategy and retail media scorecards across the company, creating a measurement framework from scratch to track, forecast and optimize performance across every retail media channel it invests in, including Carrot Ads, Walmart Connect, Roundel, Albertsons Media Collective and Kroger Precision Marketing. Beyond measurement, Whedon owns Horizon’s full omnichannel go-to-market strategy and joint business planning development across its top retail partners in Instacart, Walmart, Target, Kroger, Albertsons and others, directly connecting retail media investment to distribution and double-digit volume and dollar sales growth year-over-year.

The next big trend in retail media is: Closing the loop between on-site media and in-store activation — consistently. We've gotten good at digital metrics, but the next frontier is proving true omnichannel incrementality across the full path to purchase, from screen to shelf.  

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: Standardization of measurement. Scorecards and frameworks that let us compare, optimize and scale investment across partners with real confidence are a must.

The future of retail media is: Fully connected commerce, where every touchpoint, from a sponsored search result to an in-store display, is tied to a single, measurable shopper journey. The brands and retail partners who can connect that data and act on it in real time are the ones who will win.

Josh Williams
Senior Director, Partnership Marketing
Dollar General

Over the past year, Josh Williams has led several transformative initiatives that advanced Dollar General’s enterprise marketing and the DG Media Network (DGMN). He helped operationalize integrated enterprise retail media planning through annual joint business planning, monthly merchant intake sessions, and fully connected seasonal and tentpole programs. Williams was a key driver in launching DGMN’s experiential sampling partnership with Recess, bringing a community-based sampling solution to Dollar General’s retail media space. He also contributed to high-impact brand activations, including Red Bull’s Nashville Winter Edition launch and Jukebox event, which connected retail media, enterprise marketing and local cultural engagement. His leadership helped mature DGMN’s on-site/off-site capabilities and expand DG’s omnichannel retail media offerings focused on rural shoppers — an audience historically underserved in the retail media landscape. 

Williams is most proud of his work uniting merchandising, enterprise marketing and retail media into one cohesive system. By establishing repeatable upstream planning processes, including merchant intake sessions and integrated tentpole development, he ensured that retail media is not a siloed execution, but a strategic lever tied directly to resets, promotions, seasonal priorities and the customer experience. Williams played a critical role in demonstrating how retail media investments can unlock incremental brand exposure across site, app, in-store signage, experiential events and promotion mechanics. His work significantly elevated the strategic value of DGMN, advancing it from a media network to a broader ecosystem capable of influencing and measuring full-funnel outcomes.

The next big trend in retail media is: Experiential real world shopper engagement.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: Integration into a single orchestrated ecosystem.

The future of retail media is: Omnichannel ecosystems.

Regina Ye
Co-Founder and CEO
Topsort

Regina Ye led a defining chapter of growth for Topsort, spanning product innovation, global expansion, strategic investment and ecosystem development across retail media. She oversaw Topsort’s first-ever Developer Day 2025, where the company launched Toppie, Toptimize and In-Store Journey – three major product introductions that reflected a broader vision for AI-native, privacy-conscious and operationally scalable retail media infrastructure. 

Toppie, the first retail media ad exchange, enables programmatic demand and expanding monetization opportunities. Toptimize is an AI-powered optimization engine designed to improve campaign performance and efficiency. In-Store Journey is a solution that connects online and offline touchpoints, bringing retail media into the physical store experience. Ye also helped secure strategic validation for that vision through W23 Global’s investment in Topsort, backed by five leading global retailers, and led the company’s first acquisition through the purchase of Phuzion Media, strengthening Topsort’s capabilities and geographic footprint. In parallel, she guided a series of high-profile partnership announcements with companies including Breuninger, Coles 360, Despegar, DoorDash, Just Eat Takeaway.com and Skai, expanding the company’s presence across luxury, grocery, travel, food delivery and global commerce enablement. 

She also recently led the development of Topsort’s Demand Mediation framework, a new infrastructure layer that allows retailers to connect external advertising demand directly into their retail media auctions, with Criteo becoming the first demand source onboarded to this system. She has championed the idea that retail media success does not come only from adding more ad placements, but from building the underlying technology that allows retailers and marketplaces to launch faster, operate more efficiently and create better advertiser experiences. 

The next big trend in retail media is: AI-driven automation and smarter ad auctions.

The most exciting opportunity in retail media is: Retailers owning ad tech to unlock new revenue.

The future of retail media is: AI-native systems powering end-to-end ads.