Retail Media Unplugged: Epsilon’s Adam Skinner on the Collapsing Funnel, Agentic Commerce & the New In-Store Reality
In this episode of Retail Media Unplugged, Senior Editor Cyndi Loza chats with Adam Skinner, managing director of retail media at Epsilon, and one of this year's P2PI Retail Media Award winners.
The earliest retail media buy Skinner can recall is a massive cardboard display for Weet-Bix back in the summer of '96. Three decades later, with roughly 80% of transactions still happening in-store, he emphasizes that brick-and-mortar remains a critical environment for reaching shoppers during the decision-making process.
"It's not so much as retail media is returning to the store as the store is finally catching up to where digital media has been for the past two to three decades," Skinner said.
Other topics discussed include:
- The Era of Agentic Commerce: As AI bots become more involved in search, discovery and purchasing, they act as proxies for human consumers. How should retailers and CPG brands prepare for a future where a bot — not a human — is making the brand choice?
- The Future of Mid-Market Retailers: While everyone tracks Amazon and Walmart, there are also hundreds of independent and mid-market retailers out there. Skinner shares why the next phase of industry growth will be driven by the consolidation and aggregation of mid- and long-tail retail media networks.
- The "Collapsing" Funnel: Is the upper/lower funnel distinction dead in commerce media, and what does that mean for how CMOs allocate budgets in the next 24 months?
Watch the full video above.
