Customerland

When Loyalty Becomes Media And Data Becomes Railroads

• mike giambattista • Season 3 • Episode 46

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Think your customers are loyal? Our data-backed dive suggests otherwise. We sit down with Cardlytics to unpack why non-loyal shoppers often deliver outsized gains and how commerce media—powered by first-party transaction data—can transform media spend into measurable loyalty. From banks to retailers to CPGs, we trace how card-linked offers (CLO) connect incentives to outcomes and deliver immediate consumer value alongside certified incrementality.

We explore how category-level visibility changes everything. A shopper who looks loyal in your CRM might be splitting most of their wallet with competitors. With insights drawn from trillions in annual spend, Cardlytics shows how to spot those leaks, build audiences around real switching behavior, and target them with relevant, timely offers. The results are hard to ignore: higher average tickets, more repeat visits, and a proven path to iROAS that stands up to third-party validation.

Then we look forward. SKU-level targeting lets a brand drive a specific product through a specific retailer, closing the loop from exposure to receipt. Agentic buying is on the horizon, where AI shopping agents will hunt for value across channels. Cardlytics’ position—integrated with banks, merchants, and identity—acts like rails for this future, enabling offers to flow to both humans and agents in ways that are privacy-safe and performance-driven. Along the way, we dig into the unglamorous but essential work of data hygiene, merchant normalization, and building a modern tech stack that makes these outcomes possible.

If you’re rethinking loyalty, measurement, and where your next dollar of growth comes from, you’ll find practical guidance here: focus on non-loyal shoppers, pair CLO with clean identity, validate incrementality, and treat loyalty as a revenue center. Subscribe for more conversations at the edge of data, commerce media, and customer growth, and leave a review to tell us the next question you want answered.

SPEAKER_01:

It's pretty clear that if advertisers focus on the non-loyal customers, they basically get a 7x uplift in revenues. So it's a pretty massive opportunity. And especially as we look across, we see the definition of loyalty starts to change. Which might be very contrary to how an individual merchant might be taking.

SPEAKER_00:

And um just just to acknowledge the heartburn that the teams on either side have been going through to put this together for several weeks, actually over a month now. Um because there's so much to talk about, so much vital stuff that I'm anticipating comes out of this conversation that uh I'm eager to get going. But first, Amit, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01:

It's a pleasure to be here. Uh, I'm absolutely a fan. I think the customer-centric uh business uh element always is close to my heart. So I'm excited about the conversation today, Mike.

SPEAKER_00:

I feel like uh on some level we should have had this conversation a couple of years ago, but glad that it finally happened. Um just for context, for people who may not really know what Cardlytics is all about, can you talk to us a little bit about the business model, z plural, um, and your role there?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, absolutely. Um so Card Lytics is a you know very typical commerce media platform, and it might be a bit of a flavor du jour because it's kind of gotten into more prominence now, but it is, I mean, that's something that we've been on, we've been on this journey for quite a while. Uh, and we operate in two ecosystems. So as a commerce media platform, I'll probably state the obvious, you know, we're powered by our publishers' first-party data, and that's where that's the bedrock of modern ad foundation today. Uh, the two ecosystems we play in, there's a financial media ecosystem and a retail media side. On the financial media ecosystem, we arguably run one of the largest uh financial media networks across US and UK. Um, we have over six trillion dollars of spent visibility on an annual basis, uh, over 225 million unique uh customer uh monthly qualified users. So the scale is big. Uh, we work with the uh most leading banks across these uh countries. Uh and uh you know there's a substantial value that gets provided to the end consumer. So to that end, we're proud that we've delivered over$1 billion of rewards uh to the end uh consumers, and we're um pretty happy about that. On the retail media side, this is where we actually house our identity resolution capability. We also bring to market our retail media uh offering, uh which goes under the brand name of Ripple. And more recently, Mike, we've started to bring the best of uh blend, the best of card-linked offers and the best of retail media. So let me pause. Hopefully, that gives you a sense at the high level. Financial media, retail media, uh, both umbrellas uh fall under the umbrella of commerce media.

SPEAKER_00:

So for somebody who's been on the outside but looking in at your operations for several years, um, it is a little bit eye-opening to see that's how you kind of frame this. Um I've seen the operations, I've seen, I've let's face it, I've spoken to your uh counterparts, your cohorts, your colleagues, and your competitors over time. So I had that as kind of my own personal framework, but uh was a bit of a surprise when we first started talking about this conversation. To uh, yeah, I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but that you all see yourselves as a commerce media network. It makes perfect sense, but that's a term that frankly hasn't really been in vogue until very recently. And uh and then it seems like everybody who has been in retail media is now suddenly in commerce media. And yet, uh, based on this conversation, it certainly looks like Card Lytics has been at it the whole time.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, absolutely. Uh I think we've been on the journey for a decade and a half, as you know. And uh, you know, the one part of on the one part of our commerce media offering, which is truly differentiated, are card-linked offers, right? We pioneered this concept, this ad format that is truly unique, might um, and we might be slightly biased because we pioneered it, but but there is, you know, it's one of the few ad formats that really drives and delivers instant value to the end user, and that's what we like, right? Um, and it really does go seamlessly across both the financial media side and the retail media side. Uh, and that's the power of the uh more modern tech stack uh that helps us kind of bring it across the two uh verticals easily. So that's what we're proud of.

SPEAKER_00:

Um right now, I think um McKinse has this space projected to hit$100 billion by 2027. It's astronomical because for a category that, let's face it, didn't really exist, say three years ago, uh, this is almost unheard of. And I'm kind of comparing it my mind to uh the emergence of retail media networks, which were this another kind of uh bombshell addition to uh traditional uh digital media spend and how much money shifted over into those channels and how quickly it shifted. But by comparison, commerce media is much bigger and it's a much faster shift. I suppose it's just a natural organic outgrowth of people realizing what's possible out there. But I'd love to hear your take as somebody who sits literally at the top of that pyramid, how you've seen this evolve. What kind of got us here?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I I think that's I think that is uh such a fresh and question. Uh, you know, there's an element of what made it evolve. And you know, we can perhaps even draw the line, where does it go from here? Right. And I think the success of retail media, you know, really kind of brought to bear the fact that a merchant's assets, right, uh which are developed as part of doing routine business, which includes um, you know, the digital properties, the physical properties, and so on and so forth, and the customer first-party data, all those assets start to become touch points, not just only for customer loyalty, but also for um revenue generation via you know digital advertising and so on and so forth, right? And and you know, obviously, um, you know, we have kind of the on the retail media side, the ad dollars are pretty concentrated because of the size of the retailers uh on the retail side. The interesting thing as we look about commerce media broadly, you know, there are several platforms that have high frequency customer interaction. And that's what makes commerce media unique. That you know, the we expect the ad dollars to actually be fairly spread across a several large customer platforms. So we don't expect like the top two or top three really kind of uh getting the, let's say, the 95% of the of the market share or or 85% of the market share, excuse me. Um, you know, so so that's the interesting thing about Commerce Media. Um, secondly, we actually believe done properly, this can drive not only revenue, which is real, but also the flywheel can actually drive customer loyalty. Right. And then the last thing I'd say, especially as we think about moving forward, um, we can see ad dollars going away from the traditional publisher sites, um, uh as we see the advent of the chat GPTs and uh you know different AI formats. So some of the traffic that was frankly going there, I mean, you and I uh perhaps are using some of these Chat GPT like uh uh you know models to plan our trips as an example, right? So by definition, the traffic that was gonna go and look at some of those, some of those publisher sites is gonna start moving, right? And as the traffic moves, the ad dollars have to come and move accordingly, right? So the commerce media scope today is interesting because there are a lot of platforms that have high frequency customer engagement, but in moving forward, you know, we can actually think about ad dollars moving even in higher volume and velocity.

SPEAKER_00:

Really interesting. You mentioned something that's that's kind of intriguing, which may be a bit of a dog leg on our primary conversation here, but and that is that uh done properly, uh commerce media can actually build customer loyalty. I'd love to hear you kind of unpack that for us.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, uh, I think that goes to the heart of CLO. So I'll probably just uh uh CLO has in like cart-linked offers format. Um, so we have our data and Quartrix data suggests that you know, whenever a card linked offer product is put out there, customers, 64% of customers tend to spend more in that transaction, right? And 72% of customers end up spending more with the brand that has a card linked offer. So card linked offers, you know, it's backed by data, it's a pretty powerful ad format and really drives significant value for the advertiser and obviously for the user. Um, so you can connect something like that, a card links offer to the ad format, and you bring that organically in a merchant's experience, you know, whether that's in retail, in airline, hospitality, or ride sharing, uh, and you basically blend both. Right. So uh we can think of an example of you can take any consumer frequented platform, you know, there's a distance between the two different spending events can be filled by a card linked offer product or a card linked offer uh uh format, and that drives not only value to the end consumer, but the reward back gets back in the wallet of the merchant.

unknown:

Right?

SPEAKER_01:

So if you think about a write share example, you know, I I can compare my rights and instead of paying X dollars, I might be paying X minus$10 because I have$10 sitting for my previous purchases, which I was I moved because of the right offer from merchant A to merchant B. I may have gotten too much of the weeds, but happy to kind of pull back up if you like.

SPEAKER_00:

No, I think that's that's fascinating. In fact, um, I mean, I'm personally very interested in the mechanics of that and what the kind of psychological triggers are that kind of create that deeper loyalty through that process, but that may take us too deep in the weeds and we need to recover. So um a couple of things that I'm keenly interested in your perspective on because of where you sit in the payments ecosystem, because of all the data that you have uh visibility to uh uh and I I it was either you just mentioned it or it was in my notes somewhere, but a 5.8 trillion in consumer spend is a giant uh first of all, it's a giant amount of transactions. There's an awful lot packed up that but what you see by virtue of the quantity of data that flows through your uh uh systems is giant. Um and the insights that you get to see probably are uh at a level that most people, even most people who do uh purchase analytics really don't get to see. Again, just by virtue of volume. So what kinds of patterns or shifts have you seen that retailers you should be paying attention to?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, uh we feel very privileged uh and we treat this privilege with uh uh you know with great responsibility and make sure everything is, you know, the data is kind of well taken care of. Uh, but the insights are, as you rightly say, are very interesting. Um so maybe I I'll share two parts to it. Uh what trends are we seeing, and then how have we seen uh changes in loyalty definition? Uh and you know, maybe I can also uh double click on that. So some of the trends that we're seeing, uh, you know, we we see the fact that the consumer spend remains strong, right? Despite some of the recent news, you know, the consumer strength, especially in the um, you know, the general retail side, you know, we're seeing some growth, about four to five percent of growth year on year. So that continues to be strong. But there are categories like general beauty, um, gas, uh, there is some decline on the gas side. We see frequent trips, so it's not less about the trip, but because of the lower gas prices, we see um, you know, there's a lower check size, so to speak, uh, but there is some decline there. Uh, but overall, uh, if you think about like entertainment and big box retail, um that continues to be strong and uh you know about four to five percent growth there as well. So so trends are interesting. Um, I think uh generally the spend uh holds steady. Um the other part that I'd like for us to also maybe, you know, the insight that we also get from looking at the data while the individual spend is very important at the individual uh purchase level, the category spend becomes very insightful, right? So what do I mean by that? So let's say uh Mike is a coffee lover and you go once a week to Drunken Donuts. So Dunkin' Donuts is gonna think Mike is a loyal customer, that's fantastic. But Mike might be going to Starbucks the other four days a week. Right? And and that's that's kind of becomes uh more interesting for our leading advertisers and our leading merchant partners because you know their definition of loyalty changes. And that comes with because we have the to your point, because we have the treasure probe of you know the close to six trillion dollars of spend, it allows us to look at things horizontally across the category, across large uh major players in the retail space. So, you know, just you to share some of the data, 50% of uh merchants, uh only 50% of merchants have customers unloyal, right? Whereas you know, people expect that you know a very different number uh from a loyalty spend uh standpoint. And um the remaining shoppers uh are spending 79% with other merchants in the same category. Right? So if we kind of do the math and you know, from our data, it's pretty clear that if advertisers focus on the non-loyal customers, they basically get a 7x uplift in revenues. So it's a pretty massive opportunity. Uh, and especially as we look across, we see the definition of loyalty starts to change, uh, you know, which might be very contrary to how an individual merchant might be thinking about it.

SPEAKER_00:

It's super insightful. And I think again, just by virtue of the fact that um you all see purchase data beyond um what an individual merchant might have access to. So you're seeing it across payment rails, you're seeing it across merchants for sure categories. And um I've thought I've thought for the longest time, like anyone who has that kind of insight could be sitting on uh on a gold mine, and apparently I was right. Um and and and um you know how you could leverage that. I was in a conversation, this is probably about four months ago, uh, three, four months ago, with a group that's deep into the technology of commerce media, and uh we had a kind of a similar conversation um about who really sensibly could power the data needs for something like this, who has the insights, and there are very few players who can really answer that question well, and of course Card Lytics can.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think I think you're so right. Um one thing you mentioned, which I want to uh emphasize, which is uh absolutely non-trivial, uh, is an importance of a modernized tech stack, right? Because as we get the data, uh there's a decent amount of uh lift that our tech stack is able to do, just to give you a sense of as we get the data, the merchant clean merchant identification is not clean. And we've invested a fair bit of our algorithms and our data engineering efforts to make sure merchant cleaning is is substantially better. And frankly, some of our bank partners benefit from that and actually ask us back because we're we've been able because we see scale, we're able to identify certain POS data strings that individual bank partners may or may not be able to identify, right? So at every stage of the data funnel, whether it's at the cleaning level, whether it's at the relevance level or the right level of targeting, we make sure that we use our algo, especially the data at scale, through a modernized tech stack to be able to give the best value to the advertiser and to the user and the publisher. So the flywheel works, but it can only scale with a modernized tech stack.

SPEAKER_00:

Would you uh just curious, um, that kind of um data insights and cleaning, homogenizing ability, is that a separate business line for card lyrics, or is that just something kind of baked into your existing offerings?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's a good question. I I think there are there are partners who've actually asked, you know, hey, we'll pay for this because this is so valuable for us, because frankly, we are not, we don't have the ability, and they're like, you're actually enriching my data, you know, we'll pay for this, give it back to us. So uh it is not, to answer your question correctly, it is not a separate business line. Right? This is part of our partner relationship that we offer to our partners. And uh now the interesting thing, we recently launched our insights portal, which allows our leading advertisers to start to get a sense of not only how they're doing, but they can actually compare themselves with their leading competitors uh across the industry. So they start to see trends. And we made more and more of that is self-serve. Uh we have a large analytics client analytics team that also does custom analytics. So one part is around fleeting and making sure you know the typical hygiene, data hygiene is there. But the other part, as we've talked about, as you mentioned, Mike, is about insights. And we've tried to um make sure that some of that is on the uh our advertisers' fingertips, but we also go and uh a few miles ahead uh beyond up and beyond uh and actually give up custom analytics, which are helpful for their broader business.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm thinking about a dozen or so people that I speak with on a relatively frequent basis who would love to have that conversation with you because they're dealing with uh large-scale uh data migration, data hygiene issues that uh for separate reasons um that they're really struggling with.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, it's it's not uh it's not a small issue, especially as we have our data housed in different systems, different formats. So yeah, uh I think we we deal with it all the time. And you know, that's that's a friction that we put in a fair bit of time and effort to make sure it's easy for our partners.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. I mean, uh I would I would go so far to say it's universal. There's almost no one I speak with who's not facing that challenge on some level. And um I again, I I think it comes back to the fact that Card Lytics sees so much data at such a high level. You can catch, you can see things that probably just aren't visible to people, you know, a layer or two down. And um Yeah, maybe there's a there's business in there.

SPEAKER_01:

That's true. That's true. Always good ideas are always welcome. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

So um a couple of things that just kind of occur to me on the fly here, but you know, uh you probably have uh data utility and commerce media utility worked out, so you you have a fairly good idea of what to expect, how people are gonna deploy this, what kinds of results they can expect on the on the other end of the system. But what would be again, because you see a lot of stuff, what's the most surprising use case you've seen from, and I'm just gonna say, like a non-giant brand that's using your platform?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Um I I think you know, there's to your point, we see several uh interesting uh Easter eggs here and there and um and and nuggets, but you know, there's maybe I can just share a couple. Uh so we run uh part of our value prop to our advertisers is making sure that um we have a measurable outcome for our advertisers, right? So we go in a test versus control and we uh make sure that there's a control audience and there's an uh exposed test audience so that they can actually make sure they can compare to incrementality. And you know, one of the things we recently saw that a beauty brand, in a beauty brand example, uh customers engaged with an offer and they spent twelve dollars more on average. Now the interesting thing was this was a hundred percent increase, which was pretty interesting, right? And uh the offer also drove a you know uh almost close to the hundred uh hundred percent lift in sales that exceeded significantly exceeded the IOS goals. So that was a wonderful um kind of nugget.

SPEAKER_00:

So Are you at liberty to say what uh what the trigger was behind that? And if it's giving away state secrets, don't bother.

SPEAKER_01:

But the I I would say I think maybe uh so I wouldn't go and to your point giving away super secret, but I think it goes to we have uh mastered the art, Mike, of uh uh targeting and relevancy, right? So the right offer to the right consumer at the right uh time, uh in the right channel. I think that's the power, right? So, so and we have started to get better at that. Um, that was you know, we were good, but now we can actually do that more algorithmically, at scale, on the fly. And that's that's really interesting. Uh, you know, we've got a couple of other ones where where we have always-on campaigns, and we've seen dramatic uh increase if we drive and focus them on specific audiences where we've in some cases we've seen over 200% iROAS delivery, so which has been pretty uh pretty eye-topping both for us and the advertiser as well.

SPEAKER_00:

I talked to a lot of people who are um frankly passionate on about the the argument, either one side or the other, on the value of ROAS and as a as a key metric, because you can misuse it, you can misbuild it, frankly. Um but a couple of things that it that are kind of universal in these conversations is you know, how do you know that that what you're spending in these new methods and channels is really driving incrementality rather than just shifting spend around? And um, and I know you have an answer for that, but I'd love to hear you how how, when you're asked that question, because I'm sure that you are, how uh Carlytics would answer that.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So part of this, as I mentioned, we have our TVC methodology. But the reality is we have to make sure if we are certain in our wares, we have to make sure that the advertiser should be able to test it using their models. Right? So they may, so we have our model, our TBC report that we will generate. But what we've also done is develop a network of industry leading models uh and connected with them so that let's say an advertiser is using a third party like a Nielsen or an analytics partner to run their um models or to uh to uh derive what kind of ROAS they're getting or IROAS they're getting, we now have comfort factor and we've engaged with them so to make sure that our results are certifiable. And that's what makes advertisers say, okay, you know, if you're saying X, let's get a third-party, independent third party to verify it, and that holds water. In some cases, Mike, we've seen where we've said something and their models have actually come back with a higher number, right? And that's what we'd like, right? So we'd rather be conservative, uh, but we want to make sure that you know it holds water because at the end of the day, the coordinate offer channel, the way we run it, is a performance media channel, right? Because it's not a spray and pray, it's very much a performance media kind of conversation, and that's what gets advertisers excited.

SPEAKER_00:

Let's let's look ahead over beyond the next hill into the horizon a little bit. Um I'd I'd love to hear your thoughts on where you see uh card-linked offers, um, SKU level targeting, commerce media in general evolving over the next two to three years.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think there is a uh I love the fact that you mentioned the SKU level targeting. I mean, that's one of the uh, you know, one of the new areas that we've started to bring on board. Uh and that becomes very interesting for a large retailer. So, for example, you can imagine a large grocery retailer and a CPG uh player. Um, you know, so for example, you if you want to drive traffic for Coca-Cola to a specific merchant, uh, let's say Dollar General, we can do that. Right. And not many uh parties uh can do that in a very targeted way, but also scale it up. Right. Um so we're excited about the fact that we launched a pilot uh on this specific use case uh in Q2, and we got very successful results. Uh so we're very proud of that. And and so now we're in a process of thinking about okay, how how do we take it to the next level? But to your point about, you know, let's draw the line forward, buying agents will become part of our reality uh at some point sooner rather than later. And a decent part of our spend is going to start to get influenced uh by it, right? And at some point uh and it could be different varieties of that, right? So it could be uh Mike saying, Hey, help me get my next running shoe and uh I like these brands and you know, find the lowest price, and I wanted to, I want to pick it up uh within let's say 10 miles or around Westchester, right? And uh the buying agent could go figure out the best offers, best uh, best set of opportunities and surface uh up to you, and you know, then you can make a decision. Or, you know, you can we can also see in uh in uh a use case where uh you basically authorize your buying agent to go and complete the transaction and have the shoe shipped over to you, right? All those scenarios are not too far away. They are coming. Uh it's a matter of when. And that's where card linked offers has a very interesting role to play, right? So we very much expect to connect with these buying agents so that we can actually uh have the user uh or buying agent on behalf of the user make the best decision, especially in terms of price, especially in terms of the omni-channel uh play. So that's where we we exceed, uh we uh we excel, and and that's something that we're pretty excited about as the future starts to unfold.

SPEAKER_00:

It seems to me that your position in the in the market space, in the the the broad ecosystem here is going to be uh is is ideal, frankly, because not only do you see the data and the the and have access to the transactions, but because effectively you are the Rails for so much of commerce media, um, you have the ability to kind of inject yourselves into agentic commerce in a way that probably a lot of people just just don't.

SPEAKER_01:

We absolutely believe that. I I love the fact that you talked about Rails. So I think uh, you know, because of the scale, because of our connectivity, both in terms of the banking ecosystem, but also with merchants and advertisers, right? That's what's becomes interesting. And so going back to let's say the SKU level offers and the category level offers, part of that is is made possible by our direct connectivity with a merchant and with an advertiser as well, right? So the data is kind of going back and forth, uh, both from banking and from a merchant ecosystem. And that gives us uh positions that's in a very interesting way, as you said, in a genetic buying. Um and so we're excited about that. And the best part I would say is uh you know, there's a technology part of it, there's a right place, right, uh right time part of it, but we're also very, you know, absolutely unbiased, right? So we're very much focused on the end user and delivering the most amount of value for end user, and several of our bank partners are as well, right? So um this is not about, you know, I have X kinds of users, and we only want to kind of focus on them. You know, because of our scale uh on both sides, on the bank side and the advertiser side, we're able to make sure that we're focused on delivering the maximum amount of value for the end user.

SPEAKER_00:

Um you've opened up another 30 or 40 questions and and basically ruined your morning for your whatever your schedule was. But but a couple of things just uh kind of occurred to me as you're saying that. Um one is that because the the dynamic Dynamic between consumer and uh retailer and brand is gonna get disintermediated even further by the addition of uh gentic purchasing agents. Um certainly there's opportunity there, as you've as you've well articulated, but it also presents some interesting challenges for brands and you know what they spend millions, billions, maybe trillions in some cases of dollars trying to build that relationship. You know, how do you manage that? And I'm really curious as to how Card Lytics is advising retailers and brands to uh to think about agentic purchasing as it sits right now, because it's inevitable, it's coming. We we all know that, but there's a here and now factor that um needs to be kind of processed and dealt with. So, how are you advising your clients on that?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, uh we've been in a way, Mike, we started to take the first step in that direction. Uh, because the agentic buy, you know, even though it might take uh a few months or a couple of years, but the first step we started to take by bringing card linked offer like CLO and retail media together, right? So we now basically are interacting with some of the leading merchants across different verticals uh with our newly launched Card Lytics Rewards platform. So this allows us to bring a you know not only a customer loyalty proposition, but also a cashback proposition, which goes back into their currency, into their um uh into their um you know uh local wallet, if you will, um in their ecosystem. So in some ways, that is the first step as agentic buying starts to pick up, you know, these retailers or these merchants uh will be ready for the from their side to engage with the buying behavior that an agent might uh engage in uh or engage with as the agent goes and crawls the net. So that's kind of the first step. The second step, which we expect uh will also come soon, is for us to contextualize this buying process, uh, you know, both on the agentic side and on the merchant side. And again, because of our scale, we can actually orchestrate that and make that happen as well.

SPEAKER_00:

That'd be really interesting. I I want to be, I would love to be a fly on the wall of your analyst group as they're looking through all that data just to see how the patterns emerge. I think it'd be amazing. Um, one other thing, I just want to kind of throw this out there and get your high-level thoughts on it. But I talked to a lot of people who are who sit in various parts of this big ecosystem. I I've spoken, and this is all recent conversations, with uh large multinational agencies who are now in the process of becoming much more um tech enablers, um, not tech platforms in and of themselves, but maybe even you know large-scale system integrators. And then on the other side, I've spoken with people who are traditional system integrators who are now broadening their offerings to encompass what would have looked like agency work or brand work to provide this kind of holistic approach to customer engagement, to leveraging and building customer performance. So, question one is do you see the same thing I'm seeing, or am I imagining it? Because you probably have an actual view to that. And if you are seeing what I'm seeing, that there is this kind of uh blending of disciplines and bleeding over of the various uh kind of borderlines of those offerings. Where do you see that evolving?

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Um I think the trend is right, and the trend has been underway for some time, so you're right on. Uh, and I think agencies, um, you know, we work with several leader leaders uh in the agency space. Uh and I I would probably say comfortably, I think the leaders are very tech forward and tech oriented, either organically or through acquiring assets or partnerships. And so we love the partnerships that we have with some of the agencies. Um, it helps the client, it helps them, it helps us uh stand up tokens. Um sorry about the background noise here.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, it's New York. It's it's it's what happens.

SPEAKER_01:

It's New York, that's exactly right. So uh you know, I think, and on the other side, as you said, the integrators by definition as they seek to provide greater amount of value to their clients. You know, they're bringing and melding some of the agency-like or old school agency-like characteristics. So that blending absolutely will happen. Um, and I think we also feel comfortable in saying that that'll perhaps accelerate even more the blurring of the lines will happen even more so. Um and, you know, wherever, you know, um, you know, there are a couple of uh intersection areas where we are enabling uh some of these things to happen, especially in cut in case of identity resolution. Um, you know, we can actually uh help enable uh some of these um cross-sections um to happen faster. But you know, the other part, I think you know, perhaps uh you were also alluding. I'll give a use case. You know, we have a couple of um system integrator like uh organizations, and you know, they've come to us um with a mindset of how do we help create new revel revenue lines for merchants? And that's where commerce media becomes very interesting, right? Because it's not, as we said before, you know, one part is obviously about customer loyalty, but it really does create for certain merchants, it can create a meaningful revenue line. And that's something that you know we're uh we can be really instrumental in, and we're starting to kind of think around that.

SPEAKER_00:

Customer loyalty is at the is at the core of so much of what we speak about here on this on this podcast and really what we publish about. And um I think just based on where, depending on how you define customer loyalty, where that little industry has gone and is going, everyone in customer success, customer loyalty are looking for new revenue lines. And I there have to be some possibilities there with commerce media. What are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think you couldn't be more spot on. I think that's exactly right, Mike. You know, typically uh for a lot of even leading companies, customer loyalty or customer success end up being cost centers. Our view is these are going to become revenue generation centers very, very soon uh on the back of commerce media. And we're already seeing that with uh some of the leading companies that we're in discussions with. You know, as the transition happens, as you start to think, uh come back with how do we monetize monetize the first party data in a revenue safe way, in a um privacy-safe way, this can actually drive a significant revenue line for um you know for our um uh for some of the leading um customer frequented merchants. Now, I think it has to be done with the right tech stack, it requires investments and so on. And that's where I probably say, you know, selfishly that we are or we come in and can be that plug where you know a leading merchant doesn't have to uh put that level of investment right away, right? They partner with us and then they figure out you know, where's the right place for them to invest? But we are a good kind of fast to market, quick revenue generation uh capability uh when we partner with them.

SPEAKER_00:

Word to my loyalty colleagues, please please hear that and digest it. Imit, thank you so much for the time here. I I um you know I've I've written down another, well, 15 or so questions for the next time we're able to pull this off. But um, what you're doing is is really interesting. I think it's really powerful, and you're in clearly you're in a great place to pull this off at at scale for some very, very big players. The other thing, too, we and we can even get to this, but is you know, your ability to kind of democratize commerce media for the little guys, smaller players. But you know, we have to leave something for the next conversation.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh it was a it was a wonderful conversation. I think the the clear through line is there's a lot of optimism around it that we have for sure. Uh, but industry actually is very much mirroring that as well. And we're excited about as these new trends unfold and we start to grow our ecosystem in this new direction. So, Mike, it was a wonderful conversation, and uh absolutely looking forward to a bunch of new nuggets in the next chat.

SPEAKER_00:

We'll we'll have our people get with each other.

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Mike Giambattista

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