Retail media’s early free-for-all is giving way to a more deliberate approach. At last week’s EMARKETER Summit, leaders from Kellanova and Every Man Jack described how marketers are sharpening their focus, rethinking measurement, and preparing for an AI-driven discovery landscape.

Their perspectives offer a roadmap for shaping the next phase of growth, from incrementality to AI-driven discovery.

From experimentation to discipline

The early “try everything” phase of retail media is over. Scale requires focus.

• “We can’t test and learn everywhere that we need scale. We need repeatability,” said TJ Hanel, director of retail media network strategy at Kellanova.
• That shift has pushed marketers to move from channel-specific tactics to an enterprise strategy rooted in category sufficiency, setting investment levels based on whether the brand needs to stay in step with the category, close its in-store versus online share gap, or maintain its existing advantage.

On the challenger brand side, men’s grooming brand Every Man Jack is also steering away from scattershot spending.

“It’s a very large shift away from linear and much more of an embrace of upper funnel advertising through RMNs,” said Nicklaus Hasselburg, vice president of performance marketing and ecommerce at Every Man Jack.

The problem everyone needs to solve

Incrementality remains the friction point threatening future investment.

Kellanova is increasingly relying on MMM to understand which levers drive impact.

• “We’re trying to frame up additional data sets around MMM,” Hanel said, explaining that the company is layering in sales-lift reports and insights from retail partners to deliver “tighter, multi-tactic-level performance.”
• He acknowledged that the company’s current MMM approach tends to understate its omnichannel performance.

Meanwhile, Every Man Jack relies on controlled experimentation.

“We’re progressively using holdouts… manipulating spend either downwards or upwards to understand what the effect is on our digital and brick-and-mortar business,” said Hasselburg.

When attribution is murky, Hasselburg focuses efforts where incrementality is clearer.

“By pouring more investment into… generic and conquesting efforts, there’s more of an assurance… that those dollars are going to be more successful in converting new shoppers for you,” he said.

Speaking in metrics that matter

There’s still a noticeable disconnect between internal teams due to differing interpretations of strong performance.

• “There could just be some discrepancies between how the omnichannel team thinks… versus how a sales lead might think,” said Hanel.
• To bridge this divide, the brand is now co-authoring omnichannel and retail operating plans to ensure alignment from the outset.
• “It doesn’t resonate when we talk click-through rate… CPCs… ROAS,” said Hanel. Instead, the team emphasizes “Digital penetration, sell through… stories that they can unpack.”

He added that connecting RMN investment directly to merchant priorities has also helped bring teams together.

“The more we can tie one into the other, the better and tighter we are as a broader organization.”

Preparing for new discovery paths

Generative AI is reshaping how people shop, and Every Man Jack is exploring how LLMs gather and interpret information about brands and products.

• “We’re invested in a tool called Profound to help us understand how agentic [AI] and how LLMs are crawling the internet,” said Hasselburg.
• Early insights suggest that LLM signals closely align with SEO and PR fundamentals, such as appearing in the right publications and maintaining a strong PR strategy.

Hanel is focusing on strengthening the digital shelf, especially for brands without DTC capabilities.

“[We’re] making sure that our digital shelf is as tight as possible… ensuring the crawlers are accessing the right data at the right time.”

Despite rapid AI advances, Hasselburg emphasized that product quality remains the ultimate differentiator.

“The single most important initiative… is delivering an exceptional product experience,” he said.

Watch the full session.

This article was prepared with the assistance of generative AI tools to support content organization, summarization, and drafting. All AI-generated contributions have been reviewed, fact-checked, and verified for accuracy and originality by EMARKETER editors. Any recommendations reflect EMARKETER’s research and human judgment.

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