Marcus Johnson (00:05):

Hello and welcome to a special edition episode of the EMARKETER podcast, Behind The Numbers. I'm Marcus Johnson, and today I'm introducing a special episode from the EMARKETER Commerce Media Trends 2026 Virtual Summit.

(00:18):

In this episode, our expert panel examines the challenges and best practices for measuring impact of commerce media advertising. Arielle Feger, EMARKETER's senior analyst, media content hosts Jack Kneuper, senior digital performance marketing manager at Purdue Farms. And Matt Barresi, president of digital commerce and capabilities at Kimberly Clark. Hope you enjoy.

Arielle Feger (00:42):

Hi, everyone, and welcome. I'm Arielle Feger, a senior analyst here at EMARKETER. Measurement remains one of the biggest friction points in commerce media, especially as budgets spread across more networks and formats.

(00:55):

In this panel, we're going to unpack how to understand commerce media's impact and move past platform reported metrics to setting up incrementality tests that hold up under scrutiny.

(01:05):

Today, I'm joined by Jack Kneuper, senior digital performance marketing manager at Purdue Farms. Hey, Jack.

Jack Kneuper (01:13):

Hi, happy to be here.

Arielle Feger (01:14):

Glad to have you. And we've got Matt Barresi, president of digital commerce and capabilities at Kimberly Clark.

Matt Barresi (01:24):

Hi, everybody. And hi, Arielle. It's great to be with you today.

Arielle Feger (01:26):

Yeah, I'm super excited. So let's dig in. First, I want to do a little bit of level setting. Where is measurement actually breaking down right now? And are retail media budgets outpacing measurement maturity? Matt, let's start with you.

Matt Barresi (01:44):

Yeah, great question. And I suspect, I think across the industry that yes, our retail media spend and investments growing really rapidly, yes. Is our measurement capabilities growing? Yes. But I think the reality is spending's outpacing the pace of capability.

(02:08):

And so it's a pretty important subject. Certainly for us, when you ask about the state, we do certainly use measurement from some of our media network partners, but we also use internal and/or separate third parties.

(02:25):

We tend to favor not grading our own homework. And I think at times even some, well, maybe not intentionally, but at times some metrics can be designed to demonstrate certain favorabilities. So we tend to try to use our own sources as well.

Arielle Feger (02:44):

Yeah. What about you, Jack? Where are you seeing measurement breakdown where your struggle's at?

Jack Kneuper (02:50):

Yeah, I'd say where it's breaking down, I would say with fragmentation. So really every retail media network or platform gives you a different view of success. So it might be the attribution window or the KPIs that they have available. I think it makes it difficult to compare channels apples to apples.

(03:15):

And I know one of the big talking points is incrementality. That's not always easy to get. Sometimes for me, I might reach out to a retail media network and they say I have to spend a certain amount on a very specific campaign in order to get incrementality.

(03:34):

And there are platforms and brands out there who provide those services to give you incrementality, but not everyone has the budget for that. So I would say that spend is certainly moving faster than measurement maturity. And that's exactly why a lot of us are here trying to solve that puzzle.

Arielle Feger (03:59):

Yeah. I'm going to actually skip ahead one question in our notes, so apologies. I'm flipping it up on you guys. But since you mentioned, Jack, not everyone has the budget to do incrementally and it can be really intensive.

(04:15):

How do you decide when it's worth it? What are the parameters that you're thinking about when you're talking about, is this really worth testing?

Jack Kneuper (04:24):

Well, I would certainly look at the budget. So is this a platform that we're spending a meaningful amount of budget on? And would the result of an incrementality test change where we're investing? Would it be impactful? So that's usually what I look at.

(04:43):

I think something to factor in is uncertainty. So if a channel has a pretty clear role and stable performance, I might not need that incrementality necessarily right away. But if I'm seeing performance and I'm like, "Man, that almost looks too good."

(05:01):

Or, "I suspect attribution maybe is overstating the value." I might dive a little bit deeper into that with incrementality and see the true impact of that channel.

(05:12):

So I would say if there's a threshold, will the results help us reallocate the budget? And is the upside of learning that bigger than the cost and time that it would require to run that test?

Arielle Feger (05:31):

Yeah. Matt, do you have anything you want to add?

Matt Barresi (05:33):

No. And I agree with everything Jack said.

Arielle Feger (05:36):

Great. All right. So digging a little deeper, getting a little more into the weeds, ROAS has historically been the default metric in retail media.

(05:46):

When you're thinking about performance today though, is ROAS still central or are other measures like incrementality, marginal return, or lifetime value playing a bigger role? And I'll pass that to you, Matt.

Matt Barresi (06:00):

Yeah, certainly I agree with the sentiment of your question. And frankly, I'd say for us, and I would probably say for most consumables businesses, ROAS is irrelevant. Maybe on a more durable business, ROAS is relevant.

(06:20):

But so for us, we tend to focus far, far more on incrementality and the incremental return associated with our investments. And then secondarily for us, as you point out, lifetime value is also really important to us.

(06:36):

And so the two things we're really looking at is incrementality's great. The barrier today, frankly, is often the lag on getting incrementality. So we're working quite hard on accelerating the time associated with incrementality measurements, and we're making progress, but we've got a lot of room to grow.

(06:54):

And then lifetime value is certainly relevant for us and disproportionately for certain categories, particularly categories if you think about baby care or others where it's not just an individual purchase, but there's extremely high category loyalty.

(07:12):

And the benefit of user acquisition for lifetime value retention and/or growing into adjacent categories or other things is really, really important. So those tend to be our two emphasis. I view ROAS as spelled J-U-N-K for our business anyway.

Arielle Feger (07:30):

I like that. Jack, what about you?

Jack Kneuper (07:34):

Yeah, I think Matt's spot on. I mean, ROAS, to me, it's a short-term measurement. It doesn't paint the whole picture. I think a lot of people like ROAS in the sense that it's simple. It's very available across the board. It's easy to communicate.

(07:50):

But that's something historically ROAS, it really was our North Star and we still do use ROAS, but it's more of a piece of the puzzle. So incrementality, margins, repeat rate, lifetime value, they help us truly calculate what we're activating. Is it making a long-term impact? As opposed to just the short-term, did it perform well or not?

(08:18):

So I think Matt was spot on. We really all are moving towards incrementality and other measurements beyond just ROAS.

Arielle Feger (08:28):

Yeah, absolutely. And Matt, you mentioned speed to insight, and that's something, speed came up in our prep calls as we were talking about what we wanted to discuss today.

(08:44):

How are you balancing the need to have statistical rigor? You want your results to be correct and helpful, but you also want to move faster. How are you finding the balance between those two things?

Matt Barresi (08:59):

Yeah, it's a great question. I think it goes beyond just incrementality. There's many areas where there's a lag and the reality is digital commerce is a real-time business. And so speed is of critical importance.

(09:16):

So it's an area we've been working quite hard at. It's an area we are constantly on the lookout for for others that can help us accelerate speed. It's also a place where we're learning to do a couple things.

(09:32):

One is, I think, we're learning areas where we can be a little bit more aggressive. We're learning at times in some areas, generally speaking, and I'm rule of thumb, but frequently we find early read losers rarely turn into statistical wins.

(09:51):

And so as you use that, so there's some kind of rule of thumbs that can help us move faster. You accept some risk with that, but we tend to find that the benefit of the speed offsets the risk.

(10:01):

And then we also are trying to get much more intentional about, much more aggressive on experimentation and fast cycle experimentation to draw principles that can help us move at a faster pace without necessarily being reliant on some tools that are longer lag.

Arielle Feger (10:22):

Yeah. Jack, what about you? How are you thinking about speed in terms of speed to insights or just making sure that you're moving at the right pace?

Jack Kneuper (10:35):

I mean, speed's so important, this environment changes constantly. So sometimes I think speed is more important than perfection.

(10:44):

But I would say what's slowing us down is at times there's multiple platforms, multiple dashboards across several different departments. So you're trying to stitch everything together, and that's really where the speed comes into play.

(11:02):

Now, I would say from my end, I look at really two different buckets. So if something is maybe a smaller budget, we can use our directional data and try to get that speed in place for something that's in flight if we want to make changes.

(11:20):

But if it's a higher, whether it's a really big strategic decision or a massive campaign with a higher budget, I tend to lean more towards the rigor and really diving in deeper and making sure we really analyze that. So I think you can balance it out.

(11:39):

So you're still moving fast-paced with certain things, but also still taking the time with some of those bigger initiatives.

Arielle Feger (11:48):

Yeah. Jack, you mentioned having different teams, having different data, and that's obviously got to be really difficult to organize. Who owns measurement internally within your organization, and how are you keeping all of the teams aligned within that?

Jack Kneuper (12:09):

Yeah, that's a great question. And I would say I think measurement works best when there's clear ownership, but shared accountability.

(12:18):

So from our side, we have a team that builds out the framework for measurement, but everyone who's managing the campaigns across the board is aligned on what success actually means.

(12:32):

So as far as keeping teams aligned, I think what's most important and what's worked for us, anytime we start a campaign, we decide what are the main KPIs and within those KPIs, what is success? So then afterwards, there's no debate on, "Oh, was this successful or was this not successful?"

(12:53):

We get that all determined before the campaign kicks off. We may have some KPIs that build up to or tell the story a little bit, but I think that's so important is having that figured out beforehand so that everyone's aligned when the campaign ends, regardless of the results.

Arielle Feger (13:14):

Yeah, absolutely. To start off on the right foot, have a North Star where you say, "Okay, this is what we are looking for," and then you can measure everything up against that.

(13:26):

Matt, what about you? How are you structured internally in terms of measurement? How are you keeping all of your teams aligned?

Matt Barresi (13:34):

Yeah. I think probably somewhat similar to Jack. We have a dedicated media analytics group, and they report to and are accountable directly to what I would call our three-legged stool of our digital commerce marketers, our brand groups, and our national media team, which all work together to develop integrated retail and national media programs.

(13:59):

But to me, the key thing is I like to flip versus measurement to insight because measurement is the data and the what. The real power is the insight and the actionability out of that.

(14:14):

And I agree with Jack, one of the key things here to make that really powerful is clear objectives and common language and framework are really important. We can get ourselves, and we have, and I'm sure a lot of folks in this call have, when you have well-intended people who look at things differently.

(14:34):

And so one of the big things in my role that I'm doing across our enterprise is not just for measurement, but for digital commerce, one common framework, one common set of language, clear KPIs all supported by a common set of tools that give one source of truth.

(14:52):

So that collectively across our organization, whether it is media measurement or more broadly, we're kind of operating off the same sheet of music. And that allows us to turn measurement into insight and into action as opposed to swirl around data discussion.

Arielle Feger (15:07):

Yeah, that's such a good point is you can have all of the access to the data, but if you're not able to then take it one step further and make it actionable, it's meaningless. So you really need to have the why or the what next part of that.

Matt Barresi (15:26):

And the biggest thing I've seen with that, again, is everybody's well-intended, right, is to me, I think the leader's responsibility is to share a well-intended multifunctional team has common objectives and one way to look at the world.

(15:43):

Because if you don't have common objectives and you have different ways to look at the world, those well-intended teams spend a lot of effort swirling in ways that frankly aren't as productive and for them is frustrating.

(15:55):

But when you get a small collective group on a common objective and a key way to look at the business together, that's where the magic happens. They get the insight out of that and they turn insight into action and can do it in real time.

Arielle Feger (16:08):

Absolutely. Moving from more internal thinking to more external thinking, how are you guys working with your media partners on measurement? Where are you finding the gaps and the challenges? Matt, I'm going to kick it back to you for that.

Matt Barresi (16:27):

Yeah, thank you. To me, this one's super important for us. And in a few areas, one as I've come in tomorrow, there's an element about working to improve measurement together with our partners. There's another element which is about really acting as true partners.

(16:45):

And to me, true partners are transparent and true partners act with facts, not with opinions. And so one of the things I've tried to bring to our organization is real transparency across all of our media partners on clear, obviously appropriately blinded, but data that helps them understand their performance on our business relative to alternative investments.

(17:15):

That helps them understand the capabilities and or investments that they make as part of our partnerships to help us against the objectives that we have. And then are they clear on what their objectives are and how we can help them?

(17:28):

And we've tried to do that in very, very granular and very, very transparent ways so that we can have a... What I found is when we do that, it might seem intimidating, but what it actually does in the spear, if you approach it with the right approach of true partnership, you get to truth on the table and you get to joint problem solving.

(17:52):

And I find in an absence of that, we tend to have, let's be honest, our partners, frankly, they have their business objectives, which includes selling more to us. And we have our business objectives and they aren't always aligned and we can do this with each other.

(18:07):

And so to me, one of the most powerful things is to use the data and the measurement that we have to help people understand, be clear on what we need, be clear on how they stand on helping us meet what we need versus investment alternatives.

(18:22):

And then we power through that together because in order to get more of our business, they want to help us. And I think that's a really powerful thing. And it's one, frankly, I'd encourage almost everybody in this call to go do, because I think it's in everybody's interest to go do that.

(18:35):

And frankly, I think the more of us that do that, the more of that becomes natural for our partners and so on and helps get into mutual problem solving as opposed to just peer selling.

Arielle Feger (18:46):

Yeah, absolutely. A rising tide lifts all boats is probably one of my favorite things to say because I find it so true.

Matt Barresi (18:53):

Well, the one thing about that is in that point is true partnership and transparency is you also need to open that up to be a two-way street.

Arielle Feger (19:03):

Yes.

Matt Barresi (19:03):

And you got to be willing to hear what others want to tell you, and you got to be willing to hear also what's really important to them, right?

Arielle Feger (19:10):

Yeah. Speaking of, great transition, I'd love to know from each of you, if you can change one thing about how retail media networks or commerce media networks measure performance, what would it be? Jack, I'll start with you.

Jack Kneuper (19:26):

Yeah. I mean, if I could change one thing, we've already touched on it, but it would be more of a standardized transparent measurement across networks.

(19:37):

So I do a lot in the retail media network space, and one of the hardest parts is just looking at the different attribution windows, certain metrics that are available on one platform and not another. It makes optimization possible, but as far as high level decision making, with that kind of disparity and measurement, I'd say it's much harder.

(20:03):

So I would just love to see more consistency across the board with attribution windows, definitions of metrics, new to brand logic, incrementality and that framework. So ultimately, we're not looking at one tactic in isolation and saying, "Is this working?"

(20:26):

We're looking at everything across the board and we ultimately want to know where I spend my next dollar, what makes the most sense across this broader mix of channels.

(20:38):

So I would say just standardization would be great. I don't know how realistic that is, but I would certainly like that.

Arielle Feger (20:47):

Yeah. We're going for pie in the sky here. We're going for-

Jack Kneuper (20:51):

We might be. Yeah.

Arielle Feger (20:54):

That's the thing, I think, we've got to make sure that people are hearing us when we say, "Hey, we want standardization." So I say shout it loud and proud.

Matt Barresi (21:03):

Can I build on that for one second?

Arielle Feger (21:03):

Please.

Matt Barresi (21:04):

Because Jack, I 100% agree, and I'm not sure it's pie in the sky. And the reason I say that is I'm old enough to know it wasn't that long ago or it wasn't when brand safety standards or things like that were happenstance all over the place across the industry and across partners.

(21:27):

And I think, the industry and call it the advertisers collectively stepped up as an industry and started to create some industry requirements. And so I think that is one of many cases in a collaborative partnership approach that the industries work together for mutual benefit.

(21:52):

And in that instance, when brands feel safe about the environments where they show up, they're more willing to invest their dollars. And I think the same thing here, if we could take a similar approach as an industry and step up in a collaborative way, the more clear we are on how things are working, the money will follow.

(22:09):

Everybody's in this for growth. Nobody's in this... We're not in the cost cutting business, we're all in the growth business. And so I do think it's possible, but I think it requires some forward thinking, and I think it requires an industry approach, and I think it requires a growth mindset and a willingness to lean in where there's great returns.

Arielle Feger (22:30):

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Is there anything else that you have on your wishlist for retail media networks, or is that really the biggest?

Matt Barresi (22:38):

I think that's the biggest one and combined with what I was mentioning earlier. I think, probably my biggest wishlist is maybe associated with that is, and I recognize where we are.

(22:53):

It feels like where we are with our retail media partners is not that far removed from where we were maybe a handful of years with some of the biggest media suppliers today that were new, media partners that were new then.

(23:06):

And I think just as they've evolved from, "I'm big and you need to be with me, so let me just sell, sell, sell." They've evolved into collaborative partners. I think our retail friends are on that same journey, and I think they're starting that and moving even faster.

(23:23):

And so I'm very appreciative of that, but I wish they would go even faster.

Arielle Feger (23:30):

Speed, fast, fast, fast, fast.

Matt Barresi (23:33):

I think there's mutual benefit in it.

Arielle Feger (23:36):

I agree. I agree.

Matt Barresi (23:38):

I'm not asking for a one-sided equation. We got to be partners. For it to work for us, it's got to work for them long-term, but I would love if we could accelerate that curve versus if you think how long that curve took with the prior generation.

Arielle Feger (23:54):

Once again, you're teeing me up perfectly for this next question, which is-

Matt Barresi (24:00):

Uh-oh.

Arielle Feger (24:00):

... AI. If you've got bingo, you've got your AI space. Obviously, we know AI is everywhere right now, but I'd love to hear from both of you where it's actually making a measurable difference in your measurement workflow today. Jack, let's start with you.

Jack Kneuper (24:20):

Yeah, absolutely. AI is a buzzword. I love to just say AI is the future on multiple occasions throughout the year, just so I sound smart. But I would say, so the biggest impact that I see is really getting insights quicker, not necessarily replacing our measurement strategy.

(24:43):

So where I'd say it's helped the most is with our manual work. So just using reporting as an example, we've been able to take reports that would take an hour or longer manually, and we can now complete them in less than five minutes using AI.

(25:00):

So thinking about summarizing trends and identifying outliers and just really getting a clearer story from raw data, but getting that a little bit faster. So ultimately, it really frees us up to be able to spend more time to actually interpret the data.

(25:23):

So I mean, all that to say, I think it's been most valuable for me and my team when it improves our workflow efficiency and really ultimately focus on the bigger and the better questions faster.

Arielle Feger (25:39):

Yeah, absolutely. Matt, what about you?

Matt Barresi (25:44):

Yeah, I totally agree. And by the way, I'd say the same thing for us on reporting and things like that. To me, another meaningful area for us in the immediate term is we're leaning in and frankly, I'd say advancing at a quite rapid pace on things like content generation that really is accelerating our ability to AB test across a variety of types of content.

(26:10):

And I don't think we're very far from that becoming just the way we do work at scale. And then as I think about our partners, to me, if going back to our partners in the industry, what would we ask?

(26:26):

To me, there's an element of really asking about machine learning-based automation on their behalf, and it's not a crazy concept. Frankly, it's here and it's here in some avenues, but it's got an ability to be here, I think, at a more meaningful breadth and depth.

(26:46):

And so to me, I'd also would say that's an area that, besides what we do internally, that's an area of our asks of our external friends and our external partners to help us all create more value going forward together for all of us.

Arielle Feger (27:03):

Yeah. I'd love next for each of you to share an example of a time when measurement actually changed your investment strategy, not just validated what you were already doing. Matt, you want to go first?

Matt Barresi (27:21):

Sure. Yeah. Let me think about how to do this in a way that isn't too proprietary.

(27:30):

What I would say is think about, we are leaning into what started out as I would say insight-driven creation of manual consumer journeys and audience content and channel optimization across that journey to using data to optimize those, to now using data to optimize and execute those in an automated way.

(28:03):

That I would say are in, I don't want to say early, but still earlier stages where I think there's opportunities to do that at a much more rapid, much faster pace of learning that will allow us to scale the improvements meaningfully versus where we are today.

(28:21):

But that's caused us to meaningfully shift our dollars and frankly, even within those journeys then shift is something that we found to be really powerful.

Arielle Feger (28:32):

Jack, what about you?

Jack Kneuper (28:34):

Yeah, we've had, I think it was late last year, a specific retailer where we had a campaign looking at driving sales in store and online, really big push for a specific product in a very specific region.

(28:51):

And I think instead of looking at just platform ROAS, we have a program with that retailer where we're able to see those in-store sales, how many units per store per week we're pushing down to the store level. So I think looking at that, it's really easy to look at platform return and say, "Hey, we're doing great."

(29:14):

But by being able to utilize that overarching data, we could actually look at our investment and where we were in certain areas and say, "Okay, this is actually impacting the business." As opposed to, "This number looks great, so let's just keep pushing here."

(29:33):

So I think, that's one example where measurement actually changed our strategy.

Arielle Feger (29:42):

Thank you for sharing that. So we've got time for about one more question, and I'd love to look ahead a little bit. Thinking two, three years down the road, what is good measurement going to look like? Jack, what do you think good measurement's going to look like a few years from now?

Jack Kneuper (30:01):

So I mentioned earlier speed over perfection, and I think here a lot of people may imagine this perfect dashboard with everything aligned 100%, but I think it's really going to be more like a decision matrix in my mind that's fast, connected, very predictive.

(30:23):

Teams across multiple departments and channels get more consistency with, "Hey, this is what happened and this is how we can build upon this in the future." I think it really has to be real time. I mean, we have to be able to optimize on the fly.

(30:44):

It's got to be rigorous enough so that when we have very big strategic campaigns or products coming down the line, we're able to really utilize that to really build upon that. And then it's got to be connected enough so that every department is aligned and accounted for.

(31:09):

But I would say speed over perfection, that's just a big thing for me with how much things are changing, you need to get things now, even if they're not 100% perfect.

Arielle Feger (31:22):

Definitely. Matt, you got a short and sweet, what's good measurement going to look like in the future?

Matt Barresi (31:29):

I have the same premise as, Jack, and what I'd say is it's going to be machine driven and it's not going to be measurement. It's going to be measurement that automates to optimization. Measurement's great, insight and action are what pay.

Arielle Feger (31:44):

Yep, absolutely.

Matt Barresi (31:45):

That's where the money is. And I think to me that's the key thing. And then to me, there's an element of what are you optimizing against? Whether that is sales, lifetime value, or in some instances, maybe even brand health.

(31:59):

And I think there's going to be an ability to bring that into measurement and insight and call it immediate action. And I think it's all going to be machine driven.

Arielle Feger (32:08):

Yeah, I think you're right. We could definitely talk about this for a very long time, but unfortunately we are out of time. This has been amazing. Jack, Matt, thank you so much for being here.