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Transcript
Our transcripts are generated by AI. Please excuse any typos and if you have any specific questions please email info@digitalshelfinstitute.org.
Lauren Livak Gilbert (00:00):
Welcome to Unpacking the Digital Shelf APAC Edition, where we explore the unique challenges and opportunities shaping digital commerce across Asia Pacific with insights from the region's top experts. Hello everyone and welcome back to Unpacking the Digital Shelf APAC edition. We are flipping the script on this episode and I'm going to be hosting our host Teresa and then welcoming on Jill here to talk about the Inside Digital and E-commerce report by Arctic Fox for 2026. This is the sixth version of this report and what's really, really exciting about it is it talks about trends for retailers and for brands, what's happening in the space from omnichannel to loyalty to retail media to digital shelf and data. So let's dig in. Hi, Theresa. Hi, Jill. How's it going?
Gill Smythe (01:03):
Very well. How are
Lauren Livak Gilbert (01:04):
You? Good. I'm excited to be back for ... This is the second round of us doing this report readout, which is kind of full circle for the APAC edition of the podcast. This is exciting.
Gill Smythe (01:14):
Very exciting.
Lauren Livak Gilbert (01:15):
Different excited. I love it. I love the enthusiasm. Awesome. So all right, well let's dive in. I mean, this has been a study that you've been doing for several years now and it's really been just like a market leader and really a barometer for Australia around what's happening, what to think about, what's coming next. So before we actually dive into the findings themselves, Theresa, why don't you set the stage in terms of how you thought about the report this year, what the direction was and just kind of center everyone on that.
Teresa Sperti (01:45):
Sounds great. Thanks, Lauren. So yes, this is the sixth year of our report that we produce in conjunction with Six Degrees Executive. And every year we ask ourselves, how can we make it more valuable for the market? And this year we've made a pretty deliberate pivot. Rather than continuing to take a broad view across the entire industry, we've decided to go deeper on two sectors that are really interwoven and those being retailing and brand manufacturing. And we've rebranded the report this year as Inside Digital and E-commerce 2026, which better reflects the sharper focus. And the timing really felt right for us to do so. We wanted to understand how organizations are really evolving in response to disruptive trends like of course AI and key shifts from a customer and shopper behavioral point of view. So that's one of the reasons. And then when we look at these two together, you start to see some really interesting dynamics, where they're aligned, where the tensions are, and where the relationships between the two need to evolve.
(02:52):
So little bit more context about the respondents. This year's study, we've leveraged insights from 107 leaders and those leaders come from, again, both retailing and brand manufacturing and they hold senior roles across digital, marketing, e-commerce, sales, retail media. And they represent some of the biggest and best blue chip brands in Australia, but also emerging brands. And so it gives us a really strong read on what is happening within the market.
Lauren Livak Gilbert (03:22):
And I really love that you're doing brands and retailers because I feel like we all need to work together to make this possible as in the world in commerce. And so seeing both sides of it is super, super important. So I really love that perspective. Theresa, you spend a lot of your time talking to brands, talking to retailers, working in the market. How did those conversations and the things that you heard as you were talking to brands and retailers really kind of shape the research and even, I guess, overall themes?
Teresa Sperti (03:51):
Yeah, it's a really good question and you're absolutely right. We work with a lot of different brands in market.
Lauren Livak Gilbert (03:59):
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Unpacking the Digital Shelf APAC edition. We are flipping the script on this episode and I'm going to be hosting our host, Theresa. And then welcoming on Jill here to talk about the Inside Digital and E-commerce report by Arctic Fox for 2026. This is the sixth version of this report. And what's really, really exciting about it is it talks about trends for retailers and for brands, what's happening in the space from omnichannel to loyalty, to retail media, to digital shelf and data. So let's dig in.
Teresa Sperti (04:38):
That really helped support us every single year to determine how it is that we're going to shape the report. So when we think about what it was that was really starting to trend locally, there were a few things that we couldn't ignore. The first is an obvious one, but obviously remiss of me not to say it. AI was no longer a conversation happening on the fringes. We were seeing it come up repeatedly in boardroom conversations, in briefs that we were receiving in questions that retailers and brand manufacturers were asking us. And so the urgency felt different to previous years and previous trends. Australian retailers and brands have at times with other trends taken a bit of a wait and see approach and a more cautious approach to global counterparts. So we wanted to understand whether that pattern was holding up this time round or whether that urgency to adapt was as widespread as we were actually observing and what we were hearing.
(05:34):
So that was the first one. And then on the loyalty front, we have observed in the local market that it was becoming a much bigger strategic focus both for retailers and for brands. And we believe part of that, particularly from a retailer perspective, is driven by the growth and focus on retail media. Obviously the first party data is such a critical component of retail media networks to be able to drive targeting, deliver measurement and more. So we wanted to unpack that in greater depth. And then we also felt that the focus and emphasis on product content had really shifted locally. For years, retailers have been obsessed about customer data and sorry, Jill, closure ears for one moment. Product data has often been the poor cousin. And we felt though that there was a material shift happening, again, connected back to the AI piece. And so we wanted to also unpack that, determine our brands leaning in and retailers leaning in more heavily.
(06:37):
And so we sought to unpack that as well along with many other things as part of this year's study.
Lauren Livak Gilbert (06:43):
And I love that you mentioned the kind of wait and see perspective because I feel like that is actually something that people thought about e-commerce at one point. I know crazy to think about that, but this is different. I mean, this is happening faster. It is hitting every element of the business. So if brands and retailers are listening to this, you cannot wait and see because if you do, the amount of time it will take you to get to where you need to go is just exponentially greater than ever before.
Teresa Sperti (07:15):
Absolutely. And I think that the question for retailers and brands isn't are we thinking about it or are we actively pursuing strategies is are we doing enough fast enough and is our investment slate deep enough to support the shifts that we need to make as organizations? And so that's been really front of mind post seeing the results of the report, which again, will unpack what's happening on the AI front. I love it.
Lauren Livak Gilbert (07:45):
I love it. All right, let's dive into it. Let's start with retailers. What was a big standout finding and were there any moments where you were like, huh, I didn't expect that to see that in the data?
Teresa Sperti (07:58):
So there's a few that I'll cover. I mean, there's so many things within the report that were interesting and surprising, but there's a couple probably that have really stuck with me since undertaking the analysis and developing the report. So the first is that 79% of retail leaders agree that their loyalty programs need to evolve to meet changing customer and shopper needs. So basically four and five and a similar proportion said loyalty strategies and initiatives are their key strategic focus over the next 12 to 18 months as part of their organizational strategy. And that signals not only the importance of loyalty, but the real scrutiny that loyalty programs are under right now and how important they are to unlocking growth and protective or protecting against competitive threats like marketplaces and Amazon in our local market. So in terms of where the evolution is heading and what trends we're seeing around loyalty, it's everything from evolution of programs that allow pooling and sharing of accounts, reward customizations at a more personalized level and more meaningful status recognition.
(09:05):
So that's the first. And did that surprise me? Again, we knew that there was a greater focus on loyalty. We didn't know how fundamentally retailers wanted to adapt and evolve in order to meet the modern consumer's needs. So that was a little bit of a surprise. The second is the widespread adoption of owned marketplaces by retailers in our local markets. Nearly one in three Australian retailers now have one and I genuinely didn't expect for that to be so high. Recent entrants include Country Road, Kmart, and there's now a real range of options for brand manufacturers looking to diversify their channel strategy both through open and closed marketplaces and are able to do so through partnerships. So that was a really big one for us. And then finally on the AI front, we wanted to test how significantly retail leaders believed that AI and Agentic Commerce will change and shape the way shoppers buy.
(10:05):
And so what we found was 52% believe the impact will be significant and 31% believe it will be moderate. So that's over 80% expecting meaningful disruption again to different degrees and that belief is translating into investment. And so when we think about where are retailers investing, what we heard from them was three things.
(10:33):
The top area of investment where retailers are making moderate to significant investment was product content and optimization was at nearly 80%, closely followed by improving onsite search and discoverability at 76% and then sizable and significant investment also going into personalization at 67%. So there you go. There's a few kind of key soundbites in terms of what we found from a retailer perspective.
Lauren Livak Gilbert (10:59):
I love it. And Jill, let's bring you in here. You're partnering with retailers every day, you're kind of seeing some of these changes in 80%. That's a significant number and people think that it's going to be disruptive, which I think we can all agree, but do the retailers have the right foundations? Are they able to execute? What are you seeing on the content side that is helping them kind of form that perspective?
Gill Smythe (11:25):
Yeah. Also, we know that there are two key pillars that underpin AI, product discovery and agentic commerce. The first is the social proof. So things like reviews and user generated content and things like purchasing velocity. So effectively, how popular is that product? The second is the product information. So what the product is and how it fits into the context of a customer's lifestyle and their needs. So when it comes to the product InfoPillow, which is my space, I would say it's very mixed with retailers in this region. Some retailers have already built strong product content foundations. So we are now helping them to optimize not just for the human consumer, but also now going deeper with their product data, making sure it's machine readable, it's nuanced, and making sure it's reliable for AI agents. So we're having those conversations now with those more mature retailers.
(12:32):
On the other hand, there are still a lot of retailers who have just really underinvested in this space. And for those retailers, it is really the conversation is just going back to the basics. We are just trying to help them get the basics right first so that they can then get that foundation that they can then start to build on. But yeah, very, very mixed. Interested to hear that so many are saying they're investing in product content. Look forward to seeing that.
(13:04):
Can
Lauren Livak Gilbert (13:04):
I ask you- Brilliant at the basics never goes out of style. It's got to be number one. Sorry, go ahead,
Teresa Sperti (13:10):
Theresa. Yeah, can I ask you a question? It's interesting. One of the things that we're hearing from certain retailers in market is that a few of them are already leveraging AI to build more depth from a product content perspective and build out more structured data. How widespread are you seeing that within market in terms of the retailers doing it on behalf of the brands?
Gill Smythe (13:34):
Yeah, I think there's an attempt to do it, not effectively yet. I think it's that sort of silver bullet trying to shortcut the hard work. So a lot of conversation about it, not seeing effective execution. So
Teresa Sperti (13:54):
Real brand risk.
Gill Smythe (13:56):
That's
Teresa Sperti (13:56):
What
Lauren Livak Gilbert (13:57):
I was going to say. It's a challenge for brands. Yeah.
Gill Smythe (14:00):
It's brand risk and it's retailer risk and it actually a conversation we're having with a lot of retailers is about that liability risk as well and where that sits. The fact that that needs to be in underlying contracts, but then also they need to make sure that they're collaborating properly to mitigate it across the chain.
Teresa Sperti (14:18):
That's right. There's a real governance requirement that sits and wraps around that in order to protect both parties. And I think that's a really important watch out as well for brands. Are your key customers doing it? And if so, how can we work together to do it or are we at risk from a brand point of view?
Lauren Livak Gilbert (14:41):
Yeah. And that needs to be a conversation in your joint business planning and all of your quarterly meetings. Have conversations, ask those questions because I've seen it go incredibly wrong, especially when brands are given X amount of days to review or approve. So just to watch out as I think both sides are trying to create the best content possible to have the best experience. So Theresa, let's flip to the brand manufacturer side. So any call-outs from the data there or big gaps or opportunities from the brand manufacturers?
Teresa Sperti (15:14):
Yeah. So a few key standouts from the brand manufacturing side. And so the first for me is that digital shelf and e-commerce has really gone from optional to table stakes in Australia. And it's funny, Lauren, you were just talking before about e-commerce and we were slow to start. Brand manufacturers in Australia have been quite slow to start from an e-comm and digital shelf point of view, but we're really starting to see that mindset shift. And so that's really encouraging and we're really pleased to see that. As it pertains to priorities, product content and digital shelf execution is now the number one priority for the year ahead, which is also really encouraging to see 63% of brands cited it as their top priority alongside of channel expansion at 45%. And when you consider what is happening locally, what the report has found is that 47% of brands are now managing five or more channels from an e-com point of view and 22% are managing more than 10.
(16:16):
So the complexity of that execution challenge becomes really clear. And so that's really interesting I think from a brand standpoint. It's not just about being within those channels, it's about how do we execute well and consistently across our digital shelf. From a channel's point of view, the channels that are commanding the most investment attention, a quick commerce or rapid delivery as it's also obviously referred to and that's really driven by major retailer partnerships that have occurred over the last 12 months. We've seen DoorDash and Uber Eats partner with the likes of Bunnings and Mitre 10 as examples. So you can get your rapid delivery within 90 minutes or 30 minutes, I don't actually know the timeframe, for your hardware and your DIY, but also it's occurring within electronic, stationary and other verticals. So that was really interesting to see. And the flip side is when we look at the retailer data, we also see that nearly one in four already have a QuickCommerce channel as part of their strategy and 28% are planning to invest in quick commerce and rapid delivery over the next 12 to 18 months.
(17:32):
So it's big for us. Again, it's been slower to move locally. And then the second big finding is really around retail media. So the vast majority of brands plan to increase or maintain their investment in the year ahead, but where the money is going is moving. So what we've seen from the study is that Amazon ads is now taking a much bigger slice of the Australian retail media pie. Last year, 33% of brands were leveraging Amazon ads. It's now 53%. So that adoption is growing rapidly, but there's some real tension occurring in the retail media space, which I want to touch on because I think it's really interesting and we've finally got some data. Intuitively, you're going to know this sounds right, but we've got data to back it. So we've found that confidence in what retailers are promising is low and brands are openly telling us they feel pressure to spend.
(18:30):
So more than half of brands have told us they feel pressure to spend without sufficient budget or capacity to do so. And I think with the backdrop of the challenges of running a business in Australia at the moment, we've got high levels of inflation, discretionary spend, consumer confidence is low. These are real challenges and nearly 50% of brands are now buying across four or more networks. So they've got choice. So retailers really need to start upping their game around measurement and effectiveness demonstration. They can't just trade on their relationships. So that's the big second finding and I've got one more if I can. Sorry.
Lauren Livak Gilbert (19:13):
Go for it.
Teresa Sperti (19:13):
There's so many good things that have come out of the report. The last one is really around AI preparedness. And so we asked brand leaders how confident they were in their foundations across product data, customer data or shopper data and MarTech to support AI and not one leader had high levels of confidence that their foundations are where they need to be to support their AI ambitions, not one. So despite all of the talk and hype around AI and Agentic commerce, I think brand manufacturers know they've got a lot of work to do locally. So I'll stop there.
Lauren Livak Gilbert (19:54):
Yeah.
Teresa Sperti (19:55):
So many more okay share, but I'll stop there.
Lauren Livak Gilbert (19:57):
Gosh, there's so many good nuggets. But that last one, I think what's really interesting is you've also talked about the investment piece, right? A lot of brands and retailers are investing, but leaders don't feel that they have what they need to actually see success. So that's a big gap that needs to be filled with education, with upskilling, with organizational change. So there's a lot of pieces there that brands really need to focus on.
Teresa Sperti (20:21):
Yeah. And there's a lot of talk about the types of use cases. What is it that we'd want to deploy? Our ability to move fast, adapt, test, scale, we're only going to be able to move as fast as our foundations allow us to. And the quality of those tests will only be as good as the foundations are that are embedded. So I think it's a really big challenge and issue that brands are going to have to lean into if they are going to be successful in their ability and ambitions to adapt.
Lauren Livak Gilbert (20:53):
I agree. And Jill, speaking of that, what have you really seen from leading brands? What are they focused on? Do they have their data in check? Are they investing? What are some of the things you're seeing on the brand side?
Gill Smythe (21:06):
Yeah. Well, actually I was going to touch just before I get to that, just we talked about with the retailers and Theresa was asking about, are they using AI to try and create content that they're not necessarily getting from the suppliers? I mean, one thing that I just wanted to sort of dig down onto into a little bit is a couple of key things we're seeing is that retailers and marketplaces, rather than trying to get the content from the brands, are trying to use AI as their silver bullet, as we said. And we are seeing a lot of mass scraping of images from websites. Now, what we're hearing from suppliers is that that is creating a lot of problems because they are pulling back a lot of incorrect or very out of date content. One manufacturer joined, came to us recently and said, "Look, we just have to get control of our product content because our trading partners are using content from our website and we haven't touched that in 10 years.
(22:01):
It is so out of date."
Teresa Sperti (22:06):
But that's a separate problem, Jill, isn't it? Because if we think about authority and source of truth, brand websites are back in vogue. And so that's also a call out for the brand manufacturers to start thinking about how are we showing up, what's our presence like online and understand that those websites do play a critical role and increasingly so, particularly to drive machine preference.
Gill Smythe (22:32):
Yes. So I think that that's a daunting realization. The other thing that was I just heard recently from a big global AI content generation company, they said that they have been getting approached by retailers and marketplaces to use AI to create images, product images. And they said, they're having to say, "We can't conjure product images out of thin air." They're saying to me, "You think about the myriad ways that AI can generate." You put in prompts for a particular product and the almost infinitesimal number of versions it can come up with that are actually never going to be quite right. And so they said that that's something they're sort of having to push back on and say that you need to have at least that accurate baseline image
Lauren Livak Gilbert (23:26):
Before you can use- With the package flat that you made the label with, maybe let's start there
Gill Smythe (23:32):
Yeah, no, I would say lifestyle images, lifestyle images you can do really, really easily. So if you've got the pack shot, you can stick it in a lifestyle image like super ... Our platform can do that like that, but yeah, you can't conjure product images out of thin air. So that's been quite funny and it does remind me of, this is just the modern version of a very old theme. So back in the day, retailers were getting photographers to create the product images that they weren't getting from suppliers. We had a photography studio for a long time attached to our business for that purpose. We always had the same conversation with them. We will do this remediation for you. We can do it. We'll create the images, we'll do the data for you, but this is a stop gap. This is not a long-term solution because as soon as we finish going through your 10,000 SKUs or whatever it is, it's already going to be out of date.
(24:28):
I'm going to start again.
Teresa Sperti (24:29):
This is so interesting because, and probably we're going to end up in a very different place to Lauren's original question, but let's go with it. That's
Lauren Livak Gilbert (24:37):
Okay.
Teresa Sperti (24:40):
The report has found that 26% of brands feel like retailers and marketplaces make it easy and painless to share their product content. We have clients that we've worked with that have gone through a major evolution of their product content and it's taken two to three months to get it onto the retailer website. So what's fascinating about this conversation is retailers want the content. They're looking at how can AI support that, but they're not actually investing in core infrastructure and integration to support and enable brands to provide the data that they already have
Lauren Livak Gilbert (25:24):
100%. I mean, I think back to my brand days, when I was on the brand site, one retailer, it will remain unnamed. It took six months to update an image. Who's going to update images then? I agree with you, Theresa. These are the fundamental elements where you can talk about the shiny AI all you want, but if you can't get content to the retailer and they can't update your SKUs, it doesn't matter. And that's the fundamental piece that needs to be completed. But
Teresa Sperti (25:52):
At the same time, there's lots of conversations happening about retail media and the need to invest more, but my ability as a brand to derive value and maximize my investment, the PDP is part of that conversation and it needs to be part of that conversation in order to drive better return and outcomes from the investment that we're making. So yeah, it's a fascinating space. Sorry, and I've taken us down a rabbit hole.
Lauren Livak Gilbert (26:21):
I loved it. I loved it. Jill, did you have something you wanted to add? Because I know I asked the question about leading brands and kind of what you're seeing there.
Gill Smythe (26:31):
Yeah. Well, so just to that point that Teresa made about brands feeling like it's not seamless for them to share their content, we are definitely finding that brands are becoming a lot more vocal now than they ever have been before. This is something that the brands that work with us used to complain to us and we used to say, "You've got to complain to the retailers." There's no point complaining to us. You've got to complain to the retailers, but they are now starting to get very vocal because it is such a source of pain and the brands want their source of truth to connect to their trading partners systems so that they can update quickly and accurately without errors and without manual intervention. But what we hear constantly from retailers, certainly in this region, I hear it all the time, they always say, "That's the supplier's problem.That's not our problem.
(27:26):
That's the supplier's problem. It's their content. It's their problem." A retailer I was talking to the other day said, "We've got a supply portal." They should just be taking the time and effort to put it into the supply portal. In the same breath, they said, "For example," and they used one of the world's largest manufacturers as an example, and they are a client of ours. So I was interested. So for example, we said this brand, they're getting interns to enter the content into our portal. And I said, "This is why I'm talking to you because they don't want to be using intro." But you think about this manufacturer, think about the thousands and thousands of supplier portals they're being asked to go and enter content manually into. And so again, it's like help us help you
Lauren Livak Gilbert (28:19):
100%. Point
Teresa Sperti (28:20):
That the research has found, 22% are leveraging more than 10 e-commerce channels. The ability to do that at scale where those integrations don't exist is really challenging and not only to get the data there wants, but to manage it ongoing and to optimize based on seasonal trends or major changes to the formula for which we produce-
Lauren Livak Gilbert (28:47):
Packaging changes.
Teresa Sperti (28:48):
Yeah.
Lauren Livak Gilbert (28:49):
Yeah. Yeah.
Gill Smythe (28:49):
100%. I'll give you an example, a food manufacturer client of ours. I was talking to one of their retailers, just went and looked on a couple of these retailers digital endpoints and the pack shots were wrong on each one and one of them there was a promotional, big, exciting, the customer can win some special thing in a promotion. Actually, if you looked closely, that promotion ended two years ago. Two
Lauren Livak Gilbert (29:20):
Years ago? Oh,
Gill Smythe (29:21):
That's the
Lauren Livak Gilbert (29:22):
App. And
Gill Smythe (29:22):
So this is a very well-known retailer, but they've gone from being bricks and mortar. They're now in the digital space. They've got multiple digital endpoints and yeah, you can just tell they've been holding this together with bubble gum and sticky tape. And I just feel sorry for the team. I feel sorry for the brand teams. I feel sorry for the retailer teams because it's the people at Cole Face, they've got very small teams. Everyone says to me the same thing like, "Jill, our team is so small." It doesn't matter whether it's one of the biggest retailers in the country. 100%. It doesn't matter who it is. They've all got very small teams, so they're really struggling. The people are really, really struggling to get this You'd get it done without the investment. There's just not enough investment in this space.
Lauren Livak Gilbert (30:05):
That's why I think it's so exciting to be in this industry right now because AI can really help enable to do a lot of that work if you have the source of truth in good content and good data. There's prerequisites, but you can finally get to a place where you can do seasonal content because you can use AI to update those lifestyle images. So there's so much opportunity here and we touched on this a bit throughout the entire conversation, but this is really a relationship and a partnership between the retailers and the brains. And it has to be everyone coming together to figure this out, to be fully aligned. And Jill, you're working with both sides of this. Where are you seeing that either the relationship is working or needs some adjustment or even some great examples of things that you've seen to be successful in that partnership?
Gill Smythe (30:58):
Yeah. Well, I mean, I'd say where it's working honestly is just where there is an alignment within the retailer that this is an important space. That's where it's working. It just comes down to investment and it's not even a lot of dollar investment, truthfully. It blows my mind. It's just investing the resources really in the people to implement the right systems and then to manage it ongoing. That's all it takes. And as I said, compared to some of the investments some of these retailers make, this is small in comparison. I mean, so that's the thing. And then I would also say once they're getting the foundations right, within the platforms that we have, we're building so much AI capability into the platforms. It's amazing. So the businesses that are actually are in, they've got the foundations right, they're using it, their Teams note, they've got adoption.
(31:57):
Showing them now what they can do with AI is so exciting. It's actually fun because we're able to go into these meetings and people are excited, but they're only excited when they've already got these programs of work humming. And then it's like, okay, AI now become this massive optimization opportunity for them. We can't have those conversations where they haven't even invested in the basics. You just can't. So yeah, that's-
Lauren Livak Gilbert (32:24):
Mic drop moment. That mic drop moment.
Teresa Sperti (32:28):
I think the interesting thing locally is how do I build that business case to demonstrate the return from investing in product content even outside of the AI piece because sometimes it can be passed off as, "Oh, well, it's content. It's not that important." And I hate to say that, sorry again, closure is. But the ability to tie investment in content to commercial outcomes I think has been a really big challenge locally. And we know that better content is going to drive better conversion, better visibility and that is heightened in the era that we are now in. But I think that's sometimes the challenge, isn't it, for retailers and also brands. And that's why they've got the skinny teams is because being able to demonstrate and tie that to commercial outcomes I would dare say has been one of the biggest challenges.
Gill Smythe (33:19):
Yeah. I mean, I do think that AI becomes a tailwind in this space because they're going to get exposed. They're not going to be able to execute on all these AI initiatives without these foundations. But it's going to take time because at the moment there's a lot of vibe coding. There's a lot of people running around saying they're doing AI initiatives, but it is just another technology like technology. It is still garbage in, garbage out. It just is. So as I said, I was a bit like the content generation, you can't conjure it out of thin edge. It is not actually magic. It feels like magic sometimes. I sometimes feel like it's magic when I'm doing stuff with AI, but it's actually not. It is just a very sophisticated version of technology. Completely agree. Watch this space. I would also
Lauren Livak Gilbert (34:07):
Say- It's a crazy, crazy time.
Gill Smythe (34:09):
The other thing, just Teresa, for our region, I think is that there is just a reality. There hasn't been a lot of competition. I mean, that is the truth. We know. We operate in a market with monopolies and duopolies. And so that is changing because as you say, starting to talk about the Ubers and the DoorDashes and Amazon's being the sleeping giant, but they're moving. Things are happening. They're
Teresa Sperti (34:33):
Not sleeping now.
Gill Smythe (34:34):
They're not sleeping anymore. We know, because we're doing a lot with them now. It's in region, they're moving. That is the thing that will get the local retailers moving because they're going to be forced to. And they're going to be exposed because these big players are pushing a lot of investment in this space. And I do worry, to be honest, I worry about our local retailers truthfully. I just worry about how sleepy they've been. So yeah, I hope we can see some movement.
Teresa Sperti (35:06):
Well, hopefully this podcast helps- Catalyst. The catalyst. Yeah, that's right. Become that catalyst. I agree. We have been somewhat complacent locally from a retail standpoint because of the things that you've just touched on. We have been a duopoly market in many respects for a long time. I think the size and scale of Amazon, even as it is today, can now no longer be ignored and the pace of which they are growing revenue can no longer be ignored. And I think it's touching a number of retailers already, both from a retail media point of view as well as core sales.
Lauren Livak Gilbert (35:43):
Yeah. So before we finish up, if you had to pick one thing, let's start with you, Jill. What would your piece of advice be to retailers and brands based on all the findings from the report?
Gill Smythe (35:57):
Yeah. Well, I guess I would say that in the world of AI led recommendations and Agentic commerce, it's about teaching the machine why it should choose your products. So making sure your product data is accurate and consistent everywhere it appears, enriching the backend metadata and having good contextual information that explains why the product matters to a specific person at a specific moment. That is going to be really, really critical as machines take over a lot more of the retail space. And for retailers, just build the product data collaboration with your suppliers. You need to have the trusted data and you can only get it from the people who know what those products should look like and what they should be and what they should say. And so build that collaboration so that you can execute in this next agentic era of commerce. I
Lauren Livak Gilbert (36:59):
Love it. Theresa, what's your piece of advice?
Teresa Sperti (37:02):
I feel like Jill maybe stole some of my advice, but that's okay. Shows we're very aligned in region. So my first piece of advice is read the report.
Lauren Livak Gilbert (37:13):
Good piece of advice. I
Teresa Sperti (37:14):
Like it. I like it. No, but more importantly, I think that Jill has kind of touched on it. There's so much focus on technology. It is just another piece of technology. And so my advice would be don't let the technology conversation crowd out the relationship conversation. The retailers and brands that will win in this environment are the ones that figure out how to go fast together. And I really do believe that. If we think about all the challenges we've just talked about, some of the solutions exist in the relationships and the partnering between the retailer and the brand manufacturer. So that would be my book. I
Lauren Livak Gilbert (37:55):
Love it. Amazing. Well, I second the read the report, download it. It's a great read, lot of great insights. And Theresa, thanks for letting me flip the script and host an episode of Unpacking the Digital Shelf APAC
Teresa Sperti (38:09):
Edition. Thanks for your time, Jill. It was nice once again to be able to hand the hosting over to you, Lauren. So thank you. And thank you, Jill.
Gill Smythe (38:19):
Pleasure. Thank you.
Lauren Livak Gilbert (38:20):
Thanks everyone.
