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    Interview

    Interview: Driving the Digital Flywheel at Target, with David Glaza, Founder & CEO of Retail Media Agency DIGITS

    With 90% of all Target’s digital sales being fulfilled by the local store, the retail media opportunity with Target is one that needs to be worked both at the national level and the local level, down to each individual store and the surrounding set of consumers. In this episode, we take a deep dive on how to best plan and execute a winning strategy at Target with David Glaza, Founder & CEO of Retail Media Agency DIGITS.

    Transcript:

    Peter Crosby:
    Welcome to Unpacking the Digital Shelf where we explore brand manufacturing in the digital age.

    Peter Crosby:
    Hey everyone. Peter Crosby here from the Digital Shelf Institute. With 90% of all Target's digital sales being fulfilled by the local store, the retail media opportunity with Target is one that needs to be worked both at the national level and the local level, down to each individual store and the surrounding set of consumers. In this episode, Lauren Livak and I take a deep dive on how to best plan and execute a winning strategy at Target with David Glaza, founder and CEO of Retail Media Agency Digits.

    Peter Crosby:
    So David, thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast. I have been really looking forward to talking to you about the expertise that you have in Target. So thank you so much for taking the time to talk to our audience.

    David Glaza:
    Great to be here. Nice to be with you guys.

    Peter Crosby:
    Everyone is constantly talking about retail media these days and it seems like every day a new retail media platform is popping up. So it's a constant fast moving space. And what I love is because when people name the big three, Amazon, Walmart, Target, I feel like, and we haven't yet been able to have a conversation with somebody who's really focused on Target retail media. You have 15 years of working with Target on that. And so I'd love for us to tell you, just start out, just where is Target's retail media offering right now? What are you seeing in the market? How are they looking to drive a better experience for their guests or customers? Dive right in with what you're seeing out in the market there right now.

    David Glaza:
    Yeah, and it's great to be here and I know my company Digits, we have myself and a lot of my team, we have a lot of experience with Target. Most of us worked at Target as either merchants or Roundel folk before joining Digits. Really our purpose here is to help brands understand Target retail media and the way we define retail media is broader probably than I think the standard term, but we think of it really as anything that can help drive digital sales faster or omnichannel sales really faster. So it's any sort of lever that a retailer provides to a brand in the digital space. So a Target Roundel has gotten a ton of publicity, they do a great job, they've really grown both in scale and in offerings, but we also focus in a lot at things like digital shelf copy, images, surge coupons, really anything that Target has there. So they've offered a lot of options available to brands.

    Lauren Livak:
    And it feels like they've been winning, their business results have been pretty strong. What are you seeing on the ground yourself?

    David Glaza:
    Yeah, they have. Target, they've received a lot of accolades for their digital business. I mean it's 15-20% sort of their total now. We have baby clients that drive 48% of their sales digitally and those are items that are full chain stocked, but yet they're still driving nearly half of their business off of somebody's phone or somebody's laptop. And so that's crazy. The important thing to highlight with Target though is, 90% or so of their digital business is still driven out of the local stores. And so it's very different than an Amazon business. It's very different than selling something on Instagram or Facebook where then you're going to B2C ship it to your house. And so the Target business, even digitally, is still heavily localized.

    David Glaza:
    The vast majority of those purchases are still happening within a five mile radius of a Target store. And those shoppers, if there's anything like me, and I'm guessing a lot of people that are listening, sometimes you walk in the store and shop, sometimes you do a drive up, sometimes you do a shipment, You really mix out your wallet and your purchases across all of those touchpoints. And that's what I think Target's gotten really good at is speaking to that shopper the same way no matter how you want to shop. And that really opens up a lot of options for brands. I mean there's so many more ways for brands to interact with the customers.

    Peter Crosby:
    And they really went into Covid kind of not knowing what was coming, but they had put a lot of that infrastructure in place and put a lot into their app and things like that. So they had a bunch of things going on that through both intentions but also given the environment through luck, kind of made it the perfect time to be good at that. Right?

    David Glaza:
    Yeah, they were set up for success and I think they really capitalized on it. I mean my last job at Target is I had launched out their Cartwheel app from the business side and so I had run that a couple years and through ourselves the marketing team, the rest of the team, we grew that to almost 40 million users and that's when it was a standalone app and that was by far exceeding I think, where we thought it would be, but it really taught Target how to get people into their app, the value of having a login, the value of having that relationship with somebody on their phone. And then a few years before Covid, they folded that all into their flagship app, their master Target app and really poured in all those users over into that flagship app. And they rolled out drive up and to your point, sort of serendipitously right before Covid. And so when Covid hit, shoppers were already familiar with the app; they had tens of millions of active users that could easily click a few buttons and do their order contactless.



    David Glaza:
    Nobody ever saw Covid coming, but that was a killer provided service to really take advantage of that. And they've just kept the scale. It wasn't a spike and dropped back down. It's basically been growing their digital percentage, at least within our client base really since the beginning of Covid.

    Peter Crosby:
    And one of the things that really jumped out at me when I was looking at you guys is you had a graphic of how you express the Target digital flywheel. Can you walk us through those pieces from your perspective and why that sort of works, that gives you that flywheel kind of energy?

    David Glaza:
    Yeah, absolutely. We, being experts on Target digital, even in initial conversations with brands, they'll sort of ask, "Well how do we win at Target?" Either they're trying to get in and they're building their strategy or they're already in, but they don't have a really robust digital business yet. So the first thing we'll do is talk about investing and there's two ways to invest. One is with money. That's sort of what everybody thinks about, right, is how much money do you have to buy media and/or help your digital at Target? And so, some brands it's as low as 2% of their sales and some it's as high as 20 or more and if you're a small brand and you're really just trying to push business.

    David Glaza:
    The other is in a team and so how experts are you in Target? Do you have a local salesperson that understands their digital? Do you work with somebody like us? Do you have other agencies? How are you truly understanding the uniqueness of Target or broader uniqueness of any retailer they're working with? And so that's one we'll push on brands. And once we get that done, then we talk about the flywheel. And so we talk about Target's digital flywheel, kind of five buckets and I'll kind of walk through them and highlight a few things that are unique to Target because these same sort of tactics really could apply at any omnichannel retailer, but we push a lot about Target's a bit different. You need to have focus resources and how to do that so we can teach, hopefully teach a little bit today or when we talk to brands about it.

    David Glaza:
    So one really is digital shelf. I think what probably people talk about mostly is the digital shelf. So it's a copy, it's images, it's reviews. And so that is sort of a longstanding digital shelf benefit. The Target tip if you will, it really is on the images. And so a lot of brands get caught up because they're so used to creating Amazon images. But Target's mobile hero image standards are quite different. And so because of that, a lot of brands don't even create mobile heroes. If you search around at Target, you don't see them. You just see product shots. So Target does accept them, but they have special rules that you need to follow. They don't allow as much text, they have other kinds of accessibility standards that are different.



    David Glaza:
    So we push brands to really focus on those and you have to create them custom for Target. The opposite side is reviews. They're not nearly as important as they are on Amazon. I mean having reviews is good, you don't want to have a bad review score. But we have brands that have come to us and said, "Oh, we only have 300 reviews at Target and I have, let's say, 10,000 at Amazon. Is that a problem?" We're like, "Target 300 actually is a decent number." And so that's a little bit different there than other places.

    Peter Crosby:
    And can I ask, is that something that is part of Target's algorithm? They just don't weigh it as heavily. And do you know what that philosophy is and why? Or is it just... Yeah, I'd love to know just where you think that comes from.

    David Glaza:
    And I think it's somewhat the algorithm. I think it's also because Target's assortment is just so much smaller. They only have, let's say, a four foot section of men's shampoo. So there's only so many items and it's already versus if you go on Amazon insert men's shampoo, there's going to be all of these brands that you maybe have never heard of. And so you're really trusting consumer reviews to be your merchant in some ways, where at Target, most customers I think, think if Target carries it it's probably pretty good. And so they might look at reviews to learn a little bit more about it, but they're not expecting tens of thousands of reviews to validate that the item's good. They assume if it's carried at Targeted, it's good enough in some ways and then it's more of just is it the right item for them versus an Amazon as a marketplace.

    Lauren Livak:
    And Target is one of those retailers that really double down on the scorecarding and making sure that all the content is present. And can you talk a bit about that in connection to all of the other pieces of the puzzle for Target and how you need to incorporate that into your strategy?

    David Glaza:
    Yeah, yeah. Target, and it's been a couple years now. They have a digital scorecard. They work with a third party to do that quantitative work and they score you. And so you need to have at least an 80 out of a hundred to pass. If you're below 80 then you're on the naughty list and you'll work with the merchant teams and whatnot to fix that out. But I would say there's not many vendors on the naughty list anymore. When it first started, the average was in the sixties and so a lot of vendors had to work to get that up. But today it's really about how many images, how much copy, how many reviews? And I'd say the standards that Target has set there is pretty achievable to be at that 80% or above. But us as an agency and brands, they love it because at least gives you a target to aim for. Like, should I have 100 characters in my copy or should I have 10,000?




    David Glaza:
    It could be broad and it gives you a number that you should aim for based on Target standards. The next bucket on the flywheel for us is Target Circle, formerly Cartwheel. And obviously this is near and dear to my heart and a lot of my teams used to be on that crew, but because it's unique to Target, it's really forgotten by many brands. It is the most robust digital coupon platform for any other sort of proprietary retailer. Walmart has a partnership with Ibotta but it's not nearly as blunt on and as integrated as in your Circle is for Target.

    David Glaza:
    And so a lot of brands, I'd say, don't have dedicated plans around it. They're still focused on ads and TPCs. Whereas in our experience, Circle promotions are going to be your best return on an investment and really brands should be pushing as much dollars and energy into it as they can. And it's also personalizable. You can find and dedicate coupons to people that have bought your brand or haven't bought your brand or are category shoppers or aren't category shoppers. And so you can slice and dice, really niche but you have to devote the energy and time to do that as a brand or a sales team or a shopper team. And so that's one thing we push on for brands quite a bit as well.

    Lauren Livak:
    And is that Omnichannel? Is that both digital coupons and in store coupons?

    David Glaza:
    It is, yep. So it's a digital only interface. There's no tags on the shelf, but if you click the coupon you can use it on Target.com or you can use it in store. The digital rates are actually about three times higher. And so if you're a brand that wants to boost digital sales using Circle naturally, people will... Because it's already on your phone. Those are the types of people that are ordering shipped or ordering drive up or whatnot within the app.

    Lauren Livak:
    I love the Target app. I don't if anyone on here has used it as well, Peter, I don't know if you use it a lot, but the coupons are notifications so you get a push notification when you've bought something previously and you have a coupon and it's on sale and that for me as a consumer is something that I don't necessarily check the app unless I need it. So that's an interesting way as well to bring people back into the app.

    David Glaza:
    Yeah, they've done a great job with... Almost thinking of it like a personalized circular, right? I mean there's 100s of circle deals and they know, I mean Target's smart enough with data to know what you've bought and haven't bought. So if you haven't bought cereal in a while or maybe you used to, they'll say, "Circle deals on items you've bought before," and they'll try to get you to buy it again. And so those are deals that are available for everybody. It's just they do a really good job of shuffling up the deck and trying to highlight things that are going to help your purchase and make it feel really personal even if maybe it is a mass deal, but it kind of creating your own personalized discount shopping experience at Target, which I think some of the other omni retailers haven't been able to replicate that and it's been a competitive advantage for Target and for brands that use it.

    Peter Crosby:
    And so you've got your digital shelf all set up optimized. You're connecting with some of Target's best customers in a really efficient way. What's next on the flywheel?

    David Glaza:
    Yeah, next is paid search. And so paid search is pretty widely done at a lot of retailers. At Target, they leverage Creideo and they leverage Citrus to be their providers for paid search. The biggest difference though at Target, and this is where I'd say a lot of former Amazon agencies or national shopper agencies don't always maybe work right at Target is, Target doesn't allow competitive conquesting. And so it's the opposite for Amazon. So if you're trying to sell Tombstone Pizza or something, which is what I grew up with in Wisconsin, you can't just bid on that if you're DiGiorno or somebody else. You can only bid on the term pizza. You can't Coke, Pepsi bid against each other. And so a lot of brands will waste money bidding on their own keywords where if you only have four SKUs and you get a brand pure search, you shouldn't really waste your money to protect your own business. You should be using it to grow and capitalize.

    Peter Crosby:
    And so I imagine that decision by Target, it probably costs them money because they would just make money off of competitive bidding. But is this more of a Target's going to put the experience for the consumer? What's that business decision for them, do you think?

    David Glaza:
    Yeah, I think that's exactly it, right. Target spends a ton of time trying to create the right assortment and then they'll teach you about a brand. And I think if a shopper is dedicated enough to type "Chobani," let's say into the search engine, they don't want to see Yoplait items. That just seems wrong and the Amazon experience is the opposite. Obviously, they've been doing that for decades. You would type in a brand and they'll put that halfway down the page and put the other items in front of it. And I think it's just what the customers have grown to expect from each individual place. But Target's always been very proud of their clean in-store experience and I think this is just their way of trying to make that same way digitally clean, easy to shop, not trying to sell you something that you didn't say you wanted, so.

    Lauren Livak:
    What I also always loved about Target is they call their customers guests and they do that very intentionally in order to make this a personalized experience. And to your point about contrasting on Amazon versus on Target and just the different experience, not better or worse, just different. I think as you're going through this flywheel it's also very clear that they're very intentional about having a guest come in, have a great experience, make sure it's simple, easy, they're shopping where they are. So I just love that that kind of rings true through everything that you're sharing as well.

    David Glaza:
    Yeah, you can have competitive conquest but not through search. We just talked about Circle. So if you wanted a competitive conquest, you could do that, but it's a little more sneaky, in a way. You can offer coupons to those shoppers but not in the experience where they're searching for somebody else. You have to try to find them a different way through media or through coupons or whatnot. And that's kind of the next bucket. And so Roundel is traditional retail media. That's what you'll see if you Googled for Target Retail Media. Roundel would come back. They offer a very large assortment of tactics for both onsite and offsite. But the biggest bogie, so what's sort of different at Target is they have a large annual investment minimum for managed service. And so you can run CRIO programs starting at zero essentially, but if you want a planned out offsite program, you can't do it unless you're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

    David Glaza:
    So a lot of the new brands don't have that. But about a year or two ago, Target made all their inventory and data available, their audience data available through Trade Desk and other DSP partners. And so we actually as Digits can go and buy those placements for brands essentially starting at zero. So I was saying you can't competitively conquer on search, but we could build you an audience of category shoppers in a certain brand that are defined at Target and run your media off platform to try to competitively conquer, if you will, but through that way. Not through Target's direct search program.

    Lauren Livak:
    Can you talk a little bit more about the data? So overall from a retail media perspective, is Target willing to share more audience data and sales and category data than you would say other retailers or has it grown and expanded over the years? Is that a focus for them?

    David Glaza:
    I mean the audience data, I think they were one of the first retailers that did that where they made their audiences available through third party DSPs. And so there's a whole bunch of data privacy stuff where obviously, we don't know who they are but we can work with them and work with the DSP to get an audience set of the defined category shoppers. And then if you spend enough money you'll actually get first party sales tracking with it as well where you'll know what your [inaudible 00:19:35] was kind of on that spend. But I think Target's been leading that space. Now, there's some other retailers. I know Albertson's got some press recently about trying to do similar things and I know their press releases have talked about them being even more open, but that's pretty nascent yet. We haven't been able to see what that offering really is. But in theory I think that that's the way a lot of the business is going because these retailers can make dollars by opening up their audiences and kind of earning money. We're kind of providing the audience data.



    Peter Crosby:
    It does seem though that retailers are taking different approaches to how generous they're going to be sharing with their brand partners data and performance and things like that. Where do you think the industry... Do you think that more openness is inevitable or for everyone, for the rising tide to lift all boats? Where do you think the trend is going across these media platforms?


    David Glaza:
    It's a good question. I think today even Target’s more open as far as sales data. We work with some smaller retailers that just don't have as many resources or systems or processes built out to show and share store level digital versus sales data at theirs, where at Target you can get access to that information very easily as a brand. It's kind of just part of your program. To answer your question of where it's going, I think it's going towards more real time and more robust because I see the omnichannel grocery world turning more into the direct to consumer world where historically if you are a direct to consumer marketer on Facebook or Instagram, you could really set up LTV segments, you could get demographics, you can get real time sales reporting and you can optimize your media spend almost by the hour.

    David Glaza:
    And traditional retail media, you're more working in campaigns, one month buckets, three month buckets and then you'll hopefully get reporting back a month later and you're kind of working in seasons where I think in general retailers that are able to open up that data to how much privacy they actually share that I don't know, but the ability to make day to day business decisions and then spend more money to hopefully make your business do what you want to do, I think those retailers will win as far as, at least from as far as collecting more retail media dollars.

    Peter Crosby:
    So I've been talking to a number of brand leaders who are frustrated with the ability to do attribution and understand the results of these campaigns and are finding it. And part of it is, I just don't know if some of the retailers, like you said, even have the data, the capacity to make those connections. But when I think about the organic side of things, when we look at the world of the product detail page and where is that going, I think it's in the same direction, which is that over time it's in the retailer and the brand's best interest to present an experience that is best for that consumer in some way or another. And that requires, I think, and I'd love your thoughts on this, deep collaboration between retailers and brands to do that sort of at scale and speed over the next five, seven years or something like that. Is that too loftier? Are we thinking similarly in the same-

    David Glaza:
    No, I think we're thinking the same. I think the challenges retailers have is they do not usually dedicate resources to these kinds of things. So the whole retail media industry is shifting towards a self-service model. And so I do agree with your goal of where it should go. I think the fix in some ways is, how is it all just systemized? I don't know if it's the AI thing or if it's software as a service company, sort of figuring this stuff out and the plugs in and that's sort of the connect between the retailer and their brand because I think, I don't envision retailers themselves building this tech, dedicating the team, but they might be happy to pay a small red share to somebody that else that figures it out, if it's going to expand the boat and grow that way. 

    Peter Crosby:
    Very cool. And I think you have one more stage on your-

    David Glaza:
    Yeah, the last bit of the flywheel and it leads in perfectly because if the talking point around first party retail media, whether it be Roundel or Walmart Connect or whatnot as kind of these planned out, not yet daily optimized programs is a fifth flywheel is third party media. And so for us, obviously it's Digits Media because that's who we are. But how are you running offsite media through your own DSP or your own planning in conjunction with Target or with Roundel or whomever?

    David Glaza:
    And so for us we find ways to create cheap interactions and awareness in a localized way around stores and we can turn it off and on almost by the day. We get reporting back on a much quicker basis. We envision a world where the way you describe the realtime media is you're doing that, but you can do a lot of that on your own as well. And so you don't have to necessarily work through a managed service program. You can either do it through an in-house agency, a third party like us, but you're doing that sort of in conjunction with your local sales team, your local shopper team, and spending a good amount of your money off platform. And so not necessarily through the retailers retail media.

    Lauren Livak:
    And David, one of the things about Target that I always have conversations with brands about is private labels. So they have a very strong private label brand for themselves at Target. And I know that can be a challenge for some of the brands competing with them. What would you say about what they can do with the flywheel you just talked about or some advice around PDPs or content to help brands stand out outside of the private labels that exist?

    David Glaza:
    Yeah, yeah. Target's always been huge in private labels. And whether it be up and up market pantry, apparel, all in motion, sort of their apparel athletic brand, I mean they have multiple billion dollar brands at Target sort of sprinkled across the store. And for us specifically, we help brands more on food and essentials. And so in that space, typically Target positions them as a value brand. They are good quality, they're not cheap, cheap, but they are on the lower end of the price point. And so when brands ask us about it, there's kind of two buckets that we will tell them just try to differentiate in them. And both are off plays of Target strategy. And so Target on a lot of their private labels, their digital experience is kind of narrow. They have not invested a ton into super awesome images, videos, reviews, they're winning the top search results anyway because they're the number one sellers and they're kind of these huge brands with a lot of space in store.

    David Glaza:
    But if you didn't know anything about the item, it might not convince you to buy it. And so we tell our brands that if you're going to try to challenge them and be at a premium price point you need to have great digital experience. Your images, you need to convince somebody to buy it because Targets today, a lot of them are just pack shops and it's not necessarily convincing and really let that brand side show through. You're not just a product on a shelf. You are a brand, you have a story, you have a reason to buy, you have a demographic you're going to and so how do you make that come through digitally? Whereas obviously Target's own brands don't necessarily do that.

    David Glaza:
    And then the other bucket is urgency with pricing. So Target is pretty much an everyday low for a lot of their own brands. And so Target's levers, whether it be Circle, whether it be lucky enough to get an ad or what, how do you drive that urgency with pricing to drive that trial and then hopefully win that person over, that shopper over and they'll keep purchasing you because you've proven how awesome your product is. And so those two levers as part of our flywheel are the ones that differentiate the best against private labels.

    Peter Crosby:
    So tell us a bit... Your clients are working the flywheel with you, doing a lot of these activities that you're talking about to reach success. So much of it is about how do I measure and know what's working, know what's not working and earn your budget with finance. There's a bunch of conversations that these results need to drive for the next season, as you put it. And so can you walk me through how you help clients with that piece of it to know what's working, what's not?

    David Glaza:
    Yeah, for us it's one of the things we pride ourselves on I would say is being able to pull all these pieces of the flywheel together at Target. They're all kind of bespoke, they're all been developed at different times. And so most brands we've talked to don't have them integrated back into their sort of standard processes. Every brand has their weekly KPI sheet or their monthly KPI sheet. But our push to them is... Lauren asked before about the scorecard. Is that scorecard on your KPI sheet? What was it's score last month and what is it this month and what is each individual brand at? Does your sales lead calling you to Target, do they even know that? And some do and some don't. But that's sort of first is how do you incorporate those just into your top sheets? From there we push really just Target channel growth rates.

    David Glaza:
    And so what is your digital penetration by brand? What's your fulfillment method, meaning is it shift, is it drive up, is it ship to home? How is that mix working for your brands and maybe how is it different across because those drive good customer insights that your headquarters team might be interested in. And then lastly, we roll up all of our retail media into a retail media impact rate. So that's Circle Search, Social Roundel, digits, everything sorted together and how much business are we driving on a week to week basis? And then we're tracking that versus your total sales on an ongoing basis.

    David Glaza:
    So I know a lot of brands will track like promo sales, promotional sales, which is ads and TPCs, but how are you real time tracking your Roundel influence sales, your video influence sales, and then rolling that up week over week to trend it and to see if it's impacting your top line. So I don't know if any of those KPIs are earth shattering is what I would say. The data we get back from Target, a lot of brands are pretty, it's pretty top line on some of this stuff, but it's more about the process, it's more about the consistency and really building it as part of your day-to-day job that I think is the winner today.

    Lauren Livak:
    And David, one thing I forgot to ask when we were talking about the scorecard was video. I know Target was really doubling down on video. Is that still the case? Are they still? They want to make sure there's video on every PDP? It's really showcasing the product. Is that still an investment for them?

    David Glaza:
    It is, but today, so yes, they require, Require is not correct, but they score you on having at least one or two videos for every UPC. And so most brands do. That was rolled out a couple years ago. They have, I would say they haven't really expanded it a ton yet, but there are providers out there. I know Amazon's expanded it right, where actually Amazon has pre-roll video, so it's not on the PDP but if you search for something it'll actually be on the search results and it'll start scrolling right in the app or on the web. And so that is something that theoretically Target could go to next, but today it's been a lot of just making sure it's on your PDP and they'll lock it into spot two or spot three within the image carousel for brands.

    Peter Crosby:
    David, so covered a lot here and thank you so much for your deep expertise. It's just great to hear somebody who's in the mix of it every day. If you are chatting with the Target channel manager that leads the effort at a brand and they're like, "All right, 2023, I want to up my game." What is it you would tell them to do? What do you see on the horizon that's worth investing in right now?

    David Glaza:
    Yeah, I mean, if there is somebody that hasn't done a lot of retail media, I think it's really just trying to develop an always on mindset and how are you always running Creideo or always running Circle. I think a lot of sales people have short thoughts of it, it's something you only turn on when you have problems like, "Oh my brand's not selling and crap, I got to go invest some money." And then they're looking at four weeks out, six weeks out, eight weeks out. Where our opinion is, just with the digital landscape is you need to be beating that drum every day of the year. Even for a highly successful brand, they should be investing money back into awareness and trial every day of the year. So I guess that's probably the biggest push for somebody that just isn't up on it yet, if you will.

    David Glaza:
    For brands that are pretty good, I think the biggest shift is into the third party media. So a lot of brands have been running around Dell, they do a pretty good job on Digital Shelf, they do a Creideo program, but they haven't yet flipped the switch to third party programming in sort of a localized way. Where we have brand partners that have started to max out either what they want to spend on site or can spend on site and then they're still trying to find ways to acquire new shoppers. And so that idea, again that most of Target's digital sales are happening within a five mile bubble of the store, is that we've really grown a lot of brands' businesses by really pushing and overlaying media in that way and then being able to actively manage it. So to answer your question, that's sort of been the last step for a lot of brands that maybe have kind of figured retail media out but are still keeping up to speed with the latest trends. That's really taken hold more in the last year or two.

    Peter Crosby:
    And it seems like especially with Target, because as you said earlier, the percentage of people who are actually picking up in store or engaging with a store to actually get the product no matter where they ordered it is super high.

    David Glaza:
    Yep. Yeah, with our media tactic there, we kind of talk about it, we're not trying to convince somebody to shop at a different retailer. We're more saying, "Okay, who's already spending a lot of money a year at Target and it's probably going there this weekend," or creating a ship order this weekend. We want to find them and attach your item to their basket. And so that's a little bit different than trying to make somebody completely aware of a brand and we don't care where they fulfill. We do care whether they fulfill because we can get the best ROI if we actually already know that person loves to shop Target and you're prominently featured there, then great. They can fulfill it there for you.

    Lauren Livak:
    Everyone knows when you walk into Target... I was just going to say, everyone knows when you walk into Target, you walk out with something that you didn't intend to buy.

    David Glaza:
    But hopefully you saw an ad two days ago before it, right? Then they're like, "Oh."

    Lauren Livak:
    Exactly.

    David Glaza:
    I did see that ad. It does look pretty cool or pretty yummy or whatever. And it's an easier ad into your cart than maybe if you had never seen it before, so

    Peter Crosby:
    Yeah, I mean there's a never ending maturity curve in everything that we do in e-commerce and omnichannel. So David, thank you so much for, as I said, just bringing your Target brain to the podcast. We really appreciate the deep dive. Thank you.


    David Glaza:
    Yeah, great to talk with you guys. Appreciated being here. Thank you.

    Peter Crosby:
    Thanks again to David for sharing the depth and breadth of his knowledge with us. Pop on over to digitalshelfinstitute.org and become a member to keep up with everything we have going on. Thanks for being part of our community.