LAS VEGAS — Retail media is exploding, and Brian Gleason wants to take a big bite.
In a November investor update, Criteo outlined its own retail media offering.
Speaking at Omnicom’s Commerce Media Summit at CES 2025, Brian Gleason, President, CRO, Retail Media, Brian Gleason, offered his views on artificial intelligence, measurement and the future of retail media in this video interview with Beet.TV.
Retail media fuels discovery
Emarketer forecasts retail media will account for 21.8% of US digital advertising in 2028.
Retail media is “really about discovery,” Gleason told Beet.TV’s Lisa Granatstein, Editorial Director. He said consumers now expect digital discovery to mimic the in-store experience.
Digital environments require a “personalized experience,” he suggested: “If someone came up to me and said, ‘Hey Brian, I know you were looking for this’, the same is true for a digital environment.
“So whether I’m shopping in social, whether on a retailer site, or on the open web, AI plays a critical role.”
AI plays a ‘critical role’
Artificial intelligence has become essential to the world of retail media and e-commerce, explained Gleason.
Predictive: “AI plays a critical role in using all of the data signals that we have – whether it’s contextual data, whether it’s transactional data – to be able to make a prediction in that moment to the appropriate consumer with appropriate product,” he said.
Measurement: AI also plays “a significant role” in measurement. “Not all measurement is clean. So the ability to use AI or ML to model for measurement is incredibly valuable, too,” he said.
Creative: Getting the right message to the right consumer requires deploying the right creative asset. When a product connects with a consumer emotionally, “it’s that moment of joy,” Gleason said. AI plays “a critical role in bringing more and more of those moments to life”, he added.
Seamless experience
The retail media landscape is filled with numerous retail media networks vying for attention and ad dollars. The sheer number of platforms presents a challenge. To create a truly seamless and unified buying experience, platforms must prioritize scale and usability for both brands and retailers, Gleason said.
Criteo represents 225 of the largest retailers around the world, including 65% of the largest retailers in the US alone. “We’re trying to make it easy for brands and agencies to access these amazing environments,” Gleason added.
The ad-tech company is building “the largest retail media platform in the world,” according to Gleason. Criteo is creating standardized rules and practices across different retail platforms.
It’s like “building an interstate highway where you want as many lanes of traffic with rules, standards, where everybody knows how to drive, what the speed limit is, what the rules of engagement are,” he explained.
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