The CPG Guys, a model and retail business podcast, began as a method for ecommerce skilled Sri Rajagopalan and information analytics specialist Peter V.S. Bond to remain on prime of business information throughout the pandemic.
Initially, Rajagopalan and Bond, who started their careers collectively on the CPG information and analytics firm IRI greater than 20 years in the past, tried a YouTube video collection.
That was no good.
They “shortly found video will not be their medium,” stated Bryan Gildenberg, who got here on because the podcast’s first visitor when he was heading up technique for Omnicom’s shopper and commerce advertising teams. He turned the third CPG man quickly after hanging up his shingle because the founding father of commerce consultancy Confluencer Commerce a few yr in the past.
Audio was extra moveable and a brand new medium the place common folks might construct an viewers. Additionally, it’s merely extra inexpensive to supply. The CPG Guys present nonetheless data video for each episode and provides the recordsdata to friends, who typically use the movies as promotional materials, Gildenberg stated.
The present takes a retail media and commerce media analytics slant, Gildenberg stated, bringing on friends from the likes of Amazon, Walmart Join, Albertsons Media Collective and Kroger Precision Advertising.
Retail media’s rise served as an “accelerant” for the podcast, which has grown organically to about 24,000 LinkedIn followers, with hundreds of downloads each episode. Its hottest episodes are typically these that includes senior entrepreneurs on the model and retail aspect.
Gildenberg spoke with AdExchanger.
AdExchanger: How do you select subjects or friends?
BRYAN GILDENBERG: About 50% of the episodes are direct business individuals, and 50% are service suppliers. The service suppliers are largely promoting based mostly. Like several content-based advert platform, you all the time decide: These folks confirmed up with a large verify, however is that attention-grabbing to our viewers?
We all the time attempt to discover advertisers which might be doing legitimately attention-grabbing work. The sponsored episodes are our major monetization software proper now.
The place ought to I make investments?
I’d say that’s not essentially our bailiwick. We love all of our youngsters equally.
It’ll be very attention-grabbing to see what occurs with the Instacart IPO. All of us discuss Instacart as a supply platform, nevertheless it makes most of its cash as an advertiser – as does Apple, by the way in which. And final quarter for those who have a look at Amazon’s monetary statements, they made extra {dollars} of revenue from promoting than the rest.
What misconceptions do folks have about CPGs and retail media?
Folks misunderstand Amazon’s enterprise mannequin. Most of what Amazon does, and what they’ve finished for years, is what one other retailer would name merchandising, which is permitting manufacturers to promote a product on the market fairly near the place the individual’s going to reside.
There’s a large false impression round how a lot of a CPG enterprise is ecommerce as a result of it’s method smaller than folks suppose. The brick-and-mortar retail ecosystem remains to be the place an awesome proportion of client merchandise are offered within the US. From an ecommerce standpoint, half the quantity is picked off the shelf of a retailer and fulfilled both by the retailer’s house supply community, supply from the shop or the consumer selecting it up on the retailer.
Why hasn’t shopping for groceries on-line caught on in the identical method that purchasing garments has?
The information would reveal that you simply’re shopping for too many little issues at one time, and the variability of what you purchase is sufficient that the method of doing it on-line just isn’t that straightforward. Retailers all constructed their ecommerce infrastructures to repeat Amazon’s, and Amazon is a one-item-at-a-time promoting ecosystem.
Instacart has a purpose-built grocery buying interface, and it’s one of many causes I’ve all the time remained fairly bullish on Instacart. It’s a greater consumer expertise for getting groceries than the retailer’s personal web site.
How is product discovery altering?
The outputs {that a} text-based generative AI like ChatGPT may give you might be extremely essential within the product discovery course of, and sooner or later [generative AI] goes to switch or complement search.
Proper now, for those who have a look at the place buyers are discovering new merchandise, more and more that’s coming by means of visible mediums which might be extra telephone and scrolling based mostly. [Google] works in a vertical method: class, subcategory, sub-subcategory. That’s the way in which most retailers work.
Instagram and TikTok don’t work that method in any respect as a result of they’re affinity based mostly. Although the scrolling course of is vertical, their content material group is extra horizontal. You get moved by means of what you’re focused on, a few of which is said to what you’re taking a look at, a few of which isn’t.
One of many causes Amazon’s Prime Day was as large because it was this yr was the linkage they made to TikTok. Amazon has changed into a conversion mechanism for demand.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
