Andrew Newman

Common sense and complexity in marketing measurement Yes, last-click attribution is suboptimal to other methods that consider and attempt to measure the contribution of all marketing efforts on commercial outcomes. Yes, last-click attribution introduces the risk that an advertiser invests money into a channel that does not deliver truly incremental outcomes. Yes, last-click attribution could result in analytics that wholly distort a business’ underlying marketing dynamics. But in certain circumstances, last-click attribution can be the best approach for measuring marketing outcomes.

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The Director of Marketing for a $500M merchandise retailer internally reviewed their CDP. Here are 2 things she says the vendor aced and 2 that might get them fired: 🏆//1 Great at Unifying Data She’s faced difficulties integrating past CDPs with the many 3rd-party tools her company uses. It always led to site slow-downs that limited their conversion rates. But her current vendor has seamlessly unified all their customer data across channels. No site slow-downs, no integration issues. And she loves how much it’s helped her better understand customer interactions. She’s also thrilled by how it’s made it easy to craft more relevant, compelling, and effective marketing in real-time for her customers. 👎//2 Not User-Friendly This CDP starts running into trouble with content creation and audience segments. She says, “It’s unnecessarily complex and difficult to manage.” Plus: - Navigating the platform is challenging - And its segmentation tools aren’t as intuitive as they could be - Causing friction in leveraging the CDP’s full range of capabilities 🏆//3 Effective Identity Resolution “We have a high number of customers using different platforms,” she says. So she needs a tool with strong identity resolution (IDR) capacities. The good news: She’s been thrilled with her CDP’s IDR. She says it’s significantly improved their reach “by uncovering an extra 20% of users across different devices!” 👎//4 Lack of Actionable Insights Despite the CDP’s effectiveness, she’s frustrated at how little guidance the vendor offers. “I’ve found myself guiding our CDP more than it’s been helping us,” she says. “It’s not ideal.” She’s hopeful though, as the platform has teased an upgrade that promises enhanced actionable insights. But if the vendor doesn’t deliver — this is going to be a big sticking point for her. She’s felt similarly irritated by a lack of actionable insights in other tools… Like their: - A/B testing AI tool - Personalization tool - Product recommendation tool She doesn’t want to have to waste hours digging for actionable insights. She wants platforms that make it easy for her to get the main points and quickly act on them to drive market growth. ___ Tl;dr A few *amazing* features won’t make up for others that constantly frustrate your clients. MarTech is a competitive market – if you don’t offer the full enchilada, buyers will find a competitor who will. Thoughts?

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Retail Media Ad Tech: Why cheap can cost you $$$ 🤑 In retail media, tech isn’t just a simple tool—it’s the engine driving ad revenue. Opting for budget tech may cut costs, but it often caps your growth potential. Here’s why: A retail media platform generating $50M in ad revenue might spend $5M on tech fees. Budget options could cut this to $1.5M, saving $3.5M—but that “savings” can cost you up to $200M in unrealized revenue. Advanced platforms double click-through rates and allow you to expand ad inventory, turning $50M into $250M. Leaders like The Home Depot and CVS know that high-performance tech is an investment that pays off. Oh, and we’re called Pentaleap for a reason—that’s the 5x our clients have seen in the many A/B tests we've run. Choose tech that drives growth, not just savings. #retailmedia #commercemedia #pentaleap

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Retail Media is passive income. When you hire us to do it. :) Kidding, been in all seriousness. It is probably the most MEASURABLE velocity tool. It is probably the most FLEXIBLE velocity tool. Here’s your go-to retail media platform list: -Kroger: 8451 -Ulta: UB Media -Target: Roundel -Costco: Costco Media -Best Buy: Best Buy Ads -Most Grocery: Instacart -Convenience: DoorDash -CVS: CVS Media Xchange -Walmart: Walmart Connect -Macy’s: Macy’s Media Network -Dollar Tree: Chesapeake Media -Sam’s Club: Sam’s Member Access -Home Depot: Home Depot Ad Center -Ahold (Food Lion, etal): AD Retail Media -Albertsons: Albertsons Media Collective -Walgreens: Walgreens Advertising Group -Chew.com: Chewy Retail Media (dotcom bonus) Citrus and Criteo can give you access to almost any other major retailers. There you have it. There’s your cheat sheet. Now, if you want it to be passive income… Or you want it to be passive velocity… Hit me up. :) ——— 🔹 We grow brands on Amazon. 🔹 We grow brands in Whole Foods, Walmart, Target, CVS, Macy’s, Instacart, etc. #ecommerce #retailmedia #retailmedianetworks #cpg #cpgbrands #retailstrategy #founderlife #instacart #ShopperMarketing #walmart #wholefoods

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DTC managers at multi-channel revenue brands are getting under-credited. Let me explain. I talk to dozens of brands per year that: • Sell across 3 primary channels (DTC, in store, Amazon) • Have "growth" or "performance" laddering into the DTC team • Track P&Ls separately across each rev stream It's usually the CMO or the VP of Growth or whoever manages the DTC line item who reaches out to me. They say something like this: "Ben, I keep having to cut my ad budgets because my DTC revenue is barely growing and efficiency is terrible! Can you help improve our marketing program?" This is a classic case of where company structures and KPIs dictate performance. The poor DTC manager is out here thinking that their growth marketing program is bad, but, in reality they've misdiagnosed the problem. When I dig in further with them, I end up finding out: • The DTC marketing budget is 90% of the ad budget • Amazon and in-store are both growing very well • There's no clear reason why a customer would buy direct Here's the harsh truth: it is very very VERY hard to make people buy in an experience that they don't prefer. Direct to consumer ecommerce is still only 13% of all retail transactions in the US. 13%! That's it! People prefer to buy on Amazon, or in Target, or at Sephora. Why wouldn't they? They've spent tens of billions of dollars building a brand that has a wide assortment of access, best prices, best fulfillment, etc. How can the lil ol' DTC manager compete? When I start to ask how the DTC team is being measured, it is usually some combination of: • DTC revenue over performance marketing costs • Touch based attribution performance • Customer surveys and trends How is it fair that 90% of the marketing budget is going toward something that's likely to only produce 13% of the sales? That doesn't mean that the marketing is ineffective, on the contrary, it means that the brand is measuring wrong. The Amazon and in-store team get all the credit while the DTC manager gets shafted. So how can you fix this? Properly understanding the contribution of ALL marketing across ALL revenue and customer interactions. We often see an equal if not GREATER contribution to incremental revenue and customer acquisition across Amazon and in-store than in DTC, even from "performance" campaigns that are driving directly to the website. Yes, really. For example: a performance Meta campaign might have a 1.5x incremental ROAS on DTC, a 1.5x incremental ROAS on Amazon, and a 1x incremental ROAS on in-store retail. That's a total of 4x iROAS vs the "proven" 1.5x iROAS. See it all the time across hundreds of tests and marketing mix models. Reach out to me and I can help dig you out of this pit. #dtc #attribution #incrementality #omnichannel

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We are living the midwit meme right now in eCommerce. Brands have zero confidence in the allocation of their media dollars. Despite having more tools than ever before, I have never seen more confusion inside of organizations. Proxy metrics have been substituted for financial measures and the allocation of capital has become disassociated from the financial return it intends to create. With the introduction of so many difference forms of measurement you create the ability to defend every channel. Your MTA, In platform, post purchase survey and incrementality studies often all say different things making every decision "defensible". Combine that with agencies or employees whose financial incentive is tied directly to channel performance and you immediately create a counter incentive to the financial health of the company. I can't tell you how much money we have seen be wasted on account of this problem. So what is the solution... Simplify. Build a connection between your in-platfrom results (i recommend 7 day click) and your primary business measurement for media (i recommened aMER). Best way to do that is with a geo holdout experiment that gives you a relative incrementality % for platform results. Use that weighted measure to set cost controls and you will never have to think about measurement again. But regardless of what system you choose fight for clarity and speed to action. Avoid decision paralysis and ambiguity. Think from first principles and measure the bank account.

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READ THIS CAREFULLY: If you’re just tracking sales, you’re leaving money on the table—literally. When I speak with eCommerce brands, the most common pain point they share is a lack of clarity on profitability. They’re drowning in data but starving for insights. They’re focused on what’s visible—sales—while the hidden costs beneath the surface, like shipping fees, transaction costs, CAC, and fulfilment expenses, quietly erode their profits. It always makes me pause because it’s the clearest signal that brands are only seeing a fraction of the whole picture. When I see high sales numbers, my first thought isn’t, “Great job!” It’s, “Are they actually making money?” Here’s the brutal truth: Just because your sales are up doesn’t mean your profits are too. Without a clear view of how your marketing spend, operational costs, and customer acquisition impact your bottom line, you’re sailing straight into dangerous waters. But there’s a better way. Imagine having a dashboard that not only tracks your sales but also reveals the bottom of the iceberg—giving you a complete profitability overview. Imagine knowing exactly how each dollar spent is affecting the profitability of your store. With StoreHero this is finally possible. Link to book a demo in the comments 👇

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Category leaders don't need to be different. But you need to differentiate against them. The data is clear: when prospects are evaluating you, they are always asking, 'but how is this different from [a brand they're aware of]'? Differentiation is a hard business strategy challenge, no doubt. It's much easier to try to spend more on ads, tweak website copywriting, declare a new category, and so on. Largely speaking, there are four buckets of differentiation: 1. Product differentiation. This is when your product does something other products don't do. It's highly effective, but extremely difficult to sustain. Every popular feature will get copied and commoditized over time. I listed RB2B here as an example, but as its founder Adam said, they're seeing new competitors emerge on the regular now. 2. Brand differentiation. Unique brand identity or market segment focus. Kit is a differentiated brand in a massively saturated category. Basecamp is irreplicable because of its personality and visible founders. 3. Operational differentiation. This is when you have a unique way of doing something. Maybe a different business model or processes that improve efficiency over traditional alternatives. Many companies do market research, but nobody does it on-demand and delivers a full insights in 24-48 hrs like Wynter does. The two-sided marketplace model is also a moat. Price differentiation also falls under the operational bucket (assuming you actually have some structural advantages to be able to deliver something cheaper sustainably). 4. Customer experience differentiation. Consumer markets are full of companies that compete and win on customer experience (Amazon, Ritz-Carlton, Chewy, etc). However I could not come up with any B2B SaaS companies that truly differentiate themselves on customer experience. Probably an opportunity for many.

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Very interesting chart. For Southeast Asia the context is different obviously but the key message remains: multi channel and balance.

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Pod alert! Does Amazon Ads actually save consumers money? How valuable is your data really? Is Retail Media considered marketing investment or cost of doing business? How do CPG companies navigate the long tail of Retail Media networks? All this and more in the last of my podcasts for Season 1 of The Lost Party Cookie! John Reiss is a 25-year veteran of digital media, behavioral data, and now Retail Media. His career spans numerous ventures across the Martech ecosystem including Tripadvisor, ComScore and now Axonet where they’re building the first national C-store retail media network by aggregating transaction data to provide CPG marketers with access to addressable shopper audiences. It was a pleasure to have John on the pod! Watch the full episode on Youtube < link in comments> As for the next season of pod, we are making an interesting pivot. We will focus on #GenAI in Enterprise, and you will hear from the best and the most future-forward C-suites on how they're using Gen AI to steer their company ahead. Watch this space! #retailMedia #adtech #GenAI #TheLostPartyCookiepodcast

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𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐂𝐏𝐆 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐮𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞’𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐨𝐧 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐚 𝐬𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐟𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 $𝟏𝟎𝟎𝐌+ 𝐀𝐑𝐑. Specially impressive is how Charles Coristine pivoted into 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐮𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 and yet systematically invested in the 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝. Being 𝐟𝐫𝐮𝐠𝐚𝐥, and yet raising just enough capital to make the 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐭𝐡. 𝐅𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐬. Doesn’t take a whole lot of mistakes to see those margins vanish. A bad production run. Not capturing wasted labor costs. Not ordering on time. Ordering more than necessary and tie up capital. 𝐒𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐢𝐧 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐭 𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐥 𝐢𝐭’𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫. Maintaining Cash flow is king. #food #manufacturing #branding #grossmargins #cashflows

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Positioning for growth tip 👇 I'm seeing go-to-market strategies reducing ad spend and headcount, with fewer BDRs working on unqualified contacts and fewer Account Execs working on real leads—someone who raised their hand to talk to Sales. This lowers CAC but requires a massive effort from your company talking heads to educate buyers where they learn things: specific events, LinkedIn, podcasts, and the like. It's not 2017. The way your buyers buy has changed. #hospitalitytechnology #hoteltechnology #hospitalitytech

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AdAttributionKit: Unpacking Apple’s new ad attribution framework AAK unifies Apple’s various advertising attribution frameworks under a single umbrella product name and extends SKAdNetwork in meaningful ways, including with support for re-engagement and alternative app marketplaces. These are substantive improvements. But impediments to adoption remain: IP-based attribution is still widely viewed as a suitable alternative to Apple’s native iOS attribution framework, meaning that platform tools like Conversion APIs will take adoption priority.

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eCommerce: Ad Dollar Growth and The Elephant in the Room ✨ Great data from the EMARKETER forecast highlights ad dollar investments across major platforms. Core Question: (1) How can brands optimize ad spend on leading platforms for maximum ROI? By the numbers: (5) 🎉 $29 billion <> Total ad $ growth (AMZ + other) 🎉 $22 billion <> Amazon ad $ growth 🎉 $14 billion <> Alphabet Inc. ad $ growth 🎉 $13 billion <> Meta ad $ growth 🎉 $5 billion <> TikTok ad $ growth Now What? (2) 1️⃣ Prioritize Amazon for retail-focused ad campaigns. 2️⃣ Expand into emerging platforms like TikTok to capture newer audiences. Roger Dunn — great share from you. #ecommerce #digital #omnichannel #strategy #cmo #cdo #ceo #cro #leadership #retailecommerceclub #cpg #privateequity #playtowin

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Interesting analysis by Circana and firstmovr looking at the correlation between frequency of PDP content and sales growth in select #CPG categories. Generally, the analysis shows that updating content more frequently drives larger YTD growth vs the category. It reinforces the value of: ⚫ Competitive insights to inform when the landscape has shifted and you must refresh content to stay relevant ⚫ #GenAI to speed up / scale #ecommerce content optimization ⚫ The right organizational structure to support content agility; this may mean creating a team in-between brand creative and customer sales team to get #SEO optimizations to shelf faster; think "performance content" ⚫ The value of #digitalshelf casuals integrated with #omnichannel sales data so you can even get to analyses like this (Note: Profitero data was used for the analysis)

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eCommerce: The Growth Lifecycle_Maximizing Long-Term Profitable Growth ✨ Exceptional visual by our friend Preston 🩳 Rutherford, co-founder of Chubbies Shorts. Core Question: (1) How can brands successfully navigate each stage (there are 7) of growth, avoid pitfalls, and maximize profits? Fun Facts: (3) 🎉 7 stages <> Brands must navigate seven distinct stages of growth, from DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) only to fully balanced, multi-channel distribution. 🎉 4 channels <> Digital DTC, Amazon, Wholesale, and Owned Stores are the four primary channels in which brands can expand. 🎉 Profits scale <> Balanced distribution across channels helps brands maximize profitability and grow long-term brand strength. Stages of Growth: (7) 🔐 Stage 1: Digital DTC Only — Brands are in the honeymoon phase, enjoying early success. It's crucial not to over-rotate on short-term wins. 🔐 Stage 2: DTC Only — Growth is happening, but hitting limits. Over-reliance on discounts and promotions can slow down long-term brand building. 🔐 Stage 3: DTC with Short-Term Tactics — Revenue grows, but too much focus on short-term tactics harms brand strength. 🔐 Stage 4: Adding Amazon — Brands open up new TAM (Total Addressable Market), but the overlap between DTC and Amazon can lead to cannibalization. 🔐 Stage 5: Adding Wholesale — The addition of wholesale fuels growth, but oversupply can lead to profit drops. 🔐 Stage 6: Balancing Channels — Proper balance across DTC, Amazon, and wholesale drives long-term success, as heavy discounting can impact margins. 🔐 Stage 7: Full Channel Balance — At this point, brands achieve healthy, resilient growth across all channels with strong profits and multiple revenue streams. Now What?: (2) 1️⃣ Strategic Channel Expansion — Ensure that the expansion into new channels (Amazon, wholesale, owned stores) is balanced with long-term brand strength, avoiding over-reliance on any single channel. 2️⃣ Focus on Profitability — As channels expand, profitability becomes key. Ensure you're not oversupplying or relying too heavily on discounts, and focus on a healthy balance across channels. #ecommerce #digital #omnichannel #strategy #cmo #cdo #ceo #cro #leadership #retailecommerceclub #cpg #privateequity #playtowin

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What if you could add $3M at 80% margin to your eCommerce business without having to sell a single additional product? Here is how the team at Homelife Media figured this margin innovation playbook...

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The secret to sustainable DTC growth? It's not just customer acquisition. It's mastering the art of working ON your business, not just IN it. Here's what that looks like: • Refine your brand strategy • Optimize your tech stack • Analyze customer lifetime value • Develop scalable systems I've helped brands turn slow periods into massive growth catalysts. How are you investing in your business's future today? #DTCGrowth #BusinessStrategy

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