What happens when a University of Buffalo panel on "Data in the Age of AI" doesn't get recorded? IGA VP Brand Development Michael La Kier brings the conversation to the Shopper Matters podcast to share the important topic with the masses.
In the latest episode of Shopper Matters, La Kier spoke with two Goodway Group leaders: SVP of Growth Joe Frick, and VP of Commerce Media Briana Finelli. Together, they unpacked what data readiness really looks like for retail and brand teams, where commerce media is heading, and why the shopper — not the technology — should always be the north star.
Watch the episode above or listen on your favorite podcast platform: Apple, Podbean, Spotify
The trio wasted no time cutting through the buzzword fog. Finelli, who brings a decade of commerce and retail media experience, was direct: AI is only as good as the data infrastructure underneath it.
"You need foundational layers in place and data integrity in order for AI to orchestrate or sit on top of" any process, she said. Without clean, connected, interoperable data, AI doesn't accelerate your business. Rather, it accelerates your mistakes.
Frick, whose career spans 30-plus years in data-driven marketing, reinforced this point: 90% of campaign execution problems live in the "plumbing," which is the connectivity between data sets, the normalization of taxonomies, the breaks between systems. His advice for organizations looking to get AI-ready? Start by auditing where your data resides and where the pipes are leaking. That discovery work can't start soon enough.
La Kier added a framing that applies well beyond AI: spend 95% of your time articulating the right questions. The tool comes second, whether it's AI, commerce media, or anything else.
One of the episode's richest threads was what Finelli called the translation problem: the gap between what brands are trying to accomplish and what retailers are set up to deliver.
Brands come to retail media with individualized goals: conquest targeting, basket diversification, loyalty reinforcement, trip frequency. Retailers, meanwhile, are building standardized measurement frameworks that can't possibly fit every brand's definition of success.
"Every brand has their own definition of incrementality," Finelli noted, "and yet retailers are still making incrementality metrics as if one fits all."
Frick, who has served on retail media committees, acknowledged that early standards work that defined impressions, clicks, and attributed sales was necessary but only a starting point. The deeper work is organizational: getting marketing, finance, sales, and retail partners aligned around a shared dictionary of terms and a shared understanding of what "winning" looks like for each relationship.
The takeaway for IGA members: joint business planning conversations need to go deeper than media plans. Retailers who genuinely listen to what a brand is trying to accomplish — and help them get there — will be the ones that build lasting supplier relationships.
The conversation took an entertaining turn when La Kier brought up agentic commerce: the idea that AI agents will soon shop on consumers' behalf, potentially rendering impression-based retail media obsolete.
Finelli was measured but skeptical. She recalled predictions from a decade ago that smart refrigerators would auto-reorder eggs, which, as we know, never materialized.
"We consistently overestimate consumer adoption of technology and how far it will actually go," she said. She also pushed back on the assumption that younger shoppers are fleeing physical stores: Gen Z, she noted, loves the in-store experience precisely because it's faster than waiting for delivery.
For IGA members operating neighborhood grocery stores, that's an encouraging data point. With 84-90% of grocery purchases still happening in store, the physical retail environment remains the core of the shopping experience, and the most valuable media channel brands have access to.
The episode closed with concrete, audience-specific advice:
For brands: Break down the silos between shopper marketing, trade, media, and eCommerce teams. Dollars pointed in the same direction, toward a unified brief and shared KPIs, will drive measurably better outcomes than fragmented, channel-by-channel efforts.
For retailers: Listen carefully in joint business planning discussions. Find the common ground between your commercial goals and a brand's success metrics. Being the retailer that helped a brand win will matter more long-term than squeezing every last impression.
For agencies: Embrace AI tools to free up time for strategic thinking. Campaign activation can increasingly be automated; the irreplaceable value agencies provide is insight, judgment, and partnership.
No matter how fast the technology moves, all three guests landed on the same conclusion: shoppers matter most. Every data decision, every AI implementation, every retail media investment should ultimately serve the customer experience, not just the revenue target.
As Frick put it, "Never forget who the customers are. Shoppers care about their experience with a store. Shoppers care about their experience with a brand. That's got to be first and foremost."
For IGA members and partners navigating the evolving commerce media landscape, that's a reminder worth printing out.
Click to listen to the full episode.