[00:00:00] Welcome to Unpacking the Digital Shelf 8-pack Edition, where we explore the unique challenges and opportunities shaping digital commerce across Asia Pacific, with insights from the region's top experts.
[00:00:13] To Unpacking the Digital Shelf 8-pack Edition, we are flipping the script on this episode and I'm going to be hosting our host, Teresa, and then welcoming on Jill here to talk about the Inside Digital and E-Commerce Report by Arctic
[00:00:41] Fox for 2026. This is the sixth version of this report and what's really, really exciting about it is it talks about trends for retailers and for brands, what's happening in the space from omnichannel to loyalty to retail media to digital shelf and data. So let's dig in. Hi Teresa. Hi Jill. How's it going? Very well. How are you?
[00:01:04] Good. I'm excited to be back for, this is the second round of us doing this report readout, which is kind of full circle for the 8-pack edition of the podcast. This is exciting. Very exciting. Super exciting. I love it. I love the enthusiasm. Awesome. So, alright, well, let's dive in. I mean, this has been a study that you've been doing for several years now and it's really been just like a market leader and really a barometer for Australia around what's happening, what to think about, what's coming next.
[00:01:34] So, before we actually dive into the findings themselves, Teresa, why don't you set the stage in terms of how you thought about the report this year, what the direction was and just kind of center everyone on that. Sounds great. Thanks, Lauren. So, yes, this is the sixth year of our report that we produce in conjunction with Six Degrees Executive. And every year we ask ourselves, how can we make it more valuable for the market?
[00:01:57] And this year we've made a pretty deliberate pivot. Rather than continuing to take a broad view across the entire industry, we've decided to go deeper on two sectors that are really interwoven and those being retailing and brand manufacturing.
[00:02:12] And we've rebranded the report this year as Inside Digital and e-commerce 2026, which better reflects the sharper focus. And the timing really felt right for us to do so. We wanted to understand how organizations are really evolving in response to disruptive trends like, of course, AI and key shifts from a customer and shopper behavioral point of view.
[00:02:36] So, that's one of the reasons. And then when we look at these two together, you start to see some really interesting dynamics where they're aligned, where the tensions are, and where the relationships between the two need to evolve. So, a little bit more context about the respondents. This year's study, we've leveraged insights from 107 leaders. And those leaders come from, again, both retailing and brand manufacturing.
[00:03:04] And they hold senior roles across digital, marketing, e-commerce, sales, retail media. And they represent some of the biggest and best blue chip brands in Australia, but also emerging brands. And so, it gives us a really strong read on what is happening within the market. And I really love that you're doing brands and retailers because I feel like we all need to work together to make this possible in the world and commerce.
[00:03:31] And so, seeing both sides of it is super, super important. So, I really love that perspective. And Teresa, you spend a lot of your time talking to brands, talking to retailers, working in the market. Like, how did those conversations and the things that you heard as you were talking to brands and retailers really kind of shape the research and even, I guess, overall themes? Yeah, it's a really good question. And you're absolutely right. We work with a lot of different brands in market.
[00:03:59] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Unpacking the Digital Shelf 8-pack Edition. We are flipping the script on this episode, and I'm going to be hosting our host, Teresa, and then welcoming on Jill here to talk about the Inside Digital and E-Commerce Report by Arktic Fox for 2026.
[00:04:18] This is the sixth version of this report. And what's really, really exciting about it is it talks about trends for retailers and for brands, what's happening in the space from omni-channel to loyalty to retail media to digital shelf and data. So, let's dig in. That really help support us every single year to determine how it is that we're going to shape the report.
[00:04:44] So, when we think about what it was that was really starting to trend locally, there were a few things that we couldn't ignore. The first is an obvious one, but obviously remiss of me not to say it. AI was no longer a conversation happening on the fringes. We were seeing it come up repeatedly in boardroom conversations, in briefs that we were receiving, in questions that retailers and brand manufacturers were asking us.
[00:05:10] And so, the urgency felt different to previous years and previous trends. Australian retailers and brands have at times, with other trends, taken a bit of a wait-and-see approach and a more cautious approach to global counterparts. So, we wanted to understand whether that pattern was holding up this time around or whether that urgency to adapt was as widespread as we were actually observing and what we were hearing. So, that was the first one.
[00:05:35] And then, on the loyalty front, we have observed in the local market that it was becoming a much bigger strategic focus, both for retailers and for brands. And we believe part of that, particularly from a retailer perspective, is driven by the growth and focus on retail media. Obviously, first-party data is such a critical component of retail media networks to be able to drive targeting, deliver measurement and more. So, we wanted to unpack that in greater depth.
[00:06:04] And then, we also felt that the focus and emphasis on product content had really shifted locally. For years, retailers have been obsessed about customer data. And sorry, Jill, close your ears for one moment. Product data has often been the poor cousin. And we felt, though, that there was a material shift happening, again, connected back to the AI piece.
[00:06:29] And so, we wanted to also unpack that, determine our brands leaning in and retailers leaning in more heavily. And so, we sought to unpack that as well, along with many other things as part of this year's study. And I love that you mentioned the kind of wait-and-see perspective, because I feel like that is actually something that people thought about e-commerce at one point. It's not. I know. Crazy to think about that. But this is different. I mean, this is happening faster.
[00:06:58] It is hitting every element of the business. So, like, if brands and retailers are listening to this, you cannot wait and see. Because if you do, the amount of time it will take you to get to where you need to go is just exponentially greater than ever before. Absolutely. And I think that the question for retailers and brands isn't, are we thinking about it? Or are we actively pursuing strategies? Is, are we doing enough fast enough?
[00:07:27] And is our investment slate, you know, deep enough to support the shifts that we may need to make as organizations? And so, that's been really front of mind, post seeing the results of the report, which, again, will unpack what's happening on the AI front. I love it. I love it. All right. Let's, let's dive into it. Let's start with retailers. What was a big standout finding? And were there kind of any moments where you were like, huh, I didn't expect that to see that in the data?
[00:07:58] So, there's a few that I'll cover. I mean, there's so many things within the report, you know, that were interesting and surprising. But there's a couple probably that, you know, have really stuck with me since undertaking the analysis and developing the report. So, the first is that 79% of retail leaders agree that their loyalty programs need to evolve to meet changing customer and shopper needs. So, basically, four and five.
[00:08:21] And a similar proportion said loyalty strategies and initiatives are their key strategic focus over the next 12 to 18 months as part of their organizational strategy. And that signals not only the importance of loyalty, but the real scrutiny that loyalty programs are under right now and how important they are to unlocking growth and protective or protecting against competitive threats like marketplaces and Amazon in our local market.
[00:08:49] So, in terms of where the evolution is heading and what trends we're seeing around loyalty, it's everything from evolution of programs that allow pooling and sharing of accounts, reward customizations at a more personalized level, and more meaningful status recognition. So, that's the first. And did that surprise me? Again, we knew that there was a greater focus on loyalty. We didn't know how fundamentally retailers wanted to adapt and evolve in order to meet the modern consumer's needs.
[00:09:19] So, that was a little bit of a surprise. The second is the widespread adoption of owned marketplaces by retailers in our local markets. So, nearly one in three Australian retailers now have one. And I genuinely didn't expect for that to be so high.
[00:09:35] Recent entrants include Country Road, Kmart, and there's now a real range of options for brand manufacturers looking to diversify their channel strategy, both through open and closed marketplaces and are able to do so through partnerships. So, that was a really big one for us. And then finally, on the AI front, we wanted to test how significantly retail leaders believed that AI and agentic commerce will change and shape the way shoppers buy.
[00:10:04] And so, what we found was 52% believe the impact will be significant and 31% believe it will be moderate. So, that's over 80% expecting meaningful disruption, again to different degrees. And that belief is translating into investment. And so, when we think about where are retailers investing, what we heard from them was three things.
[00:10:32] The top area of investment where retailers are making moderate to significant investment was product content and optimization was at nearly 80%. Closely followed by improving on-site search and discoverability at 76%. And then sizable and significant investment also going into personalization at 67%. So, there you go. There's a few kind of key sound bites in terms of what we found from a retailer perspective. I love it. And Jill, let's bring you in here.
[00:11:01] You're partnering with retailers every day. You're kind of seeing some of these changes. And 80%, that's a significant number. And people think that it's going to be disruptive, which I think we can all agree. But do the retailers have the right foundations? Are they able to execute? Like, what are you seeing on the content side that is helping them kind of form that perspective? Yeah.
[00:11:25] Also, we know that there are two key pillars that underpin AI, product discovery and agentic commerce. The first is a social proof. So, things like reviews and user-generated content and things like purchasing velocity. So, effectively, how popular is that product? The second is the product information. So, what the product is and how it fits into the context of a customer's, you know, their lifestyle and their needs.
[00:11:55] So, when it comes to the product info pillow, which is my space, I would say it's very mixed with retailers in this region. Some retailers have already built strong product content foundations. So, we are now helping them to optimize not just for the human consumer, but also now, you know, going deeper with their product data,
[00:12:19] making sure it's machine-readable, it's nuanced and making sure it's reliable for AI agents. So, we're having those conversations now with those more mature retailers. On the other hand, there are still a lot of retailers who have just really under-invested in this space. And for those retailers, it is really the conversation is just going back to the basics.
[00:12:44] It's like we are just trying to help them get the basics right first so that they can then get that sort of that foundation that they can then start to build on. But, yeah, very, very mixed. Interested to hear that so many are saying they're investing in product content. Look forward to seeing that. Being brilliant at the basics never goes out of style. It's got to be number one. Sorry. Go ahead, Teresa. Yeah. Can I ask you a question? It's interesting.
[00:13:12] You know, one of the things that we're hearing from certain retailers in market is that a few of them are already leveraging AI to build more depth from a product content perspective and build out more structured data. How widespread are you seeing that within market in terms of the retailers doing it on behalf of the brands? Yeah, I think there's an attempt to, you know, to do it and not effectively yet.
[00:13:39] So, yeah, I think it's that sort of silver bullet trying to shortcut the hard work. Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of conversation about it, not seeing effective execution. It's about brand risk. That's what I was going to say. It's a challenge for brands. Yeah. It's brand risk and it's retailer risk.
[00:14:02] And it actually, a conversation we're having with a lot of retailers is about that liability risk as well and where that sits. You know, the fact that that needs to be in underlying contracts, but then also they need to make sure that they're collaborating properly to mitigate it across the chain. That's right. There's a real governance requirement or, you know, that sits and wraps around that in order to protect both parties. And I think that's a really important watch out as well for brands.
[00:14:30] Are your key customers doing it? And if so, how can we work together to do it? Or are we at risk from a brand point of view? Yeah. And that needs to be a conversation in your joint business planning and all of your quarterly meetings. Like, have conversations, ask those questions because I've seen it go incredibly wrong. Especially when brands are given X amount of days to review or approve.
[00:14:56] So just to watch out as I think both sides are trying to create the best content possible to have the best experience. So, Teresa, let's flip to the brand manufacturer side. So any call outs from the data there or big gaps or opportunities from the brand manufacturers? Yeah. Yeah. So a few key standouts from the brand manufacturing side.
[00:15:18] And so the first for me is that digital shelf and e-commerce has really gone from optional to table stakes in Australia. And it's funny, Lauren, you were just talking before about e-commerce and, you know, we were slow to start. Brand manufacturers in Australia have been quite slow to start from an e-com and digital shelf point of view. But we're really starting to see that mindset shift. And so that's really encouraging. We're really pleased to see that.
[00:15:45] As it pertains to priorities, product content and digital shelf execution is now the number one priority for the year ahead, which is also really encouraging to see. 63% of brands cited it as their top priority alongside of channel expansion at 45%. And when you consider what is happening locally, what the report has found is that 47% of brands are now managing five or more channels from an e-com point of view.
[00:16:12] And 22% are managing more than 10. So the complexity of that execution challenge becomes really clear. And so that's really interesting. I think from a brand standpoint, it's not just about being within those channels. It's about how do we execute well and consistently across our digital shelf.
[00:16:34] From a channel's point of view, the channels that are commanding the most investment attention, a quick commerce or rapid delivery is also obviously referred to. And that's really driven by major retailer partnerships that have occurred over the last 12 months. We've seen DoorDash and Uber Eats partner with the likes of Bunnings and Mitre 10 as examples. So, you know, you can get your rapid delivery within 90 minutes or 30 minutes.
[00:17:01] I don't actually know the timeframe for your hardware and your DIY. But also it's occurring within electronic stationery and other verticals. So that was really interesting to see. And the flip side is when we look at the retail data, we also see that nearly one in four already have a quick commerce channel as part of their strategy.
[00:17:24] And 28% are planning to invest in quick commerce and rapid delivery over the next 12 to 18 months. So it's big for us. Again, it's been slower to move locally. And then the second big finding is really around retail media. So the vast majority of brands plan to increase or maintain their investment in the year ahead. But where the money is going is moving.
[00:17:51] So what we've seen from the study is that Amazon Ads is now taking a much bigger slice of the Australian retail media pie. Last year, 33% of brands were leveraging Amazon Ads. It's now 53%. So that adoption is growing rapidly. But there's some real tension occurring in the retail media space, which I want to touch on because I think it's really interesting. And we've finally got some data. Intuitively, you're going to know this sounds right. But we've got data to back it.
[00:18:20] So we've found that confidence in what retailers are promising is low. And brands are openly telling us they feel pressure to spend. So more than half of brands have told us they feel pressure to spend without sufficient budget or capacity to do so. And I think with the backdrop of the challenges of running a business in Australia at the moment, you know, we've got high levels of inflation, discretionary spend, consumer confidence is low.
[00:18:50] You know, these are real challenges. And nearly 50% of brands are now buying across four or more networks. So they've got choice. So retailers really need to start upping their game around measurement and effectiveness, demonstration. They can't just trade on their relationships. So that's the big second finding. And I've got one more if I can. Sorry. Go for it. So many good things that have come out of the report. The last one is really around AI preparedness.
[00:19:18] And so we asked brand leaders how confident they were in their foundations across product data, customer data or shopper data and Martech to support AI. And not one leader had high levels of confidence that their foundations are where they need to be to support their AI ambitions. Not one.
[00:19:42] So despite all of the talk and hype around AI and agentic commerce, I think brand manufacturers know they've got a lot of work to do locally. So I'll stop there. There's a big gap. So many more I could share, but I'll stop there. Gosh, there's so many good nuggets. But that last one, I think what's really interesting is you've also talked about the investment piece, right? A lot of brands and retailers are investing, but leaders don't feel that they have what they need to actually see success.
[00:20:11] So that's a big gap that needs to be filled with education, with upskilling, with organizational change. So there's a lot of pieces there that brands really need to focus on. Yeah, and we, you know, there's a lot of talk about the types of use cases. What is it that we want to deploy? Our ability to move fast, adapt, test, scale. We're only going to be able to move as fast as our foundations allow us to. And the quality of those tests will only be as good as the foundations are that are embedded.
[00:20:40] So I think it's a really big, you know, challenge and issue that brands are going to have to lean into if they are going to be successful in their ability and ambitions to adapt. I agree. And Jill, speaking of that, what have you really kind of seen from leading brands? Like, what are they focused on? Are they, do they have their data in check? Like, are they investing? What are some of the things you're seeing on the brand side? Yeah, well, actually, I was going to touch just before I get to that.
[00:21:09] Just, you know, we talked about with the retailers and Teresa was asking about, you know, are they using AI to try and create content that they're not necessarily getting from the suppliers? I mean, one thing that I just wanted to sort of dig down into a little bit is a couple of key things we're seeing is that retailers and marketplaces, rather than trying to get the content from the brands, are trying to use AI as their silver bullet, as we said. And we are seeing a lot of mass scraping of images from websites.
[00:21:37] Now, what we're hearing from suppliers is that that is creating a lot of problems because they are pulling back a lot of incorrect or very out of date content. One manufacturer joined, came to us recently and said, look, we just have to get control of our product content because our trading partners are using content from our website. And we haven't touched that in 10 years. It is so out of date.
[00:22:05] But that's a separate problem, Jill, isn't it? Because, you know, if we think about authority and source of truth, brand websites are back in vogue. And so, you know, that's also a call out for the brand manufacturers to start thinking about how we're showing up, what's our presence like online, and understand that those websites do play a critical role and increasingly so, particularly to drive machine preference. Yes. So I think that that's a daunting realisation.
[00:22:36] The other thing that was, I just heard recently from a big global AI content generation company. They said that they have been getting approached by retailers and marketplaces to use AI to create images, product images. And they said, they're having to say, we can't conjure product images out of thin air.
[00:22:59] You know, they're saying to me, you think about the myriad ways that AI can generate, you know, you put in prompts for a particular product and the almost infinitesimal number of versions it can come up with that are actually never going to be quite right. Right. And, you know, so they said that that's something they're sort of having to push back on and say, you know, then you need to have at least that accurate baseline image before you can actually use.
[00:23:27] Like the package flap, you know, that you made the label with. Maybe let's start there. Yeah. Now, I would say lifestyle images, lifestyle images you can do really, really easily. So if you've got the pack shot, you can stick it in a lifestyle image, like super, like our platform can do that like that. But yeah, you can't conjure product images out of thin air. So that's been quite funny. And it does remind me of, yeah, this is just the modern version of a very old theme.
[00:23:56] So we, back in the day, retailers were getting photographers to create the product images that they weren't getting from suppliers. We had a photography studio for a long time attached to our business for that purpose. We always had the same conversation with them. We will do this remediation for you. We can do it. We'll create the images. We'll do the data for you. But this is a stopgap. This is not a long-term solution because as soon as we finish going through your 10,000 SKUs or whatever it is, it's already going to be out of date.
[00:24:28] I'm going to start again. This is so interesting because, and probably we're going to end up in a very different place to Lauren's original question, but let's go with it. That's okay. The report has found that 26% of brands feel like retailers and marketplaces make it easy and painless to share their product content.
[00:24:51] We have clients that we've worked with that have gone through a major evolution of their product content, and it's taken two to three months to get it onto the retailer website. So, you know, what's fascinating about this conversation is retailers want the content.
[00:25:10] They're looking at how can AI support that, but they're not actually investing in core infrastructure and integration to support and enable brands to provide the data that they already have. 100%. 100%. 100%. I mean, I think back to my brand days. Like when I was on the brand side, one retailer, it will remain unnamed. It took six months to update an image. Who's going to update images then?
[00:25:39] Like I agree with you, Teresa. These are like the fundamental elements where you can talk about the shiny AI all you want, but if you can't get content to the retailer and they can't update your SKUs, it doesn't matter. And that's the fundamental piece that needs to be put in place. At the same time, there's lots of conversations happening about retail media and the need to invest more. But my ability as a brand to derive value and maximise my investment, the PDP is part of that conversation.
[00:26:08] And it needs to be part of that conversation in order to drive better return and outcomes from the investment that we're making. So, yeah, it's a fascinating space. Sorry, and I've taken us down a rabbit hole. So... I loved it. I loved it. Jill, did you have something you wanted to add? Because I know I had asked the question about leading brands and kind of what you're seeing there. Yeah.
[00:26:32] Well, so, I mean, just to that point that Teresa made about brands feeling like it's not, you know, it's not seamless for them to share their content. We are definitely finding that brands are becoming a lot more vocal now than they ever have been before. This is something that, you know, the brands that work with us used to complain to us. And we used to say, you've got to complain to the retailers. There's no point complaining to us. You've got to complain to the retailers.
[00:26:58] But they are now starting to get very vocal because it is just, it is such a source of pain. And the brands want their source of truth to connect to their trading partners' systems so that they can update quickly and accurately without errors and without manual intervention. But what we hear constantly from retailers, certainly in this region, I hear it all the time. They always say, that's the supplier's problem. That's not our problem. That's the supplier's problem.
[00:27:27] It's their content. It's their problem. A retailer I was talking to the other day said, we've got a supply portal. You know, they should just be taking the time and effort to put it into the supply portal. In the same breath, they said, for example, and they used one of the world's largest manufacturers as an example, and they are a client of ours. So I was interested. For example, he said, this brand, they're getting interns to enter the content into our portal.
[00:27:57] And I said, this is why I'm talking to you because they don't want to be using internet. But you think about this manufacturer. Think about the thousands and thousands of supplier portals they're being asked to go and enter content manually into. And so, again, it's like, you know, help us, help you. A hundred percent. Because at the point that the researchers found, right, 22% are leveraging more than 10 e-commerce channels.
[00:28:26] The ability to do that at scale where those integrations don't exist is really challenging. And not only to get the data there once, but to manage it ongoing and to optimize based on seasonal trends or major changes to the formula for which we produce that product. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:28:49] I mean, I can give you, you know, an example, a food manufacturer, client of ours, you know, I was talking to one of their retailers, just went and looked on a couple of these retailers' digital endpoints. And the pack shots were wrong on each one. And on one of them, there was a promotional, you know, big, exciting, the customer can win, you know, win some special thing in a promotion. Actually, if you looked closely, that promotion ended two years ago.
[00:29:19] Two years ago? And this is a very well-known retailer, but they've gone from being bricks and mortar. They're now in the digital space. They've got multiple digital endpoints. And yeah, you can just tell they've been holding this together with bubble gum and sticky tape. And, you know, I just feel sorry for the team. I feel sorry for the brand teams. I feel sorry for the retailer teams. It's the people at the coalface. They've got very small teams. Everyone says to me the same thing. Like, Jill, our team is so small.
[00:29:49] It doesn't matter whether it's one of the biggest retailers in the country. 100%. It doesn't matter who it is. They've all got very small teams. And so they're really struggling. People are really, really struggling to get this done without the investment. There's just not enough investment in this space. That's why I think it's so exciting to be in this industry right now because AI can really help enable to do a lot of that work. If you have the source of truth and good content and good data, right? Like, there's prerequisites.
[00:30:18] But, like, you can finally get to a place where you can do seasonal content because you can use AI to update those lifestyle images. So there's so much opportunity here. And we touched on this a bit throughout the entire conversation. But this is really a relationship and a partnership between the retailers and the brands. Like, and it has to be everyone coming together to figure this out, to be fully aligned. And, Jill, you're working with both sides of this, right?
[00:30:47] Where are you seeing that either the relationship is working or needs some adjustment or even some great examples of things that you've seen to be successful in that partnership? Yeah. Well, I mean, I'd say where it's working is honestly just where there is an alignment within the retailer that this is an important space. That's where it's working. It just comes down to investment. And it's not even a lot of dollar investment, truthfully. It blows my mind.
[00:31:16] It's just investing the resources really in the people to implement the right systems and then to manage it ongoing. That's all it takes. And as I said, this is not, you know, compared to some of the investments some of these retailers make, this is really not, you know, this is small in comparison. I mean, so that's the thing.
[00:31:35] And then I would also say once they're getting the foundations right, like, you know, within the platforms that we have, we're building so much AI capability into the platforms. It's amazing. So the businesses that are actually are in, they've got the foundations right, they're using it, their teams know, they've got adoption. Showing them now what they can do with AI is so exciting. It's actually fun because we're able to go into these meetings and people are excited.
[00:32:05] But they're only excited when they've already got these programs of work humming. And then it's like, okay, this is now, AI now becomes this massive optimization opportunity for them. We can't have those conversations where they haven't even invested in the basics. You just can't. So, yeah, that's... Mic drop moment. That's where I'm at. That is a mic drop moment. I think the interesting thing locally is how do I build that business case to demonstrate the return from investing in product content?
[00:32:35] And even outside of the AI piece, because sometimes it can be passed off as, oh, well, it's content. It's not that important. And I hate to say that. Sorry again. Close your ears. But, you know, the ability to tie investment in content to commercial outcomes, I think, has been a really big challenge locally. And we know that better content is going to drive better conversion, better visibility. And that is heightened, you know, in the era that we are now in.
[00:33:05] But I think that's sometimes the challenge, isn't it, for retailers and also brands. And that's why they've got the skinny teams is because being able to demonstrate and tie that to commercial outcomes, I would dare say, has been one of the biggest challenges. Yeah, I mean, I do think that AI becomes a tailwind in this space because they're going to get exposed. They're not going to be able to execute on all these AI initiatives without these foundations. But it's going to take time because at the moment, there's a lot of vibe coding.
[00:33:33] There's a lot of, you know, people running around saying they're doing AI initiatives. But it is just another technology, like technology. It is still garbage in, garbage out. It just is. So, as I said, it's a bit like the content generation. You can't conjure it out of thin air. It is not actually magic. It feels like magic sometimes. I sometimes feel like it's magic when I'm doing stuff with AI. But it's actually not. It is, you know, it is just a very sophisticated version of technology.
[00:34:02] So, yeah, watch this space. I would also say โ It's a crazy time to be in it. The other thing, just, Teresa, for our region, I think, is that, you know, there is just a reality. There hasn't been a lot of competition. I mean, that is the truth. We know. We operate in a market with, you know, with monopolies and duopolies. And so that is changing because as you, you know, as you say, starting to talk about, you know, the Ubers and the DoorDashes and Amazon's being the sleeping giant, but they're moving. Things are happening.
[00:34:32] They're not sleeping now. They're not sleeping anymore. I mean, we know because we're doing a lot with them now. It's in region. They are โ they're moving. That is the thing that will get the local retailers moving because they're going to be forced to. And they're going to be exposed because these big players are putting a lot of investment in this space. And I do worry, to be honest. I worry about our local retailers, truthfully. I just worry about how sort of sleepy they've been.
[00:35:01] So, yeah, I hope we can see some movement. Well, hopefully this podcast helps. Catalyst. The catalyst. Yeah, that's right. Become that catalyst. I agree. We have been somewhat complacent locally from a retail standpoint because of the things that you've just touched on. You know, we have been a duopoly market in many respects for a long time.
[00:35:24] I think that the size and scale of Amazon, even as it is today, can now no longer be ignored. And the pace of which they are growing revenue can no longer be ignored. And I think it's touching a number of retailers already, both from a retail media point of view as well as kind of core sales. Yeah. Yeah. So, before we kind of finish up, if you had to pick one thing, let's start with you, Jill.
[00:35:51] What would your piece of advice be to retailers and brands based on all the findings from the report? Yeah. Well, I guess I would say that in the world of AI-led recommendations and agentic commerce, it's about teaching the machine why it should choose your products.
[00:36:08] So, making sure your product data is accurate and consistent everywhere it appears, enriching the backend metadata and having good contextual information that explains why the product matters to a specific person at a specific moment. That is going to be really, really critical as machines take over a lot more of the retail space. And for retailers, just build the product data collaboration with your suppliers.
[00:36:37] You need to have the trusted data and you can only get it from, you know, the people who know what those products should look like and what they should be and what they should say. And so, build that collaboration so that, you know, so that you can execute in this next agentic era of commerce. I love it. Teresa, what's your piece of advice? I feel like Jill maybe stole some of my advice, but that's okay. Shows were very aligned in regions.
[00:37:08] So, my first piece of advice is read the report. Good piece of advice. I like it. I like it. Read the report. No, but more importantly, I think that, you know, Jill has kind of touched on it. The, you know, there's so much focus on technology. It is just another piece of technology, right? And so, my advice would be don't let the technology conversation crowd out the relationship conversation.
[00:37:33] The retailers and brands that will win in this environment are the ones that figure out how to go fast together. And I really do believe that, right? If we think about all the challenges we've just talked about, some of the solutions exist in the relationships and the partnering between the retailer and the brand manufacturer. So, that would be my advice. I love it. Amazing. Well, I second the read the report, download it. It's a great read. A lot of great insights.
[00:38:03] And, Teresa, thanks for letting me flip the script and host an episode of Unpacking the Digital Shelf APAC Edition. It was nice once again to be able to hand the hosting over to you, Lauren. So, thank you. And thank you, Jill. Pleasure. Thank you. Thanks, everyone.