The combination of connected TV ads, retail media, and artificial intelligence offer marketers many compelling propositions. One possible value is the ability to know that an ad led to a completed purchase rather than having to rely on the “guesswork” of proxy metrics like ad clicks.
In a larger sense, that could fundamentally change how campaigns measure and improve performance.
“Were enabling our AI based optimizations to focus on an actual sale event instead of just someone clicking on an ad with potential intent,” Joe Kowan, global programmatic lead at Publicis Media, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan. “We can focus on what was that journey up to the sale and do that not just on a desktop, but in the living room experience.”
This capability merges retail media’s closed-loop measurement benefits with programmatic activation’s real-time optimization, delivering quantifiable performance outcomes for marketers.
Epsilon powers deterministic approach
Publicis Media avoids third-party cookie pools by building its planning and activation processes on Epsilon’s deterministic data foundation, enabling audience targeting based on actual shopper information rather than probabilistic modeling.
“We have Epsilon data at the core, which powers our entire planning process. So we’re now actually planning and activating on real audience data,” Kowan said. “We’ve avoided all the third party cookie pools and the opaque areas and are actually able to focus on true audience data.”
This deterministic foundation extends into retail media growth, where first-party shopper data adds to existing audience datasets rather than replacing them.
Living room impact measurable
Marketers have long recognized the living room as media’s most impactful environment, making CTV’s fusion with retail media signals particularly valuable for demonstrating measurable outcomes.
“That ability to fuse retail media data and those very legit signals into that living room experience, it’s a huge opportunity and marketers are already seeing how that pays off,” Kowan said.
Publicis Media advises clients to test rigorously as they expand retail media strategies from established onsite placements into offsite and connected TV opportunities.
Precision at scale achieved
Retail media data enables brands to launch upper-funnel branding campaigns while maintaining the measurement and optimization rigor typically associated with performance-focused programmatic buying.
“Now we have clients that are launching branding campaigns using retail media data and measuring and optimizing like we would in standard programmatic,” Kowan said. “That’s where we get to this precision at scale notion that we’ve wanted to deliver for our clients for some time.”
Agentic workflows augment strategy
AI and agentic workflows enhance retail media and programmatic capabilities by automating optimization tasks, allowing teams to focus on strategic elements that drive highest yield for marketing objectives.
“These capabilities will only further boost and enhance everything that we’re doing in this space. It allows our teams to augment their workflows with AI and focus on those strategic elements,” Kowan said.
The combination of real-time audience optimization, programmatic agility, and transparent measurement that powered earlier programmatic success now applies to retail media expansion, creating what Kowan said is “an exciting opportunity” for delivering efficiency and efficacy.
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