LAS VEGAS — In order for a retail media network advertiser to accurately find consumers at the right moment, sometimes you have to travel back in time. About five years in the past, to be exact.
“We can look back at the consumer level for five years of their engagement and purchase with that product or brand,” Duncan Painter, CEO of Omni and Flywheel Commerce Network at Omnicom, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at CES. “When you can start to educate people on the granularity of history and understanding when someone can become a consumer, it doesn’t take long to realize.”
This depth of intelligence applies whether selling CPG products, automobiles, or pharmaceuticals, positioning Omnicom uniquely for long-term consumer understanding.
Omni operates as company OS
Omni functions as Omnicom’s operating system spanning brand research, creative concept development, competitive market performance analysis, creative production automation, campaign optimization using market performance data, live trading, and measurement across the ecosystem.
“In the most simple terms it’s the operating system of the company,” Painter said. “It starts right from the concept of how do I want to research this brand? How do I want to then take that through to a creative concept or design?”
The platform orchestrates workflows from initial research through trading platforms and media execution with closed-loop measurement.
Flywheel data powers intelligence
Flywheel Commerce Cloud platform’s deep retail consumer data—including purchase behavior and historical patterns—integrates into Omni’s core, making retail intelligence accessible across the company wherever relevant.
“All of that intelligence, deep intelligence of data, understanding of retail consumer information, consumer data, purchase behavior, all the look back history, all that knowledge is now at the core of how every single person in the company can understand where it’s relevant,” Painter said.
This applies across product categories from CPG to automotive to pharmaceuticals by revealing consumer habits and buying behaviors.
Strategic versus transactional mindset
Clients initially view commerce and retail information as final transaction push, but Amazon has demonstrated how intelligence gathered throughout consumer journeys over extended periods drives strategic value.
“Everyone thinks when they initially engage with commerce or retail information, that it is just about that final sort of push for a transaction,” Painter said. “But Amazon has set the pace certainly in the Western world for how to think about this in terms of the intelligence that they gather through the entire journey that a consumer has with them over a long term period.”
Networks extend throughout ecosystems
Amazon, Walmart, and category leaders recognize their consumer engagement knowledge power and are building capabilities that influence real-time decision-making throughout customer journeys across all touchpoints.
“More and more, I think you can see consumer networks and platforms becoming more and more influential through every phase of a consumer journey,” Painter said.
The shift happened rapidly, with every CTV platform now using Amazon’s consumer graph and knowledge to drive engagement less than a year after such integration seemed unlikely.
“Who would have thought less than a year ago that every CTV platform in the industry would now be using Amazon’s graph and knowledge of consumers to drive engagement?” Painter said.
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