Unpacking the Digital Shelf

Australia's online pet food and supplies market is booming, with the industry estimated to reach $1.2 billion in 2026. But with consumers shopping across grocery, specialist pet retailers, Amazon and quick commerce platforms, the retail landscape is becoming increasingly fragmented. So how do FMCG brands build an effective retail media strategy across multiple channels, and how do they measure success when they don't own the final transaction? In this episode of Unpacking the Digital Shelf: The APAC Edition, Teresa Sperti sits down with Ben Oliver, Media & ICP Lead at Mars Petcare, to unpack how the business is navigating this increasingly complex landscape. ...

Some TikTok Shop Stats: In H1 2026, global shoppers spent $50.3B on the platform—up 92% YoY. Analysts estimate global GMV will reach $123.5B by end-of-year 2026. In the US, TikTok Shop reached eBay's scale in two years—a feat that took eBay 30 years. Guest Malvika Jaggi, VP of Partnerships & Platforms at ecommerce aggregator and growth partner One Tree Brands, sees a clear TikTok Shop halo effect across marketplaces. Drawing on a decade leading ecommerce at Reckitt and Red Bull—where she managed a $400M omnichannel P&L across retailer.com, quick commerce, and last-mile platforms—she shares best practices for TikTok Shop and broa...

We are in chaotic times in marketing. Our guest David Tiltman, Chief Content Officer at WARC, mines some historical references to call it the “lightless middle of the tunnel”. But encouragingly, the most recent research is telling us that, even in the age of machines, brand matters. What are your distinctive brand assets? What are your category re-entry points? Being clear on those and ensuring that your entire consumer experience is rich with them - and coherent across all of the touchpoints - will drive value with both your audiences, human and machine.

Digital transformation was once sold as a destination. Today, we know the reality: it is a permanent state of being. As AI and Agentic Commerce accelerate the pace of disruption, your teams aren't just facing new tools—they are facing "transformation fatigue." How do you keep your workforce engaged, agile, and optimistic when the finish line keeps moving? This episode is an audio rebroadcast of a Digital Shelf Summit 2026 session that tackles the human side of the Agentic revolution. Our guests, Chelsey Alexander CEO & Founder at Open Gate Consulting, Jennifer Angelus, Senior Director-Digital Shelf, Ecosystems & Capabilities at Danone, Malvika Jaggi, VP...

Jamie Clapper here, and welcome to another episode of Unpacking the Digital Shelf: B2B Edition. Today, we’re joined by a true pioneer in the digital space—Steven Javor, Head of Digital Customer Experience and Channel Digital Commerce (Canada) at Schneider Electric. Steven has been shaping the digital landscape for over 30 years. From the early days of webcasts in the '90s to pioneering B2B ecommerce across Europe, the US, and Canada, he has seen every major shift in tech firsthand. In this episode, Steven takes us to the absolute cutting edge of digital marketing: Generative Engine Optimization, or G...

As AI fundamentally changes how consumers discover and buy products, the digital shelf is evolving into the agentic shelf. In this episode, Todd Hassenfelt, Chief Decision Officer at firstmovr, breaks down why brands can no longer rely on traditional search rankings or buying their way to the top. Todd explores how Amazon’s Alexa for Shopping influences consumer choices on product detail pages and explains why brands must adapt fast.

Social is continuing to evolve as a channel for discovery and commerce, with AI accelerating that evolution, bringing social content and product discovery closer together. And that creates an interesting new dynamic for brands, because the content created to inspire and influence shoppers is increasingly influencing what AI platforms and agentic experiences understand and recommend. Teresa is joined by Kate Musgrove, Managing Director - APAC at Bazaarvoice. Bazaarvoice works with brands and retailers around the world to harness the power of user-generated and creator content from ratings and reviews through to visual and social content to drive discovery, engagement, and...

Jeriad Zoghby has spent more than 20 years as the C-Suite whisperer for commerce with stints at leading firms like Accenture and IPG. He’s no longer whispering, he is shouting to the rooftops as the author of a new book “Competing at Machine Speed” and the co-founder of ACOS. In the book he and his co-authors lay out how the operating model most consumer goods brands built over the past fifty years was designed for a world that no longer exists. They describe the new operating system for commerce that you will need. One built to continuously sense what is changi...

Everyone knows this, but it still keeps happening - an expensive retail media campaign that leads to a neglected PDP, wasting time, money, and consumer loyalty. The madness must end! Our guests today, Amy Sillince, Global Head of Conversion and Carlota Mier, Global Performance Marketing Lead at Opella, have figured out the secret to maximizing return on retail media and growing conversions. Togetherness. They set the example through their close-knit personal rapport and respect, and content and retail media teams that ensure their plans are unified and outcomes well understood. It’s a model that every ecommerce and media le...

Bonus Episode! Tune in to hear the themes and takeaways from this year's Grocery Shop 2026 in Las Vegas, live from the show floor.

Paul Acito has spent decades leading transformation at global giants like Medtronic and 3M, and now is running Lyftbridge Innovation, helping enterprises use AI to drive transformation and measurable business impact. Paul discusses how the merging of human leadership capabilities with transformational technology is the great unlock to generate sustainable, profitable growth in this next era.

Winning in the New Omnichannel - a shopping journey that careens across the physical, digital, and now agentic shelf - takes a massive cross-functional effort that is continuously measured and optimized. Especially when it comes to the beverage category. Ben Galvin, with career stops at ABInbev, Constellation Brands, and now as Sr. Director Omnichannel Retail Sales & Ecommerce at Monster Energy, has built an always-on flywheel playbook that he continues to refine in order to drive incremental growth and lifetime customer value.

Selling at Walmart? Then this podcast is for you, with two of the sharpest brains in the ecommerce business, Russ Dieringer, Founder and Claire McBride, VP of Research and Education from Stratably. All the latest data on their quarter and the trends, pressures, and opportunities that are coming your way out of Bentonville.

What started as a way to order dinner has evolved into one of the fastest growing channels in Australian retail. Consumers are now buying everything from groceries and beauty products to hardware and home essentials, expecting delivery in minutes rather than days. As shopper expectations shift, retailers are expanding into new categories, new partnerships are emerging, and brands are rethinking how they engage consumers in a convenience-first world. In this episode of Unpacking the Digital Shelf – APAC Edition, Teresa Sperti is joined by Matt McGinley, Head of CPG and Retail at Uber Advertising ANZ, to unpack what's driving the rapid gr...

As the squished funnel of the AI shopping conversation continues to proliferate, we are seeing strong data that indicates conversion rates are higher than traditional search-based journeys. And with studies showing that 60% of consumers blame the brand itself, not the site or retailer they got the information on, the stakes for getting answer engine optimization right are rising. So Jing Feng, Co-founder and COO at AI marketing platform Bluefish joined us to share best practices and the cross-organizational orchestration required to win the recommendation.

In this episode, hosts Jamie Clapper and Lauren Livak Gilbert are joined by Nick Pericle, founder and owner of Tenexity, for a deep dive into the real-world application of AI in B2B e-commerce, distribution, and manufacturing. Drawing from over a decade of experience helping industrial businesses digitize and grow, Nick cuts through the hype to address why many organizations remain stuck in "planning mode" and how forward-thinking teams are escaping "pilot purgatory" to drive tangible ROI. From managing team mindsets and rethinking traditional job descriptions to building unified data layers that power future AI automation, Nick shares actionable insights...

Elise Barry has observed the shopper's growing control over their journey firsthand, moving from her early days managing spreadsheets on the agency side of ecommerce to her current role leading digital capabilities at Royal Canin. This evolution has placed urgent pressure on brands and retailers to transform the people, processes, and technology needed to support shopping journeys that can range from a single touchpoint to 17. On the podcast, Elise shares her perspective on the transformations necessary to prepare current and future generations of commerce organizations to thrive in this dynamic environment.

AI is already rewriting how consumers find products, and brands that aren't paying attention are going to feel it. Ideen Rahvar, Manager of Ecommerce Data and Analytics at Beiersdorf, saw it happen in real time: a live conference demo of ChatGPT recommending sunscreen skipped right over Coppertone. That moment became his wake-up call, and he's spent the time since decoding how AI evaluates brands and teaching the rest of his organization to do the same. Ideen joins the podcast to unpack why search is the golden metric of e-commerce, how AI is upending it, and what brands need to do...

The consumer journey is under one of the greatest transformations since, well, ecommerce. As AI and agents enable consumers to ask their individual questions, it is the challenger brands that are adapting to meet the moment and steal market share across many categories. Organizational silos are one of the greatest impediments to serving the consumer how, when, and where they want it. Lynsey Sweales, International Consultant & Facilitator, Founder of Cognitive Union, has found a solution that has transformed the operations of many brands. You all need to talk to each other. It’s the power of education and empathy, centered on...

Marketplaces have evolved from the fringes of retail to one of its most significant growth engines. With nearly one in three Australian retailers now operating a marketplace, brands are rethinking how and where they compete. In this episode, Teresa is joined by Mark Mansour, Managing Director of Woolworths MarketPlus, to explore the rapidly changing marketplace landscape. Together, they discuss what's driving retailers to launch marketplaces, how brands should think about where to play and how to win, what strong retailer-brand partnerships look like, and how AI and agentic commerce may shape the future of marketplaces. A must-listen for brands navigating...

Moments of great transformation, chaos, and opportunity, as we are in now, require thoughtful and transformational leadership. Now in her 11th year at Danone, Jennifer Angelus has elevated her career from an associate manager of shopper insights to now leading the digital, agentic, and brand.com strategies as the Sr. Director of Digital Shelf, Ecosystems, and Capabilities at Danone. Jennifer graciously agreed to share with our community how she inspires cohesion, connection, and scale to serve the consumer and drive growth.

Today, we are diving deep into a topic that is both incredibly massive and frequently misunderstood: the evolution of B2B digital commerce. If you ask five different people in a B2B manufacturing company to define "e-commerce," you’ll likely get five completely different answers. To some, it’s just Amazon. To others, it’s a customer portal. And to the traditional sales team, it can feel like a learning curve. Today, we are unpacking what e-commerce actually means in the complex world of wholesale distribution. Our guest, Sarah Kirwen, Director of ecommerce at Oatey, didn’t just inherit a digita...

Running the global digital and insights organization at one of the world’s largest and most storied CPG companies takes a combination of data chops, marketing savvy, and collaborative leadership skills. Keith Lehman, Global Director, Digital Commerce Marketing at Colgate-Palmolive has all of that, but in addition he credits his intense curiosity for being the additional element that helps drive the processes to help his internal customers uncover the next best action for growth. Keith joins the podcast to explain how they are building the machine to power Colgate’s next era of growth.

Can you imagine a CPG company with an 87% customer retention rate and a 50% subscribe and save rate on Amazon? Wouldn’t you want to know their secret? Well now you can, thanks to our guest today, Catherine Hayden, Chief Marketing Officer at Kate Farms, the #1 doctor-recommended plant-based nutrition brand. She recounts the journey that got them where they are today, and explains their tremendous investment in product quality, customer care, and medical research that drives trust and long term customer value.

VP of Marketing & Commerce Sha Atakhanov has been driving growth and innovation at homepathic brand Boiron for almost 17 years. From booking some of the first ads on Amazon to being an inaugural brand running shoppable ads on Samsung TVs, , Sha oversees all the channels and media that touch the consumer, and he approaches new opportunities and tech, especially AI, with a simple rule - it has to generate revenue, save time, and save money. And have some fun while you’re at it.

AI adoption in shopping is growing steadily, though demographic variations in this trend may influence where brands prioritize their investments.That’s why Nielsen IQ and the DSI teamed up on a combined report featuring consumer attitudes about AI in commerce, and brands leaders POV on how it is impacting their work and investments. Jack O’Leary, Director, eCommerce Strategic Insights at NIQ joins with the consumer numbers, and our own Lauren Livak Gilbert shares the brand data for a holistic view of the trajectory of AI in commerce.

Welcome to the very first episode of Unpacking the Digital Shelf: B2B Edition. To kick off this new series, we are joined by industry veteran Jason Hein. Jason brings over a decade of merchandising experience from McMaster-Carr and a foundational role building out Amazon Business's industrial catalog—but more importantly, he brings a fantastic sense of humor and a gift for storytelling that makes complex data actually fun to talk about. Today, he’s unpacking his 5 C’s of Product Data framework, sharing how to translate heavy technical jargon for everyday buyers, and giving us the exact tactical blueprint to bui...

The digital shelf has been joined by the agentic shelf — with AI agents no longer just tools in our marketing arsenal, they are emerging as a powerful, influential consumer segment actively shaping discovery, evaluation, and purchase decisions. In this audio version of a keynote from the Digital Shelf Summit, Jason Carmel, Global Creative Data Lead at VML, explains why enterprises need to re-think their marketing strategy to account for consumer machine agents, and how to do so while preserving authentic human connection.

Many brands spend years trying to earn their place on retail shelves. They pitch buyers, fight for space and hope their products will sell once they finally get there. But what if you flipped that model? What if you built so much demand online that retailers actually came looking for you? That’s exactly what today’s guest has done. Jaimee Vilela is the Managing Director of Cooki Haircare, a fast-growing Australian haircare brand she acquired just a few years ago. At the time, the business was doing just four sales a day. Since then, Jaimee and her team have tran...

So it turns out when you survey brand marketers, and then their consumers, you all are not on the same page. But if you get on the same page, if you get past logic and really mine the emotional layer of your consumers, you will strike gold. Sarah Levinson is a behavioral strategist for D2C, B2B, for brands small and large, and she has honed survey strategies and deep data analysis to deeply understand what consumers want, and really don’t want, from your brand. That can turn your total addressable market into your immediate addressable market, and he...

The apparel industry is super competitive, complex, and constantly in flux. No more than in how dramatically AI is transforming the industry and the way people work. Jason O’Toole, Head of Connected Commerce & Media at Gildan, has a saying that has served him throughout his experiences at brands like Spanx, Zegna, and his current role: when the game changes, you had better change with the game, and as soon as possible. He focused this sense of urgency and opportunity on what it means to the humans at the center of Gildan’s mission - the shopper. His team supercharges thei...

The leadership guru James C. Maxwell said “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.” Feels apt to this moment, doesn’t it? People are anxious about the impact AI will have on their lives and careers. The pace and intensity of the change around us is likely to continue, so it is incumbent upon each individual to find their way through - to be their own change agent. David Goodtree, CEO and Founder at Foodgraph, joins the podcast to talk through some of the best approaches to assess the opportunity and imagine your growth path.

As always with the three-legged stool of people, process, and technology, it’s the tech that gets all the buzz while it’s getting the other two legs right that really determine success or failure. Jo Lambadjieva, Founder and CEO of Amazing Wave and author of the AI in Ecommerce newsletter, invests all of her energy in helping ecommerce brands focus on enabling people to transform their processes using the right AI tooling for the job. She shares her advice 4 times a week with 70,000 newsletter readers and now, with all of you.

In this episode, we unpack the key findings from the newly released Inside Digital & eCommerce 2026 report from Arktic Fox & Six Degrees Executive. The report is a deep dive into how Australian retailers and brand manufacturers are navigating the next era of digital commerce, drawing on insights from more than 100 senior leaders across retail, eCommerce, marketing, digital and retail media. The conversation explores how AI and agentic commerce are reshaping the digital shelf, why loyalty is becoming a bigger strategic priority, and how marketplaces, quick commerce and retail media are intensifying execution complexity for brands. We also examine the growing importance...

When last we met on the podcast in 2022, Aaron Zagha, CMO at Newton Baby, was selling some amazing baby mattresses through DTC. 4 years later, and a lot has changed - they’ve gone full omnichannel, expanded their product portfolio, and built a community of parents that are sticking with them, and their email list, for years. Managing all that change takes a ton of rigor, controlling the bottom line while fueling topline growth. Aaron walks us through this journey on today’s podcast.

By the time he landed at his current Private Equity-led company, Matt Kreuger had 15 years under his belt building out ecommerce from scratch, growing global operations, and learning what it takes to drive growth across all different routes to the consumer. But as he says, “what was”doesn’t mean “what is”. Everything is always changing, and Matt, from his seat as SVP Digital Commerce and Marketplaces at Buffalo Games, is engineering growth with a lean and agile team and processes that are continually refined for today’s opportunities, and preparing for tomorrow’s. In addition to all the tech and the proces...

Being a challenger brand in the highly competitive baby formula category is not for the faint of heart. To the contrary, at HiPP Organic it takes a lot of heart, built from the family founders who needed a formula that their own child could tolerate. They now own 7% of the formula milk category in the UK and growing. Emily Jones, Ecommerce Channel Controller at HiPP Organic, joined the podcast to walk us through the omnichannel journey that is intensely focused on the needs of the parents and carers that they strive to connect with, wherever and however they want.

Retail media is attracting more investment than ever. Budgets are increasing. Networks are expanding. Expectations are rising. But one big question still sits underneath all of it: what actually drives performance? Because for many brands in the APAC region, retail media still feels like a black box. There are metrics. There are case studies. But there isn’t always clarity on what actually drives growth and which levers brands need to pull to shift performance. To answer that question, Coles 360 partnered with Circana to test a series of hypotheses around what truly drives retail media performance. Through the research, they id...

After one of the first gatherings of some ecommerce leads that I helped put together around 10 years ago, I will never forget what one of the attendees said to me - “thanks to this, I found my people.” From that sentence, the seeds of the Digital Shelf Institute were born. The desire to unite a community to figure all this stuff out together. Now the DSI is most fortunate to have another leader from ecommerce join our ranks to put her expertise, passion, and energy to work on growing and inspiring the DSI Community. Our guest today is Jamie Clapper, who...

EyeBuyDirect sells millions of pairs of glasses every year on their website, which makes every instant a shopper spends on their site a moment of truth. Sunny Jiang, CEO and President at EyeBuyDirect Inc, saw the potential of AI to use data to bring the insights of those millions of consumers to actionable life for every corner of the site and for every employee at EBD. She joins the podcast along with Sonal Gandhi, Chief Content Officer at The Lead to outline the details of an AI strategy that is laser focused on taking AI action for measurable results.