VaynerMedia hires Dentsu exec to build out retail media team

VaynerMedia has hired Mike Feldman from Dentsu to lead its retail media practice as the agency looks to grow its capabilities in the increasingly competitive market. The hiring comes as many agencies look to their retail media practices as a calling card of sorts, as the medium continues to be one of the fastest-growing spaces for ad investment. It is crucial for agencies to up their retail capabilities, said John Terrana, chief media officer at VaynerMedia. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs Over the past three years, Terrana said the agency has seen client spend in retail media increase five to seven times—and that returns on investment have outpaced that significantly at 15 to 20 times growth. Feldman will serve as senior VP, global head of retail media at VaynerMedia. He will report to Terrana and be in charge of building out his team within the media investment division. Feldman brings both agency and brand-side experience after leading digital media and commerce practices at Dentsu (where he served most recently as senior VP, head of commerce and retail media), Publicis’s Zenith, IPG’s Mediahub and Georgia-Pacific, maker of paper goods such as Quilted Northern toilet paper and Brawny paper towels. Also read: A guide to retail media “Brands continue to underestimate the importance of balancing their retail media strategy with their other marketing efforts to enable them to build demand,” said Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of VaynerMedia, in a statement. “It’s key to have a balance of retail media and broader marketing spend to maximize some demand creation, and not just be reliant on search within retail media environments.” The retail media segment includes buying inventory owned by retailers such as ads among search results on an e-commerce site as well as offering marketers valuable shopper insights. In North America, investment in retail media grew over 9% in 2023 and constituted about a quarter of media spend last year, according to GroupM. “A lot of brands still think about retail media as a cost of doing business—it’s something you have to do to do business with Walmart, Amazon or Target,” said Terrana. VaynerMedia, though, sees retail media as a starting point for better planning and creative for the rest of a brand’s marketing. The utility of retail media’s deep and quick consumer insights is obvious for consumer packaged goods clients, said Terrana, but additional categories are also discovering the value of retail data. For example, “I can take an Amazon profile of someone, and tell there’s a really good likelihood they have two or three kids that play soccer that are of a certain age and with an Amazon Prime Video ad, I can start serving them advertising to go buy their next minivan” for an auto client, said Terrana. “To have my team in media be able to bring those profiles to a creative person, they’re like, ‘This is awesome. I know exactly who this person is, and what the ad should become.’” This collaboration between media and creative practice is where VaynerMedia is placing its bets to win business through its retail media practice. While Terrana said opportunities to create innovative creative for retail media network inventory are mostly confined to static display ads, progress in video and formats that could incorporate influencer content, for example, is being made. But the opportunity to test creative variations against different retail media segments in streaming and digital video is an exciting space to explore. “It was a comment Gary Vaynerchuk made in 2015 predicting the death of shopper marketing that helped formulate my approach to the future of retail media. So, it’s full circle that I’m now joining VaynerMedia to further build their retail media practice,” Feldman said in a statement. “I firmly believe if you are not integrating brand and retail media, you’re doing it wrong.”

VaynerMedia hires Dentsu exec to build out retail media team

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