In our final episode of the year, we step back and reflect on what we learned from recording 35 conversations across retail media.

This episode isn’t about predictions. It’s about synthesis.

Over the course of the year, we spoke with retailers, platforms, agencies, publishers, and infrastructure players — and a few consistent themes kept emerging. In this Holiday End Cap, we pull those threads together and talk through what actually changed once you look across all of those conversations at once.

We cover:

• Why merchandising still plays a central role in retail media organizations
• Where “performance” retail media starts to break down in practice
• Why managed service models are quietly resurging
• How in-store media forces discipline that online retail media often avoids
• Why federation, identity, and standards continue to matter for scale

We also talk about how the show itself evolved this year — adding new perspectives, spending more time on the road, and setting up for more on-site, in-store recording in 2026.

And yes, this episode also includes an introduction to Todd Sawicki’s new cat.

If you’re looking for a single episode that captures what we actually learned this year — and sets the context for what comes next — this is it.

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