Michael, could you briefly share your journey and how your extensive experience has shaped your approach to driving global growth?
I’ve had a front-row seat to the incredible evolution this sector has seen thanks to my more than three decades of experience in the marketing and adtech space. Spanning from my early days on the job at ZDNet, to my experiences leading marketing and growth strategy at global giants like Epsilon and Oracle to my role today as Chief Strategy Officer at InMarket, I’ve defined my career by being open, interested, and passionate about exploring what’s next. As a result, I understand how coupling new technologies with data can responsibly drive connections with consumers that improve the brand experience as well as the results.
As the Chief Strategy Officer at InMarket, can you share what makes your role unique and how it has evolved over time?
As Chief Strategy Officer, it’s my job to help the C-Suite “discover what matters” for our company, employees, clients and their customers. It’s a matter of listening to these groups and then using those insights to guide the C-suite on where the market is going and how we could best get there. This includes aligning internally toward the company’s larger vision and goals as well as supporting our client’s success with their customers also in mind. I like to say the CSO sits in the “sweet spot between today and tomorrow, and business and innovation” in order to lead the market and accelerate success.
As the marketing industry and shopping landscape evolve what feels like everyday, it’s my job as CSO to keep us in lock step with that evolution. As new technologies are introduced, consumer behaviors evolve and InMarket further builds on its unique offerings, I have the responsibility of ensuring that all of these different stakeholders feel supported and excited about what’s ahead.
We’re hearing a lot about ‘sense and response’ marketing today. What does this concept mean for the future of brand-consumer relationships?
Consumers have come to expect hyper-personalized experiences from brands, creating the ‘sense and response’ marketing mandate. What it means for brands is that they must embrace data, real-time insights and technology that enable them to adapt to shifting consumer trends as they’re happening. By having these capabilities, brands can connect with shoppers contextually and at their precise moment of need with personalized advertisements that create value and improve the experience. This timely, relevant experience creates high engagement that has proven to generate greater conversion, incremental sales and return on ad spend (iROAS).
Marketers today have an upper-hand because they don’t have to wait until the next cycle to identify a shift in behavior or uncover a way they could’ve optimized the campaign. During times of economic uncertainty and hardship, like we’re facing today, this approach is crucial for meeting the needs of consumers, improving marketing effectiveness and ensuring business growth.
How do you envision its transformative potential in marketing, and how is InMarket leading the way in adopting these technologies?
The sophistication and number of signals in the customer purchase journey will continue to grow as media and shopping continue to become increasingly fragmented. Thanks to the emergence of AI, our ability to make sense of these signals and improve the entire process of building relevant and timely ads that connect with consumers is accelerating. From creative development, to data exploration, to campaign optimization and measurement data, AI and real-time technologies are redefining the marketing adtech stack and capabilities, allowing brands to better connect and adapt to consumer and market forces in real time – that sense and response capability that ensures brands stay ahead of the curve.
Since the early days at InMarket, we’ve focused on creating a platform that paves the way and leads this era of sense and response marketing, empowering marketers to uncover real-time shifts in consumer behavior, activate before and during that next shopping trip with hyper-relevant ad experiences, and then close the loop with real-time measurement and optimization. This turn-key, integrated solution ensures every ad dollar is working smarter and harder to drive the desired outcome and KPIs set by our clients.
The results we drive for our customers prove it. Our latest Breakthrough Moments Report highlights fantastic examples of brands like Olly, Danone, Bayer and Molson Coors, embracing sense and response marketing to drive results as high as an $8.15 iROAS, over $3 million in incremental sales and a click-through rate 16.8 times higher than the industry benchmark on a single campaign.
Our commitment to embracing innovation and evolving our technologies with the needs of consumers and our customers, alongside these market-leading results, is why leading brands put their trust in us.
What are some of the biggest challenges you see brands facing when it comes to capturing consumer attention, and how would you suggest them in overcoming these hurdles?
Fragmentation is the biggest challenge that brands face today. Media fragmentation is at an all-time high with the emergence of new channels all vying for consumers’ attention. That’s not all—rising costs on categories from essential and staple goods to housing and travel have forced a hunt for value, escalating fragmented shopping behaviors, where consumers shop across retail channels to find the best deals. Combined, these challenges mean it’s not just about fighting for and capturing consumers’ attention. Marketers must ensure they keep it from impression to purchase in a hyper-intense, value-driven market.
There are some key opportunities for overcoming these challenges. First, it’s about finding high-growth opportunities, like the Movable Middle, for expanding category share and incremental sales while also keeping a close eye on potential threats as consumer behavior evolves. With a better understanding of their customers and the motivations behind ‘why’ they’re making purchase decisions, marketers can then create refined strategies and messaging and, most importantly, reach consumers at the pivotal moments when they’re making purchase decisions, including while in-store.
Increased fragmentation and competition also means holistic, cross-channel measurement is table stakes. For CPG brands, it’s essential to be holistic and granular with measurement, understanding performance on a by retailer basis to overcome the challenges of fragmentation and leave no sales opportunity on the shelf.
In your opinion, what are the most significant consumer trends you’re observing at InMarket right now?
Right now, value is king. As inflation and tariffs are causing price hikes, and the cost of staple items like eggs is skyrocketing, consumers are prioritizing getting the most bang for their buck.
In fact, we recently just released our first Grocery Staples Report, shedding light on the shifts in consumer spending on essentials amid ongoing economic uncertainty:
- Growth of private label: For the categories with less differentiation like bottled water, beef/poultry, eggs, and cheese, consumers are trading down to private-label items. However, in categories where consumers have more options and can find strong brand differentiation (cereal, chips, or soft drinks), they remain quite brand loyal.
- Purchasing at a discount: Consumers are also looking for more discounts, 42% of all purchases within the more “nice-to-have categories,” like ice cream and trail mix are purchased on discount.
- Shifting shopping destinations: Consumers are not only shifting what they’re buying, but also where they’re shopping. Club stores and dollar/discount stores are seeing a big spike in purchases for the likes of coffee, candy, dairy, and cleaning supplies. In fact, InMarket found a 21% increase in the share of spend on coffee at warehouse clubs, stealing share from grocers and mass merchants.
Are there any metrics or tools that have become indispensable for understanding consumer behavior?
For targeting, superficial or surface-level characteristics won’t cut it as shopping behaviors remain dynamic and unpredictable. The key is combining multiple signals like intent, location and transactional insights to move past traditional ‘who’ to target purchases but understand why they purchase – what motivates them and when and where to best reach them. This holistic approach, combined with a competitive analysis to assess the health of your business, unlocks actionable insights and intelligence to fuel smarter campaigns.
It’s not just about the planning phase, activating in real-time contextually like while they are shopping and measurement are another tool helping marketers understand consumer behavior and improve the effectiveness of both inflight and future campaigns. Focus on the solutions that can measure and optimize outcomes across an array of KPIs, channels and retailers all while a campaign’s inflight. When it comes to the metrics that matter most, incremental is the holy grail of measurement today, showcasing the results and business growth that wouldn’t have occurred without a particular campaign.
With consumer preferences constantly evolving, how do you see InMarket’s role in shaping the next wave of customer experiences and brand engagement?
Consumer preferences are always evolving, and coupled with outside factors like tariffs and economic uncertainty, preferences and purchasing habits are likely to change even more. Brands need a partner that allows their marketing team to remain agile and implement learnings in real-time.
At InMarket, we pride ourselves on being that partner and continuously refining our offerings to help brands act in the moment and create unforgettable experiences for their customers. There is no over-stating the importance of real-time marketing and measurement and the impact it can have on campaign efforts, and we’re proud of the results we’ve helped some of the world’s largest brands to achieve with their click-through rates, incremental return on ad spend, incremental sales growth and so much more.
What emerging trends or technologies do you believe will redefine the marketing industry, and how is InMarket positioning itself for these changes?
Consumer desire for personalization is re-defining the marketing industry and forcing teams to revisit how they look to engage with current customers and win over new ones. With AI offerings and technologies that tailor results to user preferences and habits, consumers have started shopping across a wider range of channels, entirely disrupting the digital landscape. This means that brands need to ensure their strategies are sound across all platforms and are reaching consumers at the right moment, in the most impactful way – that sense and response marketing muscle that marketers must develop to thrive.
InMarket’s ability to analyze real-world behaviors through intent, location, and transactional data is unmatched in the market, and we continue to offer solutions that easily surpass industry standards with their outcomes. This is possible because at their core, our technologies focus on driving the ultimate consumer experience and evolving alongside consumer needs.
What advice would you give to brands looking to stay ahead in the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing and consumer behavior?
For marketers looking to stay ahead and lead this new era of marketing, stay curious and be open-minded. Data, creativity and technology including real-time and AI agents are the driving forces in marketing success today When combined strategically, they can yield industry-leading results, so it’s essential to focus on the partners that can help you excel in these areas and stay ahead of the constant evolution and innovation in our industry.
Don’t underestimate the power of data and analytics. Data drives actionable insights that brands can leverage to stay ahead of competitors, and with the tools now available at our fingertips, there are innumerable opportunities to maximize your marketing tactics and strategies to create true impact that others will be eager to learn from and follow.
One quote or piece of advice from the author
“Marketers today are incredibly lucky because of the technology and tools we have so readily available to us. They enable us to drive better outcomes for marketers while also creating unforgettable customer experiences.”
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