Shownotes
Anne and Chris sit down with Robert Jozic, SVP of Schwarz Media and Group Digital Strategy, to discuss the evolving landscape of retail media. Live from the VusionGroup Podcast Studio at NRF 2025, Robert offers a detailed roadmap for leveraging retail media as a strategic growth driver, focusing on digital transformation, incremental revenue, and bridging brick-and-mortar with media innovation.
Key Moments:
- 0:10 - Introduction to Robert Jozic and the Schwarz Group.
- 1:25 - Robert’s role and responsibilities in digital strategy and retail media.
- 4:37 - The strategic turning point for retail media in digitization.
- 6:56 - Timeframes and challenges in capturing true media dollars.
- 9:02 - The importance of standards, measurement, and media integration.
- 14:48 - Strategic positioning for retail media success.
- 17:18 - How retail media trends differ in Europe vs. the U.S.
- 18:45 - Future priorities for the Schwarz Group’s retail media initiatives
#retailmedia #retailtech #nrf2025
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy
Transcripts
Alright.
Chris Walton:Hello everyone, this is Omnitalk Retail.
Chris Walton:I'm Chris Walton.
Man Mazinga:And I'm Man Mazinga.
Chris Walton:And we are coming to you live once again.
Chris Walton: you can find in booth number: Chris Walton:Come on in, stop by, check out all the great tech and come and say hi to us too, because we'd love to meet our fans.
Chris Walton:All right.
Chris Walton:Joining us today, Anne, is Robert Jozic, the SVP of Schwarz Media and Group Digital Strategy.
Chris Walton:Robert, welcome to omnitalk.
Robert Jozic:Yeah, thank you.
Robert Jozic:Thank you for having me here.
Man Mazinga:Yeah.
Man Mazinga:Well, do you mind, Robert, just giving us a quick background on the Schwartz Group for those in our audience who may not be familiar with it.
Robert Jozic:Yeah.
Robert Jozic:Just to put the Schwarz Group in the context, Schwarz Group is the largest European retailer with a revenue of about US$170 billion, which actually puts them on number fourth position worldwide.
Robert Jozic:And important to mention, we have had very decent growth with a CAGR of greater than 8 for the first quarter of this century.
Robert Jozic:With our banners, Lidl, the discounter and the grocery format, Kaufland.
Robert Jozic:We're primarily focusing on three strategic directions, which is food, because we're a food retailer, then circular economy, so cradle to cradle and digitalization.
Chris Walton:Oh, go ahead.
Man Mazinga:No, I was just going to say give us a little bit of background about your role then there.
Man Mazinga:What do you do at the Schwartz Group?
Robert Jozic:Yeah, I'm responsible since seven years for the digital strategy, for the ecosystem.
Robert Jozic:So everything of what's about partnering in the digital context and new business models.
Robert Jozic:And for one of those business models, the retail media business, I'm the responsible MD as well, since three years.
Man Mazinga:It's a big, big responsibility, Robert.
Robert Jozic:It is, but it makes tons a lot of fun, I can tell you.
Chris Walton:Well, 8%, that's what we call a raging kegger over here in the States.
Chris Walton:Robert, congratulations on that.
Chris Walton:Those numbers are impressive.
Chris Walton:All right, so you're speaking at nrf.
Chris Walton:What are the key messages that you shared or what are you hoping to tell the audience while you're here?
Robert Jozic:Yeah, actually, of course, it's about retail media and there's a lot of noise out there in the market and it's also very difficult to catch the true narrative of what retail media is truly about.
Man Mazinga:We would agree.
Robert Jozic:Yeah, exactly.
Chris Walton:No doubt.
Robert Jozic:Yeah, no doubt.
Robert Jozic:So, and the title of the presentation was Retail or Media Strategic Turning Point, which actually shows of what are the main strategic considerations for actually giving your retail media business a Corresponding direction.
Robert Jozic:Why a lot of trade marketing funds are actually also factored into retail media products, which is looking from the outside more of a left pocket, right pocket game.
Robert Jozic:Might also call this brown dollars because you see in a lot of analysis at those kind of retail media models that they show very rapid growth in terms of ad revenues, but you don't find actually any kind of effects in the gross margin overall.
Robert Jozic:So the literally the needle is not moving right.
Robert Jozic:And this has actually the main reason behind this is the fact that trade marketing funds are flooded into, which is per se, not negative because it's part of the digitalization of the retail business.
Robert Jozic:So you're replacing the physical handbill with the virtual one.
Robert Jozic:You replace the billboard against a digital screen.
Robert Jozic:That's all.
Robert Jozic:Okay.
Robert Jozic:But of course you need to have a very close look on your net growth and the earnings.
Robert Jozic:So the stock market and analysts I think have already started to realize that it's a different game running retail media on a marketplace like the top three retail media players do, Amazon, Alibaba, Pinduoduo or well, better known as temu.
Robert Jozic:But of course that's a complete different kind of vertical.
Robert Jozic:You're settling your advertising business on top.
Robert Jozic:Whereas the chances are not only referring to having trade marketing funds being transferred to retail media and actually what's part of a red ocean game, because you're in this kind of game since years and it's limited by the units sold.
Robert Jozic:From the CPG point of view, it's actually also more about the historical chance.
Robert Jozic:And that's really something which I've reconsidered a couple of times in terms of is it really historic yet?
Robert Jozic:It is, because the retail business can actually truly contribute in a very valuable way to the media business.
Robert Jozic:And we see this one already starting.
Robert Jozic:And if you have a look on all of those activities running in parallel, I think we'll have a lot of topics here to mention.
Chris Walton:Got it.
Chris Walton:So if I recap what you said.
Chris Walton:So basically you're saying like retail media is, is part and parcel the effect of the digitization of retail.
Chris Walton:And so the move towards retail media could be having a net positive impact on the revenue that's generated and the margin for a given retailer.
Chris Walton:But you still have to be careful of how much is truly incremental at the end of the day.
Chris Walton:Is that right?
Chris Walton:Jeff, do you have an idea of the extent or the proportion of which is of how much is truly incremental or something you can share with the audience in that regard?
Robert Jozic:I think it's very difficult to do that without mentioning concrete examples.
Robert Jozic:But see a lot of public listed retail companies actually are compared against the big players and have actually to come up with corresponding figures.
Robert Jozic:But I can only give the advice, just analyze.
Robert Jozic:I mean, if you see a rapid growth pattern in retail media revenues for a retail media business just about or just recently started, then this is a clear indication that there is already money attracted in a very short time frame.
Robert Jozic:Which actually tells you or actually gives you an indication that this is probably coming out of recent trade negotiations.
Robert Jozic:Which is okay, right?
Chris Walton:Because before we started, you actually said something that was really interesting to Ann and Mead.
Chris Walton:You said that generally speaking of startup or retail media business, there's a time lag in terms of how long it takes you to actually get the media dollars.
Chris Walton:What is that time lag in your estimation?
Robert Jozic:When you actually focus your retail media offerings not towards trade, but towards media, which actually requires five steps we can later on go through quickly.
Robert Jozic:It actually takes you between 12 to 18 months.
Robert Jozic:Why?
Robert Jozic:Because that's the time the advertisers need actually to consider you being an integral part of their media plan for the next year.
Robert Jozic:And usually they hand this over to media agencies and that's actually the natural latency.
Robert Jozic:But the benefit is that this is 200% incremental from the retailer's point of view.
Robert Jozic:Because a retailer was not in the media business ever before.
Man Mazinga:They were never getting those dollars.
Man Mazinga:The media companies were getting those dollars.
Robert Jozic:And we have a lot of discussions, right, about those kind of commercials and whether it pays off, yes or no.
Robert Jozic:But the most important part is which kind of strategic direction you give to your team and of course also to your business.
Robert Jozic:Especially when it's then about setting up corresponding media products, right?
Robert Jozic:You can develop them either towards classical retail trade business, answering questions on uplifts and so on, or you come up actually spending your R and D in offering first party measurement across the full media channel.
Robert Jozic:So you start to earn money outside your own media channels.
Robert Jozic:And by the way, it's a very important move here because you can help every advertiser answering the most critical questions.
Robert Jozic:So what is the true effectiveness of my ATVCTV spot?
Robert Jozic:What is the true effectiveness of an ad in the open web?
Robert Jozic:So even in search and in social, you'll be able actually to answer those questions to 100% deterministically.
Robert Jozic:So you can repeat this with discrete numbers because actually you target the group, you run an A B test and then actually you can measure the true effectiveness.
Robert Jozic:And this is also what will changed the game For a lot of brick and mortar players which were called offline stores in the past, online offline.
Robert Jozic:None of those big players anymore is in the brick and mortar business offline because you have loyalty apps with a penetration of about 50, 60, 70%, 80% of your sales and those customers are digitally addressable.
Robert Jozic:And this is actually also flipping the game now for the well established players in the e commerce business.
Robert Jozic:They are no doubt 10 to 15 years ahead on average, roughly.
Robert Jozic:And have also provided a lot of valuable market adoption.
Robert Jozic:No doubt.
Robert Jozic:But nowadays actually also there we see a lot of opportunities for us because they're running ROAS definitions, nominal ROAS definitions on adjacent roas, which actually is a highly inflated KPI.
Robert Jozic:If you measure against those kind of adjacent rows, a true incrementality, which is the trend right now, you will see that this will actually fall apart compared to that's true against a single item.
Robert Jozic:Rower.
Robert Jozic:Yes.
Robert Jozic:Or in other words, see it is like this that there's a wonderful chance.
Robert Jozic:I mean their margin is our opportunity.
Robert Jozic:Once someone.
Chris Walton:Right.
Chris Walton:As someone once said, famously said.
Robert Jozic:Exactly.
Robert Jozic:And actually that matters to the whole market.
Robert Jozic:So there's a wonderful chance applies to everybody.
Robert Jozic:Yeah.
Robert Jozic:At a time where 80 to 90% of the retail business is still brick and mortar and by far not offline anymore.
Chris Walton:Right.
Chris Walton:Well.
Man Mazinga:And Robert, I want to dive a little bit deeper into what those opportunities are then like if with all of the background that you just gave us inflated roas, being in, you know, one of the opportunity areas for retailers and brands, explain a little bit about what your, what your guidance would be on what to focus focus on.
Man Mazinga:If I'm a retailer right now when.
Robert Jozic:It comes to retail media, first of all, from the strategic positioning, you have to take the decision of whether you serve retail or media and on how you do that, I mean there's no matter, it doesn't matter actually of whether you decide to do this out of one hand or start to separate it from your point of view as a retailer.
Robert Jozic:But it makes a significant difference to the market.
Robert Jozic:Giving you an example, if you start actually to bundle those kind of offers which like you're a supplier and you tell the supplier now you're an endemic advertiser and he is actually offer what we require from you as a listing condition.
Robert Jozic:These are the trade marketing funds we expect and this is a media money.
Robert Jozic:And then I can tell you this actually has a lot of significant disadvantages.
Robert Jozic:Although you might actually be in the position to push very hard is actually first of all of what those players call bundling is truly coupling, in fact.
Robert Jozic:And then you might take the risk of being sued by the FTC or by 17 states.
Robert Jozic:Wow, that's happening though.
Man Mazinga:That's what we're hearing from all these brands is that they are being told, look, you get this end cap in our store, but you also need to spend X number of dollars on our retail media platform.
Robert Jozic:Yeah, so, and on the other hand, if you start to separate those kind of business lines, and again, you need to facilitate the digitalization of the trade marketing funds, no questions about that.
Robert Jozic:But you need to focus and enter the media station.
Robert Jozic:Now come back to your question five steps on how to enter the media business.
Robert Jozic:First of all, comply to standards because standards matter.
Robert Jozic:So in the states, you have the mrc, you have the iab, follow those standards so that your media portfolio can be instantly accepted by the media market.
Robert Jozic:Because there are two main forces actually you need to take into consideration for your market entry.
Robert Jozic:And this is the learning curve of the advertisers and the trust they need to gain with your portfolio.
Robert Jozic:Then secondly, start setting up corresponding media offers and start to compare them against existing media offers.
Robert Jozic:Like for example, digital out of home in front of a store is truly by far more convincing for endemic advertisers than a digital order form at a subway station.
Robert Jozic:Right, because in front of the store you're just two minutes away from your purchasing decision, whereas at the subway you don't even know whether your customers are all around there.
Robert Jozic:Third, you can lift the bar.
Robert Jozic:You can literally bring your own media business on a complete different level because you can start as a retailer, especially brick and mortar, to come up with metrics which haven't been in the market ever before.
Robert Jozic:Instead of CPM or CPC where you buy eyeballs or clicks, you can internalize the advertiser risk by offering cost per action.
Robert Jozic:So only customers who saw the ad and truly converted are actually the ones that you have to pay for and not for the lost eyeballs.
Robert Jozic:And the retailer can do that because it does it already on a 247 basis.
Robert Jozic:They already predict their good supply for the corresponding promotions on a daily weekly basis.
Robert Jozic:Why?
Robert Jozic:Because if you don't do that, you either have overstock positions or out of shelf, which both actually you have to, of course, to avoid.
Robert Jozic:That's the third step so you can outperform existing media players.
Robert Jozic:Fourth, you don't actually need to fear any kind of comparison against E commerce pure players because they run on adjacent roas.
Robert Jozic:If that's the case, then any kind of incremental measurement will give you a strategic advantage.
Robert Jozic:Why ask yourself when you actually, when you open up an E commerce app and you see an ad, you can decide straight away.
Robert Jozic:You can decide in 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 1 hour, next day.
Robert Jozic:Right.
Robert Jozic:And this is actually factored in in this ROAS calculation.
Robert Jozic:But if you have on the other hand, the comparison to a loyalty app, you open a loyalty app in the store.
Robert Jozic:So and you see the ad, you have to decide now because in five minutes you have the cashier, in 15 minutes you're in your car, in one hour you're at home and the next day, most probably you forgot.
Robert Jozic:So in terms of stickiness and relevance for a media advertiser, this has a really high, high contribution to their main considerations about truly being at the point when the purchasing decision is taken.
Robert Jozic:And this is qualitative explanation which you can also measure in a comparison between a single article raws versus an adjacent and the fifth one and the most important one, those kind of incremental analysis, A B you can run across the full funnel of digital channels which are digitally addressable.
Robert Jozic:Why?
Robert Jozic:Actually you can do an A B test there as well.
Robert Jozic:You want to know for the upcoming launch or for any kind of samples you might have of which kind of customers you will attract or the different way of which kind of media you need to consider for the corresponding marketing media mix.
Robert Jozic:You run this kind of a B test, incremental test together with your retail partner and you as a brand will figure out very swiftly on what the optimal mix will be about.
Chris Walton:Right, Right.
Robert Jozic:Wow.
Chris Walton:We've got a true expert here and this is fantastic.
Chris Walton: see retail media evolving in: Robert Jozic:I would say the States are always a couple of years in advance, but they are even of course also in the retail media business.
Robert Jozic: d up actually with Alibaba in: Robert Jozic:But it does make a difference.
Robert Jozic:But the interesting part is that in certain areas, when it's about, for example, digital out of home, I think the States can actually learn a lot about, for example, the business in uk, where they are already quite advanced in setting this up.
Robert Jozic:And the good thing about the NRF and the community is that we have this instant and direct exchange all around the globe.
Robert Jozic:So we are by far quicker than we have ever been before in order actually to share best practice and those kind of trends.
Robert Jozic:So what I actually expect for the market, this will be the year, not only another critical year for the the retail media industry to mature.
Robert Jozic:We'll see it in a lot of different areas.
Robert Jozic:Whether it's actually now entering the media business for most of the retail players, whether it's about on how to deal with media content in order to increase the stickiness of your loyal customers.
Robert Jozic:I mean we see this one from a couple of big players here in the States investing in media content.
Robert Jozic:And I think this is, this is of a very, very high importance.
Robert Jozic:Not only actually from a competitor point of view, it's about the potential you have.
Robert Jozic:Because when you have the chance as an advertiser to book an ad to your audience and measure actually the true sell through performance and the true conversion, even offering those kind of products by one or two clicks is.
Robert Jozic:Yeah.
Robert Jozic:Out of actually the running live broadcasting of a football game or whatsoever.
Robert Jozic:This is truly very convincing for the advertising industry.
Robert Jozic:And compare this against any other media player not having the chance to integrate media content, advertising and commerce.
Robert Jozic:And that's a swiftly way.
Robert Jozic:It's actually I think decisive, looking forward.
Man Mazinga:Wow, this is so impressive, Robert.
Man Mazinga:I mean it's really opening my eyes to I think how, how very different you need to set up your teams, how very differently you need to set up your businesses as a retailer right now.
Man Mazinga:Because you are not just taking people from your media buying teams as a retailer and making them like having them create their retail media business.
Man Mazinga:You really need to bring people in from the media industry.
Chris Walton:Whole new business.
Man Mazinga:Yeah.
Man Mazinga:To really start to send this up the correct way based on your very extensive knowledge.
Man Mazinga: e the Schwartz group going in: Man Mazinga:What are your priorities as you start to really define success for the retail media teams at the Schwartz Group?
Robert Jozic:Yeah, actually we need to fulfill the expectations of the media players and the advertisers out there and which might.
Robert Jozic:Yeah, but what actually might sound very simple.
Robert Jozic:It's actually pretty demanding because you need capabilities and know how you usually don't have at hand as a retailer.
Robert Jozic:For the retail part, trade marketing, this actually will evolve and it's substantial that this evolves because this is part of our existing retail business.
Robert Jozic:No doubt.
Robert Jozic:But for the media part, we'll be for sure in terms of expectations be more confronted than ever before in serving and acting as a media partner.
Robert Jozic:The most important question will be on how fast the market can adopt to those kind of changes because, see, I don't want to be asked in 10 years of how on earth you could actually gave up on this tremendous opportunity, considering the fact that more than in Germany, more than 94% of the food business is still brick and mortar.
Robert Jozic:Just taking Germany as an example, we operate in Europe, so there is this digital reach in terms of data technologies.
Robert Jozic:We are there.
Robert Jozic:Right.
Robert Jozic:And the most important aspect is you have to take responsibility and of course, in a very trustful way, treat and work together with your customers, your retail customers, because actually they are the ones relying on you that actually you use their data for their advantage.
Robert Jozic:Right.
Robert Jozic:And this is a framing, but I don't want to be asked on how we could give away on such a very good starting position entering this race.
Robert Jozic:But of course there's a lot of work ahead of us.
Robert Jozic:Right?
Chris Walton:Right.
Chris Walton:Just kind of mile one of the marathon, so to speak, in a lot of ways.
Chris Walton:And keeping the constituents top of mind is always a good way to go about business.
Chris Walton:So.
Chris Walton:Well, Robert, thank you so much for your time today.
Chris Walton:It was an absolute pleasure getting to pick your brain on this topic.
Chris Walton:I know Ann and I both thoroughly enjoyed it.
Chris Walton: ere all podcast studio, booth: Chris Walton:Stop on by, come on in, say hello.
Chris Walton:And until next time, Anne, be careful out there.