The Retail Media Podcast: Full Circle at NRF

Colin Lewis is joined by Octavie Gosselin, Vice President of Mirakl Ads, for a special final episode recorded live at NRF 2026 in New York — exactly one year after the series launched at NRF 2025 with the same pairing. Octavie reflects on the three defining trends of 2025 — marketplace-driven growth, product-led retail media, and full-funnel expansion — and looks ahead to the forces shaping 2026: embedded AI, agentic commerce, yield management, and omnichannel execution. The conversation underscores a year in which retail media moved from proving the model to scaling it, with client success stories from Worten, Debenhams, Rakuten, and Jumia illustrating the speed and substance of the shift.

Key Discussions in This Episode

• Full Circle: One Year of the Retail Media Podcast (00:00–01:00) Colin welcomes Octavie back to the NRF floor and marks the anniversary of the series, noting that the first episode was also recorded with Octavie at NRF 2025. This “full circle” moment sets up a retrospective-and-forward-looking conversation.

• Three Defining Trends of 2025 (01:00–02:30) Octavie identifies the year’s three key shifts. First, marketplace as a growth lever for retail media — no longer a brand-only game. Second, the move to product-led, tech-integrated solutions with self-service and algorithmic transparency. Third, full-funnel expansion across on-site, off-site, and in-store — with a clear call to incorporate agentic commerce into that strategy now, not later.

• Growth as the North Star (03:00–05:00) Colin frames everything through the lens of growth — the one metric that unites brand and retailer. Octavie explains how marketplace sellers, many already spending on Amazon and Walmart, represent untapped demand for other retailers. These sellers are higher spenders than top brands, less seasonal, performance-driven, and capable of investing 10–15% of GMV — provided they are given the right automated, self-service tools.

• The Long Tail Opportunity (05:00–06:00) Colin references the Worten podcast with Inês Catão, reinforcing that long-tail marketplace suppliers are eager to spend more when freed from rigid budgets. The individual advertiser may be small, but the collective opportunity is transformational.

• Client Success: From Proving to Scaling (06:00–07:30) Octavie reports 30 new clients in 2025, including Jumia, Debenhams, and Boohoo. Debenhams launched its retail media programme just three weeks after signing — not three years. Existing clients moved from proving the model to repeatable, scalable outcomes: Worten achieved 130% incremental advertiser onboarding within two months; Rakuten saw a 60% increase in fill rate and 25% boost in CTR during its first month of re-platforming.[4]

• Agentic Commerce: The Word on Everybody’s Lips (07:30–10:20) Colin notes that 2024’s buzzword was AI and 2025’s is agentic commerce. Octavie describes Mirakl’s response — Nexus for broader agentic e-commerce, and within Mirakl Ads specifically: adapting search algorithms from two-word queries to 13-word natural-language intent, preparing to monetise retailers’ own agents, and integrating marketplace results into external agentic commerce platforms.

• From SEO to GEO (10:20–12:15) The discussion turns to Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO). Octavie explains that Mirakl has evolved its catalogue optimisation tools — previously focused on SEO — to include GEO capabilities, helping retailers ensure their catalogues surface correctly in AI-driven discovery platforms. Colin reflects on how his own search behaviour is already shifting, and how the long-keyword challenge compounds existing SEO difficulties for retailers.

• Product as the Centrepiece (12:15–13:00) Both agree that the product itself — its content, imagery, and catalogue structure — becomes the central asset in an agentic world, reshaping how retailers need to think about content and visual merchandising far beyond simply “making it ready for agentic.”

• 2026 Trends: AI, Embedded BI, and Navigating Uncertainty (13:00–14:30) Octavie outlines the pivot from defining AI strategy to executing it, in a landscape evolving so fast that flexibility and the right technology partners are essential. In retail media specifically, AI must be embedded across the entire advertiser journey — from onboarding through to campaign optimisation — not bolted on as a separate layer.

• From Dashboards to Decisions (14:30–16:00) A key shift for 2026: retailers and advertisers no longer want dashboards — they want decisions. Embedded business intelligence powered by agents will deliver actionable recommendations at the right moment, replacing retrospective reporting with real-time guidance. Colin adds that scenario-based thinking (“what if”) will be more valuable than point predictions in this environment of wide parameters and rapid change.

• Growth in 2026: Finding New Levers (16:00–17:30) Octavie acknowledges that traditional, legacy retail media is likely to be challenged. Growth will come from three additional levers: scaling marketplace advertising with mid- and long-tail sellers (not just top sellers), diversifying channels from on-site to off-site, offline, and agentic, and capturing overspend — redirecting advertiser budgets that cannot be fully spent on-site into off-site and other channels to optimise the full programme.

• Self-Service and the Tension with Intuitive Guidance (17:30–18:30) Colin identifies a productive tension: retailers need to push self-service responsibility onto suppliers, but those same suppliers need intuitive, immediate recommendations rather than complex dashboards. Both imperatives — scale through self-service and simplification through intelligence — must be solved simultaneously.

• Programmatic: A Bespoke Approach by Geography and Vertical (18:30–19:30) Octavie describes Mirakl’s partnership-led approach to programmatic, acknowledging that maturity varies enormously by market, vertical, and individual retailer. Rather than a one-size-fits-all product, the approach is bespoke — a pragmatic stance given the gap between US-scale audiences and the rest of the world.

• Omnichannel and In-Store: The Differentiator (19:30–21:00) In-store retail media is one of the big differentiators for marketplace retailers versus Amazon. Octavie reports wide variation in maturity — from retailers wanting multi-format solutions (screens, cameras, audio) to those testing a few stores with no clear roadmap — but best-in-class UK and US retailers are proving the model. Colin frames this as a “continental divide”: in the US, retail media grew online first and is catching up in-store; elsewhere, the reverse is true.

• Mirakl Ads Innovation Pipeline for 2026 (21:00–23:30) Four priorities emerge: (1) AI-powered embedded business intelligence with agent-driven actionable insights; (2) yield management — giving retailers flexibility to optimise supply and demand across placements and categories, borrowing from airline-style yield thinking; (3) agentic commerce support across retailer-owned agents, search adaptation, and integration with external agentic platforms; and (4) continued full-funnel and omnichann…