Death By Dashboard: Simplifying Commerce Media for the People Driving It at MAD//Fest

AI and automated technology have, in recent years, dominated conversations across advertising and marketing, and this year’s MAD//Fest in London was no exception. But these conversations are evolving, exploring automation and technology from a new perspective: The Human Touch.

At this year’s MAD//Fest, Claire Trbovic, SMG’s Global Head of Product, took to the stage to showcase how RMX, the open, intelligent Retail Media Exchange powered by Plan-Apps, is transforming the experience of commerce media planning.

Death by Dashboard

At this point, advertisers and agencies have likely lost track of how many dashboards and platforms they rely on throughout a typical workday to support commerce media campaigns across retailers.

As Commerce Media Networks have multiplied, so have the platforms, logins, approval processes, reporting systems, and measurement frameworks that media planners must navigate every day. The ecosystem has grown rapidly, but the infrastructure supporting it has struggled to keep pace. 

Running a single campaign across multiple retailers often means even more unnecessary complexity, duplicated effort, and valuable time spent on administration instead of strategy.

“Every hour spent moving a piece of information from one place to another is an hour we’re not spending adding value to our advertisers in the chain,” said Trbovic.

This growing complexity is beginning to impact advertiser behaviour and industry growth, with 56% of US advertisers looking to consolidate their spend across fewer commerce media networks, according to Bain & Company. As advertisers prioritise fewer networks, the industry risks slowing its growth. 

Advertisers and agencies want to reach across multiple retailers, with consistent planning and buying, simpler workflows, shared reporting, and unified measurement. Retailers, meanwhile, want to retain control of their media, protect their data, and grow with demand efficiently. 

New infrastructure is required to enable agency objectives and preserve each retailer’s unique offering, while considering the people actually behind these campaigns. 

In order to preserve the success of commerce media, the ecosystem must become easier to navigate for the media planners driving its development.

Reviving the Industry 

That’s why SMG introduced RMX. Designed as a single access layer to connect retail media networks, the platform simplifies planning, activation, and measurement while allowing retailers to retain full control over their inventory, data, and commercial relationships.

Behind RMX is technology built to reduce obstacles for the humans orchestrating retail media campaigns, from eliminating duplicated workflows and fragmented reporting to overcoming inconsistent metrics and the need to navigate multiple platforms.

By simplifying the operational side of commerce media, RMX reduces the time media planners spend behind a dashboard. The platform exists to provide humans more time to think strategically, more time to be creative, and more time to build cohesive commerce media campaigns across an expanding retail landscape.

The continued growth of the commerce media industry depends on simplifying the path for the people who power it. Rather than more platforms, the future of commerce media is about using technology to create simpler, smarter experiences that empower the humans driving the industry forward.

Until next time, MAD//Fest.