Sarp Tuncay - Moving from Operators to Orchestrators of AI in Retail Media

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0:50That's salesforce.com slash consumer goods. Hi, I am Sartan K, a retail media and e-commerce strategic leader in the industry, and you're watching this CPG Guys podcast.

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2:55Subscribe rate, follow three simple actions that help us bring more of the conversations that matter to you. And now our guest. Our guest today is Sarp Tanke, an e-commerce and retail media leader who's led retail media strategy across Amazon and Walmart and the broader omni-channel ecosystem. Sarp has become an increasingly visible voice in the retail media community, and often you'll find him at speaking engagements in the industry at conferences. At the recently concluded Retail Media Summit, he made the case that AI will not simply replace retail media professionals, but it will challenge those who do not move closer to business decisions and further away from routine execution, as most of the industry runs today.

3:31He's also been exploring how agentic AI could become the next front-end of grocery, reshaping how shoppers discover products and how retailers and brands define and measure success. Sarp Welcome to the CPG guys. It's great to have you with us. How you doing? Thank you sir. It's genuinely great to be here. I spent my career at the intersection of retail media, e-commerce, shopper marketing, and the commercial side of the business. What has become clear to me is that AI is not just changing our tools, it's changing which parts of our work create real value. The thesis I want to explore today is not the retail media jobs suddenly disappear, it is that routine execution becomes less differentiating as platforms automate bidding, pacing, targeting, reporting, and optimization.

4:19That creates an important choice of practitioners. We can remain platform operators or we can become business orchestrators, as I said. People who frame the question, understand the context, manage trade-offs, connect signals across retailers and on the decision. My shorthand for it's simple, platform optimize, but human orchestrate. And I'm excited to unpack that with you. So we're going to get started in a minute here. But before we jump into this deep conversation, a quick reminder to our audience, check the digital show notes of this episode, where we'll drop the LinkedIn hyperlinks for Sarp.

4:55So you can multitask while you listen and you can engage with him directly. All right, Sarp, let's jump right into it. The first one I have is an interesting one, a bedtime story about your son, Kai. And it perfectly frames the human AI collaboration dynamic. Tell us about that bedtime story. What was that moment and how did that moment crystallize your thinking about what's actually changing in retail media? Well, it was a very simple moment, Siri. Kai and I were creating a bedtime story together. I had AI help us to get the story started, but then Kai immediately began changing it. he added his own characters, redirected the plot, and shaped the story around and what was meaningful and exciting to him.

5:39That's called a future successful kid, my friend. What stayed with me was that AI could produce a draft, but Kai owned the imagination and the direction. And that felt very similar to what is happening in the retail media. So AI is becoming incredibly capable of producing a first answer. It can recommend a bid, identify a pacing issue, or summarize campaign performance, maybe generate an audience or suggest an optimization. But it does not fully understand why a particular outcome matters to the business. It does not naturally understand the context around a retailer relationship, a product launch, an inventory constraint, the profitability target, or a brawler shopper objective.

6:26So the human contribution is not simply editing the machine's output. It's providing intent, text, judgment, and ownership. So that's the moment with Kai helped me, Siri, that the most productive model is not human versus AI. It's human with AI, but very clear roles. Let AI create possibilities. Let the human decide which possibility is meaningful. In retail media, language platforms can optimize, but humans still need to orchestrate. And I think that is much more empowering conversation than asking whether the technology will replace us. I personally love the story. The analogy is absolutely fantastic and it can be explained to anybody.

7:17But let's get into that human replacement moment right now. You've said that the central risk isn't job loss. It's work that becomes less important as platforms automate and become smarter. That's actually a little bit more unsettling than saying, hey, the job disappears. When you frame it, this is not the first time. Of course, when you get on our show, you're going to reach the whole industry. But you've also been on stage saying it and people have heard you say it. How do they react? What did they tell you when you get off stage? there is usually a moment of discomfort because people recognize the situation immediately like most practitioners are not seriously expecting to walk into the office tomorrow and discover that ai has eliminated their entire position what they are seeing is more subtle like they're seeing activities they spend years learning become easier faster and increasingly automated, like bid adjustments, like pacing checks, targeting recommendations, let's say performance summaries and routine reporting once demonstrated expertise.

8:26Now, many of these capabilities are becoming embedded in the platform themselves. That creates a very personal question theory. If the platform can do more of what made successful, where does my value come from next? The reason I describe the risk as irrelevance is that a role can continue existing while gradually losing influence You can keep the title, okay? You can remain busy, you can produce a lot of work But if that work becomes disconnected from the decisions that shape growth, profitability, investment, and retail strategy Then the role begins to matter less, you know? of course so if i'm a you i'm if i'm somebody listening to this podcast the way i'm gonna react is i'm gonna have some nervousness for sure but what here on the cpg guys we agree with you is you're 100 right the level of learning that ai produces through machine learning is significant and we'll be better off if we anticipated that plan for that and then learned and adapted to a new role, which you've explained in the analogy with your son, Kai, very clearly, the imagination aspect.

9:45And earlier, you've also said platform operator versus business orchestrator. We all need to start thinking about business orchestration and retail media world, not just running a platform. So now we're keeping that as a backdrop. You've described AI as already embedded in bidding, budget pacing, targeting, reporting, not in a future state, but today. Which retail media network do you feel has doing it the best? They've gone the furthest in automating execution. And what does it mean for those on that platform? Well, Siri, if I had to identify one, I would point to Amazon because of the maturity scale and sophistication of its advertising ecosystem.

10:26But I want to be careful not to turn this into a ranking of retail media networks, because the a more important point is the direction of travel we are in. Like Amazon, Walmart Connect, Instacart, like Kroger Precision Marketing, Roundel, and other networks are all moving toward like greater automation. So the pace and specific capabilities vary, but the economic incentive is consistent. So platforms can process more data than any individual practitioner, or they can monitor activity continuously. They can identify patterns across a huge number of interactions, and they can apply an optimization decision at a speed and scale that manual teams cannot match, cannot do that.

11:13That is good for the industry, Siri, when it improves execution and removes repetitive work. The implication for practitioners, however, is significant. Historically, part of our value came from operating the machine, right? We knew how to navigate the interface, interpret the reports, make the bid adjustments, and keep the campaign on track. Increasingly, the machine is taking responsibility for more of that execution. The practitioner's job, therefore Siri, moves above the platform. So what business outcomes should the platform optimize toward? What constraints does it not see? Or what should we accept its recommendation?

11:57When should we challenge it? How does this retailer fit into total portfolio? How does the result mean for the broader business? So the winning practitioner is not necessarily the person who can make the most manual changes inside a campaign manager. It is the person, in my opinion, who can provide the machine with a better objective, interpret its outputs intelligently, and connect that output to commercial decision. Do you feel brands are doing this today?

12:32Well, it depends. It can look very well managed campaign depending on the brands. The budgets are pacing correctly, like the automatic recommendations are being applied by the brands. The dashboard is current. The performance narrative has been generated or the report looks polished. Everyone feels as if the campaign is under control. But the real question here, Siri, is whether the team is controlling the business outcome or simply observing a well-automated system. This is where the illusion appears. That's an illusion. A platform may be doing exactly what it was instructed to do. It may be efficiently optimizing toward ROS, conversion, or another campaign objective.

13:21But nobody, nobody may be asking whether that objective is still the right one. So the questions would be, are we creating incremental growth or mainly capturing existing demand? Are we reaching new households or repeatedly reaching our established buyers? Are we supporting a product that matters most commercially? Or are we driving demand for an item with an inventory constraint? No brand is doing this today. I can tell you that with conviction. Are we maximizing the apparent return inside one retailer while neglecting a strategic opportunity somewhere else? So a dashboard can tell you the system is functioning, but it cannot on its own tell you that the organization selected the right destination.

14:09So the illusion of control occurs when a brand confuses efficient execution with strategic management. So the more sophisticated automation becomes, the more disciplined humans need to be about objectives, guardrails, assumptions, and outcomes. So I believe automation should reduce the effort required to operate the campaign. It should not reduce the rigor required to question the campaign. There is no doubt about it whatsoever, right? And I can also tell you most brands look at the dashboard and they take one or two actions, try to look smart and ask one or two questions. no one is doing it as comprehensively at, as you say, that's what we call an illusion of control.

14:53So if an automation creates an illusion of control, which is your phrase, by the way, which we've heard publicly, what does it actually look like on the ground for a brand team? Exactly where I want to go next when they're managing a campaign, because they're trying to show the illusion of control versus actual control. So the hardest part is letting go of the thing that made you feel valuable, you know, like A great operator has visible proof of expertise. So they understand the platform. They catch problems early. They make optimization quickly. They know where to look, which lever to pull on, how to keep the work moving.

15:33And that expertise creates confidence and professional identity. However, I think the orchestrator's work is different than a practitioner and often less tidy. an orchestrator has to operate in ambiguity they need to understand different objectives across sales marketing finance agencies and retailer partners they have to frame choices where they may not be one perfect answer they may need to say oh if you protest efficiency we may sacrifice household penetration or if we invest behind a strategic retailer we may need to accept a lower short-term return. That is harder than changing a bid because trade-offs create consequences.

16:20There is also a communication challenge theory. Operators are often rewarded for knowing the answer. However, the orchestrators need to be comfortable asking better questions, surfacing disagreements, and helping a group make a decision. The key here is not to discard execution expertise, for sure, that foundation remains valuable. The opportunity is to build on top of it. The practitioners who understands how execution really works and can also translate it into commercial decision has an incredibly powerful combination. I mean, you do not stop understanding the platform, Siri. You stop allowing the platform to define the limits of your role.

17:15superbly said actually so now let's go deeper and operator and orchestrator shop line right up top of this episode we've talked about it what is the hardest part of the identity shift for practitioners who i would largely say last 10 years the expertise around retail media has really come around operations. What are they going to struggle with? Imagine one retailer is delivering very strong campaign efficiency, Siri. Like conversion is high, ROAS is strong, the algorithm identifies additional demand and recommends increasing the investment. From the platform's perspective, that can be completely rational recommendation.

18:06The system is optimizing locally based on the objective and information it can see. But now, introduce a broader business context. Perhaps another retailer is strategically important because the brand needs to expand household penetration there. Perhaps the company has a distribution opportunity tied to the retailer. Perhaps the high-performing product has limited inventory while another product needs greater support. Perhaps the strongest short-term ROAS coming from existing branded demand, maybe rather than incremental shoppers. Or perhaps the organization is under profitability pressure and needs to account for margins that are not that are not fully represented in the platform's optimization logic.

18:58So now the best platform decision and the best business decision may no longer be the same. You know, a platform can tell you where the next dollar appears most efficient within its environment. And a human has to decide where that dollar creates the greatest value across the entire commercial system that requires connecting media performance with retail strategy, shopper behavior, supply, pricing, promotion, assortment, and maybe financial objectives as well. And that's what I mean when I say AI optimizes locally while humans optimize globally. The machine sees optimization opportunities. The orchestrator sees the portfolio, the constraints and the consequences for sure.

19:48but if we went into the optimization element right local optimization can it's already taking place today you've given the amazon example but the machine is totally capable of global optimization of a budget across retailers and business goals now most companies cannot think this way but do you know of any real-life scenario where that distinction actually made campaigns happen retail media outcomes actually happen where you looked at that global optimization, which is how the budget should be done versus just a local operation? I think, Siri, we are still in the early stages of that. The direction is becoming visible.

20:31Platform expertise remains important. Retail media is complex. The networks are different and brands still need people who understand how execution works. But platform knowledge alone is becoming less sufficient as a long-term differentiator in a global or a local level. So the more forward-looking organizations are looking for people, Siri, I think, who can translate retail media into commercial impact. So I think the question is, can this person connect media performance to sales and profitability for the company? Can they engage credibly with finance? Can they explain incrementality without relying on a single platform metric?

21:17Or can they connect activity across retailers? Or can they influence brands, sales, shopper marketing, agencies, and leadership? Or can they turn data into a recommendation rather than simpler reporting what happened? So So I think those capabilities describe a growth partner. So a platform, I think, Siri, a platform specialist may be extremely knowledgeable, you know, but their expertise can become bounded by a particular interface, retailer or a tool. But a growth partner carries a broader and more durable set of skills because the work is anchored in business decisions. So I also think the split affects promotion.

22:03You know, the people who move closer to planning investment decisions, cross-functional leadership and commercial outcomes are more likely to expand the scope of their roles. So, yes, hiring a promotion are beginning to reflect the difference, even if the organizations do not always use the labels platform specialist and growth partner. The real signal, I think, is what the organization expects the person to own, platform activity or business outcomes. All right, we should talk about those experts and practitioners. But before that, let me remind the audience that I'm speaking with Sarp Tanke, a digital leader in our industry, and we're having a deep discussion on the role of AI in media and retail media.

22:51So we've said two practitioner paths, platform specialists, who already do most of that stuff today, the real operators at the end of the day, versus the growth partner who become business orchestrators. Today, if you look at agencies, your experience in being around in the industry and looking at brands, are they hiring and promoting people differently based on that split yet? What you just literally told me. I deal all three change together, you know, but if I have to choose who starts, I would say the practitioner. not because the practitioners control the entire organization or carry all the responsibility.

23:31They do not. But they are closest to the work and often have the first opportunity to change how the conversation is framed. A practitioner can take the same performance information and present it two very different ways. They can say, here is the ROAS, here is the cost per click, and here is how we adjusted the campaign. Or they can say, here's what changed. Here's what we believe drove the change. And here's the implication for growth and profitability. And here are the decisions available to us. I think the second version invites a different kind of discussion series. Managers also have a critical role here because they determine what works is rewarded.

24:21if they continue celebrating only tactical activity and local platform metrics, practitioners will naturally keep producing those same outputs. And clients and senior leaders need to clarify what business outcomes matter and provide access to the information required to connect media with those outcomes. But change can begin with one person arriving at the next meeting with a more useful question and a clearer recommendation. You cannot always change the measurement system immediately, you know. You can change the quality of the conversation immediately. That's where I think practitioners have more power than they sometimes realize, you know.

25:09The problem, Sarp, is they have more power than they realize. There's no doubt about it because moving from platform operator to orchestrator is not rocket science. You can do this today, but they've fallen into the trap of the scorecard and trying to show the illusion of control, as we've said. That's the real issue at the table, right? So let's talk about business impact. So the success metrics today are largely illusion of control. Do you agree? The real risk is irrelevant, right? Absolutely. But they're focused on illusion of control to show their bosses that the ROAS is exactly what they want it to be, not need it to be.

25:44You've already explained earlier that some may have profitability challenges and that's what you got to focus on. Some may have distribution. Retail media is not running that way. So let's talk about business impact, growth, penetration, profitability, distribution. Who in the organization really should lead this change? The practitioner who runs the platform, their manager, or in the case of an agency, the client itself? I would start with a simple question before jumping into that. In the last month, were you invited in the conversation before the decision was made or after the decision was made?

26:20That's, I think, like reporters are typically brought in after the decision, you know? So they're asked to execute, measure, or explain. Decision support partners are brought in before the decision. So they're asked to help define the objective, assess the options, and identify the trade-offs and recommend the direction. And a second test is to review what happens at the end of your meetings. Do the stakeholders leave knowing what happened or they leave knowing what to do next? So if your work ends with a performance recap, you may be functioning primarily as a reporter. So if your work ends with choices, implications, and a recommendation, then you're operating as a decision partner.

27:06So I would also audit the language people use when they approach you. Are they saying, can you pull this? Can you update this? Can you send the numbers? Or they're asking, what do you think? What are our options? What would you recommend? What are we missing here? Those signals tell you how the organization currently perceives your value. So this is going to give the answer that you're looking for. So the purpose of the audit here is not to criticize reporting. Reporting is necessary for sure. The question whether reporting is the end of your contribution or beginning of a business conversation.

27:44So my advice is to add one layer to every recurring deliverable before we decide who is leading, who is making the change what. why it matters, what decision creates, what you recommend. That's how you gradually move from describing the business to helping shape it.

28:08I love that. So this episode is going to be a lot of fun. We've said the real risk is irrelevance, right? Being seen as a reporter rather than an addition support partner. How does one help somebody audit and understand whether they're a reporter or whether they're trying to shift? How do we let them know? Like, it might sound harsh, but how?

28:35Honestly, retail media like grieve incredibly quickly and the industry need people who could build campaign, navigate platform, manage investment and create reporting systems. Those were the immediate requirements, Syria And this is what many practitioners were trained and reverted to Now, I think the function is maturing So retail media itself is becoming more connected to the broader commercial system Which means those people, like practitioners, let's say Need to understand more than media metrics As you speak, you know They need to understand how the business makes money. What does the margin look like across product and retailers?

29:24How do supply constraints affect responsible level of demand generation? What does leadership mean by incrementality? How do promotions, pricing, content, availability, and assortment change media performance? Is it incremental sales, new households, category growth, profitable growth, or some combination of those? I mean, Siri, those definitions matter because two teams can use the word incrementality while actually discussing different outcomes. The opportunity is significant because business fluency travels with you. A platform interface can change. A retailer can introduce a new tool. An optimization feature can become automated.

30:08But the ability to understand profitability, diagnose a commercial problem theory, like frame a trade-off and communicate with leadership remains valuable across platform and organizations. So the next generation of retail media leaders, I believe, will stand and understand media, but they will also be comfortable speaking the language of shopper, the retailer, sales, finance, supply, and the brand. So that combination, it's what turns media expertise into business leadership. Love, love, love what you said. So now let's go to metrics. You recommend mastering margin calculations, supply constraints, leadership's definition of incrementality, what that means.

30:57I can tell you for a fact, that's not how we build retail media expertise in this country from a brand perspective because it's, again, been the illusion of control. But let's get your opinion. That's mine. How much of that business fluency exists today across the retail media practitioner community? Be honest with us. What have you seen? Everyone is saying AI, AI now. Like 20 years ago, when I first started this job, like 15 years ago, everyone's saying, mobile is rising, mobile is rising. So I want to spend less time asking, like, what can I do with AI? and more time asking, like, as I said on my presentation, what should humans do now that AI can do more, you know?

31:41So the technology conversation is everywhere, Siri, and it's important. We are discussing new tools, new agents, automation, creative generation, data analysis, or let's say personalization and new shopper experiences. But the organizational conversation is not moving the same speed today. So if AI absorbs more execution, how should we redesign roles? We don't have the answer. What should the practitioners stop doing? What new capabilities should leaders reward? How do we give people access to the commercial information they need to make better decisions? Or how should agencies and brands work together when automated execution becomes a baseline capability?

32:28or how does measurement, as you said, need to evolve when the shopper journey may increasingly begin with an AI agent rather than a traditional search box or a retailer interface? And perhaps most importantly, who remains accountable when an automated system makes or recommends more of the decision? So I believe agentic AI could become a new front end of commerce. The shopper may increasingly express an intention delegate part of the discovery process and allow an agent to evaluate options that could reshape product discovery, brand consideration, and even how retailers and brand define visibility.

33:13So Siri, the human and organizational implications, I think, are just as important as the technology, to answer your question. So we need to discuss the new shape of work, the new shape of leadership before come to metrics and the new shape of accountability. So technology is moving fast. Human adaptation is moving more slowly. And the gap is conversation I want to have more loudly. So I'm thinking through this in about three, three and a half weeks or so, you and I will be at grocery shop where there's going to be a lot of conversation about AI and commerce. I can bet my bottom dollar on that one, and it's going to dominate the agenda.

33:53A lot of the main stage speakers are already in that sphere. What do you want to have the conversation at a grocery shop that you think will be meaningful? I would want really the brands, the retailers, discuss to separate the assistance from ownership in the discussion when they discuss about AI, because I know that AI will be discussed for sure. So using AI aggressively where it creates speed, scale and productive capacity, let it support research, let it summarize information, let it identify patterns. I want this to be discussed between technology owners, retailers and the brands. So we have to understand that brand must still own the objective, the judgment, the distinct point of view and the final decision for sure.

34:47and it might have draft campaign brief, but brand needs to decide what shopper tension is truly worth addressing. And in this position, then AI might generate multiple creative routes with the help of agency, but the brand still needs to determine which one is authentic and strategically meaningful. And the AI tools or capabilities of the retail media networks, that moment might recommend an investment change, but the business needs to understand the trade-off and all the commercial consequences. So the AI tool or whatever we speak about on AI, which part of AI might summarize what happened, but a human needs to explain why it matters and what should happen next.

35:36So I think the danger that we have to discuss in grocery shop is not that brands use AI, why are we losing job? The danger is that they begin accepting generic output without adding proprietary context, brand judgment, or a clear point of view. So everyone has access to similar tools. The tool itself is not the differentiation. The differentiation is, the quality of the question here is uniqueness of inputs, the clarity of the strategy, and the courage of the decision. So that's what I mean when I say, let AI write the draft, you own the story. AI can accelerate the work. It should not replace responsibility of any parties of the ecosystem, agency, brand, or retail network.

36:26But it means that what the work says, what it means, what brand chooses to do is what the main responsibility. Fair enough. So let's close the episode with that very sentiment. Go back to question one, which was the story with your son, which kind of opened your eyes on this aspect. Operators versus orchestrators. Let me write the draft. You own the story. What is your advice to brands on this philosophy? Well, I really enjoyed the conversation with it. Like the brands needs to be open-minded and think out of the box. I know everyone is under the pressure in sales and price increases, tariffs.

37:09so we are in a very tough time so it's tough time for everyone but also tough times bring brands retail networks and also the agencies a chance for creativity to make things easier actually less time and less costly so i think we have to think about how to utilize the assets we have, the human we have, instead of let's use AI and have less headcount. The mindset needs to be changed. As I said, since the beginning, orchestrators are still needed. You cannot ask AI to do everything for you. If that is the mindset of the leaders, they're going to fail in next five years. That's what I'm going to say.

37:59Very well said, Sarp. Let me remind our listeners you can find all of our content by simply going to a web browser and typing cpgguys.com as the URL to our audience. I want to thank you for the clicks, likes, comments, direct messages, meeting us at trade shows, coming to our events, recording episodes with us and our sponsors. We're grateful for you. If today's conversation sparked something for you, a new idea, a fresh perspective, just a reminder why this industry is worth showing up for every day, share it, tag us, tell a colleague, the more voices we bring into this community, the sharp all of us get, You get to over 46 ,000 followers on LinkedIn that trust us to inform, educate, and entertain you about our industry.

38:36And here's my big takeaways from this conversation. Number one, AI is already here. You don't have a choice. Don't be a platform operator. Be a business orchestrator. Understand metrics. Get into the business. Understand business profitability. Understand why a campaign is run. Understand big picture optimization. Distribution is a very keyword every retail media operator should make themselves familiar with. and then really hone down on why the campaign is run versus trying to impress with the illusion of control. That easy. That's my big takeaways from today. And I love the story and analogy that Sarp already gave us with his son, Kai, which was inspirational for this whole 40-minute conversation.

39:15So, Sarp, I want to thank you for joining us for a fantastic conversation on AI and retail media today. Thank you. Thank you, Siri. I genuinely enjoyed this conversation because I think we are discussing something much bigger than retail media here. Retail media happens to be one of the first places where we can see knowledge work being transformed in real time. The technology story is important, but the human story is even more important. How do we evolve? How do we remain relevant? How do we create greater value as more execution becomes automated? For me, the answer comes back to a simple principle.

39:52Move closer to the decisions. Move closer to the business context. Move closer to the questions that matter. move closer to the trade-offs that shape growth, and move closer to accountability for the outcome. AI will continue getting better at execution, for sure. That's not something we should resist. We should use it to create capacity for higher value work. So if listeners take away one question, I would encourage them to stop asking only, will AI take my job? Instead, ask, am I spending my time doing work AI should already be doing and what higher value work will I do instead? So let AI write the drafts.

40:35You own the story. Platform optimize. Human orchestrate. Sri, thank you for having me. It has been a fantastic conversation. Sarp, this is one of our best episodes of the year and a much-needed conversation. Long, long, long overdue on the CPG Guys to our audience. I will see you next week. Keep pushing these conversations forward like Sarp did today. And Paparaj, on behalf of my co-host, Mr. Peter V.S. Bounder, PVSP, this has been the CPG Guys podcast.

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