Retail is no longer just about selling products. It is about orchestrating intelligent, personalized experiences at scale. In this episode of the Evolve Podcast, Ryan Serpan, Head of CX Practice at Blend, moderates a dynamic conversation with Janine Flaccavento, SVP Retail Media Americas at Criteo, and Jordan Cardonick, CX Platforms & Measurement Lead at Blend, joins to add perspective on AI, first-party data, measurement, and customer experience transformation.

Together, they explore how brands can move beyond fragmented retail media strategies and embrace a more connected, data-driven, and customer-centric future. Janine shares her perspective from decades at the forefront of retail media, highlighting how the industry is shifting from reactive advertising toward predictive, AI-enabled commerce ecosystems. The conversation spans first-party data, retail media networks, conversational commerce, AI-driven personalization, and the emerging world of agentic shopping experiences.

‍Key Takeaways:

• Retail intelligence is moving from reactive to predictive: AI is helping brands anticipate shopper behavior instead of simply analyzing past performance.
• Retail media fragmentation is reaching a breaking point: Unified platforms and standardization are becoming essential as brands navigate hundreds of retail media networks.
• AI is compressing marketing timelines: Campaign planning, audience creation, activation, and measurement can now move from weeks to hours.
• LLMs are becoming the new discovery engine: Shoppers increasingly expect AI systems to provide answers, recommendations, and curated solutions.
• Trust and relevance must evolve together: Brands need to rebuild the value exchange by delivering experiences that feel useful, not intrusive.
• Agentic commerce could reshape the purchase journey: AI assistants, conversational search, and recommendation engines are creating new ways for consumers to discover and buy.
• First-party data remains the foundation: High-quality data, cross-channel activation, and strong creative are the pillars of AI-powered commerce.

The future belongs to shopper-first brands: The winners will be the organizations that use AI to deepen trust, improve relevance, and create better customer experiences.

If you are interested in topics like AI-powered commerce, retail media, first-party data strategy, customer experience transformation, agentic commerce, personalization, measurement, and commerce intelligence, reach out to Ryan Serpan or Jordan Cardonick from Blend, or Janine Flaccavento from Criteo.