Is retail media actually broken, or is it just growing up in a market that keeps changing the rules? In Episode 11 of Digital Shelf Insider Season 2, host Shreshta Joy brings to the show, Kavita Cariapa, Head of Commerce Media, EMEA at dentsu, to unpack why commerce media in Europe is playing a very different game from the US, why the "gangly teenager" label misses the real problem, and what retail readiness has to look like before any brand starts worrying about how it shows up in ChatGPT or Perplexity. Kavita gets into what commerce media actually means beyond a bigger inventory play, why European retailers have an advantage most people underestimate, how in-store activation still lives outside the measurable, and what shopper data really unlocks when it stops sitting in a silo. She also lays out why AI readiness is an evolution of retail readiness, not a fresh checklist, and why the brands winning the next phase are the ones putting foundations, governance, and process ownership in place right now. In this episode: (00:00) Trailer (01:10) Intro (02:31) Meet Kavita Cariapa, Head of Commerce Media EMEA, dentsu (02:50) Retail media vs commerce media: US giants vs the European reality (07:02) European retail media's "gangly teenager" phase (10:33) How D2C challengers and legacy enterprise brands see retail media differently (11:58) Closing the gap between digital demand and in-store execution (15:50) GenAI, retail readiness, and what "answer readiness" actually means (23:56) Commercial sales enablement: clean rooms, attribution, creators, and AI agents (27:39) What comes next after agentic commerce? (28:53) Wrap-up If you work in retail media, commerce strategy, digital shelf performance, or brand growth across EMEA, this one is worth the full listen. Digital Shelf Insider is MetricsCart's podcast series, where retail and e-commerce leaders share how they are building brands, scaling operations, and reading the shifts on the digital shelf. Follow for new episodes every week! MetricsCart is a digital shelf analytics platform covering 150+ global retailers, helping brands track product visibility, pricing, availability, and content performance in the markets that matter. 📊 Check your brand's price health: Want to catch price erosion and unauthorized sellers before they hit your Net PPM? Get a free audit of your MAP compliance & Buy Box health from MetricsCart.
