Exverus Media’s Hillary Kupferberg on connecting retail media and CTV to sales

Hillary Kupferberg, Exverus Media’s VP of performance marketing, is one marketer who is embracing the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). In fact, on the latest 5 Minutes With, Kupferberg shares her hot take with The Current’s Editor-in-Chief Stephanie Paterik that she is even excited for it to take her job one day, a hotly contested opinion in the world of marketing.

Kupferberg also touches on the future of retail media and brand loyalty, and how those elements are reshaping the industry, especially when it comes to consumer data. The ability to target shoppers through new retail media channels and omnichannel campaigns redefines what has been traditionally possible, she says.

What is your one hot take or unpopular opinion about media right now?

This is one of my favorite questions. I actually think that I'm excited for AI to take my job one day. This is definitely controversial, but it is very exciting to me to think about if AI can take on aspects of my job, what else that will mean for the new and kind of next steps for what my role will transform into.

What do you want to hand off to your new AI friend?

Billing and I think everyone in the industry would agree, but definitely those tedious tasks, repetitive data, manual things that we can kind of port over to AI and focus more on using that technology to advance everything that we're doing is going to make our performance stronger and let us be us and be creative and do the things that I personally really love about this industry.

So, you do a lot of work in the retail media and retail data space. Speaking of buzzwords, it's something that people have been talking about for a few years now and are really struck by how it's grown. I'm curious to know, what do you see coming for its next phase of growth?

I think the demand for retail e-commerce in terms of the media and the data that comes with that, the demand is so strong right now and it's going to take some time for that to lead into, but the projections, eMarketer has it tying with social media by 2027. It creates a lot of opportunity for our brands.

That stat is worth repeating. Emarketer is predicting that marketing spend on retail media and retail data is going to catch up to social media in 2027. That's just a couple years away. What does the industry need to do right now to realize that growth?

I think we're already doing a lot, and in terms of embracing that growth, it is all about omnichannel and these things working together. Meaning your retail budgets and your shopper budgets are working with your brand budgets because now it's all connected. We can measure it, which is incredible and that's an exciting phase.

We have one client who is running a CTV awareness campaign — very typical, but what's new is we're able to target Walmart shoppers and then actually drive them to Walmart, and that is an incredible aspect because now we have a CTV awareness campaign that I can actually share back that they're driving millions of dollars in sales, and to have that data and that closed loop attribution is really going to propel the future of what we can do while we're in the weeds.

I'm curious to know your thoughts on stoking brand loyalty versus finding new customers. Where are your clients finding success in straddling that line? You need both.

I think as a consumer or as a person, you can agree with that. We don't want to just have transactional one-time purchases, and that's really part of building a brand, is creating authentic relationships, repeat purchases and loyalty brand enthusiasts. I mean, we've had opportunities where we see consumers sharing on social media and really loving a brand. That takes time. It doesn't happen overnight and it's not something that a week later we can report back and say, yep, we did it.

Again, it's embracing both, increasing your commitment to your brand and your authenticity and your investment in that awareness media, and then capitalizing on those through sales. That's the magic and one can't exist without the other.