ecommert Podcast

In this episode of the Ecommert Podcast, we sit down with Alberto Kechler, Global Head of E-commerce for Arla Foods, at their Utrecht offices in the Netherlands. We explore the massive shift from e-commerce hypergrowth to a mature, omnichannel landscape—where breaking down organizational silos is the key to creating a channel-less consumer experience. Alberto shares his journey from 15 years in digital commerce across giants like Nestle and Mondelez to leading the omnichannel transformation at Arla Foods. We discuss why the future of e-commerce isn't just about standalone digital teams—it's about embedding e-commerce expertise directly into local business units. In this episode, you'll learn:
🔹 The Omnichannel Shift: Why the industry is moving away from siloed e-commerce teams toward a fully integrated, channel-less approach.
🔹 "Click and Cook" Case Study: How Arla successfully turned 35 million recipe searches into 1 million shoppable carts in Denmark using API integration.
🔹 Retail Media ROI: Why every retail media investment must have a positive impact on sales, and how to navigate fragmented retailer data.
🔹 Mastering the Digital Shelf: Why perfecting the basics of content, imagery, and availability remains vital before adopting advanced AI and conversational search.
🔹 The JBP Advantage: How clear budget allocation, data, and cross-functional collaboration empower brands during Joint Business Plan (JBP) negotiations with retailers.
About the Guest:
Alberto Kechler is the Global Head of E-commerce for Arla Foods. With over 15 years of experience in the digital commerce space, including leadership roles at Nestle and Mondelez, Alberto is now focused on driving omnichannel transformation, retail media excellence, and seamless consumer experiences for one of the world's largest dairy cooperatives.
🌐 More insights: https://www.ecommert.ai
Mert Damlapinar | ecommert
About ecommert:
We partner with CPG businesses and leading technology companies of all sizes to accelerate growth through AI-driven digital commerce solutions. Our expertise spans e-channel strategy, retail media optimization, and digital shelf analytics, ensuring smarter and more efficient operations across B2C, eB2B, and DTC channels.
Thanks for tuning in to ecommert podcast.

In this episode of the Ecommert Podcast, we sit down with Alberto Kechler, Global Head of E-commerce for Arla Foods, at their Utrecht offices in the Netherlands. We explore the massive shift from e-commerce hypergrowth to a mature, omnichannel landscape—where breaking down organizational silos is the key to creating a channel-less consumer experience. Alberto shares his journey from 15 years in digital commerce across giants like Nestle and Mondelez to leading the omnichannel transformation at Arla Foods. We discuss why the future of e-commerce isn't just about standalone digital teams—it's about embedding e-commerce expertise directly into local business units. In this episode, you'll learn:
🔹 The Omnichannel Shift: Why the industry is moving away from siloed e-commerce teams toward a fully integrated, channel-less approach.
🔹 "Click and Cook" Case Study: How Arla successfully turned 35 million recipe searches into 1 million shoppable carts in Denmark using API integration.
🔹 Retail Media ROI: Why every retail media investment must have a positive impact on sales, and how to navigate fragmented retailer data.
🔹 Mastering the Digital Shelf: Why perfecting the basics of content, imagery, and availability remains vital before adopting advanced AI and conversational search.
🔹 The JBP Advantage: How clear budget allocation, data, and cross-functional collaboration empower brands during Joint Business Plan (JBP) negotiations with retailers.
About the Guest:
Alberto Kechler is the Global Head of E-commerce for Arla Foods. With over 15 years of experience in the digital commerce space, including leadership roles at Nestle and Mondelez, Alberto is now focused on driving omnichannel transformation, retail media excellence, and seamless consumer experiences for one of the world's largest dairy cooperatives.
🌐 More insights: https://www.ecommert.ai
Mert Damlapinar | ecommert
About ecommert:
We partner with CPG businesses and leading technology companies of all sizes to accelerate growth through AI-driven digital commerce solutions. Our expertise spans e-channel strategy, retail media optimization, and digital shelf analytics, ensuring smarter and more efficient operations across B2C, eB2B, and DTC channels.
Thanks for tuning in to ecommert podcast.

In this episode of the Ecommert Podcast, we sit down with Jeong Woo, Director of Brand Partnerships at Instacart, at Instacart's headquarters in New York. We explore the transformation of Instacart from a grocery delivery platform into a full-scale retail media and ad tech ecosystem powering over 240 retail partners.
Jeong shares her journey across Microsoft, Amazon, and Pinterest, and how those experiences shaped her perspective on digital media, data, and commerce. We dive into how Instacart is helping CPG brands reach consumers both on and off the platform, and why the industry is moving toward a world where everything is shoppable and friction in the shopper journey is minimized.
We also discuss how retail media is evolving beyond lower-funnel tactics into full-funnel strategies, powered by first-party data, advanced targeting, and closed-loop measurement.
In this episode, you'll learn:
🔹 The Evolution of Instacart: From last-mile delivery to a grocery technology company powering over 240 retailers with white-label retail media solutions.
🔹 Retail Media at Scale: How brands can reach consumers across on-site and off-site channels, including social, CTV, and programmatic.
🔹 Everything Is Shoppable: Why CPG brands are pushing for frictionless experiences and how reducing clicks is reshaping the consumer journey.
🔹 First-Party Data & Targeting: How Instacart leverages its data to help brands reach high-intent, lapsed, and new-to-brand consumers.
🔹 Incrementality & Measurement: How brands can measure true impact through lift studies, closed-loop attribution, and third-party partnerships like Circana.
🔹 From Search to Discovery: The rise of inspirational formats like shoppable recipes, bundles, and occasions to drive awareness and new customer acquisition.
About the Guest: Jeong Vu is the Director of Brand Partnerships at Instacart, where she leads strategic relationships with CPG brands, primarily in the beverages category. With a career spanning Microsoft, Amazon, and Pinterest, Jeong brings deep expertise in digital advertising, retail media, and commerce strategy, helping brands drive measurable growth through data-driven solutions.
🌐 More insights: https://www.ecommert.ai
Mert Damlapinar | ecommert
About ecommert:
We partner with CPG businesses and leading technology companies of all sizes to accelerate growth through AI-driven digital commerce solutions. Our expertise spans e-channel strategy, retail media optimization, and digital shelf analytics, ensuring smarter and more efficient operations across B2C, eB2B, and DTC channels.
🎧 Thanks for tuning in to the ecommert podcast.

In this episode of the Ecommert Podcast, we sit down with Stephen Howard-Sarin, Managing Director of North America for Criteo , at the Commerce Media Brands Summit in Atlanta . We explore the massive reinvention happening in the retail media landscape—from solving buy-side fragmentation to the explosion of AI-driven conversational commerce. Stephen shares his journey of over a decade in commerce media, having built giant advertising businesses at eBay, Walmart Connect, and Instacart before joining Criteo . We discuss why the industry is shifting away from trade spend constraints, the reality of shopping within Large Language Models (LLMs), and how brands must prepare for a future where product discovery starts with a picture rather than a keyword. In this episode, you'll learn:

🔹 The Retail Media Reinvention: Why the industry is shifting toward buy-side tool consolidation, allowing brands to seamlessly manage campaigns and reach audiences across multiple retail networks.
🔹 Trade Spend vs. True Media: The defining line of retail advertising—"it's not advertising if the advertiser can't say no"—and how brands are capping trade investments to focus on real media ROI.
🔹 The AI Checkout Delusion: Unpacking the Silicon Valley myth around LLM checkouts, with predictions that only 2% of e-commerce transactions will actually happen inside an AI chat by 2029.
🔹 Picture vs. Keyword: How multimodal AI is fundamentally changing product discovery, moving from traditional search terms to contextual, image-based conversations.
🔹 The AI "Black Box": The new challenges of closed-loop attribution when consumer discovery and consideration happen through ambiguous chatbot conversations before the actual purchase.
About the Guest: Stephen Howard-Sarin is the Managing Director of North America for Criteo . With over a decade of pioneering experience in the commerce media space, Stephen has played pivotal roles in building and scaling giant advertising businesses at eBay, Walmart Connect, and Instacart . At Criteo, he focuses on turning complex retail media fragmentation and the rise of conversational AI into scalable growth strategies for brands and retailers alike.

🌐 More insights: https://www.ecommert.ai
Mert Damlapinar | ecommert
About ecommert:
We partner with CPG businesses and leading technology companies of all sizes to accelerate growth through AI-driven digital commerce solutions. Our expertise spans e-channel strategy, retail media optimization, and digital shelf analytics, ensuring smarter and more efficient operations across B2C, eB2B, and DTC channels.
Thanks for tuning in to ecommert podcast.

In this episode of the Ecommert Podcast, we sit down with Alberto Kechler, Global Head of E-commerce for Arla Foods, at their Utrecht offices in the Netherlands. We explore the massive shift from e-commerce hypergrowth to a mature, omnichannel landscape—where breaking down organizational silos is the key to creating a channel-less consumer experience. Alberto shares his journey from 15 years in digital commerce across giants like Nestle and Mondelez to leading the omnichannel transformation at Arla Foods. We discuss why the future of e-commerce isn't just about standalone digital teams—it's about embedding e-commerce expertise directly into local business units. In this episode, you'll learn:
🔹 The Omnichannel Shift: Why the industry is moving away from siloed e-commerce teams toward a fully integrated, channel-less approach.
🔹 "Click and Cook" Case Study: How Arla successfully turned 35 million recipe searches into 1 million shoppable carts in Denmark using API integration.
🔹 Retail Media ROI: Why every retail media investment must have a positive impact on sales, and how to navigate fragmented retailer data.
🔹 Mastering the Digital Shelf: Why perfecting the basics of content, imagery, and availability remains vital before adopting advanced AI and conversational search.
🔹 The JBP Advantage: How clear budget allocation, data, and cross-functional collaboration empower brands during Joint Business Plan (JBP) negotiations with retailers.
About the Guest:
Alberto Kechler is the Global Head of E-commerce for Arla Foods. With over 15 years of experience in the digital commerce space, including leadership roles at Nestle and Mondelez, Alberto is now focused on driving omnichannel transformation, retail media excellence, and seamless consumer experiences for one of the world's largest dairy cooperatives.
🌐 More insights: https://www.ecommert.ai
Mert Damlapinar | ecommert
About ecommert:
We partner with CPG businesses and leading technology companies of all sizes to accelerate growth through AI-driven digital commerce solutions. Our expertise spans e-channel strategy, retail media optimization, and digital shelf analytics, ensuring smarter and more efficient operations across B2C, eB2B, and DTC channels.
Thanks for tuning in to ecommert podcast.