Cara Pratt, long-time Kroger ad sales leader and perhaps the most recognizable name in retail media, is taking the helm as president of retail and media at Circana.
If you don’t recognize that company name, don’t fret. Most people, consumers and even brand marketers, wouldn’t know Circana, though the company plays a critical role in retail media and shopper marketing.
Circana was formed by the 2023 merger of two age-old players in the category: supermarket purchase data company IRI, which has done that one thing for 45 years, and NPD Group, a 60-year-old business originally with its roots as a “National Purchase Diary Panel.”
“They’ve got a lot of rich history,” Pratt said. Last year, Circana made a bid to wrap up another major player in the space, announcing plans to acquire NCSolutions. The one-time Nielsen Catalina business, NCSolutions combines Nielsen’s media and retail data, Catalina’s store data and partnerships with online shopper loyalty programs. This deal has not yet been approved, and it’s one of the things Pratt is not able to speak about.
AdExchanger caught up with her on why she’s switching from Kroger, the changes she’s witnessed across retail and advertising in recent years and other topics she is allowed to speak about.
AdExchanger: Why Circana? And why now?
CARA PRATT: The company has been reinventing itself over many, many years, beyond being an important analytics partner for brands and for retailers. The company has helped in assessing and measuring performance, and understanding how consumer behaviors are changing across media and trade.
Then they’ve extended to new horizons as important growth partners. That can mean anything around fueling innovation, product recommendations or M&A recommendations in the brand CPG space. Or obviously influencing retail media ecosystem decisions. This is an awesome opportunity to take the next step forward.
The core focus is on being a growth partner. If I think about Circana and the assets that they have, they can influence every aspect of retail decisioning. And that starts with what happens operationally. It gets every decision of how a brand gets to shelf or creates its innovation plan and supply-chain dynamics. Then it fuels decisions like shelf assortment, price promotions, placement decisions and, of course, accessing the demand to move product.
The entire end-to-end supply chain of influencing the retail environment with brands is directly in the wheelhouse for Circana’s capabilities.
After almost 20 years leading retail media sales at Kroger, and seeing the change you have in the space, what do you think you’ll take from that to this role?
It’d been an incredible journey that I feel so grateful and fortunate to have played a role. The last eight years or so have been anchored into the retail media space. As you stated, an incredible evolution has taken shape. And there’s still a real need to drive a differentiated level of standardization. But the markers are there, as far as on the media side, and the role that retail data can play at scale to influence productive, responsible investment.
One thing is that marketers recognize the value of intelligence and understanding that first-party data can provide. And they recognize that the funnel collapsing is happening. Or has happened. And addressability at scale is accessible today: streaming, social, programmatic and retail platforms. So this is just the beginning.
There’s going to be a lot that I would expect in terms of the continued tuning. As that takes shape and standardization starts to happen, the role that retail data can play to influence better marketing decisions and ultimately influence conversions, is still in the early innings.
There are a handful of consumer apps that have pivoted from essentially aggregating deals or cashback offers to selling retail audiences and store sales data. Can you imagine Circana operating a consumer-facing app or business?
Well, Circana already has a consumer panel that bridges not just what is happening across consumer behavior, but gets to the question of, “Why?”
It is an incredibly expansive consumer panel. [Circana’s own marketing materials say there are 200,000 panelists who contribute store receipts.]
And, again, that continues to extend out our ability to help brands and retailers understand what may be driving forces behind consumer trends. I continue to see panels as an extension of various solutions that we can bring to market and really influence decisions.
There’s been a groundswell of brands and retail median agency buyers pushing back on the very high demands some retailers make, in terms of committing budgets to their respective retail media platforms. Is that something you’ve seen or would push back on?
I’ve always been of the perspective that performance has to prevail. Any retailer that’s bringing a media business forward has to focus on business outcomes, just like any media company has to focus on business outcomes, or any brand or retailer.
And retailers have different choices for how they want to go to market. That is a fact. But sustainable, scalable, responsible investment has to perform.
Do you think it makes sense for Circana to buy or build the actual ad tech, rather than stick to data and analytics?
Circana already has relationships across the media supply chain.
I’m still a short way out from my official start, but I’m certainly excited to jump in with the team and talk about the plans and augment the strategy that exists today. My focus is on influencing the media supply chain through existing capabilities.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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