Acadia

This week on the Ecommerce Braintrust Podcast with Julie Spear & Jordan Ripley we have a very special episode, recorded live from Amazon unBoxed in Nashville. Jordan Ripley and I sat down with Christopher Conetta, Director of Omnichannel ADSP Supply, to dig into updates that are reshaping how brands plan, execute, and measure full-funnel media while also leveraging ADSP for brand-building. Here are 3 key takeaways from our conversation: 🔹 ADSP is becoming the “everything store” for advertisers. With expanded integrations (Roku, Disney, Netflix, Spotify, SiriusXM and more), deterministic signals, and authenticated reach, ADSP is increasingly positioned as a true enterprise-grade programmatic solution but built for accessibility. 🔹 Holistic measurement just took a leap forward. Between advancements in Amazon Marketing Cloud and the launch of the Ads Agent, brands can now get end-to-end visibility from first touch all the way to lower-funnel conversions on Amazon. And better yet: the tools are becoming usable for any advertiser, not just the SQL pros. 🔹 The democratization of creative and media is here. With the new Creative Agent and the unification of Sponsored Products and DSP in a single console, Amazon is breaking down barriers that kept smaller teams out of premium video and full-funnel strategies. Creative production at scale, and connected storytelling across STV, OLV, and retail media, is now achievable for everyone. If you're in the midst of planning where ADSP fits in your 2026 brand strategy, this is a great conversation to listen to! Search Ecommerce Braintrust in your favorite podcast app or click the link in the comments to give this episode a listen

The future is very bright in digital media... In the last 10 days, I got to go to Unboxed by Amazon Ads Partners and was then lucky enough to be invited to Google's #AgencyLeadershipCircle in SFO. Given that I go to almost no events per year, this was very rare for me. I chose both of these events because in the right moments, you get into the weeds enough into product and can get back to basics to see some trends. I am leaving with four big conclusions: 1. As agencies, we must run to embrace all available AI products and innovation within these engines. They are game-changing. It is our job to do this for our clients and brands, and not "protect old ways." It is also our job to use all the features, exclusions, and controls to help make it work for our clients. There is nothing to fear here. Fear is useless. What are we clinging to anyway? We moaned for years about how manual bidding and horrible campaign set-ups were wastes of time. Mazel...we got what we wanted so now lets run to it and embrace AI Max and run to try Amazon's new creative embedded AI tools. 2. Search is growing. More searches on Google. More searches on Amazon. More searches on Walmart. And yes, more searches on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Reddit. The pie is growing. Searches are getting longer and more sophisticated. Secondary searches are happening more often with the benefit of these engines suggesting things. Just as some were fast to claim peak oil was 30 years ago (clearly not correct), some were too fast to claim peak search was yesterday. Peak search is still here and ahead of us. We just have to understand it differently. 3. Measurement is about "triangulation." Got to give credit to an old friend (he is not old, just our relationship is old:) John Nicoletti who shared this gem over a good lunch catch up. He is right. CFO's dont want to hear about inflated MTA results. CFOs need to see media mix models, incrementality tests, and even market-mate tests and how the CASH REGISTER moves. To get to this requires triangulation. To some degree, this links to #4 below. 4. Let's all find a bit more optimism. For an industry that was created out of thin air in the late 90's with a sense of wonder about the internet, I sure see a lot of people sad and worried. I get it. I do. But, what if we asked ourselves different questions. "Could this be the best time ever to be in this industry?" or "Are we really so romantically involved in our keywords that we cant move on and give up some control?" I guess I am just saying....I saw the future over the last 10 days and I have decided that I love it. But, in those same rooms, I saw lots of faces that were drawn and sad and I would wish for you all to see what I see...which is that its very possible we are going to have more excitement over the next 5 years than the past 20. I filled up this yellow book of notes in just 10 days. To me, that is joy.

Acadia is the 2025 Amazon Ads Partner winner for Challenger Brand in AMER for our work with BODi The Beachbody Company. The thing I love most about this campaign is that it’s based on really good retail media and marketplace fundamentals. We didn’t have a huge budget to simply buy our way in. We implemented a full-funnel “Funnel Handoff” strategy using Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) to orchestrate distinct roles across ad types. We also identified a big insight our competitors were ignoring. 80% of category searches were non-branded, highlighting a market share opportunity BODi could and did take advantage of. It was a thoughtful custom strategy utilizing the best Amazon features we had at our disposal. This is all possible because of the trust we have in our amazing partners at BODi, thank you Carl Daikeler, Andrew Samson and Erica Chan. So incredibly proud of everyone who had a hand in this achievement. Julian Galindo, Tamara Vukovic, Sanja Bazdar, Robert B., Emrina Golub, Marija Grubor Čajić, Ivana Kosovac Nanić, Bahrija Bajramović Garibija, Ross Walker, Jordan Ripley, Pat Petriello Thank you to Amazon Ads Partners & Amazon Ads for this recognition.

We’re proud to partner with Magic Spoon to lead a strategic, iterative A/B testing roadmap, and the results speak for themselves. Together, we’ve run tests throughout their site — including product pages and the BYOB funnel — helping drive a 29% lift in subscription opt-ins and a 9% boost in overall conversion rate. Thanks to Ciara Lydon and Chris LaFay of Classic City Consulting for being a great and supportive partners. The testing and learning never stops; we’re just getting started! You can read the whole case study from Shopify and watch the interview by following the link in the comments.

Acadia Named Media & Analytics AOR for Mission Pet Health. We are so happy to help Mission Pet Health help tons of fury friends live their longest and best lives...and its our good fortune to work with Maria Harper, Corbin Smith and a great team. They share our focus on not just great work but also great core values. We built Acadia to bring full funnel media to market AND tie it with incrementality testing, media mix modeling, market ranker analysis. Thanks to Steve McClellan at MediaPost for diving in and covering Acadia Analyze, our AI based insights suite that helps us define where we spend that next best dollar. Steve understands (thank you!) its unique to bring Media AND Analytics at scale to market.

Who’s ready for unBoxed next week?? The Acadia team will be there in full force… I’ll be joined by Jared Belsky, Jordan Ripley, Pat Petriello and Ross Walker. We’re excited (and pretty proud!) that Acadia is a finalist for the Challenger Brand Award for the second year in a row. Our work with BODi is being recognized for how we used custom AMC audiences and a smart full-funnel strategy to help BODi not only break into but find real growth in the ultra-competitive protein category. While we’re there Jordan Ripley and I will be recording a special edition of the Ecommerce Braintrust Podcast with Julie Spear & Jordan Ripley live from the Amazon Content Studio. And Ross Walker will be presenting with DevaCurl's Jeff Lin, Pacvue's Vince Velasquez, and Amazon Ads' Lauren Corby, spotlighting how AMC is fueling full-funnel campaigns that drive new-to-brand growth. If you’ll be in Nashville, let’s connect - I would love to catch up in person!