In this month’s episode, Emma and Danny Hoffman, Senior Director of Global Retail Strategy, break down three commerce shifts brands should be watching:

• How Amazon’s rebrand of Rufus to Alexa for Shopping is embedding conversational commerce directly into the shopping journey
• Why Prime Day moving to June changes the retail calendar
• How store remodels are turning physical retail into a more connected data and consumer experience.

Watch or listen now to hear what these changes mean for brands trying to stay ahead of the next wave of commerce.

Disruption is a familiar force in retail, yet many brands still struggle to plan ahead. In this conversation, Emma and Doug Koontz, Senior Director of retail Insights, unpack Flywheel Retail Insights’ annual Future Retail Disruption report and what it means for brands planning for 2026 and beyond.

From value-seeking behavior, affordable wellness, and private label pressure to AI’s role in making conversational commerce the norm and retail media’s evolution into a full-funnel commerce engine, Doug explains the forces reshaping retail and how brands can prepare for what comes next without losing sight of the fundamentals.

Download the report here.

Today’s shoppers bounce between retailers, channels, and missions, but they still expect brands to understand what they need. In this episode, Emma sits down with Tiffany Tan, Head of eComm Growth Accelerator at Clorox, to talk about how Clorox is striving toward 1:1, personalized marketing, the data and clean room foundations behind it, and how AI can help scale personalization in a real, practical way.

You’ll hear how Clorox thinks about high‑value shoppers, what it takes to move from broad targeting to more tailored experiences, and how Tiffany is planning for a future where creative, audiences, and measurement all work together to serve real people, not segments on a slide.

As mentioned in the episode, you can listen to "How brands can own the AI search revolution" here.

In this month’s episode, Emma and Danny Hoffman, Senior Director of Global Retail Strategy, break down three commerce topics brands should have on their radar right now. Listen in for insights on who is absorbing the cost of ever-faster fulfillment, what California’s case against Amazon could mean for brands and consumers, and why Amazon’s move to brand-agnostic Sponsored Prompts signals a bigger shift in how shoppers search and how brands show up in AI-assisted discovery.

Partnership marketing has shifted from a nice-to-have to a real growth lever for brands looking to cut through the noise. In this episode, Keke Strayhan, Head of Partnerships at Flywheel, breaks down what makes a partnership actually work, why authenticity and strategy matter more than hype, and how brands of all sizes can use partnerships to reach new audiences, build cultural relevance, and drive sales.

In this month's episode, Emma and Danny Hoffman (Senior Director, Global Retail Strategy) break down three commerce topics brands should have on their radar right now: what Joybuy’s launch in Europe could mean for competition and for brands, why more advertising dollars may keep moving toward retailer DSPs instead of other media environments, and how AI is starting to change the way shoppers discover products and how brands show up.

What does it actually take to grow on TikTok Shop? In this episode, Deren Baker, CEO of Flywheel Ventures, explains why brands need to treat TikTok Shop as a creator-led sales channel, not just another social platform or traditional marketplace. He breaks down how to match the right products, creators, and content to the way people shop in-feed, and why that shift is critical for turning views into real, profitable growth. To go deeper, download TikTok Shop Unlocked: The ultimate brand playbook for turning views into profitable growth.

In this episode, Emma and Patrick break down three pressure points every brand should be watching. First, they tackle the performance vs. transparency tradeoff in media buying. What's the balance between log‑level data and control, chasing opaque performance, and using transparency to actually change how and where you buy?

Then they unpack The Trade Desk’s latest earnings and what its slowdown (and supply‑side growth elsewhere) signal about where spend is shifting across DSPs, CTV, and the open internet.

Finally, they dig into the rush of vendors promising “LLM performance” measurement, covering how pricing is already collapsing, how little real differentiation there is, and how brands should approach contracts, trust, and experimentation in this new category.

Off‑platform doesn’t have to mean more complexity. Emma is joined by Instacart’s Head of Off-platform Strategy, Adam Silverblatt, to break down how brands can use Instacart’s first‑party data beyond Instacart.com. This looks like building high‑intent audiences, activating them via partners like The Trade Desk, Roku, Pinterest, and TikTok, and closing the loop with sales measurement. They dig into what makes Instacart’s audiences truly incremental, how to avoid double‑paying for the same shoppers, and what brands should be asking every retail media network about incrementality and accountability.

In this month’s episode, Emma and Patrick unpack what Andy Jassy’s AI comments really mean for where Amazon is betting on growth in his recent "The Information" interview, and how that could reshape the tools brands get for search, ads, and measurement.

Next, they dig into Walmart’s latest AI moves with Gemini and the challenge of who owns shopper traffic, as well as highlight areas where Walmart is set up for growth.

To close it out, they break down Amazon’s decision to shut down Go and Fresh stores and double down on Whole Foods and online grocery delivery, and what that means for your assortment, trade terms, and supply chain.

You’ll walk away with a clearer view of where the big platforms are headed next, and what your brand should start changing now so you’re not playing catch‑up in 12–18 months.