Quick answer: Grant Steadman spent nearly two decades building retail media before it had a name, first at dunnhumby powering Tesco's Clubcard and Kroger's loyalty programs, then at Coolerscreens bringing it into physical stores. In this episode of Unlocking Retail Media, he makes the case that AI is not just another tech upgrade. It is a fundamental reset of how customers shop, how retailers operate, and who owns the intelligence layer.
Retail media has a short memory. The industry talks about a five-year boom, but the foundational work, loyalty data, personalization engines, closed-loop measurement, was being built fifteen years ago by a small group of people who did not have the buzzwords yet.
Grant Steadman is one of those people. After nearly 16 years at dunnhumby, rising to President of North America, he went on to lead customer success at Coolerscreens, co-founded Astroworks AI, and now advises at Bain. In this episode of Unlocking Retail Media, he sat down with Kevel CEO James Avery to trace the arc from Tesco's first Clubcard experiments to what he calls the most significant transformation retail has ever seen. Below are the five biggest takeaways.
Takeaway 1: Retail Media Was Born from a Simple Question: Why Can't We Measure This?
Grant did not set out to build retail media. He started at an Omnicom agency in London running above-the-line campaigns for retail and CPG clients and quickly grew frustrated that no one could tell whether any of it worked.
That frustration drove him toward direct marketing and early digital, then to dunnhumby, where Tesco's Clubcard data was already being used to personalize loyalty offers. The retail media unit grew organically from there: loyalty personalization led to category insights, which led to shopper marketing, which led to someone saying, "Why don't we bundle all of this together?
That bundle of data, media, and measurement is exactly what every retailer is trying to build today. The playbook is roughly 15 years old. What has changed is the scale and the urgency.
Takeaway 2: The US and Europe Built Retail Media Differently
The US went digital-first, driven by Amazon's scale and commercial aggression. Europe, anchored by Tesco's model, went loyalty-first: more omnichannel, more aligned with merchandising, more disciplined about connecting media to the customer relationship.
Neither is perfect. The US got speed and scale but often skipped the strategic foundation. European markets built discipline but lacked tech investment. As US retail media matures and advertisers demand better measurement, the European model starts to look like a competitive advantage rather than a lag.
Takeaway 3: AI Is Not a Tool. It Is a Reset of the Entire Operating Model.
After leaving dunnhumby, Grant studied AI at UC Berkeley. What he saw was not a new feature set. It was a structural shift in how decisions get made, how work gets done, and how value gets distributed.
"This is gonna change the customer interface of how they shop, how they engage with retailers. And it is gonna change the internal operating systems of retailers and therefore the economics of retail." - Grant Steadman
For retail media specifically, AI is already reshaping audience building, campaign planning, creative versioning, performance optimization, and shopper discovery. Grant's estimate: the industry is 10-20% of the way through a decade-long transformation. The retailers acting like this is settled are the ones most at risk.
Takeaway 4: Agentic Commerce Is a New Channel, With a Data Ownership Problem.
The maximalist view, that everyone buys everything through ChatGPT, is not how Grant sees it playing out. A more useful frame: think of it like mobile. E-commerce already existed. Mobile added a new access layer. Agentic commerce is doing the same thing to digital retail.
The difference is the richness of the signal. Instead of inferring intent from a keyword, retailers can now receive a prompt like: "I'm hosting a dinner party for 12, two vegans, budget is $150." That is not a search query. That is a brief.
The catch: if that prompt goes through ChatGPT instead of the retailer's own interface, who owns the signal? Grant identifies data ownership as the most underappreciated strategic question in retail right now.
"The retailers need to decide: how are they gonna maintain data ownership and control? Who is gonna own the intelligence layer?" - Grand Steadman
Takeaway 5: The Change Management Problem Is Harder Than the Tech Problem
Grant sees it repeatedly in his work at Astroworks AI. Retailers pilot AI tools, get strong results, then fail to scale because they have not changed how teams work, who makes decisions, or what workflows look like post-AI.
The four layers Grant applies to retail AI transformations: Strategy, Activations, Change Management, and Enablers. Most retailers jump straight to layer four. The ones who succeed start with layer three.
Conclusion: The Retailers Who Win Will Own the Intelligence Layer
The retailers who emerge strongest will not just be the ones who deploy the best AI tools. They will be the ones who figure out how to own the customer signal, whether it flows through a loyalty card, a website, an app, or a prompt typed into Claude, and use it to build genuinely better experiences.
Retail media started as a bundle of data and media capabilities that most advertisers did not understand. That is exactly where agentic commerce is today. The playbook is the same. The stakes are higher.
Listen to the Full Conversation on Unlocking Retail Media
For more insights like these, tune in to the full episode of Unlocking Retail Media, the podcast where Kevel CEO James Avery sits down with industry leaders and innovators shaping the future of retail advertising.
Listen to this episode with Grant Steadman here.
