The Kind of Business You Build Determines the Talent You Value


Retail media organizations often say they are โ€œbuilding a media business.โ€

But there are at least two very different things that could mean:

  1. Monetizing what already exists

  2. Creating new value

Those two approaches can look similar on the surface.

They are fundamentally different underneath.


If an organization is focused on monetizing inventory, what it needs most are:

โ€ข Operators

โ€ข Sellers

โ€ข Process owners

โ€ข Package designers

โ€ข Forecast managers


If it is focused on creating new value, what it needs most are:

โ€ข Strategists

โ€ข Product thinkers

โ€ข Narrative builders

โ€ข Differentiators

โ€ข Insight translators


Both models are legitimate.

They just reward very different kinds of experience.


This Has Helped Me Understand My Own Friction

When I look at my own experience inside retail media through this lens, a lot of things make more sense.

I wasnโ€™t being resisted.

I wasnโ€™t being challenged.

I wasnโ€™t being shut down.


I was being evaluated through a model that didnโ€™t require what I was built to do.

My backgroundโ€”building agency products, shaping go-to-market narratives, selling strategy, designing offeringsโ€”simply wasnโ€™t central to the kind of business that was actually being built.

That doesnโ€™t make the organization wrong.

It does explain why Iโ€™ve felt misaligned.


When Experience Isnโ€™t Legible, Influence Is Hard to Earn

One of the quietest forms of misalignment is when your experience doesnโ€™t convert into authority.


Not because anyone doubts you.

But because the system doesnโ€™t know what to do with what you bring.

Over time, you learn what the organization actually values.

And you adapt.


You stop reframing the business.

You stop proposing structural ideas.

You stop pushing for differentiation.


Not out of resentmentโ€”but out of pattern recognition.


This Is the Question Iโ€™ve Had to Ask Myself

Not:

โ€œWhy doesnโ€™t this organization value me?โ€


But:

โ€œWhat kind of business is this actually trying to be?โ€


If it is primarily monetizing what it already has, then my background will always feel peripheral.

If it is trying to create new value, then my background should be central.

Those two realities cannot coexist.


The Clarity That Comes From Naming This

Retail media may evolve.

It may mature.

It may deepen.


But right now, many retail media organizations are not structured for people like me.

They are structured for monetization.


Once I understood that, a lot of my frustration stopped feeling emotional.

It just started feeling accurate.