Sam's Club's New Ad Leader Teases How He's Revamping the Retailer's Ad Business

Sam's Club is tweaking its advertising business. Just after completing his first 100 days on the job, Harvey Ma, Sam’s Club vice president and general manager of retail media, sat down with ADWEEK to talk through his vision for the retailer’s advertising business. Ma’s career began on the merchandising side of Target's retail business. He jumped over to Target's advertising arm Roundel, and then added to that experience at Albertsons before landing at Sam’s Club Member Access Platform earlier this year. “I always thought of myself as a merchant at heart,” Ma said. “What I'm here for is just to make sure the things that we build are additive to customer value, and, [historically,] I don't think advertising has done that.” As part of our ongoing series of Q&As with retail media leaders, ADWEEK caught up with Ma to dive further into the strategy and upcoming new products like in-store and connected TV ads that he’s laying out for the big-box retailer. This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity. ADWEEK: How are you balancing ad-based revenue growth and the customer experience? Ma: One of the things that drew me to Sam's Club is that during the candidate selection process, there was never a conversation about revenue or margin. Other retailers asked questions like, “How fast can you get us to X million or billion?” I'm not interested in that. I just presented our refreshed vision to the board, and there's not a single mention of revenue or profit in that mission statement. Editor’s note: Ma misspoke during the interview. He presented to Sam's Club's leadership. The words that we use are member-focused, enterprise-accelerating, data-driven experiences to build trust and add value across every omni-touch point at Sam's Club. If we do that right, members and prospective members will vote with their wallets. They will come and buy things or services at Sam's Club, and that's what drives profit and revenue—not the other way around.” What experience are you bringing to Sam's Club to ease some of the tension that can exist between the merchants and ad sales teams? There is a two-way intake process now. For seasons that are bigger for an advertiser than Sam’s Club, it's my job to be the liaison for the advertiser to say, “Hey, Merchant A, did you know that this is a huge occasion for this advertiser? You might want to think about amping up your assortment.” On the other side, I might be advertising on behalf of our merchant. I'll say, “Hey, Advertiser A, our merchants are planning on making this season a really big one. You might want to think about doing something exclusive with Sam's Club to bolster that.” That's kind of what my team's job is, which allows the merchant team to focus on assortment and experience inside of a club. It lets each expert do what they do best, and you're starting to see this operating rhythm move very quickly. People love to say that retail media is “collapsing the marketing funnel.” How are you providing appropriate measurement metrics for advertisers? A mass retail media network versus a grocery retail media network versus a specialty retail media network versus a club retail media network versus a travel retail media network—they are very different things. But as an industry, we’ve tried to build the exact same tools and measurement for all of them. Collapsing the marketing funnel is just a buzzword. Everything we do at MAP is based on member deterministic data. We have a travel business, a food business, a hard-line business, an optical business, a pharmacy, and a tire business. The number of signals you have that give you indications of a member's life are profound. Based on the advertiser, we're able to create very bespoke metrics that help satisfy what their marketing funnel priorities look like. So we'll never say we're collapsing the marketing funnel. What we will say is that our dream and our vision is to make you a smarter advertiser. Despite there being more than 200 retail media networks, advertisers tell us they only have the capacity to build joint business plans with three or four. How are you making the case that you should be on that list? The most unique and different is that we are a member, deterministic-based business. You can buy something here with a jar full of nickels, dump it on the cashier's desk, and we can still understand who you are because you are a member. You're going to see that come forward much more in the future. In-store, or in our version, in club, is the second biggest buzzword behind “collapsing the marketing funnel” in the industry these days. Almost no one has figured out how to do this well, because what they're talking about is a digital screen inside of a store. Not only do we already have digital screens in-club, we’re using Scan & Go—which 30% of members use—as a two-way, conversational tool with a member while they’re shopping. You can understand behavior in real time, and that helps everyone to better navigate the store. How are you investing in in-store ad inventory, beyond what’s available through the mobile app? I am revamping how we do in-club display ads. We have MAP integrations across all of the digital touch points within the club: the member desk, the TV wall, home improvement, automotive, pharmacy, deli. All of those are going to be touch points that are available to advertisers in the future. We are also going to pilot measurement on those. Things like heat map, dwell time, conversion, and ad exposure are on our 90-day roadmap right now. We'll unveil some of those in the very short-term future. Are you courting non-endemic advertisers, or brands that don’t sell on Sam’s Club shelves? I'm going to drop the biggest teaser for you. I have asked to change the vernacular from non-endemic to near-endemic. Think travel, automotive, optical, pharmacy. We now have a merchandising team dedicated to services, and there will also be a MAP team dedicated to services. We will share very soon what that actually means, but I believe that Sam's Club is about to be an emerging player in that near-endemic space, because we do things differently than a traditional retailer. We'll have a robust kind of MAP capability rolled out for 2025. How are you continuing to expand into connected TV advertising? We continue to use our existing CTV offering, but we are going to revamp it a bit for the future. CTV provides the reach that retail media has lacked in the past. But we want to use that reach to drive precision from an audience targeting perspective. You will be able to utilize Sam's Club audiences to maximize your reach, but then those same audiences can be measured through an attribution window inside of a Sam's Club.

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Sam's Club's New Ad Leader Teases How He's Revamping the Retailer's Ad Business

Harvey Ma discusses his first 100 days as the retailer's ad lead

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