In episode 402 of Total Retail Talks, Editor-in-Chief Joe Keenan interviews Austin Leonard, head of sales at Sam’s Club, the membership-only retail warehouse clubs owned and operated by Walmart, Inc. Leonard discusses his role at Sam’s Club (0:55), the launch of real-time intelligently retargeted display advertising via its Member Access Platform (MAP) (2:00), and how brand partners can effectively leverage this new offering to their benefit (4:30). He shares the business benefits that advertisers can realize through MAP (8:20), including advertisers’ ability to track and attribute purchases both online and offline (9:55), as well as how data is shared with brand partners (11:15).
In addition, Leonard discusses the enhanced Sam’s Club member experience (12:45), his strategy to balance member data privacy and advertiser access (14:33), and how search plays into real-time intelligent retargeting (15:20). Lastly, he shares how the ability to view in-club attribution on search advertising is a differentiator for Sam’s Club’s MAP (16:55).
As the head of sales for Sam’s Club MAP, Austin Leonard leads partnership and sales strategy development for all suppliers, agencies and ad tech partners. He’s responsible for the ad revenue, multifaceted merchant/supplier/marketer/agency/ad tech relationships, operational rigor, financial reporting, and development of the organization’s high-performance, consultative monetization team. Leonard previously served as head of food at Walmart Connect, and before that held leadership roles at Smaato, Rakuten Marketing, and eBay.
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