About the speaker

Based in Amsterdam, Christiaan Laurens (better known as "Kick") joins LiveRamp with over 25 years of experience scaling global advertising and media businesses. Having held leadership roles at Google, eBay, and Adevinta—where he led a €300M+ monetization strategy—Kick is an expert in Ad Tech and building high-performance teams. He specializes in creating strategic partnerships and optimizing revenue streams by streamlining complex tech stacks.
A polyglot fluent in Dutch and English, Kick is also improving his German, French, and Italian. In his spare time, he enjoys beer-brewing and attending rock and metal festivals.

About the session

How data collaboration fuels growth in Retail Media

Retail media is often described as the “third wave of advertising after search and social,” but it's much more: it's a new way to connect data, media and commerce. Data collaboration can unlock unparalleled new opportunities for retailers and brands.
Kick will discuss some of these new usecases in his presentation:

- Scaling data collaboration between retailers and brands
- Expanding off-site retail media activation
- Improving measurement and attribution across channels

Four questions to Kick

What is your view on the Retail Media phenomenon?

Retail media is often described as the “third wave after search and social,” but that framing oversimplifies what is really happening. Retail media is not just another media channel — it is a new way of connecting data, media and commerce.
Retailers sit on extremely rich first-party data about shopper behaviour. When this data is activated through media, it allows brands to reach consumers closer to the point of purchase, with better targeting and closed-loop measurement.
In that sense, retail media represents a structural shift in the marketing ecosystem, where retailers are becoming media owners and where commerce data is increasingly central to advertising strategies.

What are the expectations for 2026 regarding retail media, will this turn the market upside down?

Retail media will continue to scale significantly by 2026, moving beyond a niche role in media plans.
We already see two important dynamics:
Budgets shifting from trade marketing to media budgets, as brands realise retail media can drive measurable outcomes.
Retail media becoming a core part of omnichannel strategies, combining insights, activation and measurement.
It will not completely turn the market upside down overnight, but it will reshape how brands allocate budgets and how retailers position themselves in the media landscape. In the long term, retail media may challenge traditional publishers even more than global tech platforms do.

What role do/does you/your company play in this sport?

At LiveRamp we offer the data collaboration platform for retailers and and brands
we help structure, monetize and activate their data, and retail media is where all those dimensions come together.
Our role is to help build the collaboration between retailers and brands, by:
● Structuring and activating first-party data
● Enabling data collaboration and measurement
● Supporting retailers in building scalable retail media offerings
In short, we help retailers transform their data into a sustainable media and revenue opportunity, while enabling brands to activate audiences in a privacy-safe and measurable way.

Is there still much to be gained in the Netherlands or are we leading in the field of retail media?

The Benelux/Netherlands is clearly one of the more mature markets in Europe, together with markets like France and the UK. Retail media ecosystems there are more advanced and media agencies are more structurally integrated into the business models.
However, even in the Netherlands there is still significant room for growth, particularly in:
● Scaling data collaboration between retailers and brands
● Expanding off-site retail media activation
● Improving measurement and attribution across channels
So while the Netherlands is ahead in many respects, the retail media market is still evolving everywhere, and the biggest opportunities will come from better collaboration and more sophisticated data use.