On an evening in December, Emma had the pleasure of sitting down with Julie to discuss her career and vision for retail media. Julie not only shares the trends that will shape the future of the sector but also offers essential lessons for any woman entering the field. Find your zone of genius!
Julie Jeancolas is driving innovation at Dunnhumby, where she’s helping to redefine Tesco’s retail media platform. Her career, which spans over 25 years, has taken her through the worlds of agencies, Google, and product leadership.
In this journal, Julie reflects on her career highlights, discusses the trends reshaping the industry, and shares advice for women navigating the exciting challenges of retail media.
Emma: Can you share your professional journey and what led you to your current role at Dunnhumby?
Julie: After university, I knew I wanted to work in media and advertising. I left France for London, drawn by its strong advertising community. Over the last 25 years, I’ve worked in various roles across media, specializing in digital marketing. My career has spanned agency roles, product development, and leadership positions in companies like Dentsu and Google. I explored the buy side and sell side, taking on commercial and technical roles to build a holistic understanding of the media ecosystem.
My journey began on the agency side where I spent several years supporting clients embedding digital communications in their overall media mix. Then at Google, I held leadership roles in both strategic and operational sales. My initial role involved leading multi-year, multi-million-dollar negotiations with top global agencies. Later, as head of the Google Marketing Platform Agency team, I shifted focus to day-to-day sales and immediate revenue generation.
Joining Dunnhumby was an opportunity to work on Tesco’s retail media platform – an area rapidly evolving and brimming with potential. I was excited to contribute to shaping a nascent field, establishing standards, and driving innovation at the intersection of retail media, ad tech, and data science.
Emma: What challenges have you faced as a woman in the retail media industry, and how have you navigated them?
Julie: Women remain underrepresented in ad tech and leadership roles, but I’ve been fortunate to work for organizations prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion. For example, dunnhumby supports initiatives like helping women return to work after career breaks.
A key strategy for navigating challenges is finding sponsors who trust and advocate for you. Sponsors have played critical roles in my career, giving me opportunities to grow even when I wasn’t fully ready for the next step. Being transparent about your aspirations and staying adaptable is essential, as is continually learning to stay competitive in a fast-evolving industry.
Another challenge women face is building confidence to take on roles they may feel unprepared for. It’s important to trust yourself and ask for the resources or support you need to succeed. Personally, I’ve found it crucial to choose roles that align with what I call the “zone of genius” – where your natural strengths, passion, and expertise intersect. That’s where you can drive maximum impact and truly stand out.
Emma: As someone deeply involved in the product side of retail media, how do you identify and prioritize features or innovations that will have the greatest impact on both retailers and their customers?
Julie: Our process involves three phases: identify, test, and prioritize. First, we stay up to date on industry trends through regular research and by engaging with diverse stakeholders – from tech experts to customers. For instance, I write a biweekly newsletter summarizing the latest innovations, which I share with my team and the wider retail media organization.
Testing is key before fully developing a solution. We create MVPs (minimum viable products) to gather feedback and refine the idea. For example, when considering monetizing digital screens in stores, we first test the impact on revenue, customer experience, and brand ROI before productizing the solution. This ensures agility and responsiveness to real-world needs.
When prioritizing, we assess alignment with our vision, potential business impact (revenue, adoption, efficiencies), customer value, technical feasibility, and scalability. Balancing the needs of retailers, brands, and shoppers is a key focus throughout.
Emma: As we look ahead to the coming year, what do you see as the most important trends or areas of focus in retail media?
Julie: Several trends stand out:
- Digitization of the Store: Integrating technology into physical stores to enhance shopper experiences and drive revenue. This includes digital screens, sensor technology, and targeting based on real-time basket data. For instance, we’ve introduced basket-trigger targeting on Tesco instore handheld scanners, enabling brands to reach customers based on items they’ve added to their basket.
- Omnichannel Retail Media: Seamlessly delivering brand messages across online and offline touchpoints, supported by unified ad servers and cross-channel attribution. Retailers must invest in the technology to recognize and dynamically address customers across all channels.
- Shoppable Video: Offering consumers engaging and convenient shopping experiences through video and interactive ads. Retailers need to experiment with where these formats fit into the shopping journey without introducing friction.
- AI and Automation: Retail media platforms increasingly leverage AI to autonomously / self plan, create, activate, measure and optimise personalised ad campaigns at scale across channels.
- Data Collaboration: It will likely be the cornerstone of retail media success. Using clean room technology to enable secure data sharing between brands and retailers. This supports better insights, targeting and advanced measurement methodologies. It’s particularly valuable for non-endemic brands looking to tap into retail audiences.
- Modular Platforms: Retailers need to adopt modular, composable platform architectures to quickly integrate new channels and connect data streams, such as real-time stock availability or dynamic pricing.
Emma: How do you ensure your product development stays relevant in such a competitive space?
Julie: Customer-centricity. The most exciting innovations often come from the intersection of different perspectives. So we regularly organise deep listening sessions with key stakeholders from Brands, Agencies, Media planners, Client Services and Sales teams, to deeply understand their pain points, emerging needs, and goals.
Staying relevant requires constant innovation and adaptability. From a product development perspective we adopt architectural principles that prioritize modularity, scalability, and flexibility. This enables us to integrate new channels, data and technologies as they emerge.
Additionally, continuous learning and experimentation is vital. In our fast-evolving industry, keeping up with key trends, experimenting with new tech and acquiring new skills is essential. For me, staying curious and passionate about the field has been a cornerstone of success.
Emma: Are there any women leaders in retail media whom you particularly admire? What qualities or contributions have made them influential in your view?
Julie: There are many inspiring women in retail media, and it would be unfair to single out one. However, the leaders I admire most have qualities like:
- Strategic Vision: Anticipating trends in retail, advertising, and technology while focusing on the customer experience.
- Tech and Data Fluency: Understanding emerging technologies and translating them into impactful business strategies.
- Collaborative Leadership: Aligning cross-functional teams toward a singular vision and ensuring seamless execution.
- Resilience and Adaptability: Navigating ambiguity and balancing monetisation objectives with creating genuine customer value.
- Championing Innovation and Transformation: Driving continuous innovation and pushing for organizational change, whether on the retailer or brand side.
Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/women-in-retail-media-collective/
Connect with Julie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliejeancolas/
About us: The Women in Retail Media Collective (WRM Collective) is a network dedicated to empowering women in the retail media sector. By providing resources, mentorship, and community, WRM Collective creates pathways for women to lead, innovate, and drive change in this booming sector. Founded by two industry leaders, WRM Collective is committed to fostering a more inclusive and equitable retail media landscape. For more information visit www.wrmcollective.com.