Retail media reorganizes the CPG company, not just adding a channel
Price increases can cost brands volume and market share as input costs ease
Agentic commerce turns discoverability into an infrastructure problem
Check first: Confirm speaking and advisory terms, audience details, and past results on comparable topics
Main ideas
Price increases have stopped producing growth · Retail media is reorganizing the CPG company, not just adding a channel · Agentic commerce turns discoverability into an infrastructure problem
Alex Khmurets writes about how shifts in retail and e-commerce change the choices facing consumer-goods brands.
They connect developments such as retail media and AI shopping agents to practical questions about budgets, team structure, pricing and product design.
Their work also offers product-management lessons on testing ideas, learning from releases and building a clear vision.
Khmurets turns industry shifts into specific decisions, using company examples and a clear point of view.
A separate pricing analysis argues that continued price increases can cost brands volume and market share as input costs ease.
They also explore what AI shopping could mean for retailers and brands.
One post sketches a possible agent-ready shopping experience built around machine-readable product data, current prices and inventory, and checkout without a human-facing interface; another questions whether Amazon’s position will hold as shopping agents change how people buy (agentic commerce; retail competition).
Alex Khmurets argues that the CPG and retail operating model is being rebuilt from two directions: shopping agents that buy on a consumer's behalf, and retail media that merges trade and brand budgets into one demand organization.
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Underneath both is a third claim: three years of price-led growth are ending, so brands have to sell more units rather than charge more. Earlier writing applies the same operating discipline to product management, where they treat vision, evidence, and stakeholder alignment as the work.
Price increases have stopped producing growth
Khmurets argues that recent CPG growth came from price realization rather than selling more, and that the tradeoff has flipped.
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An extra point of price now loses more units than it gains in dollars: households that absorbed post-pandemic increases are cutting back, while input costs used to justify those increases, such as cocoa, freight, and labor, have normalized.
Retailers see what remains as margin capture.
Companies that keep pushing price lose share as volumes fall faster than prices rise.
The largest beverage companies moved first, Khmurets notes, signaling where the rest of the industry is heading.
Khmurets cites Bain & Co. research and unnamed retail CEOs, then contrasts Coca-Cola's stated desire for "a more balanced algorithm" and PepsiCo's decision "to lower the prices of the business" with Kimberly-Clark's seven straight quarters of volume growth. Danone and Unilever also grew volume.
Retail media is reorganizing the CPG company, not just adding a channel
For fifty years, the brand-retailer relationship ran on trade dollars, while e-commerce operated as a small team inside sales or marketing.
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Khmurets argues that retail media collapsed that separation.
Brands now fund incremental retail media from brand marketing rather than trade, and the org chart follows the money: sales, marketing, and commerce consolidate under one leader, with retail-media roles inside the brand.
Khmurets quotes Toby Espinosa, VP of Ads at DoorDash, saying half the dollars sit locally in the trade bucket and half in national media.
Retail media, Khmurets concludes, is both at once.
In an aggregated ledger of 17 CPG organizational moves, nine consolidated sales, marketing, or commerce under one roof.
Kellogg merged shopper marketing and e-commerce into an "omni team," Mars Wrigley runs marketing and sales as "one demand," Unilever replaced the CMO title with a Chief Digital & Commercial Officer, and Hershey did the same under a Chief Growth Officer.
P&G plans to bring 30% of its $7 billion global media spend in-house.
Profitero+ data shows the share of companies running e-commerce as a small team inside sales or marketing falling from 54% in 2021 to 19% today.
Agentic commerce turns discoverability into an infrastructure problem
Khmurets argues that the first agent-driven holiday season is close and most CPG brands are not ready, largely because they treat AI as an internal employee rather than as the buyer.
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The practical consequence is a new storefront built for agents: a direct-to-consumer endpoint with a JSON catalog, live price and inventory, and programmatic checkout, with no human interface in the loop. Khmurets sees this as a product and data problem more than an advertising one, so the response cannot stop at media planning.
Muse passed 3 million downloads, Amazon already runs an agent that buys on a shopper's behalf, Walmart's agent sits inside Gemini, and Google put agentic checkout in Search. On the brand side, Heineken is building an AI marketing engine, a Coca-Cola bottler called agentic input "a potential game changer for our sales force," and BAT brought in Accenture to cut costs with agentic AI.
Khmurets argues Amazon is repeating Blockbuster's mistake by defending its scale and selection while adding friction to purchase.
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The comparison draws on two quoted statements: Blockbuster in 2007 said its stores were a competitive advantage because people like going to them, while Amazon in 2026 says horizontal agents are good at aggregating selection but retailers are better at selection, price, delivery, and trust. Khmurets's claim is that agents reward open, programmatic access and that blocking them pushes buyers to competitors.
Agents handle about 3% of Khmurets's shopping.
When Amazon blocked Muse, they bought from Walmart and Office Depot for the first time in years.
After twenty years of removing friction from purchase, Khmurets argues, Amazon is now adding it.
This is stated as a prediction grounded in personal experience rather than measured market data, and Khmurets presents it as a bet a reader can argue with rather than a forecast to repeat as fact.
Product management: vision as a laser pointer, evidence over timelines
Earlier posts carry the same operating discipline into product work.
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Khmurets rejects the "herding cats" description of product management as demeaning and as saying more about the manager than the engineers and stakeholders.
Cats hunt; they do not graze.
To move them, use a laser pointer—a model Khmurets offers for a product vision that inspires, clarifies, and drives.
In a post drawn from Profitero's 2023 product hiring round, Khmurets argues that candidates stand out by using frameworks critically rather than mechanically, treating development as a series of measurable increments rather than a straight line from deadline to delivery, and recruiting senior stakeholders as champions by showing them the roadmap and asking them to prioritize.
Khmurets argues that a competitive analysis is unnecessary for a backend migration because the team should already understand competitors' offers and double down on its strengths. Showing a requester the roadmap and asking them to prioritize can lead them to conclude on their own that their request should not be the top priority.
Answers the question “what does agentic commerce actually change for a CPG brand?”
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It is the clearest statement in this set that shopping agents change the storefront itself, not just the marketing.
Alex Khmurets argues that the next holiday rush will be the first driven by shopping agents and that most CPG brands are unprepared.
The post stacks the evidence: Muse passed 3 million downloads; Amazon already runs an agent that buys on a shopper's behalf; Walmart's agent sits inside Gemini; and Google put agentic checkout in Search.
It contrasts AI used inside companies — Heineken building an AI marketing engine, a Coca-Cola bottler calling agentic input “a potential game changer for our sales force,” and BAT bringing in Accenture to cut costs — with AI acting as the buyer.
The claim: the most novel brands will build a separate checkout for agents, a direct-to-consumer endpoint with a JSON catalog, live price and inventory, and programmatic checkout, with no human interface in the loop.
For brands planning a campaign
For a brief on adapting to agentic commerce, this is the concrete opening: the argument casts agent-era discoverability as an infrastructure problem — machine-readable product data and checkout — not just a media problem.
Explains why retail media is an organizational change, not just another channel, using named companies instead of abstractions.
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Drawing on an aggregated ledger of 17 CPG organizational moves, the post reports that nine consolidated sales, marketing, or commerce under one leader: Kellogg merged shopper marketing and e-commerce into one “omni team,” Mars Wrigley runs marketing and sales as “one demand,” Unilever replaced its CMO title with a Chief Digital & Commercial Officer, and Hershey did something similar under a Chief Growth Officer, while Colgate-Palmolive's CEO ties “omni-demand generation” to its 2030 strategy.
Five more created retail-media roles inside the brand, and Nestlé added a full-time e-commerce “translator.”
P&G plans to put 30% of its $7 billion global media spend in-house and credits a reinvented agency model with $1 billion saved over five years; Coca-Cola deliberately did not restructure, working through cross-functional networks instead.
The post also says 70% of leading brands now fund incremental retail media from brand marketing rather than trade.
For brands planning a campaign
Organizational evidence is the sharpest material for a brand-facing keynote: it names companies, titles, and the budget line retail media is drawing from, giving audiences a benchmark for their own structure.
Gets to the long-run shift in two numbers and one quote — a concise explanation of why retail media unsettled the brand-retailer relationship.
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The post frames retail media as the collision of two budgets kept apart for fifty years — trade dollars and national media — until Amazon began charging brands for the shelf itself.
It quotes Toby Espinosa, VP of Ads at DoorDash, saying half the dollars sit in the local trade bucket and half in national media, and concludes that retail media is both.
Profitero+ data show that in 2021, 54% of companies ran e-commerce as a small team tucked inside sales or marketing; today, that figure is 19%.
The post asks readers how they allocate trade and media budgets and whether that has sparked any fights.
For brands planning a campaign
Useful as the quantitative spine of a retail-media argument and as a conversation starter: the closing question is aimed at a brand audience.
The most opinionated piece in the set, and the best example of how Alex Khmurets turns a platform shift into a concrete bet readers can argue with.
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The post sets a 2007 Blockbuster quote about physical stores being a competitive advantage against an Amazon statement that agents are good at aggregating selection while retailers are better at selection, price, delivery, and trust.
It calls the pattern a Blockbuster moment for Amazon.
The supporting anecdote is small and personal: agents now handle about 3% of the author's shopping, and because Amazon blocked Muse, they bought from Walmart and Office Depot for the first time in years.
The argument: Amazon spent twenty years reducing friction to purchase and is now adding it.
For brands planning a campaign
A ready-made debate frame for a keynote or panel. It is a stated prediction backed by one shopper's experience, not measured market data.
Connects pricing to demand generation: if growth has to come from units again, brand and retail-media budgets get harder to cut.
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The argument is that three years of CPG growth came from price realization and that the trend has reversed.
The post cites Bain & Co. and unnamed retail CEOs for the claim that an extra point of price now costs more in units than it gains in dollars, and that CPG companies are losing share as volumes fall.
It says the increases were originally sold as a way to pass through input inflation — cocoa, freight, labor — but as input costs normalize, further hikes have nothing left to cover and read to retailers as margin capture.
Coca-Cola wants “a more balanced algorithm” and PepsiCo “decided to lower the prices of the business”; by contrast, Kimberly-Clark posted seven straight quarters of volume growth, with Danone and Unilever also volume-positive.
For brands planning a campaign
Frames why brands are moving money toward demand generation: the case for a creator or retail-media program is stronger when volume, not price, is the growth lever.
A short, memorable demonstration of how Alex Khmurets argues, and a quick look at the product-management side of the writing.
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The post rejects the common “herding cats” description of product management as demeaning and as saying more about the manager than the engineers and stakeholders. Its counter-argument: cats hunt rather than graze, and if you really need to move them, use a laser pointer — the author's preferred analogy for a good product vision, which “inspires, clarifies, and drives.”
For brands planning a campaign
A short, contrarian style built on one concrete image, suited to a talk or written piece.
Khmurets argues CPG brands are underprepared for the first agentic holiday season, citing Amazon's buying agent, Walmart's agent inside Gemini, Google's agentic checkout in Search, and Muse passing 3 million downloads.
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After cataloguing how CPG companies already use AI internally, they predict the most forward-leaning brands will build an agent-facing checkout: a direct-to-consumer endpoint with a JSON catalog, live price and inventory, and programmatic checkout with no human interface in the loop.
Khmurets names specific retailer and brand examples, then closes with a concrete technical requirement rather than a general call to experiment with AI.
For brands planning a campaign
A keynote or advisory engagement can move beyond the case for agentic commerce to agent-ready product pages, catalog endpoints, and checkout requirements a brand can scope.
Khmurets compares Amazon's public defense of selection, price, delivery, and trust to Blockbuster's 2007 confidence in its stores.
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They back the comparison with a firsthand anecdote: agents now handle roughly 3% of their shopping, and being blocked by one agent led them to buy from Walmart and Office Depot for the first time in years.
This prediction draws on a personal anecdote rather than platform data, making it a scenario prompt for debate, not a forecast to repeat as fact.
For brands planning a campaign
Useful for framing competitive risk and showing how agent access policies can shift where consumers buy.
Khmurets tracks how retail media is redrawing CPG organizations: consolidated sales, marketing, and commerce teams; dedicated retail-media seats inside brands; Unilever and Hershey replacing the CMO title with digital or growth roles; and P&G planning 30% of its $7 billion global media spend in-house.
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A follow-up post uses Profitero+ data to show e-commerce moving from a small team tucked inside sales or marketing at 54% of companies in 2021 to 19% today, and quotes DoorDash's Toby Espinosa on trade dollars versus national media dollars.
Khmurets turns named company moves into a ledger, anchors the argument in published data, and invites readers to share how their organizations allocate trade and media budgets.
For brands planning a campaign
Strong material for briefs on retail media operating models: where the budget sits, who owns it, and how brands can restructure to avoid running commerce as a side team.
Each extra point of price now costs more in units than it gains in dollars; post-pandemic hikes worked only while households absorbed them; and input-cost cover disappears as cocoa, freight, and labor costs normalize. They cite Bain & Co, recent filings showing share loss where units fall faster than prices rise, and pivots at Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, while pointing to Kimberly-Clark, Danone, and Unilever as volume growers.
Khmurets builds the argument from company filings, named executive statements, and analyst research, then asks readers how their organizations allocate trade and media dollars.
For brands planning a campaign
Relevant for briefs on pricing, promotion, and volume growth, connecting pricing decisions directly to retail media and commerce investment choices.
Khmurets rejects the "herding cats" analogy as demeaning, arguing that a good product vision should be a laser pointer that inspires, clarifies, and drives. Drawing on their participation in Profitero's 2023 hiring round, they lay out lessons for product managers: use frameworks critically rather than mechanically, expect to learn during development instead of treating delivery as a simple linear sequence, value clear increments over timetables and long specs, and recruit senior stakeholders as champions by showing them the roadmap and asking them to prioritize.
Khmurets draws lessons from firsthand involvement in hiring interviews and personal product management experience, focusing on what separates proven product managers from other candidates.
For brands planning a campaign
Useful for briefs on product, innovation, or internal team enablement, showing a speaker who can address practitioner audiences with operating detail as well as market commentary.
Alex Khmurets writes about how shifts in retail and technology change the choices facing CPG brands.
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In a post on agentic commerce, they argue that brands may need product catalogs and checkout experiences designed for shopping agents, not just human shoppers.
In a post on retail media and CPG teams, they focus on organizational change: as retail media draws on both sales and marketing budgets, companies are merging responsibilities or creating new roles.
And in a post on CPG pricing, they argue that price increases are losing their power to drive growth, making volume more important.
Earlier posts turn to product management, arguing that product vision should align a team and frameworks should be adapted to the problem rather than followed by rote.
The through line is practical: identify what is changing, then ask what brands or teams should do differently.
Both examine how AI shopping agents may change retail and advertising, using specific platform announcements to move beyond general predictions.
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Their posts raise practical questions about product data, checkout and advertising as shopping becomes more agent-driven.
Dunn focuses on platform mechanics, including agent tools, connectors and ad attribution. Khmurets brings the shift back to CPG brands: their readiness, product pages and the organizational changes retail media can prompt.
Both connect retail and ecommerce developments to decisions CPG brands face, using named retailers and data to explain why digital growth matters.
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Brett builds posts around specific datasets, such as retailer filings or NielsenIQ figures, and turns them into numbered actions tied to marketplace execution. Khmurets focuses on broader shifts in market structure, pricing and how brands organize their teams.
Both connect AI, CPG and retail media, highlighting how product data and content can affect shopping and advertising outcomes.
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Hariharan emphasizes enterprise AI risks, including hallucinations, governance and liability. Khmurets focuses on market changes and how brands may need to adapt.
For a CPG keynote or advisory engagement on agentic commerce and retail media, Alex Khmurets writes for that buyer’s world: retail-media org changes, trade versus media spend, CPG pricing cycles, agentic checkout, and product-management judgment.
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Their posts do not identify who is reading.
The only published audience figure is 1,822 LinkedIn followers on the account that published these posts, observed 8 October 2026.
This points to a small, focused following around CPG and retail commerce, not broad consumer or general-marketing reach.
Before booking, ask for recent results on comparable topics—retail-media data, pricing analysis, and agentic-commerce commentary—and follower demographics or an audience survey covering job function, seniority, and geography.
LinkedIn followers
1,822
LinkedIn account record for the profile that published the reviewed posts · 2026-10-08
Across seven posts written between February 2024 and October 2026, Khmurets publishes analysis and commentary on CPG pricing, retail media, e-commerce organization, agentic commerce, and product management.
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Commercial references are to their employer and the companies they analyse, not to a rate card, media kit, sponsored-format menu, or booking route.
The posts do not identify an official partnership page, sponsorship policy, audience specification, or inquiry address.
Brands should confirm commercial terms directly before budgeting.
Khmurets has no published product to buy for campaigns aimed at agentic commerce and retail media.
The analysis could support a paid engagement: in the Post about agentic commerce, they argue that brands need an "Agentic User Experience" and cite examples including retailer shopping agents and CPG AI deployments.
Any keynote, advisory, or sponsored-content arrangement would be negotiated case by case, with format, deliverables, and disclosure terms settled privately.
A CPG brand's commerce and marketing leadership wants a keynote, plus a follow-up advisory session, on how retail media and shopping agents change the operating model — where the budget should sit and what the brand has to build.
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Khmurets fits this closely.
The strongest material is organisational and budget-level rather than motivational: an aggregated ledger of 17 CPG organisational moves, nine of which consolidated sales, marketing, or commerce under one leader (Kellogg's merged omni team, Mars Wrigley's "one demand," Unilever and Hershey replacing the CMO title with digital or growth roles, Colgate-Palmolive tying omni-demand generation to its 2030 strategy), plus P&G's plan to take 30% of its $7 billion media spend in-house and the claim that 70% of leading brands now fund incremental retail media from brand marketing rather than trade.
A companion post gives the two-number version of the same shift: e-commerce run as a small team inside sales or marketing at 54% of companies in 2021, 19% today, with DoorDash's Toby Espinosa quoted on the split between local trade dollars and national media.
On agentic commerce, Khmurets moves past the case for AI adoption into requirements a brand can scope: retailer and platform agents already in market (Muse past 3 million downloads, Amazon buying on a shopper's behalf, Walmart's agent inside Gemini, agentic checkout in Google Search), then the prediction that the most forward-leaning brands will run a separate agent-facing checkout with a JSON catalog, live price and inventory, and programmatic checkout.
The pricing work supplies the commercial rationale for shifting spend toward demand generation: three years of growth came from price realisation and that is reversing, with Bain cited, Coca-Cola seeking "a more balanced algorithm," PepsiCo lowering prices, and Kimberly-Clark, Danone, and Unilever named as volume growers.
Conditions to settle before booking: the posts show a small measured audience (1,822 LinkedIn followers, observed 8 October 2026) and no audience-composition data, so the value of the event rests on the analysis rather than on reach; no rate card, media kit, or booking route is published, so format, fee, and disclosure terms have to be agreed directly; and the platform and company claims are Khmurets's stated arguments in short posts, not a published data deck, so the session should present them as commentary and flag predictions as predictions.
When to choose a specialist
A household-goods brand launching a new consumer SKU wants paid creator content — short video for TikTok and Instagram from a set of creators — with guaranteed reach and engagement against a broad consumer audience, a media kit with rates, and content delivered to camera.
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This does not fit what the posts show.
No sponsorship or partnership offer of any kind is documented: no media kit, rate card, sponsored-format menu, audience specification, or inquiry route appears in the posts, so there is nothing to book and no basis for a reach guarantee.
The only audience measure available is 1,822 LinkedIn followers observed 8 October 2026, with no data on job function, seniority, or geography — and LinkedIn followers are the wrong denominator for a consumer launch in any case.
The writing itself is analysis for brand-side practitioners about CPG pricing, retail-media organisation, shopping agents, and product management; nothing in the posts here is consumer-facing entertainment or presented to camera, and no video or audio material was available to judge.
The subject matter would also work against the purpose of a campaign aimed at shoppers: a post arguing that unit growth, not price, now drives CPG results speaks to a marketing or commerce team deciding how to allocate budget, not to a shopper choosing a cleaning product.
The correct conclusion is narrower than "Khmurets does not take sponsorships" — the posts here document none.
If the same brand wants its commerce team briefed on agentic readiness or retail-media budget ownership, the keynote and advisory session described above are the ones to pursue.
A worked campaign example
A worked angle for a keynote and follow-up advisory session for a CPG brand's commerce, media, and sales leadership, built only from the posts.
Frame the engagement as a roughly 45-minute keynote followed by a half-day working session with the brand's commerce, media, and sales leaders.
Open on the storefront rather than AI adoption: shopping agents change what a brand has to publish and sell—a direct endpoint with a machine-readable catalog, live price and inventory, and programmatic checkout—supported by agents already in market.
Move to the budget question with the organisational ledger: nine of 17 CPG moves consolidated sales, marketing, or commerce; P&G is taking 30% of a $7 billion media budget in-house; and 70% of leading brands are said to fund incremental retail media from brand marketing rather than trade.
Then explain why the shift is defensible now: three years of price-led growth is unwinding as volumes fall, so units rather than price carry the plan, making demand generation harder to cut.
Close with the audience doing the work: map their structure against the ledger, identify which budget line pays for incremental retail media in their business, and draft a short agent-readiness checklist covering catalog data, price and inventory feeds, and checkout.
Deliverables and terms are not published, so agree them in writing first: session length, any written summary or recording rights, a disclosure line if the engagement is commercially sponsored, and fee.
Do not promise measured reach; if the brand needs an audience measure, use a post-event survey or its own attendance data.
Choose Roger Dunn for a current briefing on the agentic-commerce frontier as platforms bring it to market: TikTok's Buy Direct, Shopping Assistant and Agentic Leads; OpenAI's always-on dots that can buy; and whether an agent can read a brand's product data and complete checkout.
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Dunn tracks announcements closely, distinguishes what is live from what is directional, and translates developments into implications for discovery, measurement, and ownership of the customer relationship. This suits a CPG commerce team that needs a current briefing and specific platform questions to ask.
Dunn focuses on platform shifts and agent mechanics, not CPG pricing, volume economics, or organizational budget redesign.
Brands looking for analysis of retail-media org charts, trade versus brand funding, or price realization will find less of it here.
The posts are short LinkedIn analyses; no longer talk or deck is linked, and no booking or fee information is published.
Choose Don “eCommerce” Brett for a retailer-level growth evidence session and an Amazon grocery case.
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The posts use public retailer filings and NielsenIQ data to distinguish total retail growth from much faster digital growth, show gaps such as Walmart's +2.6% comparable sales against +24% digital, and explain why Amazon perishables shoppers spend more and shop more often. This fits a CPG leadership session on where to put the next dollar of ecommerce investment and how to execute on Amazon and other retailers.
Brett focuses on retail growth, Amazon grocery, and marketplace execution rather than agentic shopping, retail-media organizational redesign, or CPG pricing strategy.
The posts also promote Pattern services and include newsletter or community calls to action; buyers should distinguish the data analysis from the vendor promotion.
Ask directly about audience composition, rates, and booking.
Choose Guru Hariharan for a session on AI risk, governance, and retail-media performance proof.
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One post covers enterprise AI failure modes—hallucinated decisions, unmanaged accounts, bias litigation, ROI measurement, and worker training—and argues that companies need AI-specific liability thinking.
The other gives Amazon's advertising numbers and a concrete performance readout for AI-powered Sponsored Prompts, arguing that product-data quality now drives ad conversion.
This suits a CPG team that needs a risk and governance counterweight or an Amazon AEO content-to-media audit.
Hariharan covers broader enterprise AI and Amazon advertising, not CPG price realization, retail-media budget ownership, or the org-chart moves Khmurets analyzes.
The risk post is insurance-oriented, while the Amazon post focuses on platform performance; neither offers the same CPG commercial-operating-model comparison.
Ask directly about audience, commercial terms, and long-form talk availability.
Seven LinkedIn posts by Alex Khmurets, published between February 2024 and October 2026, were read in full for this page: recent posts on agentic commerce, retail media organisation, CPG pricing, and Amazon's competitive position, plus earlier posts on product management drawn from a 2023 hiring round.
Company, platform and executive claims quoted inside the posts are reported as Khmurets's stated arguments, not independently verified.
Gaps carried into the page: no long-form writing, talks, or transcripts; no published partnership formats, rate card, media kit, or booking route; and no audience measure beyond the 1,822 LinkedIn followers observed in October 2026.
