Dentsu Bets the Shelf: Holdco Pulls Commerce and Retail Media Into One House

Dentsu is consolidating its commerce and retail media businesses into a single offering under new leadership, a move the holding company frames as its clearest shot at closing the distance with its larger rivals.

The hire at the centre of it is Aisha Khan, poached from WPP Media to serve as head of retail and commerce for Dentsu North America. Khan most recently ran retail media and digital commerce for WPP's Unilever business, with earlier stints at L'Oréal and Kenvue.

She joins two other new posts created in the last month: Jen Bryce as EVP of strategic commerce media accounts, and Jason O'Toole as EVP, head of commerce and retail media activation. All three arrive with brand-side experience, which Beth Ann Kaminkow, CEO of Dentsu Americas and the holdco's chief global client officer, says was the point.

"We're able to build it in a more AI-native way," Kaminkow said, describing a unit organised around direct-to-consumer commerce, retail media networks and media commerce rather than around legacy shopper-marketing silos. Dentsu clients in the category include Dick's Sporting Goods and Dollar General.

The timing is not subtle. Brian Wieser's Madison & Wall pegged US commerce media growth at 25% year over year in the second quarter, up from 24% in the first — one of the fastest-moving lines in the entire ad economy.

Khan's pitch is a reordering of the org chart around the shopper. "I've spent most of my career orchestrating tactics across channels," she said. "I think Dentsu can leapfrog that model completely and focus instead on the consumer, the connected consumer."

Kaminkow, who was global chief commerce officer at WPP's VML before joining Dentsu 15 months ago, argues the big three holdcos still carry structural seams between shopper capability and media capability. "There are still huge chasms of understanding and of connectedness," she said. Whether Dentsu's version is genuinely seamless is a question the retail media budgets of 2027 will answer.