Data Clean-Room Monetisation Board Adviser — Retail Media

The mandate

The board keeps asking whether its clean-room pilot should remain a measurement utility, become a paid audience-collaboration product or anchor a broader retail-media network. Early advertisers value the insight, yet willingness to pay, repeat usage, activation boundaries and the economic role of technology partners remain too ambiguous for a multi-market investment.

The adviser will commit three working days per month to proposition reviews, buyer evidence and sessions with the chair, Chief Commercial Officer and privacy leadership. Six Board Data and Commercial Committee meetings are included, and material ad-hoc questions require a written response within two European business days, capped at eight additional hours monthly.

The appointment runs for nine months from December 2026. During month seven, the committee chair will assess whether a single three-month renewal is justified by an unresolved partnership or market-entry decision; renewal requires full board approval and cannot arise automatically from an unfinished management workplan.

The adviser carries no line authority and assumes no executive, controller or processor responsibility. Management owns product design, pricing, privacy decisions, advertiser commitments and partner selection; the adviser may challenge and shape those choices but cannot instruct staff, approve a data use or negotiate on the company’s behalf.

No more than two other material advisory appointments may be held concurrently. A mandate with a directly competing retailer, paid advocacy for a clean-room bidder, an investment in a measurement supplier under review or access to the same advertiser’s confidential buying strategy would require disclosure and may trigger recusal.

Why the board wants this voice

The board understands grocery economics, loyalty data and media sales, but has not previously commercialised privacy-preserving collaboration across several retailers and advertisers. Management therefore treats technical capability, legal permissibility and customer demand as if one proves the others. The chair wants an independent operator who knows where clean-room propositions create repeatable value and where they merely subsidise bespoke analysis.

What you will own

• Test management’s revenue assumptions against advertiser willingness to pay, buying frequency, activation value, switching friction and the cost of repeated custom analysis.
• Press the board to choose explicitly among measurement utility, audience collaboration, incrementality service and federated network propositions rather than funding all simultaneously.
• Challenge whether proposed data combinations, query controls, output thresholds and permitted-use terms preserve the retailer’s customer promise and commercial bargaining position.
• Shape stage gates that connect additional market or advertiser investment to repeat usage, validated lift, contribution margin and a stable privacy-control burden.
• Probe the partner architecture for lock-in, buyer ownership, analytical transparency, cross-border constraints, data leakage and credible termination options.
• Coach directors to distinguish revenue earned from media demand, technology novelty, subsidised pilots and temporary scarcity of privacy-safe measurement alternatives.
• Frame the evidence and dissent record for build, partner, acquire or stop decisions while leaving contractual and operating authority with accountable executives.

Candidate qualifications

• Advised a board or executive committee on monetising a live retail-media, data-collaboration or privacy-enhancing technology proposition across multiple markets.
• Launched or scaled a clean-room use case with measured repeat revenue, advertiser adoption and an evidenced impact on media or merchandising decisions.
• Evaluated query controls, aggregation thresholds, identity matching and privacy-preserving computation sufficiently deeply to challenge both commercial and technical claims.
• Negotiated or governed clean-room, measurement or advertising-technology partnerships containing clear data rights, portability protections and termination mechanics.
• Separated bespoke analytical-service revenue from scalable product economics and changed an investment decision when the distinction proved material.
• Navigated retailer, brand, agency and technology-provider conflicts without compromising confidential audience strategy or independent board advice.