Frazer Locke, SVP International Sales at supply-side platform (SSP) Triplelift, has worked in the retail and ecommerce industries for more than 30 years, with major names such as Comet, Toys R Us, GAME, Asda, Amazon Ads, and more in his history.
RMA editor-in-chief Justin Pearse sat down with him to learn how he made his way into retail media, why he is excited about the potential of CTV in tandem with retail data, and who has most inspired him in the retail media sector.
What is your role and what does it entail?
Triplelift is an SSP that orchestrates creative, curation, audiences and measurement as one system on a global level to ensure that brands’ programmatic ad campaigns perform with real impact. I lead the International Sales team across all regions outside of North America, including Demand Sales, Publisher Development, Business Development, Retail Media, Agency Trading and DSP Engagement teams.
Since joining in September 2024, my priority has been rebuilding our presence in Germany and France, strengthening our position in the UK and expanding into new markets such as Italy, Spain, APAC and LATAM. I am proud to say that my team has deepened relationships with major holding companies and created new opportunities with independent agencies, which is helping to accelerate our international growth.
How did you first become interested in retail media and move into it?
I’d say my interest in retail began in 1989 when I started studying for a GCSE in Retail, Marketing and Distribution (my only A grade!), which developed further when I took a part-time supermarket job unloading lorries and working in the warehouse at Sainsbury’s in the early 90s while at school and university.
Post-university I developed a career in commercial roles with various retailers before moving into the ecommerce world in 2007 at Gamestation – this was my first exposure to digital marketing, onsite merchandising and Retail Media in its simplest form, and my passion grew from there.
From there I moved to ASDA in 2009 to develop and grow their non-foods online proposition across multiple websites (which was part of their challenge) and more recently spent 11 years at Amazon, transitioning from the retail team to Amazon Ads in 2015, where I also helped to develop the “One Amazon” program which brought retail and ads teams together to help brands to harness the full capability of the Amazon flywheel, leveraging off-platform ads to drive customers back to the site to browse and buy products.
The program has more recently expanded to also incorporate AWS and the cloud infrastructure and AI tools that now underpin many brands businesses.
What most excites you about the industry today and what might happen next in RM?
It’s exciting to see how agentic AI is moving from a simple tool to an autonomous partner that fuels a continuous flywheel of growth and improvement. It promises to take the complexity out of the process, which is especially critical given the sheer number of available tools.
The most robust strategy for brands involves utilising clean rooms in tandem with agentic AI, leveraging API integrations between them to create a full-circle data loop, and I look forward to seeing more brands embracing this strategy. Retail media is also poised to be a major growth lever in the Connected TV (CTV) space.
The ability to use first-party retailer data to target relevant audiences on the biggest screen in the house is too powerful to ignore. I am particularly enthusiastic about the potential of Pause Ads. This format is ideally suited for the retail media environment because it offers value to the customer – a non-interruptive, high-attention moment.
The ad becomes relevant and additive because it is based on the specific consumer using the content at that moment. This is good old fashioned retail media – finding the right consumer, with the right product at the right time – built for the modern era.
What retail media campaign or strategy that you’ve been involved in are you proudest of?
During my time at Amazon Retail working in a highly competitive video games category, I developed a Preferred Partnership Program which brought together the combined elements of Amazon’s Retail Media proposition in the more traditional 3Ps format – product, price and promotion – for one of the video games manufacturers (who shall remain nameless).
The manufacturer was trailing behind in the race for top games console spot at the time and needed a step change in their approach in order to drive brand awareness and customer sales. The program helped them to increase onsite presence on Amazon, whilst utilising the Amazon Ads 1st party audience signals to discover and market to new audiences offsite via Amazon DSP.
The program was a huge success, helping to change the fortunes of the manufacturer and sowing the seeds for a long and fruitful relationship within the Amazon retail and ads business, with generational format adoption and long term impact. Fast-forward over a decade and this is the type of campaign strategy that underpins Triplelift’s retail media value proposition.
Who is your biggest inspiration in the retail media sector and why?
I’ve had the privilege of learning from and working with some truly inspirational and innovative leaders in this space, such as Ian Jindal (now Retail X), Alex Hole (now Samsung Ads), Ed Dinichert (now Criteo), but the person who edges it for me is Seth Dallaire (now Walmart Connect).
He was the Global Sales Leader at Amazon Ads when I transitioned over from the retail team and he taught me to remain true to the belief that the ads business would eventually become imperative for advertisers, agencies, and even the Amazon retail business, despite a number of challenges in the early days.
I learned a great deal from him about leadership, staying calm in the face of adversity (and many objections), believing in yourself, and effectively pitching the Amazon Ads flywheel and it’s impressive to see him develop the Walmart Ads business following the same mantra all these years later.
Read more profiles of industry leaders in retail media in our My Road to Retail Media series.
