Retail media is the topic everyone is talking about in the retail and consumer goods industry. And for good reason: the $45 billion U.S. retail media market is surging as retailers capitalize on the consumer shift to ecommerce while offering advertisers access to their unique audiences and data insights. Many retailers developed their own retail media networks over the last few years, from digital marketplaces and department stores to commerce intermediaries.

Apache Kafka® has become the de-facto standard for streaming data, helping companies deliver exceptional customer experiences, automate operations, and become software. As companies increase their use of real-time data, we have seen the proliferation of Kafka clusters within many enterprises. Often, siloed application and infrastructure teams set up and manage new clusters to solve new use cases as they arise.