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The retail operating system

One engine for every retail decision.

Most retailers run four or five separate tools.

Search in one tool, pricing in another, ads bolted on top — nobody owns the order shoppers see, and margin leaks between them. The Unified Decision Engine governs relevance, inventory, margin and sponsored demand in one pass, on every surface, including the AI assistants now doing the shopping.

Start with one surface. Leave the rest of your stack untouched.

Need one thing first? Start with our AI product recommendation engine or AI site search.

From Segments to Signals — MAD//North 2026 with Face the Future | Particular Audience

James Taylor, Beth Smith and Face the Future's Dave Trolle at MAD//North 2026: why signals beat segments in retail media, and what happened when relevance was switched off — CTR −87.3%, sales −55.6%.

From Segments to Signals in Retail Media — recorded live on the Retail Media Stage at MAD//North, Manchester, 25–26 February 2026. AI, machine learning and the closing gap between retail personalisation and media targeting.

Speakers: James Taylor (CEO & Founder, Particular Audience); Beth Smith (VP Customer Success, Particular Audience); Dave Trolle (Marketing Director, Face the Future).

Personalisation is just good prediction. The same collaborative filtering that predicts your next song predicts the item a shopper needs right now — from clicks, dwell time, basket adds and semantic search, not demographic segments.

75% of intent is missed by exact-match keywords. The system learns what the user is trying to achieve right now, not who they were three months ago.

Face the Future case study: when ads were sold on a bid-only auction, ad scale rose 9× while retail media CTR fell 87.3% (overall CTR −82.5% desktop, −59.9% mobile). Switching off signal-led relevance cut clicks 44.72%, sales 55.62%, sitewide AOV 12.68%, units per transaction 10.52% and revenue per visitor 12.27%.

With/without comparison presented on stage by Face the Future and Particular Audience; directional.

Dave Trolle, Face the Future: "From a brand side, it's hard to let go of control. Advertisers like the 'comfort' of buying a specific keyword or audience segment because it's tangible and what we've known over recent years."

Beth Smith, Particular Audience: "Changing the mindset requires proving that 'black box' AI isn't actually a black box — it's just a faster, smarter way of processing thousands of data points at once."

Watch the session · Face the Future case study · Retail Media Cam podcast