01 — Retailers
Retailers building or scaling retail media
Retailers with meaningful ecommerce traffic that are building, scaling, or improving their retail media and broader monetization capabilities.
Convergent Commerce
Senior advisory for retail media, connected commerce, and monetization strategy.
Senior leaders who are building, scaling, or rethinking retail media and commerce monetization businesses rely on Convergent Commerce to translate audience, transaction, and partner assets into a durable monetization strategy and operating decisions.
Selected experience
Helped scale Instacart's Ads Network to ~$1B in run-rate revenue by the end of 2025.
01 — Your Challenge
Your Challenge
Some patterns show up again and again. If any of these sound like a conversation you've already been having with your leadership team, let's talk.
Monetizing audience
We have a meaningful ecommerce audience, but we do not know how to monetize it effectively.
Data into value
We have customer, transaction, or marketplace data that could create value — but no clear monetization strategy.
Margin levers
We need to maintain or grow margin, and we're exploring new monetization levers.
New media business
We need to design the org and go-to-market motion for a new ads, retail media, or commerce media business.
Outside pressure-test
We need a senior outside advisor to pressure-test strategy before a major product, org, or investment decision.
Measurement & partners
We need to think clearly about measurement, advertiser value, publisher strategy, and partner strategy.
Plan to execution
Our leadership team needs help translating strategic ambition into a credible operating plan.
02 — Typical Clients
Built for leadership teams with real commerce assets.
The common thread: meaningful ecommerce traffic, engaged audiences, or valuable customer and transaction data and questions about how to unlock those assets.
02 — Marketplaces
Marketplaces with audience & seller scale
Marketplaces with meaningful audience, transaction, and merchant or seller ecosystems exploring or scaling monetization opportunities.
03 — Platforms
Payments, commerce & loyalty platforms
Platforms exploring connected commerce, retail media, advertising, offers, or partner monetization — and the operating model to support them.
03 — The Solution
A small number of senior engagements at a time.
Dedicated, individualized support. Engagements are shaped around the questions in front of the leadership team.
ENGAGEMENT TYPES
Executive advisory retainer
A recurring relationship with a business leader or leadership team. You'll receive operating experience and judgment to the decisions that actually shape the business, not a one-time deck.
- Standing cadence shaped to the leadership agenda
- Pre-read of materials, then working sessions
- Strategic alternatives and tradeoffs discussed openly
- Direct access between sessions when decisions are live
Advisory sprint
A defined-period engagement focused on a specific monetization, retail media, or operating-model question.
Leadership workshop
A focused working session with the leadership team to align on strategy, tradeoffs, or operating model.
Board or executive briefing
A senior briefing for a board, investor group, or executive team on retail media or commerce monetization questions.
Diagnostic or topic deep dive
A focused diagnostic on a defined topic — measurement, publisher strategy, advertiser experience — sized to the question.
04 — Previous Experience
Operator experience behind the advice.
The work behind Convergent Commerce: scaling a category-defining retail media business at Instacart, and advising leadership teams of large enterprises as they enter commerce media for the first time.
Instacart
VP, Brand Partnerships · 2019 – 2025
~$1B
Run-rate revenue of Instacart's Ads Network by the end of 2025
~7,500
Advertiser brands served by Instacart Ads at the time of departure
~25 yrs
Across consumer goods, retail, marketplaces, technology, and monetization
Over eight years at Instacart, I helped build and scale the Ads Network to approximately $1B in run-rate revenue by the end of 2025. As VP of Brand Partnerships, I owned commercial strategy for the ads business in close collaboration with the VP Product, VP Engineering, and VP Sales.
The scope spanned go-to-market design, packaging and pricing, yield management, sales strategy and operations, advanced measurement, product marketing, CPG insights, enterprise partnerships, and the operating cadence across product, sales, and brand partnerships.
I also helped oversee Instacart Ads' partnership with Uber Eats and the development of Carrot Ads, the platform extending Instacart's ads technology to other retailers' ecommerce sites — including Sprouts, Hy-Vee, and Thrive Market.
Global payments network
Advised a global payments network with over half a billion consumers on the launch of its retail media offering. The work focused on demand and supply strategies, measurement and formats, pricing structures, and operating-model design.
05 — About
Convergent Commerce is led by Josh Rider.
Convergent Commerce is a solo senior-advisory business. It isn't a bench, a deck factory, a staff-augmentation provider, or a generic consulting firm. The work is intentionally selective so it stays senior, focused, and useful.
I work alongside my role as Operating Partner at Beacon Software. Engagements are shaped around the questions in front of the leadership team, not run through a template.
The firm is North America focused, and can travel selectively when it helps the work.
2025 — Now
Founder — Convergent Commerce
Current
Operating Partner — Beacon Software
2017 — 2025
VP, Brand Partnerships — Instacart
Prior
Principal — Kearney (Consumer & Retail)
Span
~25 years — consumer goods, retail, marketplaces, technology, monetization
06 — Get in touch
Want to start a conversation?
Book a 30-minute call or send a note — happy to talk through whatever's on your leadership team's plate and see if it's the right kind of engagement.