Surfside Co-Founder and Co-CEO Michael Blanche Named to ADWEEK’s Inaugural Commerce All-Stars List

Recognition honors leaders shaping the future of commerce and retail media through innovation, infrastructure, and measurable impact

NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, June 9, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Surfside, the operating system for the retail majority, announced today that Co-Founder and Co-CEO Michael Blanche has been named to ADWEEK’s inaugural Commerce All-Stars list alongside retail media leaders from Walmart, Target, and Sam's Club. The new award recognizes the most innovative and successful executives driving the future of commerce and retail media.

Blanche was selected for his role in building a unified commerce media platform that expands access to advanced advertising infrastructure beyond the largest retail players. Under his leadership, Surfside has focused on enabling the retail majority—independent, regional, and specialty retailers that collectively represent a significant share of consumer transactions but have historically lacked the tools to participate in retail media at scale.

“Michael has always had a clear view of where the market was heading,” said Jon Lowen, Michael’s Co-Founder and Co-CEO. “He recognized early that the next phase of commerce media growth would come from enabling broader participation across a fragmented market. He prioritized building a system that connects data, media, and measurement in a way that works for retailers of any size and delivers concrete outcomes for advertisers.”

As the technical and product leader behind Surfside, Blanche has overseen the development of a platform that unifies data infrastructure, audience creation, media activation across onsite, offsite, and in-store environments, and closed-loop measurement. This unified approach allows advertisers to reach high-intent consumers at the point of purchase and tie media exposure directly to verified online and in-store sales, while enabling retailers the ability to monetize first-party data, personalize the shopping experience, and drive incremental revenue.

Under his leadership, Surfside has scaled into a high-growth commerce media ecosystem, now supporting more than 8,000 retailers and activating over 1,000 campaigns in the past year alone. Between 2023 and 2025, Surfside’s commerce media revenue more than doubled, including 45% year-over-year growth in 2024 and 42% in 2025. Onsite retail media has been a key driver, growing more than tenfold over that period.

Blanche has also led the development of Surfside’s data and identity infrastructure, which includes more than 25 million beverage alcohol transactions and a device graph spanning 1.8 billion connected devices across the U.S. and Canada. This foundation enables precise audience targeting and closed-loop measurement at scale, with campaigns delivering an average 28% lift in total sales and 6–10x return on ad spend.

Prior to founding Surfside, Blanche served as Chief Technology Officer at SITO Mobile, where he led engineering and product development during the early evolution of mobile advertising and location intelligence. His work in proximity targeting and real-world attribution helped establish capabilities that underpin modern retail media measurement. He has also contributed to broader industry efforts through advisory work with the IAB, focused on advancing standards that connect media exposure to real-world transactions.

“Commerce media today is still concentrated in a small set of environments, but the majority of transactions don’t happen there,” said Blanche. “The next phase of growth comes from making that broader retail footprint addressable, measurable, and usable for advertisers. When you connect purchase data, activation, and measurement into a single system, you align media investment with where buying actually happens.”

The ADWEEK Commerce All-Stars recognition highlights executives who are shaping how commerce media evolves as a category. Blanche’s work reflects a focus on expanding access, improving measurement, and creating infrastructure that aligns media investment with real-world purchasing behavior.

For more information, visit www.surfside.io.

About Surfside
Surfside is the operating system built for the retail majority, powering retail media and closed-loop measurement across more than 8,000 independent, regional, and specialty retailers. By aggregating fragmented retail supply into a single, addressable network and unifying first-party data, audience creation, media activation, and measurement into one platform, Surfside enables brands and retailers to reach verified shoppers and measure performance based on real outcomes.

Joseph Zappa
Sharp Pen Media
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