Cross-Retailer Product Database and API

Project Overview

An internal data platform and API that aggregates product catalogs from multiple large retailers, normalizes product identifiers, and connects products to editorial content. This foundation enabled the creation of innovative, high-value advertising products for enterprise retail clients.

Business Challenge

Large retailers spending $25M+ annually on advertising sought more innovative ways to connect their products with consumers. Traditional approaches struggled to:

• Keep product availability and pricing up-to-date.
  
  

• Bridge retailer catalogs with editorial contexts like recipes.
  
  

• Provide scalable infrastructure to support new advertising formats.
  
  

A unified, always-current product dataset was required to power differentiated, personalized advertising experiences.

My Role

As Senior Technical Product Manager, I defined the product vision, collaborated with engineering to architect a scalable data solution, and worked with advertising sales and client teams to ensure the platform could support new ad product development. I drove requirements for data ingestion, normalization, and API delivery to ensure real-world usability for both editorial and advertising use cases.

Solution

We built a cross-retailer product database and real-time API that powers multiple advertising innovations:

• Daily Data Refresh – Retailer catalogs ingested and rehydrated daily with current product availability by store.
  
  

• Product Normalization – Internal IDs unify the same product across multiple retailers.
  
  

• Recipe Integration – Products mapped to recipe ingredient IDs, connecting editorial content directly to shoppable local products.
  
  

• Real-Time API Access – Fast, responsive API providing current product, pricing, and availability data for downstream advertising products.
  
  

Business Impact

• Created the core data foundation enabling personalized, shoppable advertising experiences across content.
  
  

• Allowed users to see products in stock at their local retailers while consuming relevant site content.
  
  

• Strengthened relationships with $25M+ advertising clients by delivering novel, differentiated ad opportunities.
  
  

• Served as the backbone for multiple advertising products, significantly increasing the value and stickiness of the ad platform.
  
  

Technical Highlights

• Daily ingestion pipelines normalizing product data across multiple large retailers.
  
  

• Internal ID mapping to unify products across retailers and tie them to recipe/ingredient datasets.
  
  

• High-performance API designed for real-time response under heavy ad product traffic.
  
  

• Scalable architecture supporting multiple ad product integrations.