Marketplace
Darkroom Names Nick Menicucci Managing Director, Marketplaces and Retail Media
Written by Darkroom leardership
3 min read
Oct 21, 2026
Nick Menicucci is Darkroom's Managing Director, Marketplaces and Retail Media. He joined the AI-native growth marketing agency on September 21, 2026, from eAccountable, where he was Senior Director of Marketplaces. The 2024 Skai Champion of the Year now leads one division that runs Amazon, Walmart, Target, Instacart, and Criteo as a single commerce program.
Here's what he brings, what he'll build, and what changes for brands that sell across marketplaces.
About Nick Menicucci
Nick Menicucci is a marketplace and retail media operator who built the Amazon channel at his last agency. At eAccountable, he started as Director of Amazon and rose to Senior Director of Marketplaces. His work focused on helping brands grow profitably on Amazon and other marketplaces through a data-driven approach to retail advertising.
In 2024, Skai named him Skai Champion of the Year at its ShopAble Media Awards. The award recognized how he made the commerce media platform central to his team's campaign management, optimization, reporting, and strategy.
His eAccountable profile also describes him as a frequent industry speaker on omnichannel marketplace growth.
What will Nick lead at Darkroom?
Nick leads the department that combines Darkroom's Amazon management with retail media management across Walmart, Target, Instacart, Criteo, and delivery platforms such as DoorDash, Uber Eats, and GoPuff. He works alongside SVP of Strategy Will Margaritis on Darkroom's senior leadership team.
His three priorities:
Unified commerce plan: one plan that connects paid and organic performance across marketplaces, retailer networks, and in-store sales.
Scalable account management: frameworks and automated client KPI dashboards that keep reporting consistent as the client roster grows.
Shadow workflows: the department's best workflows built into Shadow, Darkroom's AI commerce layer, so strategists put their hours into growth.
Why does Darkroom run marketplaces and retail media as one division?
Retail media is now big enough that every network needs to answer to one plan. Amazon reported $19.8 billion in advertising services revenue for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, up 26%. Walmart Connect grew 43% in the US, excluding VIZIO, in the quarter ended July 31, 2026.
That spend is split across networks with their own buying tools, data, and reporting. Run each one separately, and you end up with fragmented budgets and results you can't compare.
Darkroom's answer is one program on your P&L, judged by incremental sales and profit. Nick's job is to make that the default for every client.
Read also: Amazon vs Retail Media Networks: Where Brands Should Actually Spend in 2026
What does Darkroom's leadership say about the hire?
Lucas DiPietrantonio, Co-Founder and CEO of Darkroom, sees the hire as a fix for how most brands still buy retail media.
"Retail media has become the second search engine for consumer brands, and most of them still buy it one retailer at a time," said DiPietrantonio. "Bringing Nick Menicucci in as Managing Director of Marketplaces and Retail Media gives our clients an operator who has turned Amazon into a profit line for brands. Paired with Shadow, his team can run Amazon, Walmart, Target and Instacart as one business."
Nick sees the same problem from the operator's seat.
"Retail media has a fragmentation problem," said Menicucci. "Every retailer sells ads with its own data, its own tools and its own definition of success. My job at Darkroom is to give brands one plan and one scoreboard across every marketplace they sell on, measured by the profit each dollar adds to the business."
Expectations for Darkroom’s marketplace team
Expect one team, one plan, and one measure of success across every marketplace you sell on. In practice, that means:
Connected budgets: Amazon, Walmart Connect, Target Roundel, Instacart, and Criteo planned and reallocated together.
Incrementality first: results judged on incremental sales and contribution profit, with platform ROAS read as one input among several.
Organic and paid together: listings, marketplace SEO, creative, and ads managed as one Amazon program.
Grocery coverage: CPG brands reach shoppers across Instacart's retail partners from the same plan.
Talk to Darkroom's marketplaces and retail media team
Planning your 2027 retail media budget? Nick's team can audit your Amazon and retail media accounts and show you where incremental profit is hiding across every network you run.
