By Kenneth Oboh

As global businesses grapple with measuring digital marketing effectiveness, data scientist Raymond Iloegbunam is leading a transformative push to bring clarity, efficiency, and intelligence into retail advertising. With a background in AI and machine learning,

Raymond plans to develop cutting-edge multi-touch attribution (MTA) systems that help brands decode customer journeys, reduce wasted ad spend, and drive smarter decision-making.

“Marketers shouldn’t have to guess which touchpoint truly influenced a purchase,” Raymond explained during a recent innovation showcase. His work leverages agentic AI—a form of artificial intelligence that can autonomously act and adapt—to map how customers engage with content across SEO, SEM, affiliate links, and social media before making a purchase. His models don’t just report outcomes—they continuously learn, optimize, and activate insights at scale, demonstrating substantial merit and national importance in the retail technology sector.

Raymond’s expertise is already making waves across the retail and ad tech sectors. At Walmart’s Data Ventures division, he’s part of a team building a tool called Digital Landscapes, now empowering over 270 brand partners with actionable insights based on customer digital footprints. His work earned him the Walmart Global Tech Excellence Award, a recognition acknowledged by the company’s Chief Technology Officer for outstanding innovation, demonstrating his well-positioned status to advance his proposed endeavor.

In one award-winning project, Raymond led a team to build a prototype that personalizes mobile ads for in-store shoppers. Using real-time behavioral data, the tool serves targeted product suggestions as customers navigate aisles, significantly improving conversion rates. “We don’t just show ads—we show the right ad to the right customer at the right time,” he emphasized. This technology has shown potential for widespread adoption across the retail industry, highlighting the national importance of his work.

His impact extends beyond the corporate walls. Raymond has mentored aspiring data scientists, judged regional science fairs, and participated in STEM-focused volunteer work, namely NASA, Shell, and Seaperch. From teaching middle schoolers about energy circuits to presenting advanced analytics at internal hackathons, Raymond bridges the gap between technical excellence and social impact, furthering U.S. interests in STEM education and technological advancement.

Looking ahead, he plans to scale his MTA framework across industries—from e-commerce to omnichannel retail—while ensuring privacy compliance under regulations like CCPA and GDPR. With increased demand for AI solutions that can protect consumer data while delivering meaningful insights, Raymond’s research in critical and emerging technology is not just timely—it is essential for U.S. economic competitiveness.

Currently preparing to publish a whitepaper on agentic AI in marketing attribution, Raymond is also slated to judge a major data science hackathon this year.

As businesses seek to cut through the noise of fragmented analytics, his scalable solutions offer a compelling vision for the future—one where every ad dollar is intelligently spent, every customer touchpoint is connected, and every decision is driven by data, providing substantial positive economic effects for the retail sector and beyond.