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Welcome to the Jason and scot Show, your source for the latest news and trends

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in the e-commerce industry.

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Featuring host Jason Retail Geek Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer of

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Publicis, and scot Wingo, co-founder and CEO of ReFiBuy.

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Here are Jason and scot.

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Before we start this episode, we have an important announcement for you.

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Hi, I’m Kiri Masters, and I’m excited to introduce AdGentic,

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a new show about advertising in the age of AI.

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I’ve spent the last decade analyzing retail media, and now I’m fascinated by

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what happens when more of the shopping journey moves into AI assistants and agents.

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What happens to advertising when there’s no search results page?

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What will ads in AI actually look like?

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And where should brands, retailers, and publishers be paying attention right now?

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Those are the kinds of questions that we’ll be exploring on Adgentic through

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video essays, conversations, and perspectives from the people actually building this new ecosystem.

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Adgentic is live now as part of the ReFiBuy Media Network. Find the show on

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YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to the Adgentic newsletter on Substack.

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All right. Let’s introduce ourselves. Anyone not know who we are?

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If you don’t, I’m Jason Retail Gig Goldberg.

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And I’m scot Wingo. I’m the CEO of RefiBuy.

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And Jason, what do you do? And I have 27 more words in my title than you.

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I’m the Chief Commerce Strategy Officer of Publisus Group. And payments.

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Sure. And agentic. And agentic. Yes. Throw it in there.

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Yeah. All right. Keyword stuffing. The reason you’re probably here is you may

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have heard one of our podcasts any podcast listeners all right thanks for coming

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everybody if you’re not a podcast

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listener jason and scot the only thing tricky is the scot has one t,

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it was the 60s my dad was kind of a hippie and he wanted to be different it

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makes me infinitely googleable which is a blessing and mostly a curse it’s great for seo.

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All right. So what we’re going to do today is talk about what they asked us

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to do is like help people see kind of two sides of the debate of all the things

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going on on the front end of AI.

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And so what we wanted to do is frame it a little bit. And Jason’s going to start us off.

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Yeah. And this is just to set the table. Some of you may have seen a session

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earlier with the EVP of marketing and e-commerce at Walmart.

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And we talked a little bit about how, despite the fact they’re a Fortune 1 company,

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they’ve been remarkably agile and a fast mover in a janty.

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And so one of my favorite stories about and my hypothesis for why they’ve been

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so successful at that is they have this recently retired CEO,

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Doug McMillan, who’s, to be frank, a personal nemesis of mine.

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He’s like nicer, smarter, vastly more successful than me.

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And that would have made me already better. But then he’s now retired and he’s

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younger than me. So I’m super, super pissed about that.

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But before he retired, I got an opportunity to go to a meeting with him.

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And this is about two and a half years ago. And we come to this meeting.

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He’s the 38th most powerful man in the world, according to Fortune magazine.

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It’s a big deal to get a meeting with Doug. And people super prepare for the meeting, right?

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And so we come to this meeting. Everybody’s ready. They’re super excited.

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And Doug stands up and says, hey, thank you guys very much for coming to the

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meeting. I know you worked really hard to get ready for this.

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But before we start, I have a question for you.

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How did you all use AI to prepare for this meeting?

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And you could literally see people’s faces just deflate. Like they were so bummed

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because nobody had used AI two and a half years ago to prepare for a meeting at Walmart.

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And there was this awkward silence. It felt like eight minutes.

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It was probably like eight seconds. And then some super brave soul chimes in.

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Gosh, Doug, I’m really sorry. We didn’t use AI to prepare for this meeting,

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which, not shocking, right?

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And then he pauses, and then he drops the bomb. AI is illegal at Walmart.

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And everyone’s like, what? What are you talking about? AI is not illegal at Walmart.

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And this guy explains to Doug McMillan, he’s like, oh, I get an email from IT every week.

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You’re not licensed to use Claude, don’t use Claude, and ChatGBT hallucinates,

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and don’t you dare put any of our corporate data on there where it might leak.

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And it suddenly occurred to Doug McMillan, the CEO of Walmart,

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that like, oh my God, this is what’s going to disrupt us, right?

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That this is what’s going to knock us off of the top of the retailer list is

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that we have 1.8 million associates that are all doing their job today the way they did it yesterday.

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And they don’t feel like they have permission to do it different.

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And so he went on this whole pilgrimage to make AI innate at Walmart,

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and they bought ChatGPT for 1.8 million associates, and then they bought everything.

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And then they started building agents like Marty and Sparky and CodePuppy,

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if you heard about this morning.

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And they hired this guy, Dan Danker. And the sort of conclusion of this two

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and a half year journey, Dan Danker was the chief AI officer at Instacart. They hired him.

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In Doug’s last year at Walmart, it’s a public company, so it’s public,

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Doug was paid $29 million, which is a great value.

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He doubled the revenue, quadrupled the market cap of the company.

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Dan Danker made $44 million.

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So Doug did everything to change the culture, including hiring a direct report

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that he paid more than himself to make AI the center of Walmart.

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And when I look at all these other companies that are moving slower than Walmart,

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the thing that’s most different is this leadership from the top and that you

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had permission from the very top of the organization.

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And so my my key advice to everyone here who’s saying, how do I get a more more

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integrated in our in our own cultures is this can’t be a side project that just

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one person in I.T. who’s designated themselves. I.T.

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A.I.s are. It’s got to be a from the top initiative to do things differently. Got it.

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So the first debate is another level setting is like, what are we talking about?

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So walk through how big is e-commerce? Yeah, yeah. So just super high level.

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scot and I have been doing this for a long time. For almost as long as we’ve

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been doing this, brick and mortar retail grows about 4% a year,

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between 3.9 and 4.1% a year.

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And for most of the modern year, e-commerce has grown about 15% a year.

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And there was a time when it obviously grew faster, but more recently it’s grown

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at about 15% a year. So e-commerce goes four times as fast as brick and mortar.

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It’s wildly slowing down. Last year, retail grew at 4%, but e-commerce only grew at 5%.

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So we sort of have equilibrium as e-commerce has approached 25% of all sales.

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It’s accelerating again this year. So we’re halfway through the year. It’s about 10% now.

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Is there any evidence it’s agentic commerce? I would argue, and this will probably

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be the first argument, there’s evidence that it’s not.

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Yes. Before we get there, the argument I get in the most on LinkedIn,

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so I kind of, there’s a reporter, Jason Del Rey, and he kind of branded me a

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agentic commerce maximalist.

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So I embraced that and I put it on my LinkedIn profile. So now I draw everyone

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that wants to argue about it, just that commerce is now my friend,

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like comes at me hard. So it’s kind of a fun, fun thing. So what I have found

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is we’re endlessly arguing over the definition.

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So that tends to be, if I really pick into their argument, it’s very definitional,

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which is fine because, as they would always say, they always start their argument,

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definitions matter. And I agree they do. So that’s the first argument.

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So the three definitions, I think, are number one, fully autonomous commerce.

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Now, this comes from a statement.

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There’s two guys, two brothers that run Stripe, Patrick and what’s the other ones?

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Something Collison. I forget. I always know Patrick, but I can’t remember.

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Dan? Danny? Something? I don’t know. The other Collison brother.

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And they’re Irish. And back in like very early, this is like 2000 and like January

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of 25, one of them said, someday all payments will be fully autonomous,

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and that’s what adjunct-to-commerce is.

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So they always latch onto that. Now, I’ve actually had executives at Stripe

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on the podcast to say that’s not how they think about it anymore.

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That was just like an early thing.

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But that’s one thing that people think about it on. And fully autonomous means

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you go and you say, all right, I’m looking for a shirt that’s blue,

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and it just goes, it knows you so well, it goes and buys it. And that’s it.

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So that’s one argument of what is agentic commerce.

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Another one is, Jason, what’s another definition? Yeah. That agentic commerce

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is broader than no human in the loop, but it has to always end in a transaction, right?

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So this is this middle one, AI native transactions, that you may or may not

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have used the robot for discovery, but the robot led you directly to the checkout

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button. So either it had native checkout in it.

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I think depending on how you define it, it might include throwing someone to a PDP with a checkout.

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Yep. So an example would be you go into Chat2BT, you’re planning a trip.

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It says, have you thought about your sunscreen?

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And then you say, well, I know I haven’t. And then it says, this is what you

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should get. And then it walks you into Target and then drops you into the checkout.

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That’s the second definition.

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The people that believe the first thing would not call that autonomous because

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of the front part where you actually told the agent what you,

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you know, you helped, you said you had a say in what you were going to get.

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And you might have to actually physically click a buy button.

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Yes. Oh, my God. The horror. And then number three, and spoiler alert,

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this is kind of what I believe.

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I think any time an AI assists you in the journey, that that should be called

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agentic commerce. So I count when you’re using Rufus, which is now called Alexa for shopping or AFS.

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When you’re using that, when you’re using Sparky, you may actually use it on

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the discovery part and not want to do the checkout.

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You may want it to go do, I use these new personal agents. I use them for the

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checkout a lot because I’ll use it.

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I’ll do the discovery myself and I’ll say to it, we do a lot of tailgating.

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I’m in North Carolina and I found this really cool cooler.

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And I just said to the agent, hey, go see if you can find this for a better

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price and faster shipping. And it did. And I said, rip, rip,

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rip and roll like, you know, you do it. And it just gave me a stripe link.

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I clicked that and it bought it.

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So I use it as kind of like a GPS. I kind of put it in there whenever I feel

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like I want it to help me out a little bit and make sure I’m getting a great deal.

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Or I’ve got all the right parameters of the thing I’m doing.

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So that’s my definition.

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So this is the audience participation part.

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Any questions on the definitions before we do a quick show of hands? Is that pretty clear?

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All right, how many of you believe argument number one, it has to be fully autonomous?

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So this is called selection bias. We’re at an AI show. So the naysayers don’t come here.

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So they’re not here right now. Most of them do tend to work at retail media

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network companies. So I see Deb back here.

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She’s big into that world. But she talks about AI in ads.

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So she’s on our side of the house. But so what they’re worried about is if you

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work for a retail media network in some way, it’s really bad when the discovery

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part passes the homepage and the search experience. because that’s what rings the register.

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So they tend to, they tend like, and full disclosure, I believe in this so much

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I started a company in it.

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So I am full disclosure, I’m so biased on this that this is all I do all the time.

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So I’m pretty aware of my biases, but their bias tends to be towards protecting that ad revenue.

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And I would say like the joke here is we’re supposed to be adversarial and we

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probably don’t totally disagree on this one.

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So my surrogate for disagreeing with scot, There’s this very well-known guy

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in our industry, Andrew Lipson, who used to write all about retail media for eMarketer.

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And Andrew famously wrote this

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article, Agentic Commerce is One Giant Hallucination, which is clever.

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But when you double click with him and talk about it, the reason he says that

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is he he has that narrow definition and he thinks that’s never happening or

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it’s at least a very long way from happening.

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Yeah, there’s a guy that’s even more famous than Andrew, and it’s Eric Sofert.

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And he has this thing he writes all about mobile and he’s he’s well really well

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known on the Wall Street side of things.

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And he this is hallucination. He uses mirage. So he says agentic commerce is a mirage.

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But if you read his pieces, his definition is definition one.

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And he says that people are never going to do that.

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And instead, they’re going to use what I call shopper agents.

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They’re going to use Rufus slash AFS and Sparky and that kind of thing,

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which in my definition, I’m like, yes, that’s not a hallucination or a mirage.

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That’s part of agentic commerce.

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So it’s kind of funny that it ends up being very definitional.

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Does anyone have a different definition or want to talk about a use case we

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haven’t talked about that’s interesting?

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Hold your hand up. We have a mic runner. Anyone?

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One we’re supposed to this is an audience participation part of breakthroughing

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is we have to you know we need audience participation if you don’t ask questions

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about agentic commerce we’re going

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to ask questions about math so just to warn you oh there that got one.

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James? All right. I don’t know that I have a crisp way of articulating this

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question, but what I wonder is with incentives monetization models and like

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where the trust will need to live.

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So prerequisite, and I might tie this back to like maybe replenishment orders

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I put into Amazon, where I found I was taken advantage of because I was paying

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a premium for the permission of opting into like a subscription or something.

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So with incentives being in multiple places, As a consumer, I really want to

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know that that’s much like your use case thought on the cooler,

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right? That I had somebody advocating for me.

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Where are the, how will the monetization model support something that’s consumer-centric?

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Yeah, and we’re not, the other thing I’ll point out is we’re,

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I think we’re at ending one of this whole thing, right? Because just in the

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last 60 days, we’ve had a plethora of new technologies that are,

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most of them are based on OpenClaw underneath inside of them.

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But OpenClaw is impossible for the average consumer to use.

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Only Jason has been able to figure it out in our partnership.

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And if you can get a Mac Mini even to run it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Don’t run it on your local machine. It’s dangerous.

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And so I’m talking about Meta’s Muse, which sounds like Metamucil,

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but it’s different. Not Metamucil.

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The company’s Meta agent called Muse. And then another one is called Instinct.

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And what’s interesting about them is they are very clearly, when you start those,

00:14:48.279 –> 00:14:52.129
they are your champion. And they’re like, you’re my customer and I will go to

00:14:52.129 –> 00:14:53.789
battle with retailers for you.

00:14:54.119 –> 00:14:57.029
And there’s something like really awesome about that as a user.

00:14:57.029 –> 00:14:59.969
You’re like this thing really, and they’re aggressive about it.

00:14:59.969 –> 00:15:03.049
They’re like, do you want me to look for coupon codes? Do you want me to find

00:15:03.049 –> 00:15:03.959
this somewhere cheaper?

00:15:04.269 –> 00:15:06.599
Do you want me to like, you know, see if I can get it faster?

00:15:06.840 –> 00:15:10.609
I see, you know, you have an Amex. Do you want me to see if I can get you 10 X points?

00:15:10.750 –> 00:15:14.030
And you’re just like, well, well, yes. Do all the, I, you know,

00:15:14.030 –> 00:15:18.090
yes, yes. And yes, do all those things for me. I like having someone on my side.

00:15:18.630 –> 00:15:24.010
But, you know, they’re free right now. So I would like to pay them a subscriber.

00:15:24.010 –> 00:15:28.250
I want them, I’m happy as a consumer to pay for that to make sure it’s always on my side.

00:15:28.250 –> 00:15:31.460
Because I, you know, the other, you know, a lot of us in the industry,

00:15:31.769 –> 00:15:36.110
many people at a show like this, the most frequently said thing I say when, have you tried Muse?

00:15:36.110 –> 00:15:40.009
They say, I remember when Facebook walls were free and they told us that would

00:15:40.009 –> 00:15:42.659
be great. And then, you know, Zuckerberg will screw us over.

00:15:42.659 –> 00:15:45.719
It’s kind of like what everyone at this show tends to feel many times.

00:15:46.189 –> 00:15:49.669
So that’s real though. Like he has a history of doing that. So it’s going to

00:15:49.669 –> 00:15:52.169
be interesting. Today, the incentives are great on those two things,

00:15:52.509 –> 00:15:55.889
but they’re giving it away free. It ain’t cheap paying for all this inference they’re running.

00:15:56.149 –> 00:15:58.139
So at some point, someone’s going to have to pay.

00:15:59.759 –> 00:16:02.979
Once the, if the merchant is paying through an affiliate link or something,

00:16:02.979 –> 00:16:05.719
then suddenly it’s no longer going to be incented to fight for me.

00:16:05.989 –> 00:16:09.019
So it’s going to be interesting to see, you know, these early days,

00:16:09.019 –> 00:16:13.159
I think there will be someone that decides I’m going to have a pay,

00:16:13.159 –> 00:16:16.989
the consumer pays for this a bit, but it’s always on their side.

00:16:16.989 –> 00:16:20.209
And I think that will be a really pretty interesting winning combination on

00:16:20.209 –> 00:16:24.099
that one. And I think it’s a wonderful question because I think those are two

00:16:24.359 –> 00:16:30.120
critical things are understanding the incentives and the monetization and how that impacts trust.

00:16:31.020 –> 00:16:35.690
We’re going to talk about robots that the retailer owns, vertical robots versus

00:16:35.690 –> 00:16:38.800
horizontal robots that the LLMs own.

00:16:39.030 –> 00:16:43.650
And trust dynamics are very different there. Does anyone here trust Alexa for

00:16:43.650 –> 00:16:47.480
shopping to point you at the most successful product for you?

00:16:48.059 –> 00:16:53.010
No, right? Because Jordan does. But he’s very gullible.

00:16:54.259 –> 00:16:59.009
And Sam Altman, very famously said, like, we get it wrong all the time.

00:17:00.119 –> 00:17:04.249
The customer believes we’re trying to get it right. Like when we get it wrong,

00:17:04.249 –> 00:17:07.979
it’s not because we’re trying to trick the consumer. It’s because we just screwed up.

00:17:08.499 –> 00:17:13.159
And so at the moment, that’s the play out. But the incentives are likely shifting

00:17:13.159 –> 00:17:17.379
because, you know, scot is a very successful man and he has no qualms about

00:17:17.379 –> 00:17:20.389
paying for a service that then works for him.

00:17:20.980 –> 00:17:25.790
The vast majority of consumers don’t do that. Right. And Ben Thompson on Stratechery

00:17:25.790 –> 00:17:29.640
very famously talks about all the models that involve the consumer paying for

00:17:29.640 –> 00:17:33.350
the service don’t work. And he uses Dropbox as the example.

00:17:33.680 –> 00:17:36.470
And we’re seeing this play out on OpenAI right now.

00:17:36.610 –> 00:17:41.970
Sam Altman started out very anti-ads and they thought, hey, we’ll get consumers to pay for this.

00:17:42.260 –> 00:17:47.930
And already ads are a very robust monetization model on OpenAI.

00:17:47.930 –> 00:17:51.050
And they always say it’s not going to influence the answer engine,

00:17:51.050 –> 00:17:55.150
but over time, You know, they go public, they’re close to missing a quarter.

00:17:55.150 –> 00:17:59.630
Suddenly the ads are intermingled and, you know, the horses left the barn.

00:18:00.050 –> 00:18:03.320
So we’ll have to see how this develops. But if anyone has a bridge to buy,

00:18:03.320 –> 00:18:05.530
Jordan is in the market for one. All right. Thanks, Jordan.

00:18:06.118 –> 00:18:11.450
Any other, you know, anyone want to chime in on this topic of what is agentic commerce?

00:18:11.757 –> 00:18:14.169
What are some of the things that are going to happen with the adoption of it?

00:18:14.999 –> 00:18:19.450
Anyone? Anyone have a topic? Oh, go ahead, Jordan. We just picked on Jordan, so.

00:18:20.069 –> 00:18:22.389
Yeah, yeah, they’re bringing you. You’re allowed to defend yourself.

00:18:22.389 –> 00:18:25.019
That’s fair. Jordan, who are you with? Jordan from tomorrow.

00:18:25.019 –> 00:18:27.409
Okay. Thank you. From the future. Why?

00:18:27.949 –> 00:18:32.789
I know. Here we go. This idea of trust and where monetization takes its role

00:18:32.789 –> 00:18:33.979
in agentic experiences.

00:18:34.199 –> 00:18:37.169
The reason that we’re trusting Alexa for shopping right now,

00:18:37.169 –> 00:18:41.169
we being kind of some folks I work with, is because we do understand that at

00:18:41.169 –> 00:18:46.419
this moment, both Amazon and Walmart have over-indexed for trust

00:18:46.819 –> 00:18:49.599
in the development of their agents. You’re calling them vertical bonds.

00:18:50.299 –> 00:18:55.099
Sparky and Alexa, those teams have been given very clear direction that it is

00:18:55.099 –> 00:18:56.989
all about trust building right now.

00:18:57.440 –> 00:19:00.950
They are introducing sponsor prompts, and you can see them visibly,

00:19:00.950 –> 00:19:05.410
so we’ll see over time. But as of now, I think you’re getting the purest that

00:19:05.410 –> 00:19:08.810
you’ve ever gotten, at least in the last 10 years, from a Walmart and Amazon.

00:19:09.119 –> 00:19:13.659
In those experiences. So it’s a very special time and that’s going to change

00:19:13.659 –> 00:19:15.959
maybe, but as of now, I think it’s pretty nice.

00:19:15.959 –> 00:19:19.310
No, I think you’re 100% right. I don’t know that, I’m not from the future like

00:19:19.310 –> 00:19:23.170
you, but if I look at the- The near future, it’s just 24 hours.

00:19:23.170 –> 00:19:24.970
Yeah, but it’s always a day away.

00:19:25.730 –> 00:19:29.090
True. Yeah. What I was going to say though is if we look at history,

00:19:29.090 –> 00:19:31.870
right, and history doesn’t necessarily repeat, but it tends to rhyme.

00:19:32.190 –> 00:19:37.110
And some of us are old enough to remember when And Google used to return 10 blue links, right?

00:19:37.110 –> 00:19:43.380
And obviously the pixels diminished every year. And now that first organic pixel

00:19:43.380 –> 00:19:47.970
is about four pages deep, I think, in the thing. And it seems likely that we’re

00:19:47.970 –> 00:19:50.150
going to see a similar progression play out here.

00:19:52.559 –> 00:19:56.459
All right, any topic that you guys want to chat about around Agents of Commerce

00:19:56.459 –> 00:19:58.139
before we move on to the things we prepared?

00:19:59.189 –> 00:20:00.969
Another Jordan. Are you from tomorrow?

00:20:02.159 –> 00:20:08.059
I wish. Can you just talk broadly about the puts and takes on the durability

00:20:08.419 –> 00:20:14.139
of retail advertising inside these aggregation platforms like Amazon, etc.?

00:20:14.519 –> 00:20:20.379
How do you see that revenue model potential under attack by agents that are

00:20:20.379 –> 00:20:23.459
brought into discovery or the intent that’s shifting to them?

00:20:23.459 –> 00:20:26.189
So specific to Amazon ads or the whole retail media network?

00:20:26.369 –> 00:20:29.810
The whole retail media network. So the question is, what’s this mean?

00:20:30.660 –> 00:20:35.040
I said earlier, and we talked about Andrew, the retail media network folks are

00:20:35.040 –> 00:20:39.080
rightfully, I think, very worried about this. Because in a little brief history

00:20:39.080 –> 00:20:40.439
of that, Jason will correct me.

00:20:40.789 –> 00:20:46.879
Amazon launched Amazon ads in 2016, I think it was. Yeah, about 10 years ago.

00:20:47.299 –> 00:20:51.420
And it was a sponsored, it was just like one lowly little sponsored listing

00:20:51.420 –> 00:20:52.500
for third-party sellers.

00:20:52.780 –> 00:20:55.380
And it ended up being wildly successful. And then they realized,

00:20:55.720 –> 00:20:59.040
you know what? We have a lot of traffic. We can monetize that and our sales

00:20:59.040 –> 00:21:01.080
don’t go down. It’s basically free margin.

00:21:01.550 –> 00:21:07.250
Fast forward 10 years, it’s now a $80 billion run rate line item for Amazon.

00:21:07.599 –> 00:21:10.850
They had to break it out. It got so big. We believe it’s pure margin.

00:21:10.850 –> 00:21:16.629
So it just sits there on the P&L and 100% goes down to gross because it costs nothing to serve.

00:21:16.859 –> 00:21:18.739
It doesn’t hurt any other part of the business.

00:21:19.499 –> 00:21:23.509
The website’s already being served to sell stuff, so it has no inherent cost.

00:21:23.509 –> 00:21:28.309
Now, I’m sure internally they give it some huge allocation of a P&L or something, but that’s it.

00:21:29.029 –> 00:21:33.249
Every other retailer saw that and copied it and said, that’s a great idea. We need that.

00:21:33.560 –> 00:21:36.980
And then now, now they even want to call it, they’ve gotten out of calling it

00:21:36.980 –> 00:21:40.720
retail media network and they call it just commerce networks or commerce.

00:21:41.140 –> 00:21:43.640
I forget what they call it. Do you guys, what’s the new thing they’re trying to call it?

00:21:44.270 –> 00:21:48.570
Commerce media, because now Instacart has it and Expedia.

00:21:48.780 –> 00:21:51.890
And now everywhere you go, there’s a fricking ad like through the whole,

00:21:51.890 –> 00:21:54.400
like, you know, top of the funnel, middle of the funnel.

00:21:54.680 –> 00:21:58.400
Amazon, one time I was looking for a dog treat and I swear to God,

00:21:58.400 –> 00:22:02.920
Amazon was hiding it. So I’d have to see 8,000 ads on my way to find the dog

00:22:02.920 –> 00:22:07.030
treat. It’s gotten that kind of, because the incentives have gotten so kind of misaligned.

00:22:07.330 –> 00:22:12.050
One time we did a calculation and like something like 67% of the pixels on the

00:22:12.050 –> 00:22:16.429
Amazon page were ads, not for every product, but for a lot of the CPG stuff I was looking for.

00:22:16.719 –> 00:22:20.199
So, so, you know, I actually think this is a reaction to that.

00:22:20.199 –> 00:22:23.079
I think they’ve gone too far. This is my personal opinion in this debate.

00:22:23.509 –> 00:22:26.719
Jason works for an ad agency, so he’ll take the other side. All ads are good

00:22:26.719 –> 00:22:30.939
at all times. There you go. Spend more. So here it comes. Get ready. Here it comes.

00:22:31.319 –> 00:22:34.719
In fact, if anyone has their checkbook, I’m accepting them right now. Yes.

00:22:35.010 –> 00:22:38.629
So here’s what I’ll say. Hey, like everything in this space,

00:22:38.629 –> 00:22:42.709
it’s complicated. Like retail media or commerce media isn’t just one thing, right?

00:22:43.039 –> 00:22:50.379
And so I think it’s very clear at Amazon, there’s a huge fountain of incremental

00:22:50.379 –> 00:22:55.159
revenue that Amazon’s getting from ads that like change. Mark profit.

00:22:55.359 –> 00:23:00.512
Yeah. earned income that sorry I forgot you said puts and takes so I know you’re a finance guy.

00:23:03.029 –> 00:23:06.299
There’s nothing wrong with that it’s cool we like everyone here let’s throw

00:23:06.299 –> 00:23:10.720
some basis points in 50 basis points all right there you go Bips yeah talking

00:23:10.720 –> 00:23:12.910
Bips Jordan it’s all about the Bips.

00:23:14.219 –> 00:23:19.470
And Walmart is a very robust incremental revenue stream. Instacart probably is.

00:23:20.000 –> 00:23:25.140
Once you start moving down market, it is debatable that it’s incremental.

00:23:25.140 –> 00:23:30.050
Like every retailer gets money from their wholesale partners every year since

00:23:30.050 –> 00:23:34.040
the beginning of time. Right. And we used to call it merchandising,

00:23:34.040 –> 00:23:37.500
accrual fees or shopper marketing or trade marketing.

00:23:37.983 –> 00:23:42.980
Co-op. Yeah, absolutely. And so some of those dollars in a retail media network

00:23:42.980 –> 00:23:45.830
are new dollars to buy new eyeballs.

00:23:46.000 –> 00:23:50.980
Some of those are something that you used to buy in a meeting with a handshake.

00:23:50.980 –> 00:23:54.560
You now get to buy on a website and it’s more efficient and it’s better measured

00:23:54.560 –> 00:23:55.940
and it’s more optimized.

00:23:56.350 –> 00:24:02.050
And so I would argue as Ajantic becomes a more important discovery engine,

00:24:02.050 –> 00:24:07.450
it doesn’t derogatorily affect all that trade dollars moving from analog to

00:24:07.450 –> 00:24:09.060
digital. I think that still happens.

00:24:09.500 –> 00:24:15.560
But I do think it disrupts the incremental traffic dollars that Amazon’s getting.

00:24:15.560 –> 00:24:20.340
And not necessarily eliminates, but if you think about it, per scot’s point,

00:24:20.340 –> 00:24:25.390
he went for a dog treat and it showed him 20 ads before he could get to his dog treat.

00:24:25.800 –> 00:24:29.180
All of those 20 ads had to pay for that visibility, even though…

00:24:29.200 –> 00:24:30.680
For clarity, it’s for my dog. Yeah.

00:24:31.220 –> 00:24:34.472
scot, thank you. Yeah. And your dog, thank you. Yeah.

00:24:35.580 –> 00:24:39.000
Is your dog name Old Roy or Rufus? No, none of the both. Okay.

00:24:39.759 –> 00:24:45.049
The he had to see all those ads and all those ads paid, even though the likelihood

00:24:45.049 –> 00:24:48.199
that scot noticed any of those ads is slim. Right.

00:24:48.329 –> 00:24:50.729
And maybe he saw one or two of them.

00:24:51.459 –> 00:24:57.189
If if all of that discovery switches to a robot, the the analogy,

00:24:57.189 –> 00:25:01.589
the analogous ad format to the sponsor product listings that scot’s talking

00:25:01.589 –> 00:25:02.869
about are sponsor prompts.

00:25:03.280 –> 00:25:07.710
And there’s less of them. Like you can’t have 20 effective sponsored prompts

00:25:07.710 –> 00:25:10.210
for each prompt. So you’re only going to have two or three.

00:25:10.620 –> 00:25:14.750
They’re going to work better. So the magic question for Amazon is to protect

00:25:14.750 –> 00:25:16.890
that $60 billion in revenue.

00:25:17.500 –> 00:25:22.940
Can they transition from 20 ads to three more expensive ads?

00:25:23.080 –> 00:25:27.410
Right. And we actually know the answer to this because Google has successfully done that with Gemini.

00:25:28.780 –> 00:25:32.300
So in Google, this is super confusing, but you have AI overviews,

00:25:32.580 –> 00:25:36.020
AI mode and Gemini. Gemini is kind of off to the side.

00:25:36.560 –> 00:25:39.380
Rarely do people use Gemini in its pure context.

00:25:40.049 –> 00:25:43.799
Google is increasingly sending people into AI mode and making it the default

00:25:43.799 –> 00:25:49.289
because what they found is, yes, it’s fewer ads, but they monetize so much better.

00:25:49.581 –> 00:25:53.330
So they’re actually net positive. And you’ve seen this in the Google earnings

00:25:53.330 –> 00:25:56.740
where they were, you know, search was slowing down revenue, but now it’s picked

00:25:56.740 –> 00:26:01.050
back up because they have figured out the calculus that, yes, in fact,

00:26:01.530 –> 00:26:05.790
less ads that convert much higher, the retailer is actually willing to pay more

00:26:05.790 –> 00:26:09.199
and that more is actually net positive for them as a company.

00:26:09.399 –> 00:26:12.589
So I believe they will get to the other side of that because Google kind of shown them the path.

00:26:13.329 –> 00:26:16.460
All right. So the format here, we had a lot of people walk up,

00:26:16.740 –> 00:26:21.179
is put a topic out there in the family of agentic commerce, and Jason and I

00:26:21.179 –> 00:26:22.369
will debate either side of it.

00:26:23.159 –> 00:26:25.239
Any other topics that folks want to talk about?

00:26:26.109 –> 00:26:29.699
Good, sir. Mike, coming in hot. I’d love to hear more about,

00:26:30.299 –> 00:26:34.819
I buy everything you’re saying around like CPG and in general overall in retail.

00:26:34.969 –> 00:26:38.109
But I’d be curious to hear your thoughts about fashion apparel specifically.

00:26:38.509 –> 00:26:41.269
Because I think that that’s like a little bit different of a use case.

00:26:41.269 –> 00:26:45.549
Brand plays a huge part within why people shop different apparel categories

00:26:45.549 –> 00:26:47.909
and different things like that. And I’d love to hear more about your guys’ thoughts on that.

00:26:48.209 –> 00:26:51.980
Yeah, last year I was here solo. Jason, you know, foolishly chose to go to the,

00:26:52.500 –> 00:26:53.660
grocery shop. We chose him.

00:26:53.920 –> 00:26:56.730
I said, but it’s outside in the sun. and this year he was back.

00:26:56.730 –> 00:26:59.180
So we picked him out of the grocery shop for this reason.

00:26:59.969 –> 00:27:04.099
And a lady sat on the front row and she was very aggressive that I will never,

00:27:04.439 –> 00:27:06.699
I love fashion and I will never use an agent.

00:27:07.099 –> 00:27:10.839
And that’s fine. You know, I think in my definition, that’s if you love shopping

00:27:10.839 –> 00:27:15.219
for dresses and you want to go pick it out, touch it, make sure it fits, go do that.

00:27:15.709 –> 00:27:18.889
But I have two daughters and they do that. They go to the store,

00:27:18.889 –> 00:27:20.759
they find the perfect dress, they love it.

00:27:21.079 –> 00:27:26.590
And then my 19-year-old, she gets great enjoyment from battling it out on Depop,

00:27:27.240 –> 00:27:31.220
Posh, and then there’s a whole, what’s the Vinted? I don’t know what Vinted’s

00:27:31.220 –> 00:27:33.180
all about. Everyone talks about Vinted now.

00:27:33.500 –> 00:27:37.190
So she has an agent go do that. She says, this is the dress I want in this size.

00:27:37.570 –> 00:27:43.880
Go hammer them. The retail price is $150. Mom and dad aren’t paying that. Go find it for $75.

00:27:44.140 –> 00:27:48.930
And they just like sits there. So I count that as a joint of commerce. So that’s one use case.

00:27:50.980 –> 00:27:56.069
I bet I can make it fit almost any argument because you can use it for that.

00:27:56.069 –> 00:27:58.689
And you still got all the enjoyment of finding it. But now you’re even more

00:27:58.689 –> 00:28:01.699
happy because you saved half off. What’s not to love about that?

00:28:02.459 –> 00:28:07.080
So that’s one way I could see the fashion thing work. Do you want to argue opposite? Kind of.

00:28:07.620 –> 00:28:11.700
So I don’t think you’re wrong. There’s a spectrum in every category, right?

00:28:11.700 –> 00:28:16.179
And there’s some consumers in every category that are going to have strong brand

00:28:16.179 –> 00:28:21.760
affinity and strong prestige influence and they’re going to seek out a particular thing.

00:28:21.760 –> 00:28:26.740
And those people are probably not going to be that swayed by agentic experiences

00:28:26.740 –> 00:28:29.910
because they don’t help lead you to that prestige, right?

00:28:30.342 –> 00:28:34.049
Although sometimes the most prestige has a scarcity problem and you may use

00:28:34.049 –> 00:28:38.049
the robots to discover the scarce thing. If you want to get on a list to buy

00:28:38.049 –> 00:28:44.380
a Patek Philippe watch, you might use the robot to help you win a slot on that list.

00:28:45.180 –> 00:28:48.069
Here’s the thing, though. If you’re in the apparel business at all,

00:28:48.069 –> 00:28:53.419
and I admit style and brand are very influential attributes in apparel.

00:28:53.419 –> 00:28:57.079
But if you are any business at this show in the apparel business,

00:28:57.499 –> 00:28:59.079
I can guarantee you one thing is true.

00:28:59.680 –> 00:29:02.250
Shein grew more than you did over the last five years.

00:29:02.940 –> 00:29:06.690
They absolutely did. That’s what everyone else calls shine. Yeah.

00:29:06.690 –> 00:29:12.080
Well, only country gentleman from North Carolina.

00:29:12.080 –> 00:29:16.029
I call it Shein, but it’s Shein’s an insider’s amalgamation of that.

00:29:16.029 –> 00:29:24.469
So Shein is like essentially an agentic apparel company, right?

00:29:24.469 –> 00:29:27.919
And if you’re not familiar, their model is essentially they don’t tell people

00:29:27.919 –> 00:29:32.319
what’s cool to wear. They don’t create a new style and send it to the Paris fashion show.

00:29:32.930 –> 00:29:36.270
They create TikTok to find out what scot’s daughter is already talking about,

00:29:36.270 –> 00:29:39.890
right? And she’s this week talking about vintage crop top Argyle sweaters.

00:29:40.170 –> 00:29:45.339
So Sheehan makes a vintage crop top Ardol sweater in a week and they sell it

00:29:45.619 –> 00:29:49.779
like 18 months before the Gap can get one on market. Right.

00:29:50.360 –> 00:29:53.670
And so, well, a bunch of people are in apparel are like, oh,

00:29:53.670 –> 00:29:57.150
I see why people would buy toilet paper with that, but they’re never going to buy our category.

00:29:57.460 –> 00:30:01.780
But while they’re saying that they’re massively losing share to someone that’s

00:30:01.780 –> 00:30:03.950
already using a Jantic to disrupt them.

00:30:04.649 –> 00:30:07.279
Did that answer your question, Jordan? Is there only Jordans here?

00:30:07.279 –> 00:30:09.169
Yeah. How many Jordans do we have here?

00:30:09.589 –> 00:30:12.239
Next year, there’s going to be a session. There’s one there.

00:30:12.239 –> 00:30:13.669
There’s literally 12 Jordans here.

00:30:13.999 –> 00:30:18.019
Was this in the session thing? Did it say Jordan Welcome or something?

00:30:18.019 –> 00:30:20.869
I’m changing my name for next year. They like to ask questions, too.

00:30:21.700 –> 00:30:25.030
And we have future Jordan. So Jordan is going to be here tomorrow. Yeah.

00:30:25.520 –> 00:30:31.050
Weirdly, Jordan spoke on stage yesterday, which seems totally counterintuitive.

00:30:31.650 –> 00:30:34.190
All right. Oh, your name’s not Jordan. You just raised your hand.

00:30:34.190 –> 00:30:38.000
Okay. I can go by Jordan if we prefer. Yeah. Use your given name.

00:30:38.000 –> 00:30:39.370
I figured everyone was going to raise their hand.

00:30:41.890 –> 00:30:44.030
When you asked for Jordan. I didn’t realize I’d be the only one.

00:30:44.030 –> 00:30:46.460
Wait, you lied to us? So that would make you a vertical agent. Okay. Yeah.

00:30:47.199 –> 00:30:50.739
One of the things that I’ve been seeing with consumer satisfaction for the big

00:30:50.739 –> 00:30:53.599
marketplaces, mentioned Xi’an, we’ve been talking a lot about Amazon,

00:30:53.919 –> 00:30:56.769
is that it’s kind of coalesced to this

00:30:57.169 –> 00:31:00.959
massive, like what started as like different brands selling on these platforms

00:31:00.959 –> 00:31:05.109
has kind of become just what Xi’an and Timu are, which is lots of Chinese factories

00:31:05.109 –> 00:31:07.179
that have and run ads on these platforms.

00:31:07.539 –> 00:31:11.539
Like what is the case for agentic commerce not eventually just becoming,

00:31:11.739 –> 00:31:15.179
you know, flooded with these low, high

00:31:15.179 –> 00:31:18.649
margin, super cheap products and overshadowing any of the other brands?

00:31:19.389 –> 00:31:22.159
The case for or against? Yeah, I mean, I don’t…

00:31:22.259 –> 00:31:26.739
Argue for it. Yeah, yeah. I think there’s a swath of consumerism that goes to

00:31:26.739 –> 00:31:28.489
the more efficient thing, right?

00:31:28.489 –> 00:31:31.549
And I do think it’s changing. I think it’s a mistake to think of these as like,

00:31:32.110 –> 00:31:35.750
cheap knockoffs that are stealing other people’s things. That’s very often how

00:31:35.750 –> 00:31:39.670
they started. But most of those platforms, Timu and Shein in particular have…

00:31:40.220 –> 00:31:44.469
I’m not saying they’re Louis Vuitton yet, but they’ve evolved beyond that, right?

00:31:45.760 –> 00:31:51.180
Just so you know, like Timu is like increasingly selling branded goods like

00:31:51.180 –> 00:31:54.760
and in many cases it’s brands that they invented but nevertheless it’s branded goods

00:31:55.113 –> 00:31:58.339
and consumer there’s a lot of evidence that consumers are more willing to buy

00:31:58.689 –> 00:32:02.439
dupes which they’re not they’re not trying to convince people are

00:32:02.869 –> 00:32:06.689
some famous brand they’re just they have the same positive attributes at a more

00:32:06.689 –> 00:32:07.629
economical price point.

00:32:09.000 –> 00:32:13.080
I would argue the agents help for everything. They help for that value shopper

00:32:13.080 –> 00:32:14.580
that’s looking for that dupe.

00:32:15.119 –> 00:32:18.589
And they help solve that very specific problem.

00:32:19.249 –> 00:32:23.459
You could be an organic food chef, and you’re still going to use an agent to

00:32:23.459 –> 00:32:27.179
do meal planning for you, even though you’re going to end up buying a bunch

00:32:27.179 –> 00:32:30.479
of ingredients from Whole Foods for that meal.

00:32:30.729 –> 00:32:35.590
And you could be using an agent to pick the most effective sunscreen,

00:32:35.590 –> 00:32:39.360
which turns out to come from some super expensive prestige house in Paris.

00:32:40.050 –> 00:32:42.490
But it best meets your criteria for sunscreen.

00:32:42.490 –> 00:32:49.040
And so I don’t think agentic is necessarily like tied to the high end or the

00:32:49.040 –> 00:32:55.530
low end of the market. I think there may be more early use cases that tend to lean lower in.

00:32:56.140 –> 00:33:01.010
Yeah, I think as these things grow, they tend to reflect the consumer behavior,

00:33:01.010 –> 00:33:06.300
that there’s a set of consumers that use these tools that are fine getting cheap

00:33:06.300 –> 00:33:07.940
Chinese stuff and that’s what they’re looking for.

00:33:08.140 –> 00:33:12.890
There’s another set that want branded items and they want to stay in that world.

00:33:13.070 –> 00:33:16.500
So I don’t think it’s, I think it’s just, you’re right, it will end up looking

00:33:16.500 –> 00:33:20.050
like that, but it’s not the tool’s fault, it’s the consumer behavior that’s

00:33:20.050 –> 00:33:21.310
causing it at the end of the day.

00:33:21.800 –> 00:33:26.210
So it’s really up to the brand to continue to tell your brand message of why

00:33:26.210 –> 00:33:28.210
you’re different than that Chinese knockoff.

00:33:28.830 –> 00:33:32.330
This is where stores, there’s a whole argument that this is where the retail

00:33:32.330 –> 00:33:35.010
media network people are going is into the store.

00:33:35.270 –> 00:33:40.590
So the store adds this authenticity and an experience you can’t get through these things.

00:33:40.985 –> 00:33:44.550
And in fact, kind of going back, we’re right out of time, but tying it back

00:33:44.550 –> 00:33:47.710
to that very first slide, one of the things that’s always frustrated me as an

00:33:47.710 –> 00:33:53.180
e-commerce person is we’re stuck at what, Jason, like 18% adoption of e-commerce across?

00:33:53.440 –> 00:33:56.170
Depending on how you count, 18, 22, somewhere in there. Yeah,

00:33:56.170 –> 00:33:59.780
which is wild, because in my household, we’re at like, you know, 99%.

00:33:59.990 –> 00:34:02.810
But there’s a set of people that they just love going to the store.

00:34:03.020 –> 00:34:03.850
And, you know, that’s fine.

00:34:04.230 –> 00:34:06.930
That’s their thing. They’re crazy. No, I’m just kidding. But…

00:34:08.639 –> 00:34:13.979
But that’s, you know, so they’re not buying cheap Chinese stuff, right?

00:34:14.380 –> 00:34:18.910
So there you go. So consumer behavior will drive the outcomes of a lot of these things.

00:34:19.330 –> 00:34:22.070
All right. Unfortunately, we’re out of time. We are doing a debate.

00:34:22.093 –> 00:34:26.280
I think that’s tomorrow. And that’s going to be down at the podcast studio down that way.

00:34:26.490 –> 00:34:28.550
It’s called Battle of the Podcasters.

00:34:28.770 –> 00:34:31.640
So look for podcasters in your app and come to that tomorrow.

00:34:31.640 –> 00:34:35.150
We’ll be talking about a lot of these topics if you enjoyed it with a couple

00:34:35.150 –> 00:34:37.420
of opponents that we’re just going to roll through.

00:34:37.980 –> 00:34:41.130
What’s fun about that is instead of debating each other, which are confident,

00:34:41.130 –> 00:34:45.410
we’re going to be crushing those poor newbie podcasters. All right.

00:34:45.600 –> 00:34:46.860
Thanks, everybody. Thanks for coming.

00:34:49.080 –> 00:34:53.440
You’ve been listening to The Jason and scot Show. For all the latest news and

00:34:53.440 –> 00:34:56.070
trends on e-commerce and shopper marketing.