AI
Mary Meeker Is So Back: My Notes From Her 340-Page AI Futurecast
I spent 2 hours reading Mary Meeker’s 340-page AI trends report so you don’t have to... But you probably still should. Here are my 6 highlights for retailers, brands and agencies.
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Walmart's Sparky AI Assistant: A Late Mover with Early Promise
I remain convinced that shoppers will increasingly turn to their own personal AI assistants for help interacting with retailers, rather than relying on retailer AI assistants who always going to be limited by context from their own walled garden.
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AI in real life: how retailers and brands are leveraging AI (real numbers)
Most businesses struggle not with what AI can do, but with envisioning what it should do for their specific challenges. Today I'm sharing four real examples where companies figured out the "what" and can tell you exactly what they got back.
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55% of consumers say they don't trust AI shopping chatbots & recommendations
While 75% of consumers have encountered AI recommendations or chatbots online, only 44% actually engaged with them.
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Walmart is Betting on AI Agents, While Amazon Goes Proprietary
The brands and retailers that get this right won't be the ones with the flashiest AI features. They'll be the ones that make it seamless for both humans and bots to do business with them.
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"We're Not Dabbling Here" Amazon Q1 Earnings Highlight AI Progress
"We're not dabbling here" said Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on the company's earnings call on Thursday. That's an understatement. Jassy pointed to a 'thousand plus AI applications' that are being baked at Amazon right now. As he put it: "
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The Back-Channel: Industry Insights From Behind the Scenes
Today, I'm sharing "The Back-Channel" - an anonymized grab-bag of snippets from conversations with industry insiders that I've had in the past week. The point is to identify updates on the big themes that are happening in the industry, just like if we were
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The Shopping Agent War Begins
In the classic board game Risk, players maneuver armies across continents, form strategic alliances, and attempt to control territory. Today, a similar high-stakes game is unfolding in the digital realm as tech giants position their AI shopping agents to capture the most valuable territory of all: consumer purchasing decisions. The
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I Tested Amazon's AI Shopping Agent That Buys From Other Websites — Here's Why It Matters
Amazon has quietly launched one of the most significant developments in agentic AI shopping: a feature called "Buy For Me" that allows its AI to purchase products directly from brand websites when those items aren't available on Amazon's platform. Though Amazon didn't
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What Amazon's Alexa+ Means For Brands: A New Product Discovery Landscape
This post originally appeared in my column for Forbes.com, on Friday March 13, 2025. As Amazon prepares to roll out Alexa+, brands face an urgent need to adapt their digital strategy for voice-powered shopping. Recent patent findings suggest the integration of Alexa with Amazon's Rufus product intelligence
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How Autonomous AI Shopping Agents Will Transform Retail
This article originally appeared in my column for Forbes.com on February 25, 2025. Retail's AI revolution is entering its third wave. After predictive AI and generative AI, autonomous agents capable of completing shopping tasks without human intervention are emerging as the next frontier. Salesforce's latest
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AI in Retail Media: Practical Applications to Get Started Now
I'm excited to continue our series with Lauren Schiavone, founder of Wonder Consulting. In this second installment, we're digging deeper into practical applications of AI for marketing and retail media professionals. Building on our first discussion about AI literacy and organizational transformation yesterday, Lauren now shares