Future Commerce

By Phillip Jackson, Brian LangeSociety & Culture Business Entrepreneurship Philosophy Marketing

Future Commerce episodes

June 29 *TEASER* Was E.T. Slimy or Dry?
On this edition of After Dark: Spielberg's flop(?), GLP-1s are melting nightlife, Midjourney's health pivot, and why this is the Bad Place. this episode is exclusive to Future Commerce Plus members – sign up now at futurecommerce.com/plus.

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3 min
June 24Korean 'Dopamine Sites' Let You Shop Without Shopping
Phillip and Brian run the docket: why "proof of work" is the new luxury signal, what the AI export-control fight shares with a brand guarding its trade secrets, and how AI is flooding the patent office while quietly favoring incumbents.
But perhaps the most profound part of the conversation lies in two trends taking internet culture by storm. "Tasteslop" and Korea's "dopamine sites" appear as distinct ideas, but they’re actually two faces of the same impulse: consumption stripped down to pure signal.
Key takeaways:
AI slop makes "proof of work" the new status signal.

Brands win by showing the process and the discards, not hiding them.

Software isn't the moat… chips, power, and craft are.

AI patent tools favor incumbents, widening the gap with upstarts.

"Tasteslop" and "dopamine sites": consumption as pure signal, minus the object.
Key quotes:
[~06:45] "When people aren't making up the machine, we start to question everything now." — Brian

[~10:00] "It's the entire PR campaign around it that shows you all of the discarded drawings that weren't used." — Phillip

[~36:00] "AI does not make this more of a level playing field. If anything… they can box the small guys out even more effectively." — Phillip

[~39:29] "You can't trademark taste." — Brian
In-Show Mentions:
"The Process Is the Product" – Insiders piece by Sophia Epstein

James Bridle – Ways of Being: Beyond Human Intelligence and New Dark Age

AI & Agentic Commerce hub

Emily Segal on "Tasteslop"

STRATA: 10 Aesthetics Shaping Culture and Commerce
Associated Links:
Check out Future Commerce on YouTube

Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print

Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world

Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce
Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
57 min
June 17Inside Lululemon’s Resale Engine
Resale is forcing brands to rethink product design, pricing, and customer acquisition from the ground up.
Ryan Rowe (Archive) and Alison Buchanan (Lululemon) join Brian and Alicia to unpack how lululemon’s Like New evolved from a sustainability pilot into a meaningful commercial channel. We unpack messy reverse logistics, the AI agents now quietly running warehouse decisions, and the organizational vision required to make circular commerce work across a vertically structured enterprise.
When the Future of Commerce Is Circular, Every Brand Is A Secondhand Brand
Key takeaways:
Resale has shifted from a sustainability gesture to a commercial channel with P&L accountability.

Branded resale wins where third-party marketplaces can't: data integrity, trust, and brand language.

Like New must operate to tackle a fundamentally different eCommerce problem — one-of-one inventory breaks mainline systems.

AI is moving from assisting warehouse operators to serving as autonomous agents that optimize pricing and routing.

Circular commerce is an acquisition engine; roughly half of resale shoppers are new to the lululemon brand.
Key quotes:
[02:41] "It's a very technical problem. It's a large-scale platform problem that touches virtually every piece of a brand's business." — Ryan Rowe
[06:12] "Commerce is, is obviously just a space that we are starting to realize is a strong commercial lever… Like New for our business is really sitting at this intersection of business and impact." — Alison Buchanan
[08:40] "Resale of lululemon was happening at scale already all around us. And it was either let it happen without us… or uphold our brand standards." — Alison Buchanan
[26:26] "A lot of customers are actually trying brands for the first time with a used item… because it's a way for them to test things like fit and material and quality at a much lower barrier to entry." — Ryan Rowe
In-Show Mentions:
Archive

Like New by Lululemon
Associated Links:
Check out Future Commerce on YouTube

Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print

Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world

Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce
Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
49 min
June 10The Machine Ate the Storefront, PayPal Mapped the Collapse
Dr. Mark Grether, SVP and General Manager of PayPal Ads, joins Phillip from PayPal's Manhattan offices to argue that the merchant storefront is migrating off owned websites and into LLMs. This may make the mechanics of customer experience and loyalty a bit murky, but Mark explains how PayPal's "transaction graph,” built on real purchases across 30 million merchants and 400 million consumers, acts as the deterministic identity layer that the post-cookie ad world has been missing.

We also cover the evolving world of commerce media, from zero-click commerce and CTV attribution to PayPal Ads’ newest product, Storefront Ads, which transforms the creative into the checkout.
The Cart Cartographer
Key takeaways:
Consumers now start product discovery on LLMs, not search engines or merchant sites.

PayPal's transaction graph spans 30M merchants and 400M consumers, representing real purchases, not just clicks.

Deterministic payment identity beats cookies and probabilistic IDs for cross-channel attribution.

Storefront Ads turn any ad into a one-click, pre-populated checkout.

Creators run two businesses: generating consumer data, then monetizing it.

[00:04:03] "We're not just seeing behavior, we're actually seeing the real transactions. We know what people are purchasing — not whether they search for something or browse for something. We actually see what they are buying." – Mark Grether

[00:11:00] "The trick about our identity is it was built from a finance perspective, meaning I need to understand that you are you and not your twin brother. Our identity has to clear a much higher bar compared to probabilistic IDs or cookies." – Mark Grether

[00:13:40] "The idea of Storefront Ads is that the creative itself becomes the shop. You're getting exposed to the sneakers, and with one click, you can actually make the purchase. We already know who you are, we know your bank account, we know your address — everything is pre-populated. From a consumer perspective, it becomes super easy to finish a transaction."
In-Show Mentions:
PayPal’s Storefront Ads

Learn more about PayPal Ads
Associated Links:
Check out Future Commerce on YouTube

Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print

Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world

Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce
Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
21 min
June 03Nearly 1B Strong: Snapchat Has Retail’s Most Overlooked Audience
Snap Inc.'s Sid Malhotra makes the case that the platform most brands wrote off as "babies and teens" has quietly grown up. Now, commerce is migrating into these private, conversational spaces where nearly one billion users actually spend their time. We dig into why the traditional funnel no longer holds consumers’ nuanced behaviors, how creators and chat shape decisions long before the last click, and what AI Sponsored Snaps mean for brands willing to be the answer rather than just another link.
Where Are Your Next New Customers?
Key takeaways:
Snapchat's earliest users grew up; nearly one in four Snapchatters is now aged 35+.

Purchase decisions increasingly occur in private chat, not on public feeds or in search.

"Last-click jail" hides where customers actually decide. It’s imperative that brands measure the full journey.

AI Sponsored Snaps let brands run their own agents inside the chat feed. This is conversational commerce, in context.

Authentic, creator-led, low-fi content beats polished commercials on the platform.
Key quotes:
[03:57] "We've come into the age where people are loving a few services and are hanging onto them and are creating their own personal community within those… And that brings me to the final question that Snapchat is trying to answer for businesses and brands worldwide: Where are your next first customers? Where are your next new customers?" — Sid Malhotra

[16:27] "Last-click measurement systems are great at telling [you] where the purchase took place. But it doesn't tell you much more than that. It's kind of like trying to watch a movie by just watching the last scene…Sure, you know how the movie ended, but you have no idea what the main characters were doing, what the plot line was, and what got them here." — Sid Malhotra

[19:55] "Working with influencers and community is closer to B2B commerce than B2C commerce…B2B has done a really good job of building real relationships, engaging with people where they're at, and finding the things that they care about in the process of selling to them." — Brian Lange
Associated Links:
Check out Future Commerce on YouTube

Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print

Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world

Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce
Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
43 min
May 29 After Dark: "You're Not A Visionary, You're A Vendor"
Get all After Dark releases by joining Future Commerce Plus: www.futurecommerce.com/plus.Future Commerce Plus members get 20% off STRATA: www.futurecommerce.com/strata.
An AI agent burns $12 building a fake Android phone nobody asked for. From there: Pope Leo's encyclical, a tick crisis blamed on vanishing chickens, a website that's cookied Phillip into Spanish forever, and The Devil Wears Prada 2, feat. why media was the visionary all along.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
1 hr 7 min
May 27LIVE @ Google Marketing Live: The Infrastructure Connecting Your Agent to 60 Billion Products
Recorded live at Google Marketing Live 2026, Phillip and eCommerce reporter Nicole Silberstein sit down with Ashish Gupta, VP & GM of Merchant Shopping at Google, who is behind the foundational commerce infrastructure powering the Shopping Graph and Universal Commerce Protocol. Gupta breaks down the GML announcements: UCP's expansion beyond shopping into hotels and food delivery, the multi-item Universal Cart that spans Search, Gemini, YouTube, and Gmail, and why the future of agentic commerce still depends on merchants nailing the fundamentals.
A Shopper for Every Shopper
Key takeaways:
UCP is expanding beyond shopping into hotel bookings and local food delivery, giving every shopper their own personal shopper.

The Universal Cart lets shoppers buy multiple items at once across Google surfaces, streamlining the buying experience as shoppers venture from inspiration to discovery and comparison.

Merchants remains the seller of record no matter where the transaction is completed, tackling industry concerns about disintermediation.

Conversational attributes enrich product feeds so AI can match nuanced shopper intent.

Winning in agentic commerce starts with the fundamentals: feeds, first-party data, and UCP readiness.
In-Show Mentions:
Google Marketing Live 2026 and Google I/O 2026

Universal Cart & Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)
Further Reading:
Google Imagines a Future Where Everyone Shops in Ads — A special edition of The Senses that distills the week’s key announcements

Episode 463: LIVE @ Google I/O: Universal Cart, Agentic Payments, and the Protocols Powering the Agent-Mediated Economy — Companion interview with Suresh Ganapathy

Episode 464: LIVE @ Google Marketing Live: How Google Is Taking the Drudgery Out of Shopping— Companion interview with Nick Fox

Google Solidifies Its Place in the AI Race — Insiders coverage of Google's UCP debut at NRF 2026, the foundation for this week's announcements

[Member Brief] Agentic Commerce and the eCommerce Site's New Existential Crisis — How agentic platforms are reshaping the role of the branded eCommerce site
Associated Links:
Learn more about

Check out Future Commerce on YouTube

Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print

Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world

Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce
Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
23 min
May 22LIVE @ Google Marketing Live: How Google is Taking the 'Drudgery' Out of Shopping
Recorded live at Google Marketing Live 2026, Phillip sits down with Nick Fox, SVP of Knowledge & Information at Google — the executive overseeing Search, Ads, Commerce, and geographic mapping products. Building on the prior day's I/O announcements, Fox unpacks how Gemini is reshaping Google's consumer and advertising products, why the Universal Cart strikes a balance between human taste and agentic convenience, and how two-plus decades at Google inform his view of building technology that shapes the lives of billions.
Enabling People To Be People
Key takeaways:
Gemini 3.5 is the foundation supercharging Search, Ads, and Commerce across Google.

The Universal Cart keeps humans choosing while agents handle the drudgery.

UCP adoption has accelerated faster than expected across the industry.

Conversational search has shifted user behavior toward natural, multi-word queries.

"I think there are people that think everything's gonna be about agents talking to agents. I don't subscribe to that view." — Nick Fox

"I am the person putting things in the cart. But then the cart is helping us agentively at the same time." — Nick Fox

"We're building products that billions of people across the world are using. That's a responsibility we take seriously." — Nick Fox
In-Show Mentions:
Google Marketing Live 2026 and Google I/O 2026

Universal Cart & Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)
More from Future Commerce:
LIVE @ Google I/O: Universal Cart, Agentic Payments, and the Protocols Powering the Agent-Mediated Economy

Google Solidifies Its Place in the AI Race

[Member Brief] Agentic Commerce and the eCommerce Site's New Existential Crisis
Associated Links:
Check out Future Commerce on YouTube

Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print

Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world

Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce
Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
15 min
May 20LIVE @ Google I/O: Universal Cart, Agentic Payments, and the Protocols Powering the Agent-Mediated Economy
At Google I/O 2026, Phillip sits down with Suresh Ganapathy, Senior Director of Product Management for Consumer Shopping at Google, to unpack the day's announcements: Universal Commerce Protocol's expansion into new verticals, agentic payments arriving in Gemini Spark, and the debut of Universal Cart. We trace what these foundational pieces mean for how a billion daily shoppers, and the merchants serving them, will operate in an agent-mediated economy.
Enter the Delegation Era
Key Takeaways:
Universal Cart maintains shopper state across Search, Gemini, YouTube, and Gmail.

The cart works on your behalf: tracking prices, flagging restocks, and catching product incompatibilities.

Agent Payments Protocol’s (AP2) tamper-proof contracts make agent purchases verifiable and accountable to shopper intent.

Merchants remain seller of record, preserving customer relationships inside agentic flows.

Gemini Spark becomes Google's first consumer agent with purchasing authority this fall.
Key Quotes:
"We're laying the foundational building blocks of agentic commerce." — Suresh Ganapathi
"People come to shop at Google over a billion times a day, and we want to make sure that we're delivering the best experience to them when they do." — Suresh Ganapathi
"We want to make it really simple for shoppers to enjoy the fun parts of shopping and then delegate some of these more tedious aspects to agents." — Suresh Ganapathi
"Spark is the agent. AP2 is the payments protocol. Universal Cart is the ability for consumers to have less friction." — Phillip
Further Reading:
More on Google’s AI play: Insiders: Google Solidifies Its Place in the AI Race

More on agent-mediated commerce: Member Brief: Agentic Commerce and the eCommerce Site’s New Existential Crisis

Our 2026 Predictions: The Age of Autonomy

Learn more about Google I/O

Google’s Universal Cart Announcement
Our Links:
Check out Future Commerce on YouTube

Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print

Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world

Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce
Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
15 min
May 13AP x Swatch x Mass Brand Psychosis
The Swatch x AP "Royal Pop" arrived after a week of generative AI fan renders, watch-Twitter speculation, and a 24-hour emotional rollercoaster from disappointment to "actually, this might be iconic." Phillip and Brian sit down with Michael Miraflor to unpack the speedrun spectacle, the high/low collab playbook, and why the purchase is just the tip of consumer participation.
The Royal Pop Heard 'Round the Internet
Key takeaways:
AP x Swatch’s collab sparked a flood of fan-prompted, generative AI images of anticipated designs

The participatory economy now renders the product before the product exists

“This is kind of a match made in heaven, which is why I think this is something that will sell out for a long time.” – Brian Lange

“I wonder if people react differently based on everyone else’s reactions” – Michael Miraflor

“Purchase of the product is kind of a cap on the experience.” – Michael Miraflor
In-Show Mentions:
Read our 2025 Field Notes on Swatch – available to Future Commerce Plus members

AP x Swatch design reveal

Follow Michael Miraflor on X
Associated Links:
Check out Future Commerce on YouTube

Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print

Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world

Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce
Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
38 min

About Future Commerce

From the publisher's feed

Future Commerce is the culture magazine for Commerce. Hosts Phillip Jackson and Brian Lange help brand and digital marketing leaders see around the next corner by exploring the intersection of Culture and Commerce.