Retailgentic | Consumer Behavior & Retail Trend

May 20th at Google Marketing Live, right before my high-level strategic chat with Nick Fox, SVP of Knowledge and Information at Google (you can read/listen to that one here), I got to sit down with Ashish Gupta, VP & GM of Merchant Shopping at Google.

If the Nick Fox conversation was the 30,000-ft strategic view of where Google is taking AI Mode, AIO, and the answer engine, this one with Ashish is the exact opposite. It’s the on-the-ground tactical roadmap for merchants. Ashish is literally one of the people building the thing, and he’s telling you what to do about it before holiday.

This interview was recorded right after his fireside chat with Augustina Sartori at Google HQ. On that panel, he laid out the 4 things merchants should do right now: 

1. Product feeds
2. Data strength
3. AI campaigns, 
4. Agentic infrastructure (i.e., UCP). 

We get into all four. In this interview we discuss:

• The 6 new conversational attributes — just launched, live now in the supplemental feed (FAQs, related items, popularity rank, document links, additional variants, item group). Why they exist, how to use them, and the “best sales associate in your store” analogy for how AI surfaces are now expected to behave
• UCP’s expansion into new verticals — food delivery and travel. Why now, and why the “U” in Universal Commerce Protocol is doing real work
• Loyalty in UCP via Google account linking — your Ulta $10 reward shows up at checkout. Critical for merchants who don’t allow guest checkout
• Data strength — bringing first-party loyalty data into Gemini / AI Mode surfaces so loyal customers see more of the brands they love
• AI Max & P-Max and the new ad formats showing up across AI surfaces (and YouTube)
• AI Performance Insights coming to Merchant Center — the new Share of Voice metric, why the funnel doesn’t behave like a normal funnel (it can actually widen deeper in), and how Google is moving from a “click/keyword” company to an “answer engine” company
• The keyword vs. long-tail question — in an answer engine world, is there even such a thing as a “popular search term” anymore? (Ashish’s answer is interesting)

What’s neat about doing these back-to-back is you get both layers in one day. Nick’s interview is about framing: how Google thinks about AI Mode vs. traditional Search, the Innovator’s Dilemma, the ~5 prior attempts at “transactions on Google” and why this one is different, and trust at the intersection of answer engines and AI ads. Ashish’s interview is the merchant-facing manifestation of all of that: here’s exactly what’s shipping, here’s what to put in your feed, here’s how we’ll measure you.

Read both together and you get a pretty complete picture of what Google is doing with agentic commerce in 2026.

Timestamps: 
01:41 — Episode intro: Ashish Gupta returns, context on GML, the merchant vs. consumer org structure at Google

04:39 — Interview begins (on-site at Building 100 Bayview)

05:18 — Breaking news: the 6 new conversational attributes are live

06:32 — The "best sales associate" analogy for AI surfaces

08:09 — Popularity rank: how merchants can signal without giving away proprietary data

09:37 — Related items, additional variants, and item group attributes

11:01 — UCP expansion into new verticals (food delivery, travel) — why now

12:32 — The 4 things merchants should do: feeds, data strength, AI campaigns, agentic infrastructure

13:02 — Data strength explained: first-party loyalty data in AI surfaces

14:08 — Loyalty in UCP via Google account linking (the Ulta $10 example)

16:01 — AI campaigns: AI Max, P-Max, and showing up across AI surfaces

17:46 — New ad formats and YouTube shopping

18:04 — UCP on YouTube and what's next (Gmail?)

19:19 — AI Performance Insights & the Share of Voice metric

20:17 — Discover / Explore / Purchase: Google crosses from search engine to answer engine

21:34 — Why the AI funnel doesn't behave like a traditional funnel

23:20 — Long-tail vs. keyword: do "popular search terms" still exist in an answer-engine world?

25:05 — What Ashish is most excited about

26:06 — Outro

👉 Connect with Ashish: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashishgupta98/

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May 20th at Google Marketing Live, I was very fortunate to be able to sit down for ~20 minutes with Nick Fox, SVP of Knowledge and Information at Google. Earlier in the day he had a fireside chat with Ben Smith, Editor-in-Chief Semafor. Later that afternoon after I had time to reflect on this conversation, I had a ~20min interview with Nick.

It’s not often you get to sit down with one of the top execs at a ~$5T company so I worked a lot of topics into a short time. As always, I try and approach this with you, the audience in mind. What would YOU ask? I had just completed a super tactical Agentic Commerce / UCP/Universal Checkout chat with Ashish, so for this one flipped into high-level strategic mode. In this interview we discuss:

• How does Nick ‘frame’ AIO/AI Mode/Gemini
• Will AI Mode/AIO and traditional search transition from traditional to AI Mode or will they merge, or ‘other’ down the road?
• Google’s had ~5 previous attempts from the Froogle era to today for ‘transactions on Google’ - why is this the moment they are getting super serious about it?
• Navigating the Innovator’s Dilemma
• Finally, managing trust at the intersection of ‘Answer engines’ and ‘AI Ads’

Timestamps:
01:45 — Scot introduces Nick Fox, Google SVP of Knowledge & Information
02:31 — “Search in the AI Era” and Google’s AI strategy
03:21 — What this interview covers: AI Mode, Gemini, ads, and commerce
04:00 — Why Google believes transactions will work this time
04:33 — The innovator’s dilemma and defending Search
05:16 — Ads, trust, and AI-generated answers
05:52 — Interview begins live from Google Marketing Live
06:23 — How Gemini is “supercharging” Google’s advertising products
06:50 — Ads inside AI Mode and agentic commerce tools
07:11 — Universal Commerce Protocol + Universal Cart
07:26 — Nick Fox on 23 years at Google and the AI era
08:07 — Why Google sees tech shifts as growth accelerators, not disruptions
08:53 — Search vs AI Overviews vs AI Mode vs Gemini explained
09:12 — Google’s “two main products”: Search and Gemini
10:16 — Reinventing the Search box for the AI era
11:01 — Will AI Mode eventually become the default?
12:10 — Google’s philosophy: combining AI + the web
13:00 — Why Google believes users still want the web
13:03 — Gemini “Spark” and agentic capabilities
13:43 — AI agents running 24/7 in the background
14:14 — Using Spark to manage complex tasks like event planning
14:50 — The future of Gemini in the agentic era
14:59 — Google as an economic engine and ad marketplace
15:42 — The innovator’s dilemma and Search resilience
16:04 — “Lean into the technology shifts” philosophy
16:52 — Why Google didn’t see AI as a business-model threat
17:17 — Google’s ad model as a marketplace between users and marketers
18:18 — Why Google Shopping is different this time
19:02 — Why AI enables better shopping confidence and discovery
19:43 — AI helping users get further down the purchase journey
20:24 — Trust, ads, and AI-generated answers
21:04 — Google’s principles for ads in AI experiences
21:31 — “Ads are clearly labeled, separate, and relevant”
21:58 — Closing thoughts and wrap-up

👉 Connect with Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickthefox/
👉 Learn more about Google Marketing Live: https://www.googlemarketinglive.com/digital

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Today at Google I/O, in her part of the larger keynote, VP/GM of Ads and Commerce, Vidhya Srinivasan announced a raft of Agentic Commerce items with the anchor new feature being Universal Cart. After Vidhya’s keynote comments, I was left with these questions that I know merchants will have too:

• Googlers talk about Universal Cart being available on surfaces like Gmail and YouTube - what’s that actually look like IRL? What are the use cases that merchants can think about and start experimenting with?
• Universal Cart is coming this Summer - that’s typically June/July/August - that’s a long window in AI-time, early/mid/late Summer?
• I haven’t heard Google, at least the Agentic Commerce team, talk about AG2 in a while, and suddenly it popped back up in the context of the new consumer agent called Gemini Spark. What’s that all about that.
• Loyalty (via identity linking) was part of the UCP features announced back on March 19th (details here) but kind of missing here? Even though if you read Vidhya’s blog post very carefully it says that Universal Cart uses “loyalty information”, but it’s not like the Copilot UCP-based loyalty linkage we saw with Target back on April 22 (here if you missed it).

That’s a lot of questions - I only had 30mins with Suresh, so had to pick and choose, but we covered some good ground. The good news is I have two more interviews scheduled for Wed 20th at Google Marketing Live and will work them all in.

Subscribe, engage and stay tuned for more great Google I/O content coming at you all week! 

👉 Connect with Suresh Ganapathy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sureshsganapathy/
👉 Learn more about Google I/O: https://io.google/2026/

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In this episode, Scot sits with Elizabeth Lachhar to unpack Rezolve AI’s end-to-end agentic commerce platform, including its closed retail-trained LLM, Brainpower, and modules across search, discovery, conversational commerce, checkout, and loyalty.

A lot of the agentic commerce conversation focuses on offsite experiences like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and other AI shopping agents. But there’s another major shift happening onsite, where retailers are rethinking search, merchandising, conversational commerce, checkout, loyalty, and personalization for an AI-native world.

Elizabeth brings a deep enterprise background from Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and more, and now works with retailers, brands, food service, hospitality, and B2B companies navigating this transition.

Highlights 

• Why onsite agentic commerce matters just as much as offsite AI shopping agents
• How Rezolve AI approaches search, merchandising, conversational commerce, checkout, loyalty, and geolocation
• Why closed, retail-trained LLMs may matter for hallucination, security, and enterprise trust
• How conversational commerce can help retailers move beyond flat, 2D ecommerce experiences
• Why B2B discovery is a major agentic commerce use case
• How loyalty, memory, and past purchases can create better personalization
• What retailers are asking about right now: security, compliance, fraud, ROI, and partner strategy
• Why Elizabeth believes agentic commerce is already here, not years away
• What Generation Alpha could mean for the future of shopping experiences by 2030

Agentic commerce is also about rebuilding the onsite experience so retailers can understand, personalize, transact, and convert in a world where consumers expect commerce to be faster, smarter, and more conversational.

Timestamps

 00:00 — Introduction to Retailgentic
 01:34 — Meet Elizabeth Lacchar of Resolve AI
 04:18 — Elizabeth’s background at Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and more
 07:14 — Why she joined Resolve AI
 09:54 — What Resolve AI does
 10:32 — The end-to-end agentic commerce platform
 11:29 — Quick service, geolocation, and hospitality use cases
 13:25 — Search, discovery, merchandising, and visualization
 15:08 — B2B catalogs and complex SKU discovery
 17:12 — Why agentic commerce is different from legacy site search
 18:11 — Resolve’s closed LLM, Brainpower
 20:26 — Checkout, wallets, crypto, and international payments
 26:02 — Loyalty, data, and the full customer lifecycle
 29:50 — Brain Suite, Brain Commerce, Brain Checkout, and Brain Assist
 31:09 — Resolve AI’s customer mix
 34:22 — Elizabeth’s role as EVP of the Americas
 35:55 — Vibe check: where retailers are in adoption
 38:31 — Is agentic commerce a race to the bottom?
 40:28 — Fraud, bots, security, and guardrails
 42:35 — Selling agentic commerce across enterprise teams
 46:26 — Predictions for holiday and 2030
 49:41 — Where to learn more about Resolve AI

👉 Connect with Elizabeth Lachhar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-lachhar/
👉 Learn more about Rezolve Ai: https://www.linkedin.com/company/airezolve/

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In this episode, we sit down with Michele Fisher (Global Director, Business Strategy for Retail & CPG) and Atanu Ghosh (Director of Agentic Commerce & AI Innovation), who sit at the intersection of Azure AI, Copilot, and real-world retail and brand Agentic Commerce implementations.

This conversation dives into how Microsoft is thinking about agentic commerce as a full operating model shift, not just a feature or channel.

From Copilot shopping to data infrastructure to ads inside LLMs, the discussion connects the dots between:

Highlights 

• Conversational discovery is fundamentally different from search: The way people talk about brands inside AI systems looks nothing like traditional keyword behavior, and most companies have zero visibility into it.
• Agentic commerce is not one thing, it’s an operating model shift: Microsoft defines it broadly: agents participating in discovery, decision-making, and transactions, not just checkout.
• Copilot + catalog + data = the new commerce stack
• Ads are changing from persuasion to evaluation: Agents don’t care about creative. They evaluate structured data, trust signals, and relevance.
• Loyalty becomes infrastructure, not a program
• The “frontier firm” is the North Star: A future where humans and agents work together across workflows, not just AI acting as an assistant.
• Protocols like UCP matter more than people realize: Open standards enable discoverability across surfaces and prevent fragmentation in agent-driven ecosystems.
• The funnel is collapsing

If your brand is still thinking about traffic as the starting point, you’re already behind.
In an agentic world, discovery happens before you ever see the user, and increasingly, without them.

Timestamps

00:00 – Why brands have zero visibility into conversational discovery
01:50 – Scot’s “Big 6” podcast goal and Microsoft joins the list
04:00 – Michelle & Atanu backgrounds + roles at Microsoft
10:00 – What agentic commerce actually means (and why definitions vary)
14:00 – Microsoft’s agentic commerce stack: Copilot, agents, data layer
18:00 – The “Frontier Firm” and human + agent workflows
20:00 – UCP, protocols, and why openness matters
23:00 – Loyalty, identity, and friction in agent checkout
28:00 – Ads in agentic commerce: from persuasion to evaluation
33:00 – First-party data vs. conversational behavior data
39:00 – Why most retailers aren’t ready (and what they need first)
45:00 – The real blocker: operating models, not technology
46:30 – Where to learn more + how leaders are consuming information now

👉 Connect with Michele: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelekfisher/
👉 Connect with Atanu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/buildingai/
👉 Learn more about Microsoft in AI: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/azure-ai-foundry-blog/the-future-of-ai-harnessing-ai-for-e-commerce---personalized-shopping-agents/4386980

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In this episode of Retailgentic, Stephan breaks down how agentic commerce is evolving globally, with a particular focus on Europe’s rapid adoption.

We explore why AI-driven shopping is accelerating faster than previous technology shifts, how brands are already losing visibility without realizing it, and what practical steps companies can take today to stay competitive.

From product data strategy to protocol wars to the future of loyalty, this conversation offers a clear view of where commerce is heading next.

Highlights 

• Discovery is the new battleground: If your product is not readable, trustworthy, and rich in context for AI agents, it will not be recommended.
• Agentic commerce starts before checkout: The most important shift is happening in discovery, comparison, and decision-making, not the final transaction.
• Europe is moving differently, not slower: Adoption among younger consumers in markets like Germany is already very high, with many using AI in shopping workflows.
• Product data is now infrastructure: Years of optimizing for search engines are being replaced by the need to structure data for AI systems.
• Loyalty and identity are becoming core systems: Future commerce will depend heavily on how well brands manage identity, value, and customer relationships across AI ecosystems.
• Protocols are evolving fast: Systems like UCP and MCP are shaping how agents interact with product data, pricing, and checkout layers.
• Small experiments already create visibility gains: Even limited API exposure or structured data improvements can increase inclusion in AI-driven recommendations.
• Agentic commerce is accelerating existing problems: Many of today’s challenges, like poor data quality and disconnected systems, have existed for years but are now becoming urgent.

Agentic commerce is already reshaping how products are discovered today, and the brands that adapt fastest will define the next era of retail.

Timestamps

00:00 – Opening and overview of agentic commerce
02:00 – Who Stefan Ritter is and his background
05:00 – Why agentic commerce adoption is happening faster than mobile
09:00 – What agentic commerce actually means
11:00 – Human vs autonomous decision-making
13:00 – Why context is replacing keywords
16:00 – State of agentic commerce in Europe
20:00 – Data quality and infrastructure challenges
23:00 – AI platforms and protocol landscape
26:00 – Loyalty, identity, and authentication of agents
28:00 – The three opportunity spaces for brands
32:00 – How AI changes product storytelling
36:00 – Events, ecosystem, and European perspective
37:00 – Deloitte research and discovery battleground
39:00 – Retail media and monetization challenges
42:00 – Practical roadmap for brands
46:00 – The future of agentic commerce
49:00 – Closing thoughts and where to follow Stefan

👉 Connect with Stephan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanritter/
👉 Learn more about Deloitte: https://www.linkedin.com/company/deloitte/

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This episode goes beyond surface-level AI hype and into how retail organizations are actually responding.

Krystina shares what she’s hearing from operators, board members, and data leaders and why the biggest risk right now is moving in the wrong direction.

At the same time, we explore how agentic commerce is reshaping traffic, discovery, and brand relationships and what that means for the future of ecommerce.

Highlights 

• AI is forcing a full end-to-end transformation of retail
• Many companies are prioritizing the wrong AI initiatives, focusing on hype instead of P&L impact
• A growing concern: “dark” or untracked AI-driven traffic is already impacting performance
• Data strategy is becoming a core battleground: What do you give AI platforms? What do you get back? Do CRMs need to evolve entirely?
• The real unlock for AI shopping is complex, multi-step purchases (travel, events, planning)
• The industry is early, but pressure from boards and declining traffic is accelerating adoption

The future of retail will be defined by who applies it to the right problems.

⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 — The future of retail data + AI uncertainty
 00:47 — Retailgentic intro
 03:10 — Kristina Gustafson’s background (CNBC → Shoptalk → RetailClub)
 08:02 — Why RetailClub exists: AI needs a verticalized event
 10:00 — From “retreat” to “festival”
 12:00 — Intimacy vs scale in events
 17:00 — What “festival format” actually means
 20:00 — RetailClub themes: full AI transformation of retail
 26:00 — How Kristina tracks AI trends (75%+ of her time)
 28:00 — AI prioritization problem inside companies
 29:00 — Data, CRMs, and “dark agentic traffic”
 30:00 — Traffic decline + board pressure
 36:30 — Agentic commerce: what actually works
 38:00 — Why brands won’t fully disappear
 40:00 — RetailClub details + closing

👉 Connect with Krystina: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krystina-gustafson-908a5a14/
👉 Learn more about RetailClub: https://retailclub.com/

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
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In this episode, we go deep into what agentic commerce actually looks like in a real-world vertical, and why grocery may be one of the most important battlegrounds.

We walk through the shift from “tools that help you shop” to systems that shop for you, and how that fundamentally changes everything from discovery to monetization.

We also unpack the tension between grocers and platforms like Instacart, the rise of retail media networks, and why owning your data, and your customer relationship, may matter more than ever in an AI-driven world.

Highlights 

• Regional grocers are losing both data and margin to platforms like Instacart
• Agentic commerce shifts grocery from manual planning → “do it for me” automation
• Delectable combines food intelligence + shopper intelligence + real-time inventory
• AI closes the gap between inspiration (TikTok/recipes) → instant cart creation
• Vertical AI beats horizontal models with better accuracy, speed, and cost efficiency
• Grocery e-commerce hasn’t saved time, until now
• Retail media networks are massive, but broken by middlemen and inefficiency
• Agentic advertising creates unlimited, contextual ad inventory
• The future of grocery is about owning discovery, not renting it

If you want to understand where agentic commerce gets real, beyond theory and into infrastructure, this is one to pay attention to.

⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 — Who owns grocery discovery today
 02:05 — Intro to Delectable AI
 04:00 — Joe’s background in enterprise commerce
 10:00 — Why grocery (and why now)
 12:50 — The Agentic Experience Platform explained
 14:30 — Why grocery e-commerce hasn’t saved time
 15:50 — “Do it for me” shopping vs tools
 17:00 — Retail media inefficiencies and opportunity
 19:00 — The shopper journey (TikTok → cart)
 22:00 — Fundraising + early traction
 26:00 — Vertical vs horizontal AI debate
 30:00 — Instacart, data ownership, and margins
 32:00 — Why vertical AI wins (accuracy, speed, cost)
 34:30 — What’s next for Delectable

👉 Connect with Joseph Lee: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephchiahsunlee/

👉 Learn more about Delectable AI: https://www.linkedin.com/company/delectable-ai/

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Everyone is focused on how AI helps people discover products. But what happens after that? In this episode of Retailgentic, we go deep on the missing layer of agentic commerce: checkout, payments, and fulfillment. Because it turns out, the hardest part isn’t finding the product. It’s buying it.

Rye is building what they describe as the “Stripe for commerce.” It connects AI agents, apps, and platforms to merchants handling:

• Checkout and order placement
• Payment orchestration
• Fulfillment across retailers like Amazon and Shopify

In short: if an AI agent decides what to buy, Rye helps it actually buy it.

Highlights 

• Checkout is the real bottleneck: Discovery is improving fast, but actually placing an order across fragmented systems is still incredibly hard.
• Rye enables real AI purchasing: They connect agents to merchants, allowing products to be bought directly from platforms like Amazon.
• Amazon is a critical unlock: Most bots are blocked, but Rye’s API-based approach allows real transactions to go through.
• Protocols won’t solve everything: Even if UCP/ACP take off, long-tail merchants and major players won’t fully standardize.
• B2B is the sleeper opportunity: Complex procurement decisions are a perfect fit for agent-driven commerce.
• AI reduces returns: More context leads to better decisions, driving return rates extremely low.
• We’re still early, but close: One breakout use case could flip massive volume into agentic commerce quickly.

Agentic commerce isn’t just about what gets recommended—it’s about what actually gets bought.

Timestamps:

 02:00 — Meet Arjun Bhargava and Rye
 04:00 — Founding story and early vision
 08:00 — Contextual commerce → agentic commerce
 11:00 — What Rye does (simple explanation)
 14:00 — How AI agents place orders
 18:00 — The rye.com story
 22:00 — Amazon integration and why it matters
 26:00 — Payments, tokenization, and infrastructure
 30:00 — UCP vs ACP debate
 35:00 — Why protocols won’t cover everything
 40:00 — Where agentic commerce is heading
 42:00 — B2B opportunity and procurement
 46:00 — Real-world AI agent example
 47:30 — Closing

👉 Connect with Arjun: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjunbhargava/
👉 Learn more about Rye: rye.com

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
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In this episode, Scot sits down with Debra to unpack what might be the most important shift in digital advertising since social media.

This isn’t theoretical. It’s happening right now, and brands that don’t understand it risk getting left out of the new chain of commerce.

Highlights 

• Why ChatGPT’s ad rollout is just the beginning, not an experiment
• The tension between trust vs. monetization in AI interfaces
• How retailers are both excited and terrified of AI shopping agents
• The emergence of “AI Media” as a new category (like social + retail media before it)
• Why current ad formats are “boring”… and what comes next
• How companies should actually prepare (hint: it’s not just media buying)
• The shift from advertising to agent influence, and what that means for the future

We’re still early, but not that early. The rules of digital advertising are being rewritten in real time, and for the first time in decades, the winners aren’t obvious. The question isn’t whether AI will reshape commerce. It’s whether your products, and your data, are ready to compete when agents decide what gets bought.

Timestamps:

 02:19 – Meet Debra Aho Williamson 

 05:00 – From social media to AI: spotting the next shift 

 09:00 – What “AI Ad Economy” actually means 

 11:00 – Are we at a social media–level inflection point? 

 13:00 – ChatGPT ads: early signals and what matters 

 16:00 – Why current AI ads look like search ads 

 18:00 – Trust vs. monetization: the line platforms can’t cross 

 23:00 – Why retailers are leading AI ad adoption 

 25:00 – Google’s AI ad strategy vs. ChatGPT 

 29:00 – Perplexity, Copilot, and the fragmented landscape 

 33:00 – Where Meta fits (and why it’s surprising) 

 35:00 – New ad formats: sponsored prompts + conversational ads 

 38:00 – Reddit, TikTok, and emerging players 

 40:00 – How brands should prepare for AI media 

 43:00 – Why structured product data is critical 

 45:00 – The future: ads for agents, not humans

👉 Connect with Debra: https://www.linkedin.com/in/debrawilliamson/
👉 Learn more about Sonata Insights: https://www.sonatainsights.com/

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
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