We’re in a “zero-click revolution”: up to ~60% of Google searches end without a click because AI overviews and rich SERP answers give users what they want on the page.
Classic SEO (“rank #1 in 10 blue links”) is being supplemented by GEO/AIO:
AIO: making content machine-readable (schema/JSON-LD, structured data, FAQs, technical hygiene).
GEO: earning citations, brand mentions, and trust so LLMs surface you in their answers.
- The new “ranking system” is E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness), reinforced through:
- Structured data & FAQs
- Third-party content, PR, reviews, and backlinks
- Consistent brand presence across the web
Jenna’s vision: consumers will train personal agents (grocery agent, wardrobe agent, recipe agent, etc.) that know their preferences (brands, price ranges, sizes, AOV) and negotiate/buy on their behalf—possibly using data from email receipts, purchase history, and more.
Matt Ezyk (Hanna Andersson): already built a grocery shopping agent that:
- Generates recipes based on constraints (high protein, low carb, time)
- Calls Instacart’s API and fills the cart
→ He sees commerce shifting from search + scroll to conversations + tasks, so brands must invest in speed, clean data, and strong APIs.
Matt Hudson (BILDIT): offers a dissenting but nuanced view:
- Tech doesn’t instantly rewrite all human behavior; many people still like stores, browsing, and visual shopping (especially apparel).
- AI chat is a “kick-ass iterative search” and a powerful discovery layer, but brand sites, apps, and physical stores remain critical.
- High-trust, low-emotional-investment categories (flowers, groceries, replenishment items) will be automated first; complex, fit-sensitive, or taste-driven categories (shoes, fashion) will lag.
Howie (Space Dinosaurs): counters that brand loyalty may actually increase:
- In a world flooded by generated content, people rely more on trusted brands and sources.
- Agents will make repeat buying from known brands easier (“buy the same pajamas in the next size up”), reinforcing loyalty.
They agree: AI will be a massive discovery & convenience layer, but brand trust, physical presence, and experience still matter a ton.
AI agents will sometimes prioritize trust and known brands (loyalty), and sometimes optimize purely for price/quality, creating “search serendipity”—finding brands you never knew but that fit your constraints.
This dynamic will:
- Reward brands with strong reviews, clear value propositions, and solid data.
- Punish brands that rely solely on traditional search and haven’t optimized for AI visibility.
- Everyone agrees brand loyalty isn’t dead, but it will be challenged and reshaped by LLM-driven discovery and agentic commerce.
- Today, many sites use bot mitigation (Human, DataDome, Cloudflare, etc.) and may be blocking AI crawlers by default, limiting their presence in AI answers.
- The conversation shifts to “bot management” vs “bot mitigation”:
- You want a “fast lane” for good bots/AI agents that are answering user questions in real time.
Brands are starting to:
- Use security/bot tools and analytics to identify AI crawlers vs real users.
- Use tools like Scrunch AI, Profound, Peep, llmrankings, etc. to see how they appear in LLM responses relative to competitors.
- Create llm.txt files (like robots.txt) to explain who they are, what they stand for, and how AIs should understand their brand.
- Caveat: many measurement tools are still immature—often using older or local models, so they give directional but not complete insight.
The panel ends with a pretty concrete playbook:
Nail your fundamentals (data & UX)
Clean product data: accurate SKUs, attributes, sizes, specs, pricing, inventory, size guides.
Good descriptions & reviews.
Fast, low-friction site/app experiences.
→ This helps everything: SEO, AI, paid, and conversion.
Make your content machine-readable
Add JSON-LD/schema for products, FAQs, organization, reviews.
Create FAQ and guide content answering real questions your customers ask.
Consider an llm.txt to introduce your brand to AI crawlers.
Check that AI crawlers aren’t getting errors or blocked paths you don’t see in human analytics.
Stop the bleeding & establish visibility
Audit what LLMs currently say about your brand and competitors for key queries.
Ensure good bots are allowed through your CDN / bot management tools.
Start monitoring mentions, rankings, and trends over time (even if the data isn’t perfect).
Measure & experiment like it’s a new channel
Treat AI/GEO as a new channel: give it owners, KPIs, and a lightweight roadmap—even if nobody’s full-time on it yet.
Start small: pick one high-friction journey (e.g., sustainability queries, loyalty questions, a replenishment path) and build an AI-driven use case or experience around it.
Use existing vendors and tools that already have AI built in; you don’t need an AI department to begin.
Prepare for fast change
Right now, AI-driven traffic is not yet a huge, clearly attributed revenue channel, which makes it politically hard to invest in.
But the panel warns: when it hits, it will hit fast—brands that ignore it risk suddenly losing a big chunk of organic traffic when search interfaces shift more fully to AI answers.
Overall, AI search not as “the death of SEO” but as a new layer on top of it: brands that combine solid fundamentals, structured data, strong brand trust, and early experimentation with AI agents and measurement stand to benefit as consumer behavior gradually shifts toward agentic, conversation-driven commerce.
Transcript:
00:01:35 [Speaker 1]
Well, I'm really excited to be here today.
00:01:37 [Speaker 1]
Thanks everyone for joining.
00:01:39 [Speaker 1]
My name is Jenna Fleeman Poser, founder and CEO of Chief Digital Agency, and I am pleased to join forces with Space Dinosaurs and Build today to bring you an amazing discussion with some industry experts.
00:01:52 [Speaker 1]
Our topic today is gonna be SEO, winning the age of AI search with GEO.
00:01:58 [Speaker 1]
It's a new and a new topic, and we thought, hey.
00:02:01 [Speaker 1]
Let's get together, talk about some best practices, tools, and hear firsthand from brands other operationalizing against this new channel in the market today.
00:02:10 [Speaker 1]
So before we kick off, let me, go around the horn here, and let's take a moment to introduce ourselves.
00:02:16 [Speaker 1]
I know I'm myself.
00:02:18 [Speaker 1]
But, Matt, why don't you kick us off and let our listeners, learn a little bit about you, where you're from, the expertise you bring to this lovely broadcast.
00:02:30 [Speaker 2]
Sure.
00:02:31 [Speaker 2]
Hi, David.
00:02:32 [Speaker 2]
Hi, everyone.
00:02:32 [Speaker 2]
My name is Matt Ezyk.
00:02:34 [Speaker 2]
I lead engineering and technology for ecommerce at a brand called Hannah Anderson.
00:02:38 [Speaker 2]
If you're not familiar with the brand, we sell children's clothes for boys and girls, infant to age 12, and we also sell family match pajamas, which I'm wearing right now.
00:02:47 [Speaker 2]
I'm actually in our office here in Portland, Oregon.
00:02:50 [Speaker 2]
This is our annual all hands where everybody just brings out their Christmas PJs and wears them.
00:02:55 [Speaker 2]
So, we just wrapped that up right now.
00:02:57 [Speaker 2]
So, coming out fresh with that and still get them on and happy to represent here.
00:03:02 [Speaker 2]
I've been in ecommerce for, for a few decades now.
00:03:06 [Speaker 2]
I've worked with AI before it was generative when it was predictive and machine learning.
00:03:11 [Speaker 2]
When generative came on the scene, I quickly caught on to this trend with search and, always been very interested in it in the three years that we've been in this new generative world.
00:03:20 [Speaker 2]
So really happy to be here and dig into this topic.
00:03:22 [Speaker 2]
It's super interesting for me.
00:03:24 [Speaker 1]
Awesome.
00:03:25 [Speaker 1]
Howie, you wanna hear me through?
00:03:27 [Speaker 3]
Thanks, Jenna.
00:03:28 [Speaker 3]
I'm not wearing my pajamas, but I wish I was.
00:03:30 [Speaker 3]
And had I known, I I I would have.
00:03:32 [Speaker 3]
But as Jenna mentioned, I'm I'm Howie Ross.
00:03:34 [Speaker 3]
I'm one of the cofounders and head of technology at Space Dinosaurs, where we focus on ecommerce engineering and revenue optimization.
00:03:43 [Speaker 3]
And we've been involved in the, you you know, AI revolution that we're a part of right now, for a number of years, and I'm excited to share what we're seeing in the market and how you can, take advantage of this, you know, the current wave of technology innovation.
00:03:59 [Speaker 1]
Awesome.
00:04:00 [Speaker 1]
Matt.
00:04:01 [Speaker 4]
Well, mine doesn't sound as good as Howie does.
00:04:05 [Speaker 4]
I'm the founder of Build It.
00:04:06 [Speaker 4]
Build It is primarily a, a content experience platform, driven by AI, of course, centered around personalization and and, specializing in mobile app.
00:04:19 [Speaker 4]
So I'm I'm really excited about this panel.
00:04:21 [Speaker 4]
I mostly just because I love to pontificate.
00:04:24 [Speaker 4]
So I'm ready to talk about all the hypotheticals and what's gonna happen, not gonna happen, and have some good dissenting opinions from these smart folks.
00:04:32 [Speaker 1]
You're gonna shine that crystal ball for us.
00:04:35 [Speaker 1]
Tell us what's coming.
00:04:36 [Speaker 1]
I can't wait.
00:04:37 [Speaker 1]
Okay.
00:04:38 [Speaker 1]
So before we dig into the discussion, you know, Howie, maybe you can just kind of root us in current state.
00:04:44 [Speaker 1]
What are you guys seeing, you know, help ground us in in this, category?
00:04:50 [Speaker 3]
Sounds good.
00:04:51 [Speaker 3]
Happy to.
00:04:52 [Speaker 3]
So we are in the middle of what many folks are calling the zero click revolution.
00:04:56 [Speaker 3]
And there's a fundamental shift occurring where you know the approach of ranking number one in the list of the 10 blue links is being overtaken by the new reality that is AI overviews such as Google's and of course you know generated a generative AI and LLM such as chat GPT, Gemini that are providing you know synthesized direct answers to the questions that people wanna know including about what to purchase.
00:05:21 [Speaker 3]
And you know a key stat about that is that, up to 60% of Google searches are now ending without a click.
00:05:30 [Speaker 3]
And why is that?
00:05:30 [Speaker 3]
Because the answer is now right there on the page.
00:05:33 [Speaker 3]
So this really changes the notion of visibility.
00:05:37 [Speaker 3]
Whereas as I mentioned you wanted to be, you know, the top of the blue links.
00:05:41 [Speaker 3]
Now, you know, to be represented in these generative answers, it's all about the new currency, which is citations and brand mentions.
00:05:52 [Speaker 3]
And there's a couple components to that.
00:05:54 [Speaker 3]
Right?
00:05:55 [Speaker 3]
So it and there's a couple terms that I wanna I wanna cover here.
00:05:57 [Speaker 3]
So there's geo as we mentioned.
00:05:59 [Speaker 3]
And there's but there's also the related AIO, AI optimization.
00:06:04 [Speaker 3]
So AIO is making your content technically available, machine readable.
00:06:09 [Speaker 3]
So that's using structured data so that AI systems can easily understand and extract your content.
00:06:15 [Speaker 3]
And then there's JIA, which is earning the trust of these AI models so that your brand, can be listed as authoritative, and that's via those citations that we that I mentioned.
00:06:29 [Speaker 3]
So let's talk about a little bit about what we're seeing in the market.
00:06:33 [Speaker 3]
So you know demand is of course not dying as we just saw with our you know recent you know Black Friday and Cyber Monday which is of course become Cyber Week.
00:06:42 [Speaker 3]
Demand is up, but you know it's redirecting.
00:06:46 [Speaker 3]
So whereas shoppers used to Google, you know, best sustainable denim, now they're asking a more formulated question to an LLM are what are the best sustainable denim brands under a $150 and getting, you know, two to three direct recommendations as opposed to, you know, that list of lists.
00:07:08 [Speaker 3]
And so while, you know, the traffic for, you know, for many, retailers may be down or that at organic traffic.
00:07:16 [Speaker 3]
For many of them, we the conversion rate is actually up because many some of the reports we're seeing are that conversion rates from these generative sources are up two to five times what it was, from traditional search.
00:07:31 [Speaker 3]
So, this is there's a massive opportunity here, but in order to capitalize on it, there's, there's an acronym we need to follow, which is EAT, e e a t.
00:07:43 [Speaker 3]
Right?
00:07:43 [Speaker 3]
We need to, demonstrate that we have the experience, the expertise, the authoritativeness, and the trustworthiness.
00:07:51 [Speaker 3]
And how do we do that?
00:07:52 [Speaker 3]
As I mentioned, with dimensions and with backlinks, links back to our content on on the far data service.
00:07:59 [Speaker 3]
So what are we doing with our customers to ensure this?
00:08:04 [Speaker 3]
Well we're switching to an answer first approach.
00:08:07 [Speaker 3]
Of course we're gonna have our our e commerce sites with our products listed.
00:08:11 [Speaker 3]
There's even more emphasis on, on FAQs, guide content, and as I've mentioned repeatedly, those third party sources, in addition to the technical foundation, that I that I also mentioned.
00:08:25 [Speaker 3]
So, you know, and and also, you know, monitoring, how you stand and, how you are trending over time in your key areas that you wanna focus on.
00:08:38 [Speaker 3]
So, with that I'll summarize to say that, the channels for demand are definitely shifting, but the demand is there and there's a huge opportunity, to be capitalized on by by the brands that, approach geo and and whether it's
00:09:00 [Speaker 1]
Awesome.
00:09:01 [Speaker 1]
Thank you, Howie.
00:09:01 [Speaker 1]
I really appreciate it.
00:09:04 [Speaker 1]
So so let's kinda get into the discussion here.
00:09:06 [Speaker 1]
You know, obviously, thinking about, you know, SEO Yeah.
00:09:10 [Speaker 1]
Translation into a practice that is mirroring kind of that prioritization, but kind of in this new agentic world.
00:09:17 [Speaker 1]
You know, we'll we'll we'll talk about measurement.
00:09:19 [Speaker 1]
We talk about tools.
00:09:20 [Speaker 1]
We talk about strategy.
00:09:21 [Speaker 1]
Like, let's let's talk about the future.
00:09:24 [Speaker 1]
Let's talk about what we think this is going to look like.
00:09:28 [Speaker 1]
You know, what does the future of of AI enabled commerce really mean?
00:09:34 [Speaker 1]
And and let let me I'll give you an example here, and we can kind of debate and talk about what we think is gonna happen.
00:09:41 [Speaker 1]
But, personally, I believe that there is a world where I am going to train an agent to go out and shop on my behalf.
00:09:51 [Speaker 1]
It could be, I can have a number of different agents.
00:09:54 [Speaker 1]
Maybe I have a grocery agent.
00:09:56 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:09:56 [Speaker 1]
Maybe I have, you know, a shopping agent for my wardrobe.
00:10:00 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:10:00 [Speaker 1]
Maybe I've got, an agent that's gonna go find, you know, recipes and maybe interact with that grocery agent.
00:10:06 [Speaker 1]
Who knows?
00:10:06 [Speaker 1]
Who knows what it's really gonna look like?
00:10:08 [Speaker 1]
But the reality is that as a consumer, I'm gonna be incentivized to train and share data with this agent because I want it to go out and be as successful as it can be for me.
00:10:18 [Speaker 1]
And that doesn't just mean things I might wanna buy, but at what average order value, at what discount rate, with which brands.
00:10:26 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:10:27 [Speaker 1]
And there are ways that we can do this in in in a really, you know, shortcut fashion as a consumer doing things like authorizing my Gmail account to an agent to allow to scrub every order confirmation email I've ever received.
00:10:40 [Speaker 1]
So it knows my size, my color preference, my brand proclivities.
00:10:43 [Speaker 1]
It understands how often I buy, what my average order value is, and it's gonna leverage all of that.
00:10:48 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:10:49 [Speaker 1]
It's gonna take that data, and it's gonna go leverage it in order to negotiate on my behalf and find these products.
00:10:56 [Speaker 1]
And so if that's true, a, do we believe that there is a future that looks like that?
00:11:03 [Speaker 1]
Where do we go from there?
00:11:05 [Speaker 1]
Where do we go from there?
00:11:06 [Speaker 1]
How do we plan for that as brands and as retailers and as technology companies?
00:11:12 [Speaker 1]
So do first of all, do we do we believe that there's a future that looks like this?
00:11:17 [Speaker 1]
And does it then transition to a world where brands have agents that operate for them, and these brand agents and consumer agents are now communicating in an agent to agent fashion.
00:11:26 [Speaker 1]
Like, is that the future?
00:11:28 [Speaker 1]
Do we believe in that?
00:11:32 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:11:32 [Speaker 2]
I can take that.
00:11:33 [Speaker 2]
I can take that first.
00:11:34 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:11:34 [Speaker 3]
I was
00:11:34 [Speaker 2]
gonna say there's there's two mats here, so we gotta we gotta have a demarcation of of the mats.
00:11:40 [Speaker 2]
But, yeah, I I absolutely believe in that.
00:11:42 [Speaker 2]
I mean, the first thing you said really resonates with me because I built a grocery shopping agent.
00:11:47 [Speaker 2]
I don't think it's going to be for everything.
00:11:49 [Speaker 2]
Like, if you're shopping for shoes or pajamas.
00:11:53 [Speaker 2]
Right?
00:11:53 [Speaker 2]
You wanna see things.
00:11:54 [Speaker 2]
You wanna look at all the patterns.
00:11:56 [Speaker 2]
But at least for me, like, shopping for groceries is something I have to do.
00:12:01 [Speaker 2]
I don't really enjoy doing it.
00:12:02 [Speaker 2]
So I've I've actually done a lot of experimentation with putting in, like, hey.
00:12:07 [Speaker 2]
I wanna build this recipe, and I want high protein, low carb, and I want it to cook for three days.
00:12:13 [Speaker 2]
And it spits out recipes for me, and then it makes an API called Instacart and then finds all the ingredients I need.
00:12:20 [Speaker 2]
Right?
00:12:20 [Speaker 2]
So I think commerce really shifts from search and scroll to conversations and tasks.
00:12:26 [Speaker 2]
So the future shopper and and to some cases, current shoppers will expect agents that understand intent and handle complexity and really can complete outcomes.
00:12:36 [Speaker 2]
So if you're a brand listening, you really need to invest in speed, data quality, have really strong APIs, and that will really win because AI relies on clean structured inputs.
00:12:49 [Speaker 4]
I'm gonna take a slightly dissenting view.
00:12:51 [Speaker 4]
Sure.
00:12:52 [Speaker 4]
And I and I and I feel like people will be surprised by this because I'm, you know, app guy, technologist guy.
00:13:01 [Speaker 4]
But I've thought about this deeply for even the last two years.
00:13:04 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:13:06 [Speaker 4]
First thing is that technology doesn't drive human behavior.
00:13:10 [Speaker 4]
Now it drives ours.
00:13:12 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:13:12 [Speaker 4]
Because we are the technology people.
00:13:14 [Speaker 4]
But ChattGPT, no matter where it gets, my grandma's not gonna use it, and she still buys stuff.
00:13:20 [Speaker 4]
I also think about the history where the Internet was gonna kill TV, and TV was gonna kill radio, and radio was gonna kill newspapers, which it finally, you know, did mostly.
00:13:31 [Speaker 4]
But how long did it take?
00:13:34 [Speaker 4]
I mean and there are still people that enjoy newspaper.
00:13:36 [Speaker 4]
So I think there's a couple things.
00:13:38 [Speaker 4]
Like, our our frame of reference has gotta be really important.
00:13:41 [Speaker 4]
I'm a what I'm gonna basically say is it depends.
00:13:44 [Speaker 4]
Right now, chat is a incremental search, and it's a really kick ass incremental search, or iterative search.
00:13:54 [Speaker 4]
Excuse me.
00:13:54 [Speaker 4]
Not incremental.
00:13:55 [Speaker 4]
Iterative search.
00:13:57 [Speaker 4]
And in that aspect, if we think about who is challenging the chatbots, Google, and how Google used to have or has PLAs today, product listings, right, and had Google checkout, did that change everything?
00:14:10 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:14:10 [Speaker 4]
It did.
00:14:11 [Speaker 4]
But it didn't change all of our behaviors.
00:14:14 [Speaker 4]
So I don't think that the face of the brand of a a website, so to speak, is gonna go away.
00:14:20 [Speaker 4]
I think of it as we're getting a kick ass search that's on other channels.
00:14:26 [Speaker 4]
And I think that the face still stays there because the brand's more important.
00:14:29 [Speaker 4]
And I think what Howie said was was really important to understand is that if you have the right product and it gets found and you're in those engines that are talking to each other because that all of that part is absolutely gonna happen, then you're gonna see a much higher conversion just which basically is much less browsing.
00:14:47 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:14:47 [Speaker 4]
So that's true for very certain type of products, high search products or products where there's high trust.
00:14:55 [Speaker 4]
But I don't think that it necessarily gets rid of, in particular, apparel where the size data is not there yet, or do I trust the brand?
00:15:03 [Speaker 4]
Like, for instance, I can't buy Nike because it's narrow.
00:15:06 [Speaker 4]
So if it shows me Nike, I don't buy it.
00:15:08 [Speaker 4]
Yes.
00:15:08 [Speaker 4]
Eventually, it will learn.
00:15:10 [Speaker 4]
But tastes and trends and all those things change on a daily basis depending on what, you know, unfortunately, Kim Kardashian is wearing.
00:15:18 [Speaker 4]
So the way I see it is is that it's we're a long ways away from the dramatic craziness that we kinda feel out there on LinkedIn, But we are we are getting a kick ass search that's that's really solved a lot of things across the board.
00:15:35 [Speaker 1]
So I think you're talking about, you know, new a new form of product discovery happening through LLMs.
00:15:40 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:15:40 [Speaker 1]
Consumers engaging more.
00:15:41 [Speaker 1]
And I know you say your grandma's not going on, you know, chat chikativa, but, you know, my mom is, and she's grandma.
00:15:47 [Speaker 1]
So, you know and I will tell you this.
00:15:49 [Speaker 1]
I've got a I've got a gen alpha at home, right, who's talking to G every day, who is
00:15:54 [Speaker 4]
Oh, my daughter too.
00:15:55 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:15:56 [Speaker 1]
So Absolutely.
00:15:57 [Speaker 1]
As we think about the future of commerce and and the future demands and needs and and interest of the consumer, you know, the and and the pace at which we're evolving and growing, it is happening faster than anything I've ever witnessed in this industry.
00:16:10 [Speaker 1]
So so keeping tabs on this and keeping an eye on it, I think is is obviously incredibly important.
00:16:16 [Speaker 1]
You know, there are some challenges that you mentioned, you know, in apparel.
00:16:19 [Speaker 1]
I think I think food mat is a really great example of of, an industry that can be pretty unlocked, knowing that we have specific, brands of food that we trust.
00:16:30 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:16:30 [Speaker 1]
I mean, I think there's a challenge around, like, fresh produce.
00:16:32 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:16:32 [Speaker 1]
Like, knowing is the avocado ripe or is it gonna come hard?
00:16:35 [Speaker 1]
You know, it's gonna be very hard to kind of navigate that.
00:16:38 [Speaker 1]
But, I guess, you know, what use cases do we believe in today in this moment?
00:16:45 [Speaker 1]
Like, AI use cases that we believe in today.
00:16:49 [Speaker 1]
Are you guys using any today?
00:16:52 [Speaker 1]
You know, or have you have you used perplexity to actually transact through an LLM today?
00:16:55 [Speaker 1]
Like, anything that you're I'll tell you I'll tell you I got a really
00:17:00 [Speaker 4]
nice, what's the word, knee jerk reaction the other day.
00:17:07 [Speaker 4]
Mhmm.
00:17:07 [Speaker 4]
And and it gave me a really good insight.
00:17:10 [Speaker 4]
It was my anniversary, and I thought, I need to buy flowers.
00:17:13 [Speaker 4]
Now here's the thing.
00:17:14 [Speaker 4]
I buy flowers for my wife every year.
00:17:16 [Speaker 4]
Well, guess what?
00:17:17 [Speaker 4]
I'm out of colors.
00:17:18 [Speaker 4]
Okay?
00:17:18 [Speaker 4]
And I'm out of flowers, type of
00:17:20 [Speaker 2]
flower I buy.
00:17:21 [Speaker 1]
Once a year.
00:17:22 [Speaker 4]
Well, hey, listen.
00:17:25 [Speaker 4]
Calm down.
00:17:26 [Speaker 4]
Calm down.
00:17:26 [Speaker 4]
Don't don't get me in trouble.
00:17:29 [Speaker 4]
She doesn't like flowers actually, but I still insist upon sending them.
00:17:34 [Speaker 4]
So well, because if you send them to the office, it's still it's still a, hey, your husband loves you.
00:17:39 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:17:39 [Speaker 2]
It's not
00:17:39 [Speaker 4]
a I know.
00:17:40 [Speaker 4]
It's kinda those words.
00:17:41 [Speaker 4]
Luckily, she doesn't follow me on LinkedIn or Instagram or anywhere else.
00:17:45 [Speaker 4]
So it's fine.
00:17:45 [Speaker 4]
I can say what I want here.
00:17:46 [Speaker 4]
I'm in the same zone.
00:17:47 [Speaker 4]
But, no, the point is is that it was a high trust or a low or, like, I didn't really care that much.
00:17:53 [Speaker 4]
I knew it would come from a local florist.
00:17:56 [Speaker 4]
I knew most of the florists are gonna do a really good job of being artistic.
00:17:59 [Speaker 4]
I knew I could tell Chet GPT or, in my case, I wanted to use, like, you know, I hate Siri, but, you know, basically, the the voice assistant.
00:18:08 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:18:08 [Speaker 4]
I I had this gut feeling like, oh, shit.
00:18:10 [Speaker 4]
I can just I'm just gonna say order me some flowers.
00:18:13 [Speaker 4]
And I and that's right when I thought, okay.
00:18:16 [Speaker 4]
That is a really good case where I'm not that concerned about the, like, exact pieces.
00:18:21 [Speaker 4]
I you know, kind of the colors and the generality, perfect.
00:18:24 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:18:25 [Speaker 4]
And food's kinda that way too.
00:18:26 [Speaker 4]
Like, I'm I'm not necessarily caring exactly what brand of strawberries I'm gonna get, but I might care other things like the, you know, the quality or, you know, the price obviously is gonna be a big one.
00:18:38 [Speaker 4]
So I think, high researched, kind of, you know, like apparel things, those are gonna be challenging to buy.
00:18:46 [Speaker 4]
But where you know the deterministic sort of, output, like a coach bag or certain kinds of foods or flowers where, you know, there's high trust there on the brand and what you're getting and the people making it, those are gonna be the cases where it's no brainer.
00:19:02 [Speaker 4]
Because I I just go in and say, hey.
00:19:04 [Speaker 4]
Send me purple purple rose or, what is she like?
00:19:07 [Speaker 4]
Pur browse green roses.
00:19:10 [Speaker 4]
I'm screwing up, Gina.
00:19:12 [Speaker 4]
Gina's looking at me, and it's messing my whole game up.
00:19:15 [Speaker 4]
Blue roses and purple tulips.
00:19:17 [Speaker 4]
I'm screwing it up.
00:19:18 [Speaker 4]
But, anyway, point is, it depends on the trust, and it also depends a lot on the brand.
00:19:22 [Speaker 4]
And I think the brand trust has gotta be there, and the brand mentions have to be there as well in in inside the AI chatbots.
00:19:29 [Speaker 1]
So so to that end, like, what is this gonna do to brand loyalty?
00:19:33 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:19:33 [Speaker 1]
So there's a few things here.
00:19:34 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:19:34 [Speaker 1]
There's kind of two directions.
00:19:35 [Speaker 1]
One is you're saying, hey.
00:19:37 [Speaker 1]
Consumers are more likely to convert those easy use cases.
00:19:39 [Speaker 1]
Where it's a brand I trust.
00:19:40 [Speaker 1]
It's a size I know.
00:19:41 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:19:42 [Speaker 1]
Like, make it easy.
00:19:42 [Speaker 1]
Think like replenishment.
00:19:44 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:19:44 [Speaker 1]
Like, it's my makeup.
00:19:45 [Speaker 1]
I know I want the same mascara every month.
00:19:47 [Speaker 1]
I'm I'm gonna tell it, hey.
00:19:48 [Speaker 1]
Order that mascara.
00:19:49 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:19:50 [Speaker 1]
But I do think as we've all seen over the past, you know, six, twelve months is that, like, this kind of opportunity to become discovered as a new brand and new experience in these LLMs is actually, it it's pretty ripe.
00:20:03 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:20:03 [Speaker 1]
It's a pretty ripe opportunity.
00:20:04 [Speaker 1]
And as we think about consumers engaging these agents that are gonna go and find things, like, what's the priority then?
00:20:13 [Speaker 1]
Is it quality?
00:20:14 [Speaker 1]
Is it price?
00:20:14 [Speaker 1]
Is it physical location of of product?
00:20:17 [Speaker 1]
Is it is it, like, you know, I I would almost argue that that the brand loyalty is gonna be challenged dramatically because agents aren't gonna necessarily get it.
00:20:29 [Speaker 1]
Like, maybe they'll go to the brand because they think you have a higher likelihood of converting, and they will have done their jobs, and they'll probably get a spiff.
00:20:36 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:20:36 [Speaker 1]
There's probably gonna be some sort of of, affiliate model here for agents that are con converting.
00:20:41 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:20:43 [Speaker 1]
But what do you think that's gonna do to brand loyalty?
00:20:46 [Speaker 1]
Am I gonna care where I get my pajamas as long as I get a high quality pajama at a good rate?
00:20:51 [Speaker 1]
Like, maybe my agent will find something I never would have found because it's, you know, got the time and mission to go find that intersection of all those things.
00:21:01 [Speaker 2]
I call that search serendipity.
00:21:03 [Speaker 2]
I think, agentic search is really great for finding things you didn't know existed or, didn't know you you needed or wanted.
00:21:12 [Speaker 2]
But I also think the the agents, when you talk about personal agents that consumers are gonna use and build for themselves, it's only gonna be as good as the inputs you give.
00:21:19 [Speaker 2]
So I can say, like I know for me personally, my own shopping, there's certain just like everyone else, there's brands that I like to shop and I'm happy to be loyal to because I like their product.
00:21:29 [Speaker 2]
I like the value they give me back.
00:21:31 [Speaker 2]
And I can put that in the instructions with the agent and say or really anything.
00:21:36 [Speaker 2]
Like, going back to, like, the grocery shopping example, I know that there's certain markets in where in the area where I live are just gonna have better produce than some of the other ones.
00:21:45 [Speaker 2]
And I can say, hey.
00:21:46 [Speaker 2]
I don't I don't want you to buy the red onion or the green pepper from this market.
00:21:51 [Speaker 2]
I would rather get it from here and here and here.
00:21:53 [Speaker 2]
And then the thing I haven't figured out yet that I'm going to is I want it to price shop.
00:21:58 [Speaker 2]
So I need a green pepper, and these are the markets I like and I'm loyal to.
00:22:02 [Speaker 2]
So at the end of the day, if you have an Instacart Plus account or whatever, it will drop you several orders based on the pricing and availability, and then and then you're done.
00:22:12 [Speaker 2]
So, like, that to me and and personally, that's a great use case of agentic commerce.
00:22:17 [Speaker 2]
And but, again, to other Matt's point, I don't think that's gonna ever replace certain things like, apparel in some instances, shoes.
00:22:27 [Speaker 2]
You know, there's just there's just so many things that people just love to shop for, but it will be great in finding things you didn't know existed and getting that joy of shopping through this, you know, this new world that we're
00:22:37 [Speaker 3]
So if you don't if if you don't mind, man, I'll take the contrary opinion here.
00:22:42 [Speaker 3]
And and I'll say that, you know, in this era of of generative AI, I could see brand loyalty actually increasing.
00:22:50 [Speaker 3]
And I found this in, within myself in related to, you know, to news content.
00:22:55 [Speaker 3]
Whereas for, you know, for a short period of time, I think we were, you know, many of us were displeased with, like, the, you know, the the traditional news media.
00:23:02 [Speaker 3]
And we were looking to independent bloggers and getting a lot of news on x and and and
00:23:07 [Speaker 4]
Short period of time?
00:23:09 [Speaker 3]
I mean, it's still it's still happening.
00:23:10 [Speaker 3]
Thought my
00:23:11 [Speaker 1]
my Just like a decade.
00:23:12 [Speaker 3]
There's there's so much generated content now that I'm paying more attention to to the source.
00:23:18 [Speaker 3]
Because even if it looks like a high quality video, it could be completely generated fake.
00:23:22 [Speaker 3]
And I think that, you know, the bar or the barrier to entry for brands like, you know, Steven, smaller unknowns or illegitimate brands can produce, you know, very high quality marketing materials now.
00:23:32 [Speaker 3]
Now.
00:23:32 [Speaker 3]
We used to just you know, we look at the marketing materials, and you would evaluate the quality of the product before you get it, you know, based on that.
00:23:38 [Speaker 3]
And I don't think we're gonna be able to do that anymore.
00:23:41 [Speaker 3]
So I think there may be an, you know, increase in, in brand loyalty as a result and the ease with which you'll be able to just say, you know, just, you know, buy those Hannah Anderson pajamas and the next size up for, you know, for my kid to your, you know, to your agent.
00:23:54 [Speaker 3]
It's gonna be so much easier to just, you know, repeat buy to those as brings your loyalty.
00:23:58 [Speaker 1]
I think you're I agree
00:23:59 [Speaker 4]
with that.
00:23:59 [Speaker 4]
It does.
00:24:00 [Speaker 4]
So it's solidified.
00:24:01 [Speaker 4]
It does exactly, what you're saying, Howie, and I agree with everything you said.
00:24:07 [Speaker 4]
By the way, perplexity for news is great.
00:24:09 [Speaker 4]
It removes all of the bias crap, and it summarizes all of it in an unbiased way.
00:24:14 [Speaker 4]
So I love I actually only use perplexity to read the news because it removes all the biased stuff and clickbait.
00:24:19 [Speaker 4]
So it but anyway, separately from that, I think it sort of creates a scenario where there's a mix between discovery and trust.
00:24:26 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:24:27 [Speaker 4]
The brain trust is absolutely important.
00:24:29 [Speaker 4]
There was a study, being an app guy, I'm gonna bring this up, but there was a study, a legit university peer reviewed study that talked about, mobile app usage near a physical store increases by, like, 50%.
00:24:44 [Speaker 4]
Mhmm.
00:24:44 [Speaker 4]
But why is that?
00:24:45 [Speaker 4]
Because we trust the brand that we can see.
00:24:48 [Speaker 4]
Stores still drive most revenue in the age of look, we're all e commerce people.
00:24:53 [Speaker 4]
Okay?
00:24:54 [Speaker 4]
And I'm not I'm not but people still love to go to the physical store.
00:24:58 [Speaker 4]
And I remember years ago when ecom was gonna kill stores.
00:25:01 [Speaker 4]
No.
00:25:01 [Speaker 4]
It's not gonna kill stores.
00:25:02 [Speaker 4]
It's gonna drive stores and feed them.
00:25:05 [Speaker 3]
And I
00:25:05 [Speaker 4]
think you're right, Howie.
00:25:06 [Speaker 4]
It's gonna feed the good brands, right, and solidify them.
00:25:10 [Speaker 4]
And and brands will, you know, be discovered and optimally move up the chain and be solidified.
00:25:16 [Speaker 4]
And so some brands, I could think, are gonna see crazy upticks, like you said, in conversion, and others are just gonna get killed and die because they're literally gonna have no traffic.
00:25:26 [Speaker 4]
However, I think ads are still there.
00:25:28 [Speaker 4]
I think ads are gonna be an extremely important part because, you know, what people aren't talking about out in the technology world is, ads drive enormous amounts of traffic even among, brand loyal customers, right, and those relationships, and are am I am I near a physical store?
00:25:46 [Speaker 4]
Now, again, if you don't have a physical store, and and there's a million exceptions to that, but the point is is that brand trust is still extremely important.
00:25:54 [Speaker 4]
Is there a store to return things nearby is still extremely important.
00:25:58 [Speaker 4]
And then the quality of what gets sent
00:26:00 [Speaker 3]
to me.
00:26:01 [Speaker 4]
I mean, Instacart's great, but sometimes I get, like, a three pound, you know, set of blueberries instead of, like, a a quarter pound.
00:26:08 [Speaker 4]
And I'm like, okay.
00:26:09 [Speaker 4]
I got it for the same price.
00:26:11 [Speaker 4]
That's nice.
00:26:12 [Speaker 4]
You know?
00:26:12 [Speaker 4]
Or sometimes I'm like, who is sending me these, you know, the the the cheese that's the wrong cheese, you know, and and they they selected something slightly different.
00:26:20 [Speaker 4]
But we sacrificed that for convenience, and so there's a trade off.
00:26:23 [Speaker 4]
So I agree with you.
00:26:24 [Speaker 4]
It's a product discovery channel.
00:26:26 [Speaker 4]
It's a killer search.
00:26:28 [Speaker 4]
You've gotta be it's imperative to be there, but our websites are still gonna exist.
00:26:33 [Speaker 4]
The brands are still gonna have need trust, and it's gonna be even more it's just gonna be one more place where we gotta make sure we show up in that search and that we're giving our customers the best data to make the best decision, to make the best reviews, and that authenticity is gonna be even more important than it you than it ever was.
00:26:51 [Speaker 4]
So on that aspect, I completely agree with you, Howie, and and to a degree, you know.
00:26:55 [Speaker 1]
Well, that's funny.
00:26:55 [Speaker 1]
I I also sit right in the middle.
00:26:57 [Speaker 1]
I think you're alright, in some respect.
00:26:59 [Speaker 1]
I I I think that, you know, it's, from a discovery standpoint, yes, we're we're seeing the, the huge opportunity that LLMs are actually presenting.
00:27:09 [Speaker 1]
But I think to to the point that I think has been really hammered home, consumers are gonna have to be intentional about staying loyal to these brands.
00:27:17 [Speaker 1]
Otherwise, you know, they they could absolutely get lost.
00:27:20 [Speaker 1]
So, you know, figuring out, you know, how do you create those repeatable replenishable moments?
00:27:27 [Speaker 1]
How do you continue to stay close to your customer data to make sure those retargeting remarketing opportunities still exist there?
00:27:33 [Speaker 1]
I mean, that's gonna be super key staying front and center and, you know, keeping consumers focused and loyal.
00:27:39 [Speaker 4]
Right.
00:27:39 [Speaker 4]
How often are you gonna retarget them when they buy?
00:27:42 [Speaker 3]
It's a
00:27:42 [Speaker 4]
good idea.
00:27:43 [Speaker 4]
Your data game is gonna have to be so much stronger, not only on the discoverability bit, but when somebody links to you in chat gbt.
00:27:51 [Speaker 4]
So, you know, I we made this, AI pixel that we put into our CMS to see if you get, searched by AI.
00:28:00 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:28:00 [Speaker 4]
Is it browsing your site?
00:28:02 [Speaker 4]
Whatever.
00:28:03 [Speaker 4]
We figured out that TikTok, was building an AI engine and is and is scanning, you know, weird sites and talking to our APIs.
00:28:10 [Speaker 4]
And I was like, holy shit.
00:28:12 [Speaker 4]
What is going on?
00:28:13 [Speaker 4]
You know, I had no idea.
00:28:15 [Speaker 4]
And it just pops up in my feed that, like, ByteDance, crawler is hitting us.
00:28:21 [Speaker 4]
And, the point of that is is that it the time is now.
00:28:25 [Speaker 4]
As much as I'm taking a dissenting opinion on the overall behavior, you better be in those, places.
00:28:32 [Speaker 4]
You know, particularly with Google's AI mode, you know, if Google is your number one source of traffic with ads, PLAs, etcetera, ChatGPT, you know, coming down the pipe and, of course, being whatever I don't know how being plays into it exactly, but, obviously, it's important.
00:28:47 [Speaker 4]
I mean, your discoverability piece is gonna be absolutely the most important thing if you don't have a physical store.
00:28:54 [Speaker 3]
Well, let
00:28:54 [Speaker 1]
let's get let's dig into the tactical now.
00:28:56 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:28:57 [Speaker 1]
Like, let's get a little bit more into it, you know.
00:28:59 [Speaker 1]
And and Matt, as a brand, maybe you can kinda give us some perspective here.
00:29:03 [Speaker 1]
How do you know AI is looking at the site?
00:29:05 [Speaker 1]
You know, what tools are you leveraging to measure this right now?
00:29:08 [Speaker 1]
Now?
00:29:08 [Speaker 1]
Like, how deep is your measurement go?
00:29:09 [Speaker 1]
Give us a glimpse into that.
00:29:12 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:29:12 [Speaker 2]
So we we use a couple tools.
00:29:14 [Speaker 2]
We have one tool that, it's a it's a security tool that looks at our traffic and specifically gives us insights into the bot traffic we have.
00:29:24 [Speaker 2]
We can see, you know, what what different AI crawlers are hitting our site and really starting to unlock understanding if it's a real person using a AI, interface or if they're actually using an agent.
00:29:37 [Speaker 2]
I mean, that's pretty small at this point.
00:29:40 [Speaker 2]
We also have and there's lots of tools out there that can show you how your brand is represented out in that world and how like, for example, like, we had,
00:29:50 [Speaker 1]
Like, tell us about that.
00:29:52 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:29:52 [Speaker 2]
Like, we we have a loyalty program.
00:29:55 [Speaker 2]
We just we just eclipsed a million members in our loyalty program last month.
00:30:01 [Speaker 2]
We had a great article that was written about us in Forbes, and we can see how that is representing us in the different searches that people are making where it's it's finding this and it's using this as reference and giving us it's really been a positive boost for us because we could see how we're ranking with other, our other competitors or how other people are searching.
00:30:25 [Speaker 2]
The tool we're using is Scrunch AI.
00:30:27 [Speaker 2]
Mhmm.
00:30:28 [Speaker 2]
So that's a that's been great to just get started.
00:30:31 [Speaker 2]
We've we've also built a, LLM TXT file, which is for you SEOers out there.
00:30:38 [Speaker 2]
You know, robots TXT, very similar.
00:30:40 [Speaker 2]
It it tells our it tells, like, a chat CPT or perplexity who we are, what what we stand for, what our brand values are, why someone would want to be surfaced our brand in their conversational search.
00:30:53 [Speaker 2]
So these are really basic things that are easy.
00:30:55 [Speaker 2]
But the I think the thing that's really challenging with brands now is there's so much going on in the world right now that is affecting brands.
00:31:05 [Speaker 2]
And it's really it's a really challenging business climate.
00:31:07 [Speaker 2]
They're getting tariffs.
00:31:09 [Speaker 2]
Tariffs have a great example.
00:31:11 [Speaker 4]
Tariffs.
00:31:12 [Speaker 4]
Social media, though, too.
00:31:13 [Speaker 4]
Like, the additional brand channels and TikTok taking over.
00:31:15 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:31:16 [Speaker 4]
They're spread then.
00:31:17 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:31:17 [Speaker 2]
Exactly.
00:31:18 [Speaker 2]
So it's, it there there's a lot of things that I could I could look at a brand and argue that AI doesn't really even matter to you right now because you have so many other things you gotta fix.
00:31:27 [Speaker 2]
But there's really foundational elements, like making sure you have a great experience and it's fast and removing friction and, you know, just getting your basics in order.
00:31:37 [Speaker 2]
And that that certainly applies to data.
00:31:39 [Speaker 2]
And then you could start with experimentation from there.
00:31:43 [Speaker 1]
Well, I wonder too, and and, you know, Howie, maybe you've seen this with some of your clients.
00:31:48 [Speaker 1]
I know you've got a pretty insane roster of of customers that you work with.
00:31:55 [Speaker 1]
I'm curious to know
00:31:56 [Speaker 3]
I mean,
00:31:57 [Speaker 1]
I know in my own experience, you know, being in the seat being as an operator on the digital side, you know, very often we've got bot mitigation platforms like, you know, the humans, the data domes of the world.
00:32:07 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:32:07 [Speaker 1]
Even just a, you know, CDN, a a CloudFlare that's sitting kind of at the top that's managing who can get in the site and who can't.
00:32:14 [Speaker 1]
You know, in my experience in talking to brands today, so many of them right now are hamstrung with just, like, they're already keeping them all out.
00:32:21 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:32:21 [Speaker 1]
They're not even able to really understand, you know, who do we actually let in right now.
00:32:26 [Speaker 1]
Right now, it's like, historically, there's been just like, hey.
00:32:29 [Speaker 1]
We wait list Google.
00:32:29 [Speaker 1]
We wait list x, y, or z to let them come in and scrape the site, but everybody else is pushed out.
00:32:34 [Speaker 1]
How are you thinking about or or, you know, Matt or Howie, how are your clients thinking about, you know, kind of filtering out some of that noise and making sure, you know, when it comes to efficacy that the right agents are being let in.
00:32:46 [Speaker 1]
I mean, are is that on the radar?
00:32:48 [Speaker 1]
Are people talking about that yet?
00:32:50 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:32:50 [Speaker 3]
For sure.
00:32:51 [Speaker 3]
So, you know, many members of the Space Darnass Tours team were previously at a CDN and and security company where, you know, we've worked on this topic extensively.
00:32:59 [Speaker 3]
And, you know, many of you probably know that, you know, we used to call it, you know, bot mitigation.
00:33:03 [Speaker 3]
And now it's it's bot management.
00:33:05 [Speaker 3]
It's not I'm just trying to mitigate them all out of the site.
00:33:08 [Speaker 3]
We almost need to create a fast lane for some of them into the site.
00:33:12 [Speaker 3]
Right?
00:33:12 [Speaker 3]
And and especially for, the generative bots that may be asking a question on behalf of a user in real time.
00:33:19 [Speaker 3]
We wanna get that answer to that user back as fast as they can because, you know, we don't like waiting for sites to load.
00:33:24 [Speaker 3]
We don't like waiting for these LLM queries to, respond either.
00:33:28 [Speaker 3]
So those fundamentals that that, Matt, you were referring to about creating that great experience, creating that that fast, experience are still, you know, just as important.
00:33:38 [Speaker 3]
And then in addition to that, you know, Matt, you were you were mentioning you're using Scrunch, and we're using tools like that.
00:33:42 [Speaker 3]
There's other ones like, Profound and Peep.
00:33:45 [Speaker 3]
And, you know, so what you can do, you know, for our audience that may not be aware, is you you load in your, you know, the priority queries that you want to come up for.
00:33:52 [Speaker 3]
I was using the denim example before.
00:33:53 [Speaker 3]
So you wanna come up for, you know, what are the best sustainable denim brands.
00:33:58 [Speaker 3]
So you're gonna load that query and all of your other priority queries into these systems.
00:34:02 [Speaker 3]
You're also gonna load your competitors into these systems, and you're going to see how you are returned in relation to them and also see how you're changing over time.
00:34:12 [Speaker 3]
So that's allowing us to establish a baseline of where these brands stand now in those areas that they wanna be authoritative on and then also see the impact of our work where, you know, we're doing the technical aspects that I was mentioning of, adjusting the the markup and the schema, so that the LLMs can more easily access the content.
00:34:31 [Speaker 3]
And then also working on the actual content, the FAQ content that we know people want and those third party, affiliate mentions as well.
00:34:38 [Speaker 3]
We can, you know, measure and monitor the impact of all of that, which is really exciting.
00:34:43 [Speaker 4]
So Well, I wanna I wanna jump in here a bunch.
00:34:46 [Speaker 4]
There's so many so many things that I wanna mention, but we'll start with a few of them.
00:34:51 [Speaker 4]
First of all, I disagree with most people that say that AIO, GEO, AEO, whichever one you wanna mention, is SEO, you know, fundamentals.
00:35:02 [Speaker 4]
It's not.
00:35:03 [Speaker 4]
It's it's important.
00:35:04 [Speaker 4]
SEO is still extremely important, and I think, you know, the there's there's a, an idea out there that, you know, SEO for AI also works.
00:35:13 [Speaker 4]
However, we we haven't even determined a name yet.
00:35:15 [Speaker 4]
That's how infant infant tile that this thing is.
00:35:19 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:35:21 [Speaker 4]
But to Howie's point, you absolutely have to, put JSON LD on your pages, which is basically the schemas for your products so that they show up.
00:35:31 [Speaker 4]
You absolutely have to have at least a basic FAQ that answers questions.
00:35:37 [Speaker 4]
The formatting, it it matters.
00:35:39 [Speaker 4]
The citations and your, expertise, whether you mentioned in Reddit or other Google searches.
00:35:45 [Speaker 4]
And, obviously, it all depends on which LLMs.
00:35:48 [Speaker 4]
Some of them, you know, actually run out and do searches, against Bing or or or others, and some don't.
00:35:56 [Speaker 4]
On the on the mentions thing, we are we are so at the early beginnings of this, there's not even ads.
00:36:02 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:36:02 [Speaker 4]
The fact that there's no ads should tell you how how early we are in this process.
00:36:08 [Speaker 4]
And once there's ads, it's gonna change the whole thing just like Google AdSense and AdWords and DisplayAds and PLAs did.
00:36:15 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:36:15 [Speaker 4]
And that is absolutely gonna be here.
00:36:17 [Speaker 4]
And Google's already already got it, so that's the nice thing is it's probably gonna be something similar to that but in in chat or or or whatnot.
00:36:24 [Speaker 4]
But the the the point I'm trying to bring is that many of the mentioned tools out there are using local versions of the model that are usually six months behind or maybe a few months behind.
00:36:37 [Speaker 4]
The the bots, the the the chat engines block automation trust me.
00:36:42 [Speaker 4]
I tried
00:36:42 [Speaker 3]
this actually.
00:36:42 [Speaker 3]
I tried building one of my own
00:36:42 [Speaker 4]
of these.
00:36:42 [Speaker 4]
You can get the mentions building one of my own of these.
00:36:46 [Speaker 4]
You can get the mentions from your local, but it's not the personalized version.
00:36:50 [Speaker 4]
You're getting such a barely anything knowing whether you're getting mentioned that I mean, it's extremely valuable information.
00:36:58 [Speaker 4]
I mean, I've used, llmrankings.io, which is a a a small startup that that has them, and it's really easy to use them.
00:37:06 [Speaker 4]
They're all local models.
00:37:07 [Speaker 4]
Try omnia, try aivo,uh,.com.
00:37:11 [Speaker 4]
Peak is a really good one that's a bit more solidified in the market versus the ones that I'm talking about, which are more startup oriented.
00:37:17 [Speaker 4]
But you need to make sure that it's actually checking live.
00:37:21 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:37:21 [Speaker 4]
It's actually checking not just the API, but what the experience is.
00:37:25 [Speaker 4]
Matt Ezyk, you mentioned this.
00:37:27 [Speaker 4]
But you need to know is it spinning up a web browser, like, as an agent to look at you, or is it just indexing you?
00:37:35 [Speaker 4]
When it searches your site, is it you is it moving the mouse as an example?
00:37:38 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:37:39 [Speaker 4]
Is it actually browsing it to see if it's a human?
00:37:41 [Speaker 4]
Some of them are.
00:37:42 [Speaker 4]
I can spin up an agent right now in ChatGPT Pro, which is $20 a month, a browser version, and that is going to only grow.
00:37:50 [Speaker 4]
If I'm doing it, there's definitely gonna be more people doing it.
00:37:53 [Speaker 4]
Somebody's gonna find a way to do, as an example, fraud with it.
00:37:57 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:37:57 [Speaker 4]
Buy on the site with agents.
00:38:00 [Speaker 4]
ChatGPT is held to a different standard, but there's a number of others, DeepSeek, etcetera, that are not regulated the same way that ours are.
00:38:07 [Speaker 1]
Well, I think there's an important delineation there.
00:38:09 [Speaker 1]
There's an important an important delineation there and where we are today versus where this is going very quickly.
00:38:13 [Speaker 1]
There are two different paths here.
00:38:14 [Speaker 1]
One is consumer to l l m l m to agentic experience.
00:38:19 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:38:19 [Speaker 1]
And that's what we're kind of talking about right now.
00:38:22 [Speaker 1]
But there's a whole other scenario where bespoke agents are being built, whether it's deployed by an Amazon or Google, and it's going and shopping on your behalf.
00:38:29 [Speaker 1]
That was a different vibe.
00:38:31 [Speaker 1]
That is a different outcome.
00:38:32 [Speaker 1]
That's a totally different scenario than exploring, discovering, and purchasing through an l o m.
00:38:37 [Speaker 1]
And so I think being ready for those two scenarios are completely different.
00:38:41 [Speaker 1]
And so how do maybe you guys can kinda riff on this a little bit.
00:38:46 [Speaker 1]
And by the way, Matt Hudson, that was amazing.
00:38:49 [Speaker 1]
Thank you for sharing all those third party resources.
00:38:51 [Speaker 1]
Of course.
00:38:51 [Speaker 1]
People, you know, people really need it.
00:38:53 [Speaker 1]
So it's it's really, really helpful.
00:38:55 [Speaker 1]
But, like, where do they start?
00:38:57 [Speaker 1]
Like, how do they begin this process?
00:39:00 [Speaker 1]
Is it measurement first?
00:39:02 [Speaker 1]
Is it bot management first?
00:39:05 [Speaker 1]
Is it, like, how do they determine is this a problem or a challenge or an opportunity yet?
00:39:09 [Speaker 1]
Like, where do they begin?
00:39:12 [Speaker 3]
How we Yeah.
00:39:12 [Speaker 3]
I'd like
00:39:12 [Speaker 4]
to take it first.
00:39:13 [Speaker 4]
Oh, sorry.
00:39:14 [Speaker 4]
Whichever.
00:39:15 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:39:16 [Speaker 4]
No.
00:39:16 [Speaker 4]
No problem.
00:39:16 [Speaker 4]
We can I think
00:39:17 [Speaker 2]
we can all answer this, in different ways too, which is interesting?
00:39:21 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:39:21 [Speaker 2]
I mean, in my perspective, the way I looked at it when joining this brand, it's it's really looking at our product data, our pricing feeds, our inventory.
00:39:29 [Speaker 2]
If that is all accurate, we're on a great or great, start with that.
00:39:33 [Speaker 2]
If it's not, then you you don't really you shouldn't really go any further than that.
00:39:38 [Speaker 2]
So once you get that baseline built, your architecture has to be modern so systems can serve humans and agents equally well.
00:39:47 [Speaker 2]
I I like to pick a high friction journey that we've identified and try to build the AI use case around it.
00:39:53 [Speaker 2]
I mean, there's there's so many ways you could start.
00:39:55 [Speaker 2]
You really just have to focus on one thing.
00:39:58 [Speaker 2]
And, my partners in, marketing that do, AI enhancement and SEO, we've we really try to double down, very similar to SEO on certain things that we know we can win as a brand.
00:40:12 [Speaker 2]
So for us, that's, sustainability.
00:40:14 [Speaker 2]
Like, our customers love that we have sustainable products that are organic, and they're very high quality.
00:40:20 [Speaker 2]
So we wanna capture as much of that out there in the market as possible.
00:40:25 [Speaker 2]
And a lot of our content that's out there, whether it's, on our product descriptions or if it's the the PR we're getting or, quite frankly, just people talking about us on Reddit because our product stands stands for itself are all talking about those things.
00:40:40 [Speaker 2]
So the the AI world is starting to ingest all that.
00:40:44 [Speaker 2]
And when someone is searching for something like that, we get surfaced in that conversational search pretty often, which is great.
00:40:55 [Speaker 1]
What else?
00:40:55 [Speaker 1]
Howie, what do you think?
00:40:56 [Speaker 4]
You, Howie.
00:40:57 [Speaker 1]
Where did
00:40:57 [Speaker 3]
it go?
00:40:58 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:40:59 [Speaker 3]
So, I mean, I touched on this, and I do think that, you know, measurement and and establishing your baseline of, you know, where where you are.
00:41:06 [Speaker 3]
And, and then, also, I would say, almost more importantly, you know, where do you want to go and, and and investing that through a number of of of channels, but just Matt mentioned with, you know, with your product data and, ideally, you know, beginning to to explore feeding that directly to to ChatGPT so that you can be a part of their instant checkout program, and, you know, aligning yourself with the platforms that, you know, seem to have a leg up, and are already going there, like Etsy and, and Shopify.
00:41:35 [Speaker 3]
And I'm sure there's gonna be, you know, most of the the the larger platforms, are going to be there.
00:41:41 [Speaker 3]
So I think that those are two, you know, great places to start.
00:41:43 [Speaker 3]
You know, establish your your your measurement process just like we all do with, you know, Google Analytics or, you know, similarity tools these days, and then get your feeds into the, the the the major platforms.
00:41:54 [Speaker 4]
I I would say I I would layer it into a a multi approach.
00:41:59 [Speaker 4]
First of all, product data affects everything, so that's sort of the fundamental.
00:42:03 [Speaker 4]
Now it's a much harder problem to solve, but, you know, if you don't have your, your your SKU color set up correctly or if your size guides aren't aren't correct or if your descriptions aren't good and if you don't have specs or if you don't have review I mean so nail the fundamentals first.
00:42:19 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:42:20 [Speaker 4]
The product data.
00:42:21 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:42:21 [Speaker 4]
That affects everything and affects your whole business, and you should do that anyway.
00:42:24 [Speaker 4]
Jesus.
00:42:25 [Speaker 4]
But it's gonna become even more important.
00:42:28 [Speaker 4]
The second bit, I think, is, eliminate the bleeding.
00:42:33 [Speaker 4]
So go out and evaluate your site.
00:42:35 [Speaker 4]
Find out what the AI experience is.
00:42:37 [Speaker 4]
My brother calls it AIX.
00:42:38 [Speaker 4]
You call it agentic experience.
00:42:40 [Speaker 4]
But it's basically the idea that the agent itself has an experience.
00:42:44 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:42:44 [Speaker 4]
What does it see?
00:42:45 [Speaker 4]
It's it's blind.
00:42:46 [Speaker 4]
It doesn't necessarily render your entire, I'm a front end guy, so it doesn't necessarily see all of the images and things like that.
00:42:52 [Speaker 4]
What does it see?
00:42:54 [Speaker 4]
It's seeing the FAQs, the JSON LDs.
00:42:56 [Speaker 4]
It's seeing, your you know, the JSON LDs, the schema that Howie refers to.
00:43:00 [Speaker 4]
So go out and nail the fundamentals on that.
00:43:03 [Speaker 4]
Stop the bleeding.
00:43:04 [Speaker 4]
Evaluate your site based upon what the fundamentals.
00:43:07 [Speaker 4]
Make sure your l o m dot text is there.
00:43:09 [Speaker 4]
Make sure you're not sending any errors.
00:43:10 [Speaker 4]
One of the things I found out is, my site was sending chat g p t an error.
00:43:14 [Speaker 4]
I didn't even know about it.
00:43:16 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:43:16 [Speaker 4]
It shows up in the logs, but none of my tools that that measure for humans get fired.
00:43:21 [Speaker 4]
So I didn't know until I until, you know, I saw in, oddly the tool.
00:43:27 [Speaker 4]
So, you know, fix the fundamentals, stop the bleeding, make sure you're getting mentioned.
00:43:32 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:43:32 [Speaker 4]
Make sure that you're starting to to monitor it.
00:43:35 [Speaker 4]
The next layer would be measuring.
00:43:37 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:43:37 [Speaker 4]
You need to know where am I ranking, what's gonna happen.
00:43:40 [Speaker 4]
Because, to Jenna, to your point, this stuff is gonna go you're not it's not like, you know, mobile or search or whatever where you had, like, you know, you had a year or two to get there.
00:43:51 [Speaker 4]
No.
00:43:51 [Speaker 4]
It's gonna go like this.
00:43:52 [Speaker 4]
Boom.
00:43:53 [Speaker 4]
Yep.
00:43:53 [Speaker 4]
And a bunch of, brands are gonna get caught with with their pants down, and suddenly, they're gonna be down 60% of traffic because Google is not sending them traffic anymore.
00:44:02 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:44:03 [Speaker 4]
And and that's their lifeblood, and there's no ads currently.
00:44:06 [Speaker 4]
So if this happens to you, what is your business gonna do?
00:44:10 [Speaker 4]
You better have a a loyal, following in order to nail it.
00:44:14 [Speaker 4]
So I would say stop the bleeding, you know, and then and then measure to see where you're at and then come up with a strategy for the rest.
00:44:22 [Speaker 4]
You know?
00:44:24 [Speaker 4]
But you gotta know where you're at first, and I think a lot of places don't.
00:44:28 [Speaker 4]
Even the measurement tools, Howie, that you mentioned or that I mentioned, again, they're offline.
00:44:32 [Speaker 4]
So they're not necessarily a complete representation.
00:44:36 [Speaker 4]
Your data teams better be looking in your logs to see what's happening if you don't have a an analytics tool on your site to see what's going on.
00:44:43 [Speaker 4]
You you gotta get visibility first in in my mind.
00:44:46 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:44:47 [Speaker 1]
I I think one of the biggest challenges, and Matt maybe or, Isaac, maybe you can speak to this, you know, it's just not a big channel right now.
00:44:54 [Speaker 1]
There's not a lot of attributed revenue to it.
00:44:56 [Speaker 1]
So finding the time to peel yourself off of profitable channels to explore a new one and invest in a new one.
00:45:04 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:45:04 [Speaker 1]
And kind of like put eggs in a basket that hasn't even really been woven yet.
00:45:08 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:45:09 [Speaker 1]
It's it's it's very tricky, especially when, you know, in most cases, agents and consumers can't even convert through the experience.
00:45:17 [Speaker 1]
So it's like, Matt, how do you how do you balance that with investment and leadership and buy in across the organization?
00:45:25 [Speaker 1]
Any tips any tips there?
00:45:27 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:45:28 [Speaker 2]
I I, I definitely see that.
00:45:30 [Speaker 2]
Right?
00:45:30 [Speaker 2]
I, you know, you know, we wanna treat AI like a new channel, give it owners, give it KPIs, give it a road map.
00:45:37 [Speaker 2]
But we don't we also do not have infinite money.
00:45:40 [Speaker 2]
I wish we did, but we don't.
00:45:42 [Speaker 2]
And we're also challenged with a lot of things this year with with I I think every business is is challenged this year with all the macroeconomic, conditions that we have.
00:45:50 [Speaker 2]
So it's, just like adding anything or any new channel or any business, you gotta build it with the the people you got.
00:45:57 [Speaker 2]
And then eventually, when it grows, you can hire people that own it.
00:46:00 [Speaker 2]
And you're seeing the the larger businesses out there hire, even at the executive level, people that own AI, and they're doing this.
00:46:07 [Speaker 2]
But, mid market, smaller businesses just, quite frankly, can't.
00:46:12 [Speaker 2]
And to what you're saying, Matt Hudson, I I totally agree with that.
00:46:16 [Speaker 2]
And I actually, talked about that a lot over the last few years is that there's gonna be a point where certain businesses are gonna say, why is my conversion tanking?
00:46:24 [Speaker 2]
Why why is my top line tanking?
00:46:26 [Speaker 2]
And it's because people are discovering these new brands, and you're not even knowing it because you're not ready for it.
00:46:32 [Speaker 2]
So, I think the best way to approach it is just to get people to buy into the vision that you need to do something with this and experiment and just start experimenting.
00:46:42 [Speaker 2]
And and by the way, that's that's where we're at.
00:46:44 [Speaker 2]
Right?
00:46:44 [Speaker 2]
Like, we don't have a whole division of people that focus on AI.
00:46:47 [Speaker 2]
We can't.
00:46:48 [Speaker 2]
Right?
00:46:48 [Speaker 2]
A lot of brands are in that boat.
00:46:50 [Speaker 2]
But I think what I've done here is I've been able to get people curious about it and interested in it, that we're all going in and learning.
00:46:58 [Speaker 2]
And we're not only were you taking different things and doing POCs and pilots and trying things, but we also have all these vendors that use AI in everything that they do.
00:47:08 [Speaker 2]
So we're activating that.
00:47:09 [Speaker 2]
And we've seen some great results with it too.
00:47:12 [Speaker 2]
Are we where we wanna be?
00:47:13 [Speaker 2]
Of course not.
00:47:14 [Speaker 2]
But you have to continue to experiment and learn.
00:47:16 [Speaker 2]
And, this is this is a changing world.
00:47:19 [Speaker 2]
I mean, we're gonna be talking about something a week from now that doesn't exist today, and, you just have to keep learning and keep experimenting.
00:47:30 [Speaker 1]
Awesome.
00:47:31 [Speaker 1]
Well, this has been super fun.
00:47:33 [Speaker 1]
I've enjoyed this.
00:47:34 [Speaker 1]
Definitely learned a lot.
00:47:36 [Speaker 1]
Really appreciate it.
00:47:37 [Speaker 1]
I'm not sure if we have any q and a or if we're ready to
00:47:40 [Speaker 3]
There's none
00:47:41 [Speaker 4]
in the chat, but, we'll get some on LinkedIn after this.
00:47:44 [Speaker 4]
I'm absolutely sure about that.
00:47:45 [Speaker 1]
It's ongoing.
00:47:47 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:47:47 [Speaker 1]
Post panel.
00:47:48 [Speaker 3]
There's so
00:47:49 [Speaker 4]
there's so many good topics, Gina.
00:47:51 [Speaker 4]
I mean, you we covered lightly over them, but I I feel like these three guys, or these three here and you are an amazing squad of of people that are on the edge.
00:48:00 [Speaker 4]
So I appreciate all of you guys joining us.
00:48:04 [Speaker 4]
Same to
00:48:05 [Speaker 3]
you guys.
00:48:05 [Speaker 3]
Thanks so much.
00:48:06 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:48:06 [Speaker 1]
Thank you guys.
00:48:07 [Speaker 1]
And thanks thanks to to Build It and Space Dinosaurs and CDA.
00:48:11 [Speaker 1]
And, Matt, thanks for giving us part of your day even though you're all, you know, head to toe pajamas right now.
00:48:16 [Speaker 1]
Appreciate you.
00:48:17 [Speaker 2]
Back to the pajama party.
00:48:19 [Speaker 4]
I am not the other Matt, though.
00:48:21 [Speaker 4]
I mean, I'm not gonna be the other Matt, Matt.
00:48:24 [Speaker 4]
We're both Matt.
00:48:25 [Speaker 1]
Music, Hudson.
00:48:26 [Speaker 1]
Alright.
00:48:27 [Speaker 1]
Well, thank you, guys.
00:48:28 [Speaker 1]
This was awesome.
00:48:29 [Speaker 4]
You guys.
00:48:29 [Speaker 2]
Have a
00:48:29 [Speaker 4]
great day.
00:48:30 [Speaker 4]
Time.
00:48:30 [Speaker 3]
You so much.
00:48:32 [Speaker 3]
Thank you.