51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ

Transcript

Hi everyone, see a few of you joining. Good morning. I’m going to give everyone another couple of minutes before we get started.

For everyone joining now, we’re just waiting a couple more minutes, giving people more time to jump on before we dive in.

We’ll just give another minute and we’ll get started.

Okay, great. Well, thank you all for joining. I’m thrilled to be hosting and showcasing our 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Digital Insights Retail Leaders webinar.

We’re going to be showcasing our AI-driven growth insights as well as our top performer playbook. So a lot of exciting trends to cover just by way of introduction though. First, my name is Vivek Pandya and I’m the director of 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Digital Insights. 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Digital Insights is the data-driven and research insights wing for 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ. So looking forward to walking through all the insights we’ve uncovered for this webinar today. But I’m also excited to be joined by Tara Pagney, Marla Mims, Brian Rigby, and Stephanie Cavatone. They are part of our customer success team and they work directly with our customers. They’ll be providing a lot of great thoughts and perspectives around working with customers like you all and how our insights can be contextualized into their day-to-day workflow and everything that they’re seeing process-wise. So really excited to have them come back on and join us. So we have a lot to cover, but before we dive into the insights, I do want to give you all a little bit of background on 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Digital Insights. As I mentioned, we are the data-driven research and insights wing for 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ. And we essentially look across 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Analytics and many 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ products and provide thought leadership guidance reporting on how these trends are looking in the online retail space. We’re getting into creativity spaces, generative AI. And we also provide many of our customers with benchmarking reports so they can see how their online retail metrics are performing relative to their peer or competitor group. So if you are an 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ customer and you are interested in that type of report, please reach out to your customer success manager or your account manager and we’ll work to get you that sort of report. Really, that valuable report is how you’re doing relative to your peer set, but then we also have a lot of great thought leadership reporting out that’s disseminated through to our customers, but then is also publicly available and on our website and places like that. So lots of exciting data that we’re able to tap into over a trillion visits, hundreds of millions of SKUs, and it really lets us give the markets a sense of how online retail is looking, how digital prices are looking, and then how all these types of metrics are doing and how generative AI is kicking off a lot of momentum. So for those of you who are curious about our calling card, we are the ones who are typically reporting out on Black Friday and Thanksgiving online spending. So when you’re seeing reports about that in the news, that’s usually our team. So that should give you a little bit more context in terms of the data that we work with.

Now, we’ve got some exciting trends to really cover and talk about today.

There’s a couple of different lenses we’re looking at. One is the generative AI phenomenon. We’re about a year and a bit past when we first started to see traffic come to retail sites from these generative AI platforms. And so now a year on, we’re seeing the surge in growth. We’re seeing the impact of the metrics. So we’ll be talking about that. And then we’re also going to get into what we call our top performers and the attributes associated to them and what they’re really driving incredibly well on and excelling at in order to overperform the broader markets and also drive stronger growth. So we’ll be able to really get into the drivers there and really dig into these metrics.

So I know the first area many of you are probably curious about is generative AI adoption and the trends coming out of that. And what we’re seeing is pretty staggering. We’re seeing about a 4,700% year on year increase just this past July in traffic coming from these Gen AI platforms to the retail sites. So there’s a lot of momentum happening there. And it’s really indicative of us being really about a year or two into this phenomenon where now we have consumers who are getting more comfortable using generative AI platforms. More than 30% to 40% in the range of 30% to 40% of Americans have tried a generative AI platform. And many of them are exploring different use cases. Some are doing it for research, education, but we are seeing them lean on it for this type of retail purchasing use case. Many of them, when we survey these types of consumers and users, we’re finding that they’re using it to conduct research, get product recommendations, maybe get the best deal. We’re still in a pretty inflationary environment. So they’re looking to see where they can find cheaper goods, cheaper versions of products, and really generate those shopping lists and ideate. So you have the generative AI platform emerging at a time where the consumer is looking to drive the efficiency and efficiency around their spending and get the peace of mind that the product they’re getting is the absolute best. And when they’re trusting these generative AI platforms, we see more than 90% of consumers really trust the responses that they’re getting from the generative AI platforms. And that’s a factor of these platforms really triangulating information across multiple sources.

The crawlers are looking across Reddit, they’re looking at reviews, they’re pulling in social media conversations. So it’s really distilling down for the consumer where they can maybe get the best pair of jeans or find the best cabinet for a certain price point. You know, the consumer is able to put in a lot of criteria and feel good about the results they’re getting. So that’s why we’re seeing this uptick and accelerated traffic growth. It’s continuing to grow and as we head into the holiday season, we expect that to continue to surge.

The other area is the level of engagement. We’re finding in just a short period of time, AI source traffic visits are driving 10% higher engagement on retail sites compared to non-AI source traffic. So already we’re finding that there’s an uptick in terms of engagement and how much time they’re spending on the site and how much they’re exploring. But then this is very interesting right here in terms of conversion rate. We’re finding that AI source traffic, while not really overperforming non-AI source traffic conversion rates yet, is closing the gap. So it’s accelerating in its ability to convert more effectively in a really short period of time. We’re talking about just over a year. So a big opportunity here for retailers to think about this sort of traffic and the opportunity there to lean in and try to track this type of traffic because in certain other metrics, AI source traffic is already overperforming non-AI source traffic. So we find a 27% better bounce rate from AI source traffic than non-AI source traffic. We’re looking at the sessions and how people are engaging with the content once they get from the generative AI platform to the retail site. We do find that they’re exploring the retail site more. There’s 32% longer visits and 10% more page visits. It’s pretty astounding when we think about it because you have a consumer who’s doing a lot of research on the generative AI platform itself and really getting an understanding of everything they want, what their options are, really doing that back and forth prompt response with the AI platform. And then once they come onto the retail site, they’re also engaging with that content in a really significant way. So it’s very important for retailers to think on two fronts. One, how do they get visibility on these AI platforms so that they can be served back to the user as an option? And then how do they continue to keep that type of traffic engaged effectively on the site? And what we’re finding is there are new sort of strategies that are emerging to drive on what we call generative engine optimization. And this goes beyond traditional SEO. And some of those SEO tactics are still important, making sure things are tagged properly, making sure your site properties are very crawlable. We have an LLM optimizer product here at 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ that’s really defined specifically to that. And also, how are we reaching out to our social media influencers? How are we owning that piece of the conversation? How are the brands ensuring that they’re appearing on top 10 lifts provided by affiliates to ensure that it’s viewed as a really strong option by third parties? We are also thinking about products and product reviews. Can you incentivize your customers to give more reviews so that the LLM crawler can take all this context in and serve you up as a winner and a leader? And what’s really important is that you have a leader in your space for a particular product that the user is interested in. Because what’s immediately apparent when we look at this level is this traffic is performing. It’s performing very, very well on these sites. It’s growing. So it’s really incumbent on brands and retailers out there right now to lean into this moment and try to get in on early in terms of the strategies to engage this type of user. Another great stat, the revenue per visit has increased up 64% just since February. We find it’s still not as high revenue per visit wise as non-AI source traffic. But again, that’s a big gap improvement that we’re seeing where it’s just performing 27% less now versus 97% less a year ago. So these trends are shifting very quickly. Ground is moving beneath many brands’ feet. And it’s very exciting in terms of getting the user that you need to know what you are offering and having a lot of criteria met and meeting that moment. Anything that gives you an edge, be it free shipping or being able to provide certain perks and deals. All that is now being absorbed based on the user’s criteria and how they’re trying to drive more efficiency in that. We’re trying to evolve past having multiple browser windows open and trying to keep track of everything that’s available out there. Oh, maybe Yelp is saying this, but Google reviews is saying that. All of that is something that the user is trying to distill to get an answer around what is the best option, the best product that I can be getting and how can I do that quickly. And the other area that’s very interesting right now is that the AI traffic right now is very desktop laptop focused.

We’re in an e-commerce age, which is very mobile first. But in terms of these generative AI platforms, because the curve that many of these users are on and trying to learn about these platforms, they’re doing that primarily through laptop desktop. And so we expect that to change. And I’ll be talking about that more in a little bit. But what we’re seeing right now is how this device journey can impact the traffic because we do know laptop desktop conversion rates tend to perform better than mobile. But the shift there is happening quite a bit in overall e-commerce, and that has implications for what that could do with generative AI traffic.

Now, the other area that becomes very important is understanding the categories and the types of areas and industries that are going to benefit from this type of traffic and this type of discovery on generative AI platforms. And what we’re seeing so far is the visit share is particularly strong with consumer electronics, home goods and home improvements. And we’re also seeing an uptick on apparel and footwear. What we find with certain things like consumer electronics is there’s more complexity around the purchasing. You know, what size TV do I need? What screen quality? What is the aspect ratio? All those types of things that can be a little complex. Same with computers. Things like how much memory do I need? RAM, space, storage. All that gets rationalized by the generative AI models so it’s more easier for the consumer to absorb or they don’t need to do as much research there because the LLM is doing that for them. The other area is home goods and home improvement. You know, if you’re trying to build a cabinet and you’re trying to get guidance and help and assistance from the generative AI platform, the next step there is, OK, where can I get my materials? Where can I purchase what I need for that? And that’s where the LLM is continuing to foster that journey. The other thing I’ll just remind people is that more than a year and a half ago, the generative AI platforms were emerging onto the scene, but they weren’t really allowing consumers to click off the platform. That became a phenomenon much later. And that’s why we’re seeing all the trends we’re seeing. So if we think about the way things are moving right now, the next move ends up being trying to drive optimization so that you can bring in this traffic, which is very focused and very activated around what they’re purchasing.

Now, when we think about the broader implications here, we have generative AI platforms, traffic and the need to really effectively convert on it and drive more momentum there. But we’re also thinking about the broader trends that top performers in this space of online commerce and retail commerce need to be focused on. And what’s really clear is that retailers benefit, the top performers benefit by having a strong loyal base of customers and being able to invest in loyalty because the top performers are able to drive about 47 percent of their revenue share from repeat customers. So if we think about the dynamic economic environment where we need a strong base of growth, loyalty is really a key driver there because we see the top performers almost performing three times better than the underperformers there. So yes, you want to get new traffic and unlock new customers. But in making sure that your existing customers are being served effectively and you’re investing loyalty will help many brands across the board. And it’s helping our top performers because we’re in an age where consumers are doing a lot of impulse buying. They’re picking up their phone, one touch buying, going to their app. So driving more velocity there will only help many of the brands and retailers out there as it is the top performers. And it shows in the data there’s a 37 percentage point gap there between the top performers and the underperformers. So huge opportunity to unlock for many brands and retailers to think about making the case to drive more loyalty, invest in more loyalty programs because the top performers are leaning in on that and having, especially in a volatile environment where loyalty is being questioned in the context of things like price and cost of living. And things like that engendering strong loyalty will be a big win for many brands out there. The other area that we definitely highlight on is mobile performance. Even though in aggregate, mobile conversion rates have underindexed compared to laptop, desktop, we still see the best growth and momentum around mobile journeys, mobile conversion happening from the top performers who are able to drive more mobile page views, they’re able to drive three times more mobile conversions compared to the underperformers, and they’re able to ensure that the year on year consistency is happening. There’s still a lot of upside with mobile performance. And the top performers who recognize that and who are continuing invest in mobile journeys apps are going to see stronger outcomes there.

The other key area to flag is mobile bounce rates. You know, we tend to see these also kind of surge up across over time. And but the ones that can really drive the best experiences will keep those mobile bounce rates low. And we see the top performers really, you know, showcasing how it’s done there. The other area that we’re focused on is visitor growth and what is the type of traffic that’s unlocking new wins for customers and top performers. And while it’s important for top performers to stay dominant on paid search, direct as a channel, especially direct being from the lens of Gen AI, as we were talking about, there’s pre-research happening, and then some of the consumers will click over, but some of them might come through a different channel. Paid search is still important. Direct search, direct traffic is still very key and investing in the brand so that people can come directly to your site. But social is a massive vector of growth for top performers. They’re able to drive about 18% year on year growth, and it’s a 20% increase in their revenue share as well. So it’s a huge opportunity because many consumers are going social app first. They’re ideating on social apps. They’re discovering new brands, new influencers right there. So the brands that have overindexed on social are seeing a benefit and are able to ensure that they can drive more new growth. They’re able to ensure that they’re converting off that traffic. And the key piece here is social affiliates or social media influencers who are driving affiliate programs. That type of traffic is converting five times better than regular social traffic. And the top performers that are able to invest in those types of programs are seeing strong, exciting interest. They’re seeing the revenue share, visit share from affiliate revenue is three times higher. And so really, it’s a big opportunity for brands to think about these major platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and tap into those audiences to drive newer, fresh growth, because that’s an area where you have a social media influencer and we find that users really trust them and they even get promo codes, discount codes, which provides more value. So that is helping drive this stronger conversion. And so if you’re looking to unlock fresh, strong, converting growth, going to social media influencers and driving on that strategy is a good way to go.

The other key piece we want to call out here, we’ve gone through a number of trends associated to top performers. We’ve talked about mobile. We’ve talked about loyalty. We’ve talked about social and we bucket it under this larger umbrella of AI driven growth. And what’s happening is much of this is intersecting. We’re finding that the generative AI platforms are really taking note of the broader conversation happening around a product. What’s new? What’s the best? What’s ideal? And taking that conversation and passing it with what we’re seeing in terms of the reviews and the loyalty and the evangelizing by customers of these brands on things like Reddit. All that is kind of coming and converging together and driving better outcomes for brands on these generative AI platforms. So ensuring these strategies are working in tandem with one another and harmoniously is super key because we’re at an inflection point with the generative AI platforms supporting these journeys. And then we also have these new channels that are having pronounced growth. Reddit, the social media platforms, Instagram, TikTok. And so being very focused on mobile experiences, given all this, is key. And what we really called out was, yes, the generative AI platform traffic is very laptop desktop focused right now, but it’s very much and very quickly becoming a bit more mobile focus. People are getting comfortable enough with the platform to download the app and start accessing the app on mobile devices. So ensuring that the mobile conversion is ready to meet with the influx of generative AI mobile traffic will be especially important in order to unlock more gains across the board. So that really informs what our guidance is for many of the brands and customers out there. Really optimize around AI enhanced traffic. We talked about a few of the tactics that will have to be employed. This will be a new muscle for many brands to think about these things working in tandem together. Focus on loyalty, especially in an impulse instant gratification world that we’re in right now. People can action on that instant gratification and that impulse buying if they trust the brand and the retailer and the app experience. That will really drive and hold the growth gains that you’re expecting. Mobile optimization, there’s still a lot of room and opportunity there for many retailers and brands to drive that at least at parity to laptop, desktop, if not more. And then the influencers have gotten very sophisticated with their audiences. They know what their audiences want, like. So partnering with them with high opportunity affiliate programs will net out new audiences, new better levels of conversion out of social. So really drive on that. And then again, putting all these things together in order to have a benefit where it builds outwards. So we see the impact of generative AI visibility. We ensure we’re owning the conversation with with social and evangelizing customers. And then we see that net out in terms of product reviews and customers really being passionate about their brands and products that all needs to come together. So that really kind of rounds out our view and insights so far. And I’ll hand it over to Tara and we can kind of get into the broader conversation here and what customers are seeing.

Thank you so much, Vivek. I learned a ton. Pre-reading the material and listening to it again, it’s complicated.

And one of the things that we wanted to kind of demystify demystify is what are we hearing in our day to day conversations with customers? And with that, I brought three partners with me, Marla Mims, Stephanie Cavatone and Brian Rigby to share what they’re seeing in their day to day customer interactions.

So I’m going to start with Marla. Marla, I’d love to hear how are you seeing today’s macroeconomic environment shape customer purchasing behavior and expectations? Yeah. So what we’re seeing with the current macroeconomic environment with inflation, changing interest rates, tariff driven price increases, it continues to put pressure on consumer wallets. As we’d expect, there’s a bit of heightened price sensitivity. Shoppers are weighing essentials versus discretionary purchases a little bit more carefully. But at the same time, their expectations haven’t changed. Customers still want more added value, whether that’s through convenience, faster fulfillment or personalization to make the experience more relevant for them. They’re also becoming a little bit more discerning. They’re doing more review research, deeper product comparisons, and they’re being more selective about joining loyalty programs that they see as truly high quality. So overall, they’re spending with somewhat more scrutiny, but still expecting those high level experiences that are tailored and valuable.

I love that you mentioned loyalty programs. I’m a member of many of them, and it’s complicated to know which one is going to provide value. So I’d love to just kind of lean into a little bit of that. What role do they play, loyalty programs, in driving retention and strengthening long term customer value? What’s your POV on that? Yeah, so loyalty programs have been around for a long time, but they’ve really evolved beyond just points and discounts. Today, they’re one of the most powerful ways that brands have to build those customer relationships and deliver the personalized experiences. At 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ, we think of a great loyalty program as being built on three pillars, those being utility, novelty and recognition, and community and belonging.

Personally, in the last three years, I would say more than half of my customers have either started the process or completed an overhaul of their own loyalty programs to become more customer-centric. They are understanding that rewarding the engagement of their customers in ways that are meaningful to the customer can be the deciding factor in whether the customer sticks with them or moves on to somebody else. I think the real opportunity for brands is in using the loyalty program as that source of first party data and leveraging that data in innovative ways. When a program is running at a high level, brands can use those insights and those data points to not only anticipate shifts in customer purchase behavior, but also to design loyalty strategies that are just as adaptive and personalized as the end to end shopping journey.

Helpful to know what you’re seeing in your day-to-day conversations with your customers. Thank you for that. Next, I’m going to pivot to Brian Rigby. Brian, thinking about the retail customers that you work with and the trends you are seeing more broadly, what do you think is changing about the way customers are being impacted by affiliates and social media influencers? Double down into the Vax topic. Yeah, I think influencers and affiliates have a really high level of trust with their audiences. The audience feels a very personal connection to them. So they’re trustworthy experts and probably they look a lot like their followers. So as we saw during the holiday season last year, affiliates and influencers actually drove a whole lot of traffic to site visits. They were responsible for about 20 percent of all of the site traffic, which is a big increase from the prior year and something we’re going to continue to or we expect to see again. So the brands that are really leaning into having partnerships with affiliates and influencers are doing better. That content is really powerful.

Vivek mentioned that the conversion rate is a whole lot higher than just ads you may see on social media from an influencer who’s actually demoing a product. So some of the retail customers that I work with actually have a great following with influencers because they can help showcase a product and show what it actually looks like. So it’s helping somebody with the research. It eliminates a lot of the unknowns of what a product actually looks like outside of just a brand’s pictures that have been carefully curated. And you can actually see the results of a product as you’re using it. So it tends to have a really strong launch as well with new products because there’s this element of seeing how it’s going to work. But then you also feel like there’s a community around it. You’re driven to buy the product because of the aspect of being part of a movement.

The sofa, what it’s going to look like in my family room to the eyeshadow, what is it going to look like with my new outfit. I love both of those. Personally, we use those a lot at our house. To just lean into that a little more, when you think about social media and I think back on one of the fun clips I just saw on my phone this morning while I was getting ready for work. How much of these clips are actually just enjoyment versus driving impact to both sales and purchases? I think it depends on the channel. And the brands that seem to be winning the most are the ones that are pretty particular about the social media channels they pick. So as an example, Pinterest is really good for idea boards. So when people are working on a home improvement project or if they’re trying to get an idea for new looks, that’s a great place to start. They can get a whole lot of inspiration for different shopping trends. TikTok is where you see things move really fast. There’s a whole lot of viral trends that come out of that. A lot of products that launch and move very quickly. It really depends on the channel. But you also see that social media is driving a whole lot of just mobile phone usage. So online traffic during the holiday season last year came about 60 percent of all online traffic came from mobile devices. So that’s people spending a lot of time on small screens. And then that turned into revenue around three and a half billion dollars. So that’s a big purchase, a big share of wallet. But the other thing that you see is in the evenings during the holidays, a lot of people are turning to their phones, just looking for a little bit of a break. And so we actually saw a huge spike in the hours of 8 to 10 p.m. after a whole lot of those social gatherings are starting to wind down. People are feeling a little bit of a need for a break. I’m not proud of this, but as a dad of teenagers, I can say that I can get a pretty good indicator of how my teens are feeling by how quickly the phones come out and when they need a little bit of break. And we see that translating to purchasing behavior as well. People are using their phones as a break and that leads to purchases.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I think I made at least 50 percent of all of my holiday purchases last year through my phone. So I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen this year. I can only imagine what it’s going to go up to this year. Thank you, Brian. Moving to Stephanie Cavatone. Would love to learn about what you’re seeing and working with your customers so far this year.

Are your current retail clients benefiting from the growth of Gen-AI referrals? What are you seeing for them? I would say yes and no. I think that the data is there to support the growth. But I think that a lot of my customers have a lot of questions on how do they actually really take advantage of it. So in working with one of my clients, we were just talking last week about how do they actually set up AI traffic segments within their current analytic tools. They’re focused on creating sort of LLM traffic segments, which can include referring domains or UTMs from other LLM referrers, such as AI campaign tracking. So again, sort of updating sort of the way they’re used to doing business and putting in place those measures that are going to help them sort of understand what’s coming from this traffic, as well as then how to take advantage or grow that. The other thing that our clients are trying to do is also analyze how their products are being represented outside of their own websites. So I know Brian talked a lot about social media. How are the products being shown on Pinterest, on different social media outlets, on blogs or different search engines? So thinking about those things, I would say that the knowledge is there that the traffic is being generated. But I think that there needs to be sort of that next step around sort of making sure that what you’re currently tracking that you’re able to do now in a different lens. Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. And then just to kind of lean a little bit more into what you’re speaking about, kind of any other recommendations that you would share with retailers to help them capitalize on the stage of growth for air referrals? Anything else kind of you’d recommend? Sure. Just building on what I said earlier, I would say they definitely should be thinking about how are they optimizing their product detail pages? Are they structuring content with clear headings or FAQs so that when the AI is actually looking for that information to answer questions, it’s easily translated over? They also should think about how do they expand their content beyond their website? So how do they work with Reddit’s a great example where people are looking for information and looking for sort of peer references? How are they getting their content over to those other different sources for information? Finally, I think, and I’m sure probably a lot of our customers are doing this, but that need to evolve from just search engine optimization to really generative engine optimization. So what is your actual strategy around that? They want to make sure that they’re amplifying sort of this user generated content in our media and reviews. So again, making sure that there’s an overall strategy to number one, take advantage of that user generated content.

Look at sort of do they want to do paid creator campaigns, influencer partnerships, things like that. Again, because AI tools will tend to summarize or reference user generated content when recommending products. So it’s really rethinking what is our overall strategy and how are we leveraging that? So I think there’s some work that needs to be done. And then also mapping, you know, we talked a little bit about loyalty programs. You know, it does that loyalty program align with that GEO strategy as well. So thinking about those kinds of things and really evolving your planning to like, you know, actively go after this traffic, track it, analyze it and then grow it. So great advice, great advice. I love how we started with kind of what we’re seeing in trends and then heard what we’re seeing through through the voices here, what we’re seeing in our day to day conversations with our customers. Vivek joined us back. So thanks for joining us back. We’re going to open it up to Q&A for everybody on the webinar. And so we do have a few questions that came in in advance to kind of start us off. But at any given time, feel free to drop any questions in the Q&A section and we’ll kind of go through them as we go. So just to kind of feed us some questions that came in up front. And the first question I have is what some and anyone can answer the question. What are some ways to use AI to generate online to offline traffic? It’s a common question that gets asked online to offline.

I’ll take that one because I think it’s very exciting that the generative AI platforms are definitely keeping in mind the criteria that users are prompting with. And so if they’re saying something like I need this item today or if they are trying to ensure that where can I get this item without with taking on any shipping costs, so like a buy online pickup in store type situation that can be very helpful in making sure that the consumer can get additional value if they’re willing to forego the shipping. I think there’s also this opportunity for the generative AI platforms to really understand the inventory situation happening across different stores, different footprint across the US. And I think where we see an opportunity there is kind of like what Stephanie was mentioning is making sure the sites are in a place where the LLM bots can crawl very effectively and pick up that information and direct that consumer to a location if that’s what it’s absorbing from the user’s prompts.

That’s good. Thank you for that. Appreciate it.

Which retail brands are using Gen AI well? I know customers ask us all the time, who’s doing it great? Do we do have any thoughts on that? I want to hand it off to the people working directly with the customers.

I was going to say, at least for my customers, they’re not great yet, but they’re going to be great because I’ve been encouraged with, if I look sort of with the teams that I’m interacting, there are new sort of very specific Gen AI teams that are focused around this. So I think the brands that are going to do that, I will do a personal shout out. I think Gap, they’ve really had a transformative year over the past year, and they are doing some great things with their campaigns and their products and sort of leveraging sort of what people are wearing. And you can sort of, if you’re on Instagram, you can actually see inspiration click directly and gets takes you right to their app to actually go and purchase something. And then, you know, I think, you know, they’re also doing a great job and sort of looking around sort of what’s influencing certain demographics. And we were just talking this morning about the, you know, the Cat Eye campaign that just launched this week. And I think that’s going to be a really great example, you know, of, you know, my daughter personally has been watching it on Instagram and she’s like really excited about the brand. So I think sort of that, so cross sort of social media. But again, I think they’re doing, and they’re going to do even better because they just brought in some new people to really focus specifically on this. Yeah. What I’m hearing you say is it has multiple different legs and arms that you need to think about. You need to think about who are, who is your audience today? Who are you going after? And then the last piece that you mentioned is when customers are thinking, do I have the right talent in the building? Do I need to educate anybody in my building to learn so that they can bring the goodness forward? Or do we need to hire and look outside or partner with folks? I think it’s, I think that we tend to sometimes think about sort of the actual, you know, here are sort of the findings. But then is your org ready to like take advantage of this? And, you know, I know they’ve had some transformation within their org around people specializing in things. And so, you know, that’s something I think you need to think about to your point. You know, they, you know, do you have the right talent or someone who actually understands this? Yeah. Yeah. Sarah, I also mentioned the hardware stores because I mentioned the home, home projects, do it your DIY. Some of those major players in that space have invested a lot in DIY support, giving customers a real strong sense of the different items. And, you know, what size screw, you know, what’s the dimensions of different pieces of equipment, all that investment in the site properties is being pulled in well by the LLM. So when someone goes from how do I build this project to I need the materials, they’re there for that traffic.

And we’re expecting that, right? We’re expecting to get today I was today I was out there and asking how to do a bike ride from point A to point B that was within an X type of gravel, within X type of miles. And I expected a really good response and a link to a map. Marla, I didn’t mean to cut you off, but really. No, no, that’s OK. I was just going to add that all of my customers are curious and seeking ways for AI to help them when it comes to efficiency gains within their own processes. So everybody wants to figure out how I can help them do more with less and and be conservative with their with their own resources. Additionally, when it comes to the customer facing side, I’m seeing a lot more investment in chatbots on websites and particularly for brands who have really large inventory sold through their website or brands that have that more considered purchase experience. Something that requires more thought or interview or something. The chatbot helps kind of mimic that in-store conversation with the associate and give that experience at home versus coming into store. That’s good. That’s good.

I’d love to I’d love to pivot and understand how can 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ help, right? So when we think about it, how is 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ helping customers take advantage of capturing traffic and revenue from an AI sourced traffic like chat GPT or others? What is 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ doing for you and Ford? You have a fact. This would be a great one for you. Yeah, I think Stephanie called out the great one in just parsing this type of traffic from LLMs into different sources and different tracking parameters to ensure that we’re correctly measuring what’s coming from what platform. And the LLM optimizer recently released is fantastic in ensuring the brands out there and retailers are well positioned for being that having their content picked up by LLMs and ensuring that, you know, is everything is the best foot forward being pushed in order to ensure visibility across the generative AI platform. So I think those are key ways 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ’s driving it. I would say in terms of generative AI and efficiency, Marla was saying, you know, there’s a lot of work being done with our Gen Studio content analytics, those products, Workfront. All that is driving efficiency around how do brands run campaigns at scale with Gen AI as a part of the process in terms of creative generation, making sure the metrics are optimized relative to the creative attributes. It’s really fascinating. So I think it’s a very exciting time for us here at 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ and also our brands and customers.

That’s great. And we’ve gotten some questions in the chat box. So thank you. We’re in the Q&A. So thank you for maybe we can kind of pivot to that to make sure we catch a few of them. One that just popped into my mind as I’m not reading them even in sequence order was how can a B2B customer use AI to help generate traffic to a site and ultimately help move the customer through the e-commerce sales funnel? I like that B2B lens. We haven’t talked too much about B2B yet.

The B2B, I think, has opportunities pretty staggering because of the level of research that prospects are doing in order to determine do I want to go down this path or that path with a particular vendor or player. And I think ultimately making super rich content out there available, asset creation, white papers, all that is being now absorbed by the LLMs around what’s differentiating one B2B player versus another. And in short, there’s a couple of pieces there. Obviously, a number of the brands are using Gen AI to support the engagement with prospects and speed up efficiency and turn that documents and things like that around. But ultimately, in terms of what we’ve been talking about today in generative AI platforms, many of the same sort of tactics that we speak on in terms of retail and B2C do apply to B2B in that you essentially want to own the broader conversation. So you emerge as the leader and that’s what the LLM is going to take in and respond back to the user with. That’s good. That’s helpful. I’ve seen one of the B2B customers that I work with has seen some efficiencies with creating sales sheets and other assets that are specific to types of customers, industries, you know, anything that has regulations. You can build out parameters that will help you make better content and drive customers to an appropriate offering. So they actually know what they’re getting. It’s going to be relevant and can help drive more effective sales and help the sales team.

Great. That’s great. I am seeing a few questions about kind of some very detailed technical specs and we will be reviewing these very technical questions and be sharing out those links afterwards. So we’ll go through those specific questions right now. But we definitely will address them and we can send them out in advance or after the call.

One question that I thought was interesting that I saw is how do we identify good traffic versus bad traffic, especially the traffic that comes from Gen-II or bots? Is all Gen-II source traffic considered good, true traffic? Like, it depends, but we’d love to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah, I think it’s, I think the metrics speak to what is driving efficiency and effectively the experiences that we want to support, whether it be traffics from LLM or anywhere else. It has to be traffic that’s engaging with your content, exploring pages and ultimately purchasing and converting effectively. So being able to, we’re in a place right now where a lot of this traffic is new and what it would be key to do is kind of determine, you know, how is it navigating across your site? What, you know, what is the behavior? If it’s just coming in and bouncing in mass, that kind of tells you something versus the traffic that’s, you know, kind of operating more as your traditional journeys have and is doing what you need them to do in terms of goals and objectives. Yeah, that’s great. One other question that came in is how do I ensure my site’s ready, right, for geo and empower my team to operationalize any page created that keeps geo in mind? I’m sure others on the panel have some additional thoughts on this, but I’ll just say that the muscle that we’re looking to see develop in terms of geo is thinking, A, is the page the strongest it can be in terms of kind of like the asset generation that Brian was speaking to? How rich is the content? How crawlability is? That’s one aspect of it. But then the other is making sure that that content lives on beyond your site. Is it being picked up by affiliates or, you know, third party media properties that are getting articles circulated? Are we seeing response in terms of engagement with that content, both on social channels and on the site itself? All that now has to be a part of the equation in order to, you know, level up and, you know, inch out others that are still vying for that type of traffic.

That’s good. One question that came in before we started that’s near and dear to my heart is kind of leaning into the search side of it. So I want to make sure we cover this. How is AI transforming search and what are some successful strategies brands are using to drive differentiated traffic beyond traditional search engines? Search is usually a huge money driver for customers. When they think about search, it’s different than it was a year ago. It’s different than it was six months ago, and it’s going to do different as we go. But just leaning into that might be helpful. Yeah, I think the paid search is still dominant, which we were talking about, and search is still quite a heavy, you know, component of traffic coming to the sites. I think it becomes a lot about the use cases and what consumers how quickly they want certain things and what the information is, if it’s, you know, about a location or something like that, like, what can I just is it instead of having to just put in the directions into a GPS and find a place? Do I go to an LLM and then tell it to give me that, that navigation, it’s more likely going to be just go to the GPS app and find your location. And so that ends up being a key component is what is what is the use case and what we try to get out of the customer is we talk about the loyal customer and the repeat buyer, that type of customer knows what they want, they know the brand they want to get, you know, that’s going to help search and it’s going to be a natural tailwind given how long search has been dominant. But if someone’s new to an area and they’re needing more information, that’s that’s where these LLM are really going to shine and where the traffic is going to really balloon. Yeah, that’s helpful. Just looking at the time, I want to make sure that we wrap on time. I just want to personally thank Vivek, Marla, Stephanie and Brian for being a part of today and sharing the insights 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ’s seen and then our individual insights we’re seeing with our customers. Hopefully everybody that joined today or is listening to this recording after the fact learned something new, I know I personally did. This is something that any CSM or account director or person at 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ would love to have further conversations with each and every person on this call. So please engage with us as you’re having conversations about other topics and we’d love to lean in and continue the conversation because it’s an evolving topic. And so what we covered today will continue to evolve and we’ll have more webinars in the future to share what we’re learning in real time so you can stay up to speed just like we are. And with that, I wish everybody a wonderful afternoon and thank you for your time today. Bye everyone.

Thank you.