Category Archives: Media
ChatGPT Ads is growing up
Whilst ChatGPT Ads are still in beta; in the past few weeks the platform grew a little. OpenAI has now launched CPC bidding, expanded its self serve Ads Manager in limited territories (USA, CA, AUS & NZ) + confirmed integrations with four major agency holding groups alongside a growing list of ad-tech partners. …
IR B2B Conference 2026
Yesterday at the IR B2B Conference in Victoria Warehouse, Manchester I joined a panel on “Post purchase momentum: driving repeat revenue and B2B loyalty”. 3(takeaways) from our session: Lower CAC ≠ spend less. Spend smarter. Suppress low value accounts, segment by LTV/margin, optimise (think “Google’s” 70/20/10 as a guide to paid media focus split)% for…
Agentic Commerce Summit Speaker
I spoke yesterday at the Agentic Commerce Summit in London on a panel titled… ‘Strategic decision making: trust, control & build Vs integrate’ Alongside Mrunal Bhagat & Ed Bradley we covered quite a lot of ground(!) and here are my top 4 reflections: AI is already reshaping the customer journey (e.g GEO). Upstream, discovery is…
Vibe Marketing Feature
I was recently asked for a guest post by Vibe Marketing (Marketing & Tech magazine) about Performance Marketing; below are the headlines (link to the full article below)… Why are many in Performance Marketing Looking at Shrinking Returns? For years, performance marketing distanced itself from brand and creative disciplines; positioning itself as a numbers game…
Two AI Futures Are Emerging
Two AI Futures Are Emerging; and they’re structurally different An interesting way of viewing our (Collective. Global) AI maturity is one of not racing to the biggest and best-est model; rather the emergence of two distinct AI philosophies. For example China is not necessarily trying to “win” the same AI game that The West is…
Retail eCom North Speaker
Retail Marketing Insights: AI – where performance marketing + CX combine I had a great fireside chat yesterday at eTail North with Ben James on what’s working with AI in eCommerce businesses. A few headline takeaways: AI isn’t plug & play growth; it amplifies what already exists. Strong data + clear commercial logic = gains….
B2B eCommerce conference speaker
I will be speaking at the b2b eCommerce conference around Turning first orders into repeat customers; should be a great event ‘up north’
ChatGPT Paid Ads Beta
ChatGPT quietly introducing ads is a big CX/ marketing development for 2026. As of 16th January, OpenAI confirmed ad testing inside ChatGPT for logged-in USA users on the Free tier + the new $8/£8 “Go” plan. The majority of Paid tiers (Plus, Pro, Team & Enterprise) remain ad free. Clearly they will look to roll out…
UCP Universal Commerce Protocol
UCP: Universal Commerce Protocol and its potential impact on the entire shopping journey Google’s announcements yesterday around agentic commerce, the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and direct checkout in Search + Gemini signals an open standard that lets AI agents work through the shopping funnel; from discovery > purchase > sale support. This represents an evolution…
oLLM eCommerce analysis – 2025
Overview: Great analysis from Prof Maximilian Kaiser & Prof Christian Schulze on oLLM’s (outbound Large Language Model referral e.g ChatGPT, Perplexity, Co Pilot, Claude, etc) Full paper available on SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5585812 Direct PDF: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/5585812.pdf?abstractid=5585812&mirid=1 Summary: This research constituted 12 months of 1st party Google Analytics data from 973 online shops & ~$20bn in cumulative…