Insight

11 min read - Every eCommerce business tracks conversions. Most can tell you which channels, campaigns, and ads drove those conversions, at least according to their attribution model. But here is the uncomfortable question most attribution dashboards cannot answer: would those customers have bought anyway? That question...

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10 min read - Michaels, North America's leading arts and crafts retailer, just launched "Ask Mike," an AI-powered shopping assistant built with Google Cloud's Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience. What makes this story noteworthy is not the technology itself. It is the speed, the approach, and the early results, all of which carry practical lessons for eCommerce...

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10 min read - Nike announced on Tuesday that it is consolidating more than 1,000 digital storefronts across China's marketplace platforms down to a handful of official channels. By January 2027, the brand's online presence in China will rest within the Nike app, Nike.com.cn, and flagship experiences on Tmall, JD.com, and Douyin. Everything else closes. ...

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63 min read - Most eCommerce stores today run three to four analytics tools simultaneously. Gartner's...

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11 min read - On 21 July, Search Engine Land published a cluster of articles that, taken together, paint a picture of a fundamental shift in how eCommerce brands need to think about search visibility. The convergence of research on ChatGPT topic ownership, category framing in AI recommendations, schema markup for AI search, and Google's rollout of Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite...

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12 min read - On July 24, 2026, Mastercard's revised standards for scam merchant monitoring, sometimes called SMMP, took effect. The rules, laid out in Mastercard's ...

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12 min read - On 20 July, Google confirmed via the Google...

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11 min read - New research from Gartner reveals a striking disconnect in how consumers interact with AI for customer service: customers are now three times more likely to use a third-party generative AI tool such as ChatGPT or Claude than a brand's own chatbot. More telling still, while third-party AI tool usage has doubled in the past year, brand chatbot adoption...

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13 min read - Google AI mode is becoming a commerce platform, and the EU just ordered Google to open its data On July 16, two announcements landed within hours of each other, and together they sketch out eCommerce's near future. Google began rolling out Connected Apps in AI Mode, letting US users complete shopping, design...

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10 min read - A striking statistic emerged from retail industry research highlighted by Retail Dive...

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9 min read - The National Retail Federation's latest forecast says back-to-school spending is set to reach record highs in 2026. At the same time, nearly two-thirds of consumers have already started shopping for the season, and affordability is their number one concern. If that sounds contradictory, welcome to the paradox defining modern retail. The numbers...

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11 min read - Search Engine Land published a deep dive this week on hydration and SEO that every eCommerce team should read carefully. While the concept of hydration, the process by which server-rendered HTML becomes interactive in the browser, has been a developer concern for years, its implications for search visibility have never been more significant...

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10 min read - A convergence of data points from the past 48 hours paints a picture that eCommerce merchants can no longer ignore: AI-powered platforms are rapidly replacing traditional search as the primary discovery mechanism for products, tools, and brands. The implications are profound, immediate, and largely underestimated. ...

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10 min read - Google has confirmed it is investigating reports of reviews going missing from Google Business Profiles, a problem that has been simmering since late 2025 but escalated sharply in early July. As ...

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8 min read - Two pieces of research published on July 2 paint a detailed, and somewhat uncomfortable picture of how AI is fundamentally reshaping product and brand discovery. When read together, they form a clear directive for eCommerce merchants: the discovery landscape is shifting beneath your feet, and the brands that survive will be the ones that own their data...

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10 min read - Amazon's Prime Day just generated $26.4 billion in US online retail spend across four days in June, a 9.3% increase over last year, according to ...

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11 min read - In a week where the eCommerce industry is still processing the surreal spectacle of Allbirds, once valued at $4 billion, completing its transformation into an AI infrastructure company called Smartbird, Reformation has filed for an IPO that tells the exact opposite story. And it might be the most important narrative correction the direct-to-consumer...

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11 min read - Walmart agreed on 24 June 2026 to acquire connected TV (CTV) advertising platform Vibe.co, reportedly for $1.4 billion, in a deal that underscores just how aggressively major retailers are investing in their advertising businesses. Coming just two years after Walmart's $2.3 billion acquisition of TV maker Vizio, this deal represents a strategic doubling-down...

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9 min read - A new study by SEO researcher Lily Ray has exposed a troubling dynamic in Google's AI Overviews that every eCommerce brand needs to understand: Google is citing brands' own "best of" listicles as sources, but recommending competing products 69% of the time. Combine this with fresh Pew Research data showing 60% of Americans now read AI summaries in search...

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10 min read - On 13 June 2026, eCommerce security firm Sansec disclosed one of the most significant supply chain attacks of the year: a coordinated compromise targeting OptinMonster, TrustPulse, and PushEngage, three widely used marketing and conversion tools that collectively serve over 1.2 million websites. The malware adds rogue admin accounts and plants hidden...

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