Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast
Feed your growth mindset. Ecommerce is growing, and so are the challenges and opportunities for online retailers. In the Growing Ecommerce podcast, Mike Ryan and other smec experts are joined by industry leaders in ecommerce, digital marketing, and data science. By sharing business trends, practical solutions, and best practices, this podcast helps online retailers solve the challenges of tomorrow.
Episodes
112 episodes
1 in 4 of Your Exact-Match Impressions Now Come From AI Max
Google's AI Max is now serving 1 in 4 of your exact-match ad impressions — and it's quietly reshaping Search and Performance Max campaigns. Chris and Mike deliver the AI Max deep-dive they promised last episode, breaking down exactly how that n...
Meta's Ad Costs Are Rising: What It Means for Your Budget
Meta, Google, and Amazon just posted Q2 2026 earnings — and the numbers reveal exactly where ad costs are headed next for advertisers. Plus: Shein's IPO filing shows what happens when ad dependency meets a broken profit model.Chris and M...
Google’s CSS "20% Discount" Myth, Busted | Plus: The Hidden CPC Tax of PMax + Shopping
Everyone selling in Europe has heard the pitch: use a third-party CSS and get a "20% discount" on your Google Shopping bids. Mike Ryan and Chris finally settle what that number actually means — and it’s not a discount at all. They break down th...
A German Court Just Made Google Liable for Its AI | Plus: Temu & Shein Fall Off a Cliff
A small regional court in Germany just handed down a ruling with global consequences: Google is liable for what its AI Overviews say. The "AI can make mistakes" disclaimer? Insufficient. Text generated by Gemini counts as Google’s own words — a...
AI Max vs DSA, PMax vs Shopping, tROAS vs Max Conv. Value | Google Ads World Cup
We turned Google Ads into a World Cup bracket. Three head-to-head rounds, two hosts, no referee — just the campaign types and bid strategies advertisers argue about most.In this episode of Growing Ecommerce, Mike Ryan and Chris go featur...
Google's Smart Bidding Change: Why Your ROAS Is About to Drop
Starting August 17th, Google is quietly rewriting how Smart Bidding treats campaigns that are limited by budget — and if your account is currently over-delivering on Roas, this affects you directly.In this episode, Mike Ryan and Chris br...
Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) Explained: What Every Ecommerce Brand Must Know
AI is coming for your checkout — and the infrastructure behind it is called Universal Commerce Protocol. In this episode, Mike Ryan breaks down exactly what UCP is, why Google and Shopify built it together, who's already on board, ...
Google Goes a Box Too Far — Plus Why OpenAI’s $100B Ad Dream Doesn’t Add Up
Google just announced the biggest change to search in its history — and not everyone is happy. At Google I/O, the search bar became a search box, signaling a full shift toward conversational, Gemini-powered search. The market is already reactin...
Google's AI Now Picks Which Product You Sell | Plus: ChatGPT Shopping Ads Arrive Too
Google's new AI-powered Shopping ads can now decide which of your products wins the click — and it's optimizing for the user, not for your margin, your brand, or your strategy. This Gemini-built format writes its own product descriptions and ma...
The EU Is Breaking Temu & Shein — Plus Google's Hidden AI Metric
The EU is finally using its teeth on Chinese e-commerce — and the auction landscape is already shifting. Mike and Chris break down what falling CPCs in Europe mean for your accounts, why the July 1st customs change could matter more than any fi...
Meta Overtakes Google in Ad Spend & What It Means for Ecommerce │GML 2026 Recap
Meta has overtaken Google in ad budgets - and for ecommerce advertisers, that changes everything.It means Google is on the offensive. It means the pressure to split your budget between platforms is about to intensify. And it means that i...
Google Just Added Text Ads to Shopping Campaigns — Is AI Max for Shopping a Win or a Trap?
Google just dropped a PMax special — and there's a lot to unpack.In this episode of Growing Ecommerce, Mike Ryan and Chris break down three major updates reshaping how ecommerce advertisers run Performance Max and Shopping campaigns in 2...
Don't Buy ChatGPT Ads Until You Watch This (Plus: The Google Cloud vs AWS Cage-Match)
In this episode of Growing Ecommerce, Mike Ryan and Chris Scharmueller dive into the much-anticipated updates to the OpenAI ads platform and break down Google's staggering Q1 earnings report.While OpenAI has finally transitioned their ad...
RIP DSA: What to expect from September's Sunset
In this episode of Growing E-commerce, Mike Ryan and Chris Scharmueller dive into the end of an era: Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) are officially dying.While Google's new AI Max for Search currently sits at a tiny 1.5-2% adoption rat...
How OpenAI Just Lost the Ecommerce War
In this episode of Growing Ecommerce, Mike Ryan and Chris Scharmueller break down the latest shifts in the battle for AI dominance and the future of online shopping.We analyze the quiet death of OpenAI's Agentic Commerce Protoco...
Inside Google's UCP playbook — why OpenAI CAN'T catch up
Google just quietly won the agentic commerce war — and most ecommerce retailers haven't even noticed. In this episode of Growing Ecommerce, Mike Ryan and Chris break down the three UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol) updates Google just shipped, ...
OpenAI's "Delusional" $100B Ad Target | Plus: The Fall of Allbirds
In this episode of Growing E-commerce, Mike Ryan and Chris Scharmueller unpack two massive stories highlighting the current realities—and potential delusions—of the tech and retail sectors.First, we discuss the quiet and stagge...
The “Amazon Killer”? How JD's Joybuy Invades Europe | PLUS: Meta's Zero-Click Threat
Is the “Zero-Click” shopping era finally here, and are European retailers ready for a three-way war between Amazon, Temu, and JD.com’s Joybuy?In this episode of Growing Ecommerce, Mike Ryan and Chris Scharmueller unpack a huge week in e...
OpenAI’s $25 BILLION Loss – is Agentic Shopping Dead?
OpenAI is facing a projected $25 billion shortfall, and their attempt to monetize ecommerce is already falling apart.In this episode of Growing Ecommerce, Mike Ryan and Chris Scharmüller ask the billion-dollar question: Is the drea...
How the Top 1% Retailers Run Google Ads in 2026
Ever wonder what the biggest e-commerce brands are discussing behind closed doors? We are opening up the vault. 🤫In this episode of Growing Ecommerce, Mike Ryan and Chris Scharmueller give you a backstage pass to their recent s...
Temu Hits 71% Market Share – Should You Worry? Plus: Google's Coming for Your Landing Pages
Is the "clash of the titans" coming for your profit margins, and is Google about to take away your website traffic? In this episode of Growing E-commerce, Mike Ryan and Chris Sharma tackle two massive, existential shifts threat...
Sam Altman SCREWS UP ChatGPT Shopping | Plus: Google Product Feed Deep Dive
Why did OpenAI quietly kill its shopping feature, and what does it mean for the future of Google Ads? 🚨In this episode of Growing E-commerce, Mike Ryan and Chris Sharma tackle the reality of the "AI takeover" in paid search. Fol...
The State of PPC 2026: Live from SMX Munich w/ Wijnard Meijer (TrueClicks) and Frederick Vallaeys (Optmyzr)
If you want to know how your peers are actually handling the grind, the Google Ads updates, and the "AI takeover," this episode is a must-watch. We recorded a special edition of Growing Ecommerce live from SMX Munich! Host Mike...
The end of Dynamic Search Ads is here! Insights from 200+ AI Max campaigns
In this episode of Growing E-commerce, Mike Ryan and Chris from Smarter Ecommerce (smec) tackle the massive news that DSA's time on Earth is limited. With DSA going the way of the dinosaurs, Google is pushing advertisers toward AI Max ...
The Expensive Problem with Google’s Search Partner Network (SPN): Insights from 1,500+ Campaigns
🚨 Breaking Google Ads News: Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) will be going "the way of the dinosaurs." As confirmed by Google's Ginny Marvin, DSA's time is limited, paving the way for AI Max as the future-proof campaign standard.Is the Google Ad...
