Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast

How the Top 1% Retailers Run Google Ads in 2026

• Smarter Ecommerce • Season 4 • Episode 30

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0:00 | 32:30

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 strategy meetings with some of Europe's largest retailers. We are unpacking the exact playbooks, fears, and tactics dominating the boardrooms of the top 1% right now.

Forget the basic tutorials—this is what the mega-brands are actually testing. First, we tackle Google's controversial new push for "Demand Led Growth" (DLG). Are the top retailers really giving Google unlimited budgets, or is there a smarter way to use Target ROAS to capture demand spikes.

We also break down the reality of the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and why Europe's smartest marketing teams are obsessing over conversational feed attributes to win the AI search war. Finally, we reveal what CMOs are secretly telling their CFOs: With Chinese giants like Temu driving up costs, cheap incremental growth is dead. Discover why Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) is the new survival tool for 2026.

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About Smarter Ecommerce (smec):

Smarter Ecommerce (smec) empowers e-commerce brands with AI-driven PPC automation that optimizes for profit and business outcomes while maintaining strategic control.

The platform activates first-party data - profit margins, customer lifetime value, and key business metrics - to automate campaign optimization toward goals like profitability and efficient growth, while detailed campaign insights provide full transparency and enable PPC teams to focus on strategic oversight rather than manual execution.

As a Google Premier Partner and three-time Microsoft Retail Partner of the Year, smec manages over €500 million in ad spend and drives €5B+ in annual e-commerce revenue for 350+ global retail clients including THG, Snipes, REWE, and Intersport.

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Intro: What happens inside the boardrooms of Europe's top 1%?

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to Growing E commerce. I'm one of your hosts, Mike Ryan, and with me is our other host, Chris. Hey, Chris. Hello, sir. So we've got a good one for you again today. I mean, I think we try to make every episode good. We've been in kind of QBR season. Um we did we just did a lot of our quarterly talks with some of our clients. And you know clients. That's true. Yeah, I I can't humble brag about this, so I'm just gonna brag. Uh we're talking with some pretty, some pretty large brands and retailers um by European standards. There's the humble and yeah, I mean, some of the topics that we've been talking about, we think would just be really relevant to a broader audience. And I think it's interesting for you two to know what's on people's mind, what's on the agenda in these meetings. So that's gonna definitely include uh DLG, which is if you don't know that acronym, it's a new part of Google sales agenda called demand-led growth. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about UCP, uh Growth Pressure, Universal Commerce Protocol, growth pressure, and more.

SPEAKER_01

Data challenges. Yes. I mean, I think what by the way, uh I I didn't want to brag. I just wanted to add that uh Well for context. Yeah, for context, because uh the the topics we we unpack today and talk about today should just reflect what even the biggest of the big ones are are thinking about and where the challenges lie with with these big organizations. Yeah. Um and I think it's very telling uh in which which which which era we are operating in right now, and uh I think a lot to learn from the big ones. Yes. So this is why and a little bit of bragging, maybe. A little bit of bragging. Why not? Why not? Why not? But the European part was so humble. Yeah, yeah. Well, especially when it comes from it from an American. I love it. All right, let's jump right into it. So uh setting the stage. Uh QBR time, QBR stands for quarterly business review. It's basically a strategy meetings we have with our with our clients in general, depending on on the service scope and um not just on the size, but uh yeah, it happened now that the last uh two or three months, Mike and I were visiting rather large clients of ours, and where it's really about reviewing a quarter, sometimes the last six months, and plan the next three to six months. And uh strategic topics pop up quite regularly. Yeah. And today we want to talk about a couple of them. Of course, in an anonymized way, but what are the patterns we see? Um, what is what is moving? Even even the big ones. And uh which topics we want to start, which topic we want to start, Mike?

The "Unlimited Budget" Trap: Unpacking Demand Led Growth (DLG)

SPEAKER_00

Um, I mean we can kick it off with uh with DLG, maybe. DLG. Um because yeah, so like these QBRs, what I love, it's just a break from business as usual. And um I'm I'm personally not in like these more weekly or high frequency um touch points. And so I love when I get invited to one of these. Yes. I'm always happy about that. But DLG is something I uh this one surfaced to me because um it was getting raised more often. And it's something that uh advertisers were bringing to us and asking our opinion about it. And you can guess who was bringing it to the advertisers. I guess it's Google. Yeah, it's Google. All right, yes. So DLG is super I have to you they've done a great job. Demand-led growth. Yes, which is which is a code word. And I don't so I don't want to be too negative on this because uh it's not uh it's not all good or bad, but I'm just admiring their sales skills. Um because the demand Jed demand-led growth is their concept or phrasing for having an open budget and unlimited budget. And that is it's a very different framing. You know, if you go to the clients or to advertisers and you say, you should give us a blank check, that would land a certain way. But their argumentation here, and it's not totally wrong, it's it's rather sophisticated, their argumentation here is that if you have a budget and you're and you're hitting that in a given day or stuff like that, or in over the course of a month, um, then you are missing opportunity. Yeah, exactly. And and if you and if you have um an open budget, you your costs can more readily follow that demand. So if there's a spike in demand on a given day, you can make sure that you were there for it. And meanwhile, you can still have an efficiency target in place, a ROAS target, to make sure that everything still kind of works out. Um so it's a sophisticated line of argumentation.

SPEAKER_01

It's sophisticated. I love the sales narrative. And by the way, we we we give we we sometimes shit on Google words. Do you? In this case, I'm I'm not even I'm I'm not even negative about it because I think it's reflecting to a certain degree also our point of view. I think limited budgets is is kind of kind of an old concept, and and what what you said is perfectly right. If you if you limit your budget, um you are you can't be demand-led because sometimes there's way more demand out there compared to the budget limits you set. So I like that idea. Uh honestly speaking, I like the sales narrative. And I think to our listeners out there, this this is the fun part, right? Google is really good at driving this into the market. And and they drive it to the small ones and to the big ones. Yeah. Uh and for me, Google is a very, very well-old uh sales machine. Yeah. Some features make don't make so much sense. This one, I'm very neutral and I'm rather positive, honestly speaking. Let's unpack it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I mean, and and uh but you know, it's often entering these organizations in a top-down manner. It's another skill approach. So they'll often approach um CMO or someone more senior and bring it down to the teams who might be a bit more skeptical toward it. And yeah, I view it neutral as well. Um I, you know, on the one hand, Google is already allowed to kind of play games with your daily costs. They're allowed to break your daily budget um by a large margin, actually. And so the question becomes like, is it really necessary? Because they can already span. How how limited are they really? Um so I think that's one of the more skeptical thoughts I have to do.

SPEAKER_01

Sure. Uh I quote on that, but uh for me, I think there's a there's a substantial difference. So by the way, the the the results we see across the board, um so clients um adopt this demand-led uh growth idea. Um they're they're mixed. Uh you really have outliers in both directions. Yeah. So I think it's worth giving it a shot. That's that's my stance on it.

SPEAKER_00

It's worth testing.

SPEAKER_01

It's worth testing. The substantial uh takeaway for me is, and that and that's why it's I think very much aligned with our point of view. Yeah, what's the what's the winning paid search playbook uh for the year 2026 and beyond is that Google now actively they're not just telling you open the budget and and let the demand decide how much you spend, but they are really telling you you have your efficiency targets in place and use the target RAWs. Yes, the RAW settings as a guidance for Google. Yes.

SPEAKER_00

And this is what we Yeah, we were talking uh uh earlier this season about using ROAS as a lever.

SPEAKER_01

As a lever, as a signal to Google. And this is why, like I said, we have a neutral stance on it. You you see a mixed bag of results, yeah. It's worth testing. And I I I love the idea that open budgets is not new, but that Google is really actively telling you use the ROAS as as a as a signal for the algorithm. That's for me somehow new.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and uh well, the other thing that I view positively here, because I've actually seen a trend. Uh I feel like we might have been talked about on here before, but I've actually seen a trend that in recent years of that this is kind of the opposite of this. And so they'll actually have um no ROAS target in place, and then they control the campaigns through cost. Yeah. They're using cost controls on the campaign. And so yeah, I favor this uh I mean, in principle, they achieve similar effects, but I favor this other way a bit better.

SPEAKER_01

It feels like I think message to to the listeners, uh I think it's worth a shot. Uh but you have to understand that that the hero's target setting now now becomes a dynamic, dynamic level for you, and you have to have an idea how to do it. I mean, the conversations we had with our clients, most of them do this based on gut feelings. Yeah. Which I think can be done way better, but you have to be aware of it. This is not a static game anymore. If you have demand-let growth active, open your budget, you you have to use the target target draws very dynamically. Yes. That that's I think uh one topic for a lot of clients, especially the big ones.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

What else do we have? UCP.

UCP Explained: Why Your Product Feed is Your Biggest Weapon

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, UCP. It's everywhere. Yes. And um, this is actually not coming from Google so much yet. Um so this is but advertisers are always asked to be able to do that. Or conservators. Yeah. Because they they see the press releases and stuff like that. They don't get a lot of concrete information, and um they there are other, you know, the part other partners are not always able to help them. Let's do it. That's in their Google Play.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, this this this is good for us. Um but but it's not about that. Now from from what are the this this prototypic questions we we we got we got asked?

SPEAKER_00

Yes. So questions like what what is UCP? And what do I need to do for UCP? And um yeah, I mean this this will partly depend on how your company is structured and stuff like that. But you know, we are often talking with performance marketers, paid search teams, stuff like this. And UCP in and of itself is not really an action item for them, a huge action item, because UPC, UCP is the is this infrastructure layer, and you have some work to do on the integration with your shop system there. So that's something for your shop system team. And this is, you know, I think an important message here is that um if you're using one of these, let's say modern or standardized, standardized shop systems, like um, because I don't want to say that bespoke shop systems can't be modern, but they're not standardized. But if you're using Shopify, for example, they're one of the partners driving this thing. So Shopify is gonna make this quite easy. Um and all the other shop systems will follow suit here. And so those advertisers will be at an inherent advantage because they're gonna be able to uh activate this rather smoothly. Um and otherwise, if you've got a bespoke system or a smaller solution or legacy stuff, then you have a little homework. But the documentation is there, and um, you know, so I like to kind of direct the conversation at that point to what I see is more relevant to the growth teams, the performance teams, um, which is really what's going on in their merchant center feeds.

SPEAKER_01

The data feed, right? The data feed is also in the center of this whole or should be in the center of this whole UCP discussion because it will matter first. Yeah. That's what we think, and it will matter the most, especially in these early stages of the code.

SPEAKER_00

And it's gonna extend beyond UCP for sure. So So, like, you know, in terms of the UCP-related homework, um, we don't know if we've talked about this before, but there are a couple of rather boring administrative fields that you have to populate. There's stuff like um I have to look, but like I think like tax compliance statements, um, some shipping or fulfillment. Everything related to costs, you have to be picture perfect. Yeah. So then and then you, you know, when it comes to this future-oriented stuff like the AI checkout and stuff like that, this is something that you opt in or out. There's a field for that, and that needs to be opted in or out at the product level. But that's that's what is kind of on you in this feed area for that. But it's everything that comes next. That's your overall feed hygiene, because we can get distracted by new attributes. But, you know, in the first place, your titles, your descriptions, the basics, your product types, this boring stuff that we've been talking about for years, but it still matters. Those are still basics and they're foundational. Yes. And having, you know, having all of your existing feed attributes, well populated, current, this is table set.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's a foundation. Where does the magic happen?

Feed Hygiene: The Real Secret to Winning AI Search Queries

SPEAKER_00

The potential competitive advantage here. I mean, we don't know yet, because it's just too new, but it comes from these new conversational attributes. And um the idea here, we we again we've talked a bit about this in the past, but this is something that is supposed to help ground Google's AI. Um, they want all that data from your landing page that they would have to crawl themselves otherwise, um and and and do all that kind of work. So they want things from like your QA's, reviews, and all kinds of places. Anything that you have in there that's not in your feed, they want it. Anything that might be in one of your other product feeds, like Meta or OpenAI, they want that too. They want as much data as they can possibly get. And this stuff is more semantically oriented, as you could say. Like it is, it is going in the direction of more text and conversational. It will be conversational. Exactly. And that should power these um these experiences. But um, you know, I think that this is this is something that we should be way more focused on than necessarily the UCP stuff. That has a place too, this this infrastructure. But in terms if you are a performance team, this this is where it gets more interesting because you have to decide um which of these attributes are relevant to your catalog. You have to decide your capability to populate each of these. You have to estimate what could be the the uplift or the impact of that, how hard is it going to be. And that that comes then down to prioritization. Um, because I I think if you try to do everything all at once, it won't work. It won't work, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And uh I think the beauty of this discussion uh or the discussions we had with our clients is that uh you you can put focus on one thing now where which where there is the highest probability you can be found in terms of okay, this will impact uh your your performance. I think there is a beauty in it. Yes. Again, there is there are leverages for you to outsmart competition. I always love that. You can you can outsmart tamer. We talked about that that in one of our episodes, the the big ones, you can outsmart them. Uh and I think you really have this this is one of the areas of let's say the Atlantic commerce noisy bubble. This is one of the areas where you should be really hands-on. Yes. And it drives the big ones as much as the small ones.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely absolutely. And uh, you know, I think there you get concerns about like if you're a smaller business, um, how do my resources stack up against the big ones and stuff like that? But just that's why prioritization is key. Starting early enough is key. Um, but you we don't need to panic either. Um, but the other thing that I really like to emphasize when I talk to our clients about this is that this is um more important than UCP or agentic checkout or all these buzzwords because you know, whether or not you're even opted into UCP, Google says that this will support your visibility in AI mode and in other surfaces and experiences as well. So, you know, I think it can help in terms of AI overviews, it can help in terms of free listings. It's it is bigger and broader than that. I think your organic should benefit from this. It's overall something that you should work on for your visibility sake.

SPEAKER_01

It's one of the most important basics you have to get right now. Yes. I mean the the new uh data feed attributes are not fully open yet. I think they will there will be way more in the future.

SPEAKER_00

Aaron Powell I I think so. There's there's you know, uh it they say that there are dozens coming and I they're they're on track. It qualifies for the word dozens right now, but not when I think of dozens, I think of rather twenty-four than twelve. Yeah, yeah. I rather think of like I think of seventy-two rather than twenty-four, even. So I mean let's see how many there will be. Um but I think that they're they're actively working on this. And and and I think you know they'll want to cover more industries and more use cases and more products with attributes that make sense for those catalogs.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So for sure. Yeah. So it's certainly one of one of the bigger topics we we had on on the agenda with uh with with our clients the last um probably two months, one and a half months. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Sorry, go ahead. Oh no, I was gonna ask you, I mean, or tell I was gonna ask you about like growth. I think those are the things that we've got.

The CMO/CFO Reality Check: The True Cost of Incremental Growth

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, grow yeah, growth. I mean because what what I found very interesting is um I mean again, we we preached this for a very, very long time. That uh at the end of the day, when when you have your new business plans in place and you you you want year-by-year growth, um the the the the bottom line question is okay, at which costs can that drive this incremental growth? Yeah. And what I really loved about these last five, six, seven meetings we had together here is that the this understanding of incrementality really lands now. And that the good part about it is that it also lands at the highest levels of these companies. So the CFOs now, okay, understand it will cost to put another 5% points growth this year. And the the return net spend, which is the guiding North Star for so many performance marketing teams, it's it's not a given anymore. They understand the dynamics here. There's also one one major takeaway I have, um, and I love it. Yes. So did they understand growth costs?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, well, like I mean, one last thing, Mike.

SPEAKER_01

Uh for me, some so many players were in, and maybe still are in in deep troubles post-pandemic. And one major reason was, and I don't want to shit on the finance teams, but that the finance team said, well, 2021 was a great year. 2022 will be another great year, and of course 2023 will be even a better year. So the the the the thought about this unlimited growth at at maybe even sometimes better efficiency levels. This the this fallacy in the planning was one of the major reasons why so many retailers struggled big time.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And I think this understanding landed now, and and that's one of one of the most positive takeaways.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I I mean for sure. I think you hear about the CMO, CFO marriage, how that that should be in organizations, and I think that it, you know, yeah. And it's it has been, that's been coming to life now for a while. And these channels are not new, and they're often a very large percentage of a company's um online revenue and even their total revenues. And so it's the CMOs, the CFOs start to understand these campaigns and these platforms better over time. It's starting to really shock.

SPEAKER_01

I I I like that. And um and um I mean again, the the the companies we have been talking to now they they are big companies. So uh it's not it's not a given that the CFO, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

They have they have a lot of other concerns.

Fighting Back Against Temu & Shein (The "Last Mile" Strategy)

SPEAKER_01

That that's why I'm stating it I mean it's not about shitting anybody. It's just far away. Yeah, yeah. The understanding uh was was great and we we we landed with our message way way better than than than the years before, where there was way more discussion going on. Another topic, by the way, which I've found very interesting because it it's it's connected to the to the to the episode um we did last week, if I remember correctly. Um the big ones from the east. Yeah, okay. Chinese competition. Yes, yes. It's it's everywhere. And and no industry is safe. It seems it's it's it's crazy. And the big question for most of these re- on online retailers and clients was okay, what can we do about it? How what what's what's your projection? Will it be more, will it be less? Um unfortunately, there's no no no easy answer to that.

SPEAKER_00

No, it's I mean, it will be as money or more. Yes, it will be more. So it will be more.

SPEAKER_01

As we talked about last week, yeah. Um And again, that then we talk about these last mile optimizations, be hands-on. That the last mile will matter more than ever against these giants. So this was another topic, and and for me very interestingly, even the decision makers are now really getting getting more interested in this this last mile.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Which I find without micromanagement, but just understanding which leverage do we actually have? Um, so I think a lot of positive takes away, takeaways uh from these meetings. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean speaking uh of of last mile, I was reading um an article from a friend of the podcast, Vinny O'Brien, lately about how platforms are all fighting for fulfillment and delivery and stuff like that. And um, but this all this post-purchase experience is becoming way more important. If you become Chat GPT's warehouse or Google's warehouse or something, you know, we talked about zero click uh last episode and in the past UCP, though we just mentioned it's relevant to this. Yeah, um, then that post purchase experience, last mile, becomes even more important. And um, yeah, I mean, I I bought uh something from a marketplace, or other um Steffi bought something from Marketplace and like we're used to just it was so great because this one seller, they knew that and The way everything was packaged, it was so nice and premium and stuff. She was like, I actually could have just shipped this to my mom. It was actually for her mom. She's like, I could have just shipped it for her. And it would have been like a gift experience. She would have loved opening this. Awesome. And that's how you win loyalty. And that, you know, that's what And she wanted to buy more. Yeah, though it definitely made a good impression. Good for the online retailer and next time maybe she'll roll the dice and send it straight to straight to uh straight to her mom's instead of uh to retail.

The Granularity Debate: Stop Relying on Just ONE PMax Campaign!

SPEAKER_01

No, but uh you're right about but but but about that statement. And um but in in in in general, I I I think um the the good thing is it it really feels like again that that you have leverages, you you can do things. Um it's all about setting the right price and understands like Pareto. It meant the the beauty of our businesses that there are some principles which which just that they are just untouched. There are there are they are astronomical physical loss almost, right? Yes. Pareto, what really matters? When you when we talk about uh the new data feed attributes, there will be dozens for sure. I mean we see it already in conversations with Google. Then there's a lot of dynamic. Be sure about the impact for your business. Don't go for every every attribute, right? Yeah, so I think this is the good thing that um you have leverages here, and if you have this the right understanding of setting the price right, you can be again smarter than competition. Yeah, I love that. Absolutely. I love that. What else was was was there? Do we have uh any any more topics? Um we touched on a couple of the the big ones that are top of mind for me. I mean one one one last thing which which which could be interesting is um this constant this constant fear of being too granular versus it was a it was a common theme, right? Yeah, yeah. It was a common theme. How how granular do I want to be with my campaign structure? Google sometimes is fighting against it because you need this this data velocity and campaign level. Yeah, also I think uh was a was a constant topic. And here our recommendation is is quite easy. It's uh I mean easy. It's it's not easy, but it's it's a thin line. Yeah, don't don't be stupid and go with with this one campaign type approach. That's for that's certainly not maxing out your business business results. At the same time, don't be too granular. You need these 30 to 100 conversions on campaign level.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, yes. But but that's the thing, like especially, you know, we were talking about large advertisers, and um they can chop up their data a few more times and have plenty of conversion volume. Um, you do because that's also diminishing returns. Like uh we we we see that we've we've looked at data for how many conversions do you need for the algorithm to perform? And you know, after like 200 monthly conversions or something like that, it's not gonna the picture's not gonna change that much anymore. You've got more than enough conversions in there. Yeah. Um so you know, it it's more than like, do I have a reason for this split? Is there a tactic here? It can I use this to better reflect my business, my business goals, my strategy. You know, what is the reason for all these things? Because if you're going in a catch-all situation or like you're not being strategic, you're not being tactical.

SPEAKER_01

And you're high- I mean, let's face it, you're highly dependent on this one two campaigns and and and on Google.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, because Yeah, we're a little recency-biased. We were talking with someone and it's a large business, and they've really got an awful lot of their total company revenue running through one PMAX campaign.

SPEAKER_01

And it's to me, it's it's scary because uh but yeah, uh this this the thin line between granularity and and and this this this one two campaign types type setups. Um great discussions we had here.

SPEAKER_00

Um but and the question comes up with um search campaigns as well. Like because you know, you know, there we were in a situation where you know someone is a bit stuck in the bad old days with an overly granular search campaign. And um that was great back then. That was state of the art at one point, but not anymore.

SPEAKER_01

Not anymore.

SPEAKER_00

But it it you know, it this is a very large account and it's it's non-trivial to just consolidate it or it needs to just be done with the strategy with care.

Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM): How the Top Brands Prove ROI

SPEAKER_01

Yes, yeah. One last thing which pops pops pops pops up in my mind is and by the way, this is an evergreen for for a certain degree, attribution. Yeah. And now marketing mix modeling. Yes, yes. It's it's um, I don't know to listeners how much you you have put thought into this marketing mix modeling's um models out there. I think there are great tools out there. Um we are quite quite big on it. To really understand the contribution of a channel becomes more and more important, especially because the incrementality of your growth rate becomes more expensive.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01

Because of the likes of Temo, rising CPCs, the whole environment. And to really understand, okay, where is my incrementality coming from with the true impact to to understand what is this campaign really providing to my to my revenue goals? This topic has has completely different weight than one one year ago. Yeah, yes. And again, I think it's the right thing to do. Yes, especially for the big ones, maybe even small ones who are diversified already. It's not just Google, you have different paid media channels, channels in general. Are you really understanding the true impact of your channel? Um again, I like that. This this this is the right thing to focus on.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, absolutely. Um, and you know, these these models can in some cases even get into sub-channel effects, which is quite interesting. Um, I just think there's like if we if we talk about about Google, Google's technology at this point is very expansionary. It's very much oriented toward um, are you getting all the impressions that you could get? Uh are there pockets that you're missing, et cetera. Um, and that's something that really benefits from from incrementality of testing or from marketing mixed modeling. Because the, you know, the question arises like, um, was were those impressions? It's great. I know, there are more compression uh impressions out there. Google's tech helped me get it. Was that good? Because Google because Google says they'll get you incremental revenue. We've talked about this before, but they they they mean that merely in the sense that it was additive, that it was physically on top. Yes. At the same efficiency level. Yeah, yes. Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_01

You forgot some very, very impressive.

SPEAKER_00

They'll get you incremental conversions at the same efficiency. But but you know, they are not answering that question of was this in some way causal? Was this was this actually building out the business or or, you know, and that because every advertiser, this is basically just another manifestation of the law of diminishing returns, but every advertiser will have a ceiling on their impressions that they don't really want to extend the uh past because it's not going to be efficient to do so. And so, you know, you can by broadening, maybe you can go horizontally and and find ways to expand that way. I understand the argumentation, but it's something that I think just benefits from verification, calibration.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, for sure. And the I think the good news is here that uh marketing mixed modeling has has been a super complex thing. Uh and it it it might still is. But but the cool thing is, and we saw this now uh since we are focusing on this as a company, uh there are great tech stacks available. Yes. We are working on one, there are there are other tools out there which make marketing mix model a feasible thing.

SPEAKER_00

Yes.

SPEAKER_01

For for for the mid-sized small online retailer, let's face it. And this is this is great to to truly understanding the impact of a channel based on a on a scientific approach. I like that. And it has become a bigger topic. So for me, a positive takeaway. Yeah. Another positive takeaway.

SPEAKER_00

I see.

SPEAKER_01

So Mike, is it is it outro time?

SPEAKER_00

I think it's outro time. So that's uh that's what we've had on our mind lately, what we've been hearing from clients, what they've had on their minds lately. Um And there are solutions to every topic. Yes.

SPEAKER_01

Unless the Timo and JD pressure you you can't control. But there there are there are a lot of areas you can really make a difference again.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. I mean I I think that there's always uh you how to say this, you you can't remove every situation, but you can there's always gonna be some wiggle room, you know, and that's what optimization is. Might I quote the great Matthew McConney again? Yeah, yeah, go for it.

Outro: Is outsmarting the competition possible, or just necessary?

SPEAKER_01

I am not sure what I'm saying. I think I know what you're gonna say. Now you prime me because uh just just a little story to add to add this episode. Interstellar, one of our favorite movies. Yeah, yeah. And there was this one scene where he has to to c to dock onto the to the space station, yeah. And the AI tells Matthew it's it's not possible. And he said, but it's necessary. That's right. I think this is the right mindset for all our listeners and online retailers.

SPEAKER_00

It's not possible, it's necessary. It's necessary. And and I yeah, you know, the the AI didn't have that um the gut. Yeah, the guts. The gut and the exactly the guts and the the feeling.

SPEAKER_01

Now, question to you is it possible to do a great outro? Because it's certainly necessary, man.

SPEAKER_00

It's not possible, but it's necessary. Yes. So excellent. Thank you, Chris. This has been another episode of Growing E-Commerce brought to you by Smarter Ecommerce. To learn more, visit Smarter-ecommerce.com. And as always, if you enjoyed this episode, subscribe, follow, like, um, and give us a shout-out on social media or recommend us to a friend. We really appreciate it.