The E-commerce Leader

[00:00:00] Chris: when ads are so good and they’re so fast, I think that’s going to backfire.
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[00:00:58] Michael: Ladies and gents, it’s that time again. We are back with the eCommerce leader callin show, which isn’t on callin anymore. It’s more of just a group chat. So we’re gonna come up with some really interesting topics today that are just top of mind for us. Gents, I know we’ve got some interesting things going on.
[00:01:11] Let’s just kick off Who one of wants to plunge in? Let’s talk Turkey. What’s on your mind?
[00:01:16] Jason: I’ll go first. I have a hot topic guys. I don’t know if you’ve seen it over the weekend, but on December 1st, open AI launched, its chat, general chat, tool G P T three, or it’s called G Chat, G P T, and it’s built on their G P T, three or 3.5, infrastructure.
[00:01:36] And if you have not interacted with this general chat tool, Let me describe it for you and tell you how it’s changing the internet. I think radically, this thing is basically so incredibly powerful. It ate the entire internet in 2021, and it can now have concise and meaningful conversations with you about everything it knows.
[00:02:00] And I’ve since, Saturday morning, been playing with this thing, not playing with it. I’ve been talking to it and I can’t remember a. On the internet where I’ve had such a mind blowing oh my gosh, this is insane moment since I used Google in maybe, what was like 2003, maybe, I think 2004 when I used Google.
[00:02:25] This thing is actually mind blowing and people all over the internet are saying similar things. Toby Luki, founder of Shopify, tweeted out about using it. Wow, this is insane. Or, something to that. If you’re not familiar with in general, let me just describe the landscape and then I’d love your guys’ points of view on this.
[00:02:45] The open ai, company is, backed by Reid Hoffman, Elon Musk, and, and others. Amazon’s got money in it. And it is, developing these tools. There was a graphic. Tool release called Dolly, and then Dolly too, that’s come out. And if you haven’t looked for the graphic art that it makes, just on Instagram, for example, just search for the hashtag And you’ll see visualizations made by Dolly that are mind blowing.
[00:03:12] And basically people are what’s called prompt engineers now, where you just give it ideas and it’ll make insanely beautiful art. They just released on December 1st. This chat product that, is i’ll, I just, I will tell you, it feels. You’re talking to the Oracle of Delphi or the smartest person, professor you’ve ever talked to.
[00:03:35] I’ve used it for product research on Etsy and Amazon already to devastatingly effective info insights. I’ve used it for, charity related purposes research. I’m, I’m a Bible guy, so I love this app called the Olive Tree Bible, app. And it, it has. Olive free Bible app has literally tons and tons of historical documents and books like, the Vines, expository Dictionary of the Bible, or, on and on.
[00:04:04] The, Greek interlinear, these bible study tools that are thick, huge books. And I ask chat, G b T, do you have a working knowledge? Of all of the content of Olive Treat Bible app and it said yes, I’ve been using it for several years. It’s really helped me understand the Bible. This thing is insane.
[00:04:23] So you can go down any rabbit hole you want with it. The data was pulled that it’s using in April, 2021, and you would be shocked once you start using this thing how much it knows and can help you understand. One little example then I’ll get you guys’ input. I, I. To help me understand the Yuba City building codes for how big a shed I could build in my backyard without a permit, it instantly popped back 120 square feet or smaller.
[00:04:49] You don’t need a building permit for, I had looked on their website, I could never find that, and I think this thing’s gonna make Google literally obsolete and I am not even joking around. Have you guys used this at all? Is anybody familiar with what I’m even talking. Michael, I know you have a little bit.
[00:05:07] Michael: Yeah, I’m cheating cuz we did a podcast about this the other day, so I’m clued in why be interested to hear the other guys
[00:05:12] Kyle: thought. Yeah, I played around with it a little bit. It’s pretty cool. I think it’s just the continuation of what AI is being able to do. The machine learning component of it, being able to consume massive amounts of data and I think then articulate, it’s this, merging of a couple things.
[00:05:30] It’s like big. and being able to consume the entire internet and then natural language processing skills, where they can basically respond to a question and give you back that information that’s relevant to you. I think as that gets, more sophisticated, you’re just gonna see this continue to expand.
[00:05:49] And then, now, like Dolly’s creating content, there are already AI tools that are writing content. via prompt. So I think you’re gonna see this creative process really start to get driven more and more. I really think you’re gonna see platforms relatively soon that are creating ads, like the graphic component of it and writing the copy.
[00:06:12] That’ll be specific to the, like the targeted audience person like you. Like they. Find who the target is and it’s gonna create multiple variations of graphics and text. And then serve you an ad to try and find the most invest, but do it at such speed and scale Yeah. That, a media buyers and
[00:06:31] Jason: analyze the output and analyze the results.
[00:06:33] Set and optimize. Yeah.
[00:06:34] Kyle: Yeah, totally right. Media buyers are gonna be out of business.
[00:06:39] Chris: It’s amazing. I don’t know. I hope not. I’ve thought. Trying to think through all of the, like the AI things that are gonna happen and how we won’t be able to tell like what’s real for what’s not real, versus ads being so good.
[00:06:50] And sometimes I go down like thinking a lot negative about it, but honestly, and lately I’ve been positive in the sense of just like you said guy, like when ads are so good and they’re so fast, I think that’s going to backfire. I think of an ad as too good. I’m gonna be like, oh, for P six, I know it’s an a, I know you’re trying to sell me something.
[00:07:06] And I don’t know, that’s gonna be. I’m not worried it’s gonna be a turnoff, but it’s gonna be, I’m gonna be able to spot it and if I can spot it, then I can not be feel like I’m being fooled or tricked by it because that’s what I think I was, being negative about was like, I don’t wanna be tricked.
[00:07:20] I don’t wanna not have control over everything cuz the ads are so good that I’m literally gonna buy every single thing that I see because the ads know what I like. Like to a. Yeah. This is not like too dialed in. If you too dialed in , then I think if people are gonna be like uncanny valley kind of thing, be like, no.
[00:07:35] But no, I don’t want anything to do with this. I’m out. I’m gonna spend less time on my phone, less time on my computer. I’m gonna spend time in the real world where I know everything is real, where I don’t feel like I’m potentially being tricked because that’s what I worry about. I guess a marketer myself, I know that there’s like the Jedi and SY version of marketing, right?
[00:07:52] And I don’t want the SY marketers to take over and. Oh, for P six we can do whatever we want. Now. We will target everybody with the best ad they’ve ever seen and we’ll get so much. I’m like, yeah, but long term I feel that is gonna backfire because yes, you can do short term conversions, but long term like brand, like all that stuff.
[00:08:11] Yeah. I, I. I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but I’m
[00:08:14] Jason: not sure how AI’s gonna,
[00:08:15] Kyle: Here’s my pushback to it. It’s gonna be such a fa a fast feedback loop that even if you have, it’s too good and it’s you’re like, oh, I know this is an ad. It’s really not for me. Your lack of a conversion is gonna be data that’s gonna be fed back in and it, I think the AI will make a worse.
[00:08:34] So it’s not as dialed in to where it gets to the point where it’s this gonna be this tug of war between Europe, is it too good And, and you recognize it and you don’t convert, and then there’s dial it back and make it a little bit less professional, but it’s still gets you to convert.
[00:08:49] It’s like, when are you gonna know the difference? And if the was fast enough, I
[00:08:52] Jason: guess my mind goes to the actual, identification of the right message to market match. Where Chris never sees a message, he’s not super pumped about seeing, that’s when the ad would be, here’s your thing. I know you like advisors, and your new company is this, and here’s the ad for your new advisor.
[00:09:12] Just pushed this button and you get it. That those things where he would say, oh, thanks, internet. I was, I really wanted this. That’s the optimal isn’t uncanny valley where you have to decide whether you’re being sold or not. The optimal is, I know I want this right. And the internet just served it up.
[00:09:30] And that’s, I think that’s where it will get to is the demand, message to market match piece is so crystal. That,
[00:09:37] Chris: there’s a limit to how much you can want. There’s a limit to how much you can buy. So if I see like an amazing what you can spend, not how much you can want, , no. But if I’m inundated, if I’m completely overwhelmed with want, because I see Avisor ad and I’m like, oh my gosh, that’s so cool.
[00:09:53] Oh, I didn’t know they had those colors. And
[00:09:54] Jason: oh, they also have matching minimalism, man. People are already living in that world.
[00:09:59] Chris: You can only show so many ads, right? You can’t just pound here’s a perfect ad for you, Kyle, and you buy it and Hey, Kyle, five minutes later, here’s a perfect ad for you. And you buy that and then like now you’re like, wait a minute.
[00:10:11] Any ad, I don’t, it cannot be perfect. Because you’re added out, right? You’re marketed out, you’re like, I don’t care what it is. I can’t listen to it. I can’t, like mentally, I’m not even
[00:10:21] Jason: if I, you share wallet and share of mind out,
[00:10:25] Chris: your share of at of attention give so much. And I, the si the bad marketers in this are gonna be like, no, we could sell some more.
[00:10:34] We like push another ad on them. And I think if they push too far, if they don’t become a Jedi kind of marketer that’s Hey, yes, I do wanna know that poison is coming to town. I want to know that. Yeah. It doesn’t have to be a good ad, I just need to know exactly. Kind of thing. Yeah. This is the balance and kinda evolution that’s gonna happen.
[00:10:52] And, there’ll be ups and downs. People do it wrong, they’ll do it poorly, they’ll do it too good. They’ll like, it’ll dial back. I have confidence in, humanity overall. I don’t have confidence in humanity being able to, discern what’s true and what’s not true. But that’s a different.
[00:11:08] A different AI topic, but holy smoke, the ai. Just to add one more thing on, and we can decide where you guys wanna go with this. The ability to create not just visual content, but also now written content combined with marketing strategies that we’ve talked about on this show, combined with print on demand, platforms such as KTP and merged by Amazon.
[00:11:30] Like the barriers to entry to creating something of value that then can be turned into a product that people can purchase are gone, literally gone. I read an article literally this morning about just what you, the, the exact, g p T chat thing that you said where they made a course about like nuclear physics in the voice of a pirate.
[00:11:49] So if you wanna learn nuclear physics and you would prefer it to be in pirate talk, you can. So I’m thinking publish that as a book, the exact same course you want pirate. Sure. You want a crazy scottsman? Sure. You want whatever you want. And the computer will do it and you just crank out, Hey, I’ve got 75 different books on the exact same topic.
[00:12:08] Who would you like to read it to you? Yeah, that’s that used. That would’ve taken a decade. Yeah, right now it can be done in 10 minutes. So now that barrier’s gone, where do you go with that and where do you decide to spend your time and how do you decide to, try to create something that brings value to other people?
[00:12:22] Because just having it digitally, I, I think people still want done for you products. They want, they don’t want a plan on the internet that says, go buy this. What at Home Depot, here’s where to cut it. Here’s where to paint it here. No, they wanna buy a chair. You know what I mean? So now that we can make these chairs, how do we make the best chairs and how do we make it for the best price?
[00:12:39] And how do. You convert that value, that’s why I’m, my brain keeps going with it.
[00:12:46] Kyle: Wow. I think where it leads me, listen, did I put a bow on it? The response as a e-commerce marketer, or as a marketer in general, I think in my mind, leads me to the place of where building communities matter more and more for your brand.
[00:13:04] , because that’s something that can’t be easily duplicated by an. Yeah, totally. If you become a great community builder, That you might have marketing that’s done for you by AI and copywriting and web development. I’m sure AI will be designing websites here in no time, because it’s just code.
[00:13:22] But one thing that it’s not gonna be able to do for at least the foreseeable future is really build. Really effective communities. , that’s still I think, a person to person and I think if brands can lean into that, then I think you still have competitive advantage. I just
[00:13:35] Jason: watched a presentation by Gary V and he said he was way more interested in the interest graph.
[00:13:41] On the social platforms than anything else. Meaning what are people interested in as a community, as groups then? I think you’re totally right, Kyle, that it means that tribal, the tribal nature of what people wanna band together and have community and the leadership of it and all that, is something that’s not replicatable that easily by, the ai.
[00:14:01] So we’ll just have to move in new ways as, thought leaders and entre.
[00:14:07] Michael: The only thing that strikes me about all this in a way, , so to your point Chris, how do humans distinguish truth and not truth? That, that’s been a problem for, I think millennia. , I’m sure that Romans were pretty good at propaganda back in the day. And, depending on who was listening and what form they were taking.
[00:14:21] There’s some pretty good orators I hear back in the Greek days as well. I think, that’s an age. I think for me the rest of it feels a bit like a development of an arms race. So you don’t come to a gun, fight with a knife and survive very long. And that’s how empires were built in the 19th century.
[00:14:34] Now in Ukraine for example, you’ve got very smart missiles, condoed with satellites hitting targets. So there’s an ever increasing war. I think it’s really between, as somebody said, the attention of the consumer, the possibility of them buying. So to your point, Chris, there is a limit to how much you’re gonna buy.
[00:14:48] Even in America. , the most commercialized society you’ve ever in. It’s worked incredibly hard to commercialize itself and Britain’s very similar. Now, there is a limit to how much you’re gonna buy . It’s not physically possible. There is also a limit to, if you are. Online ads, Facebook or YouTube, the actual ad inventory space is being used up.
[00:15:07] I don’t see any YouTube ads. Like none. I don’t see a single YouTube video now that doesn’t have at least one ad at the beginning. If they start putting 10 in, I’m just gonna get to another platform. Sooner or later, Facebook is starting to hit that limit as well. So I think in a way, I think the creation side of the ad and the targeting is one thing, but the sort of physical.
[00:15:25] The financial limits of people’s ability to purchase, their willingness to purchase and the ad inventory are all hitting some sort of limits. So I think, I dunno, it’s gonna be interesting to see what happens next, but I think, for me that’s, it’s a continuation of something. It’s a kind of step change, but it’s in the same direction as, put it that way for me.
[00:15:42] Cool. Kyle, you were gonna talk about, something completely. Crunching of the gears topic. Change a
[00:15:49] Kyle: moment. Switching. Switching gears. Yeah, I saw an interesting report that came out, around, it was like consumer trends report, and they did, they surveyed, US consumers about their holiday season buying.
[00:16:00] And you would think, and the numbers essentially reinforce the thought going into Q4 that people are gonna be a little bit less likely to spend as. , but I was surprised when I saw the data, cause they said that consumers are expecting to spend nearly 40% less on holiday related expenses this year compared to a 10 year average.
[00:16:23] That’s a big, that’s bigger than what I was expecting when I was looking at a number. I expected there to be, because of inflation and uncertainty with the economy, there’s gonna be less, discretionary spending. But at 40% haircut, It’s pretty significant. And so I thought that was worth noting for people that are, have big Q4 sales histories or, they’re expecting to have a big bounce in q4.
[00:16:45] That is definitely, something to keep in mind. The other thing too that I noticed that was interesting was out of this report was 20% or more of us consumers get their holiday gift ideas from social. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. So you think about it, 20%. Okay. Said that they were getting their ideas out of from social media.
[00:17:09] Now, were they buying it off your social media ads? Probably not, but they’re looking. So you think about the influencers, you think about the video content top of funnel. It still drives awareness. And I think that, that definitely still provides, some value. And then the other thing that was interesting was virtual gifts.
[00:17:28] So like streaming and music subscriptions were among the more popular ones. So when you think about how do I create a virtual product or subscription product that can be gift. For my products because that is the trend that people are wanting to give. Hey, I wanna give you something like a subscription or something digital that I can, get in front of people.
[00:17:49] That is also, up quite a bit
[00:17:51] Jason: year over year.
[00:17:52] Wrapup: Hey folks. Thanks for listening to the eCommerce leader again today. We had an interesting chi chat about the whole business of not just chat bots in a broader sense, but ai is it gonna lead to a sort of war of for our attention. And Is that even possible to go any further in that direction? Very interesting question.
[00:18:10] Where are you gonna go next with it? My advice to you would be to at least play with a tool that Jason was talking about, which is G P T three is from open ai and you just go to open ai.com. You can set up yourself a free account and have a play with it. It’s good fun. If nothing else, how far this is gonna go.
[00:18:28] Is an interesting question, but I certainly think this is a topic that’s gonna run and run. So something you want to educate yourself about and think, can you integrate this into your marketing? How does this change the landscape of your industry or your sector of e-commerce? Certainly it’s certainly something that I will be incorporating into things, if nothing else.
[00:18:46] I’ve actually written some blog posts recently. G, PT three for the eCommerce leader. So our latest deep dive episode, if you wanna check that out, to get an idea of what a conversation with G P t three looks like, just go over to the eCommerce leader.com and look at our blog, and you can see for yourself what can come out of that quotes discussion between the human, in this case, me and open g p.
[00:19:12] Open AI’s GBT three tool, I should say. So interesting times. hope you found that thought-provoking and something for a jumping off point really for you to go and do your own research. I would suggest as ever, folks don’t forget. If you’ve enjoyed today’s show and found that thought-provoking and maybe we will help to make you a better eCommerce leader, then you can subscribe to the show at any podcast player near you.
[00:19:33] Thanks for listening to the eCommerce leader.
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