Achieving Big Results on Tight Budgets

[00:00:00] Tanner: every AI agent within an LLM is a glorified salesperson, right?

[00:00:04] Tanner: So if someone were to buy a boat, right, they would say,

[00:00:12] Intro - Outro: Welcome to Contrary to Popular Opinion, a podcast hosted by Bougiedigital. In each episode, we bring you provocative topics and novel perspectives around leadership, business, and marketing that defy the norms because exponential growth demands unconventional thinking and visionary action. So open your mind and let's get into this week's episode.

[00:00:35] Kelly: Hey everyone, Kelly McGuire with Bougiedigital. Excited to get into today's topic and talk to today's guest

[00:00:41] Todd: Hey, everybody. It's Todd. Welcome back. This is episode two of a three-part series with Tanner Zoromski, our resident organic marketing all things expert. Tanner, welcome back. we'll let you introduce yourself again and just say hello to everybody.

[00:00:59] Todd: But we're gonna talk about, the difference between the last show, which was we all agreed that, okay, SEO isn't dead and agentic engine optimization or, or answer engine optimization or all these weird acronyms that are out there is still, pressing us for answers, and so today we'll talk about what has actually changed.

[00:01:18] Todd: But welcome, Tanner. How are you?

[00:01:20] Tanner: Great to be here, Todd. Thanks for the time today. I'm doing excellent. Yeah, excited to kinda dig into it and, chat about the future of search.

[00:01:27] Todd: Yep. got to meet Tanner in person last week for the first time since he started here just a short time ago, and he is taller than he looks.

[00:01:38] Tanner: No. Thank you. Yeah, it was great to go down to San Diego. we'll have to go out and try to catch a wave sometime next, next visit.

[00:01:44] Todd: Be careful what you ask for.

[00:01:47] Tanner: Yeah.

[00:01:48] Todd: One will turn into 100, and then you'll

[00:01:50] Tanner: be- You know that I'm gonna be the worst thing in the world, yeah.

[00:01:53] Todd: all right. So like I said, last time we talked about, hey, what...

[00:01:58] Todd: I- is SEO dead? Is it completely turned into this AI thing? And y- your answers were, no, it's not dead. It's evolved. and there's still disciplines and tactics and skills that are driving traditional SEO that are not dead, still must be happening today. and then there's an evolution of, when somebody searches today, they're not just looking for links on Google to click on and then go find information.

[00:02:23] Todd: They're actually using LLMs like ChatGPT or Perplexity or Gemini or Claude, and they're actually getting answers. that's what I see as the biggest change. But for you, why don't you c- 'cause often just tell us what's changed in, in the search landscape, and, what do you think is, maybe the most critical change, but what's changed in, in the world so far?

[00:02:44] Tanner: Yeah, absolutely. It's a great place to start. I think we have to unpack the mechanics of, how has the SERP developed most, most urgently in the last five or six years. So what we're seeing are, increased SERP features, right? So Google wants to keep people on Google in order to continue monetizing that traffic.

[00:03:00] Tanner: We've touched on this before in the past. So what they've done is try to create the most useful platform possible in order to retrieve information about any query that you plug into the search engine, basically, right? with that, we are seeing it, like I s- mentioned, new SERP features around AI, maps, things to know, forums, video, short form, you name it.

[00:03:21] Tanner: Google's basically layering in all these different result types, in a, effort to produce the most accurate result possible. Now, what does that mean for organic specifically? first and foremost, we are seeing reduced click-through rates, right? So people are retrieving the information that they're looking for without going onto a website because of this kind of principle of Google producing the best result possible.

[00:03:43] Tanner: So that's the first thing to consider, lower click-through rates, some lower organic traffic on different keywords. we also see increased ad presence. We see it more at the top of the SERP results, as well as integrated into the actual site links, I see ads occasionally. So there's kind of this dual,this dual thing happening where they're monetizing more traffic while also keeping people on platform longer.

[00:04:06] Tanner: So, those are the two core principles that are driving the architecture for Google's most recent changes, as well as how people are interacting with that.

[00:04:14] Todd: So let's, let's talk a little bit about the... There's this word that's being used now called zero-click searches, and you've got these AI overviews.

[00:04:21] Todd: So forever, Google makes money off of, our teams bidding on keywords that are used in a search, and an ad appears, and somebody clicks on it. And now you do a search, and you get an AI overview. Yeah. Very well may not yield that person clicking on anything, and so then you have this idea of a zero-click search.

[00:04:44] Todd: So can you talk a little bit about the, this AI overview that, that Google's pushing out now? I, quite frankly, I, I'd love to know what's your theory on how they're gonna ... how they're dealing with the monetization of potential lost clicks- By pushing out AI, AI interviews and what sort of the end game do you think is around the idea of this AI overview piece?

[00:05:07] Todd: Is that eventually gonna lead people to a paid, thing? Is it gonna eventually contain advertising, paid advertising in the AI overview? Like, talk about AI overviews and, and I guess this, this terminology zero-click searches.

[00:05:22] Tanner: I think you're right on there. as far as, will there be ads eventually in AI overviews, yeah, we're already seeing them actually, right?

[00:05:28] Tanner: So, Google has this conundrum on, how do we continue to, sidestep traditional organic results that have now presented themselves within AI overviews, and, and make sure that we're including ads. So, just to define things, AI overviews are the results at the top of the search experience where people are able to get a summary of the query that they inputted.

[00:05:48] Tanner: We first saw these roll out for very, informational type searches where people are looking for definitions or, tidbits of info, if you will. but you know, more recently we're starting to see AI overviews expand to a broader set of queries. They're starting to show up for commercial queries or, qualitative searches like what is the best, X, Y, and Z, right?

[00:06:10] Tanner: So that is now presenting Google with a challenge of, okay, how do we, continue our monetization efforts? In the past, we saw AI overviews first, ads second. Now we're seeing ads first, AI overview second, and then AI overviews with ads, right? So there is definitely this dance going on of how do we present that information.

[00:06:26] Tanner: but,what businesses have to consider is the intent of those searches, making sure that we pre-plan for what our customers might search, and then being proactively present within those AI overviews for ideally commercial queries. But if you can consider your funnel and think about what someone would be searching from an informational standpoint, making sure you're there as well.

[00:06:48] Todd: Kelly, I, you head strategy for everything we do and for every client we work on, whether that's a small regional bank or a global publicly traded enterprise-level company. what's going on in your mind relative to conversations you may have been having with our account leads and client-side people and folks?

[00:07:08] Todd: What are you hearing? What are they... I'm sure you're hearing fearful conversations about, "Oh my God, what are we doing? How are we addressing this? And how is search..." you're on reporting calls where maybe search is, search campaigns are being talked about, where maybe, maybe clicks are down or, or whatever.

[00:07:24] Todd: So in your world from overarching guidance and strategy of investment management of client funds, what are you thinking about when you hear all these AI summaries and ads and zero-click and all this stuff?

[00:07:39] Kelly: Yeah, I mean, I think fundamentally search has always been about how do we use paid dollars to make sure that we influence the discoverability of our clients, right?

[00:07:49] Kelly: When someone is in the need of something, whether they're searching directly for the client or they're searching for the category the client's in or something that the client can possibly serve, how do we become discoverable and how do we direct that traffic or activity or attention to the client?

[00:08:06] Kelly: And that's always been the balance between organic and paid. That's always been the argument between are people gonna... Are we in first organic position and therefore we should just let them come to us, or should we control our destiny and, and pay for that positioning? And I think that the disruption to the journey bec- your question around how do we use client dollars to continue to elbow our way into that user journey and that discoverability and make sure we don't miss out on opportunity, and that we capture what we can ultimately monetize for the client needs.

[00:08:44] Kelly: it, it does bring a few questions that I'd love to get your perspective on, Tanner. So two, two big things come to mind. you said the search results, and sort of the structure of the way that Google is presenting information, and there's two elements of that that I'd love to go into. The first one is if that sentiment and that thinking changes at all in a heavily mobile versus desktop environment, I would imagine that the mobile experience and the way that the results are being presented, I know a lot of times when I use Google, on my mobile phone, and a lot of it I'm not even reading it, it is now speaking it out to me.

[00:09:22] Kelly: There's a, there's an audio element and a structuring to that that's really interesting to think about on there.

[00:09:27] Todd: Wait, did you... So are you saying when you do a search on your mobile device on Google, you're getting an audio answer?

[00:09:34] Kelly: Yeah. It, by default, Google typically will read the AI overview summary to me.

[00:09:39] Todd: I don't get that. How do you get that?

[00:09:42] Kelly: Maybe you need an Android.

[00:09:43] Todd: No way. Stay with, stay

[00:09:46] Kelly: with Apple, sorry.

[00:09:48] Todd: So hold on. Let me just, let me pause this right there, Tanner, before you answer that. Kelly, you're, we're talking now you're getting an audio answer of the AI overview?

[00:09:58] Kelly: Yeah. So when I, when I do a search, from, it's not for,it's in more research-type context.

[00:10:05] Kelly: I, I don't know that it's necessarily for product, like, if I was sp- specifically searching for our product, I'd have to test this. But for the most part, if my search result comes with an AI summary, my phone will by default read me that summary on my phone.

[00:10:19] Tanner: That's some new tech. I haven't seen that one yet.

[00:10:23] Tanner: That's,I think, breaking down the mobile desktop data point is super interesting, right? Of course, we know that the majority of searches now happen on mobile. I will kind of, get back to the whole,what are people searching on mobile, and I think this is kind of what underpins the broader AI question, right?

[00:10:40] Tanner: So, zero-click SEO was something you brought up, Todd, earlier. and thinking about, okay, less people are clicking on organic results. We're seeing traffic go down. That doesn't inherently mean that the monetization of that traffic is going to suffer. I think that there are so many searches that are for queries that are maybe not commercial, right?

[00:11:01] Tanner: People are not gonna click through onto the website, and I know that there's a lot of information flying around about, zero-click SEO, or these AI Overviews. But for me, fundamentally, it's about are we getting the right traffic? Was that person going to convert when they landed on our website anyway that they're not being presented an AI Overview with, right?

[00:11:18] Tanner: So if we think about, e-commerce, right? Or someone who is selling a l- large number of SKUs on a, significant site, making sure that you approach your commercial keywords in a different way than you do your informational with AI Overviews is gonna be how you break it out. So I would encourage people to try to monitor results, track what comes up, track if AI Overviews are present on those different ones, and then consider the keyword results that you want to appear, right?

[00:11:46] Tanner: So there are a lot of different ways to go about it.

[00:11:48] Kelly: so that leads perfectly into my second question. And when we were in person, I had a sort of a tongue-in-cheek moment with you where I was joking about how do we make sure that when anyone searches, "What's the best digital advertising agency?" that BougieDay Digital comes up first.

[00:12:02] Kelly: And we were joking about that and, there was an interesting sort of response to that in that a lot of the results and the way that they're structured are personalized. They, they are not universal a- as though the SEO linking would traditionally be, but it is based on what Tanner's gonna see is potentially different than what Todd's gonna see, is different than what Kelly's gonna see.

[00:12:24] Kelly: And how is that personalization of the results and the ranking and the answers that are coming in, how does that factor into the AEO and SEO elements when you're not having more of a universal control so much anymore?

[00:12:40] Tanner: That's a fantastic question, Kelly. I'm glad you brought it up. I would like to think about two things here, Google Search and then AI Search, right?

[00:12:46] Tanner: So starting off with Google Search, Geo, date, time, all sorts of elements are becoming more important as Google does get more data on each one of us. it's going to know what we're looking for and how our intent is going to be different than somebody in a different city or of a different age or with a previous search history that's different, right?

[00:13:04] Tanner: They're gonna factor those things into the type of searches that,the search results that appear for that person. And I think trying to consider, understanding more about your customer profile, who is doing the searching, what are your targeted demographics, what's your total addressable market?

[00:13:17] Tanner: Having those questions ready before you try to build your SEO organic strategy is essential. thinking about AI searches, right? And the thing that I think most people should try to consider is, AI agents have a log of all of your previous searches, right? They know what you're researching, they know what you're working on, and, and each one of those, you know, previous conversations you have are factored into future results, right?

[00:13:42] Tanner: So the, all of the information you give it is then computed into each result that you get, creating a hyper-specific experience that is far removed from what Google first was as an index, right, phone book almost, of search results. So making sure that you curate your strategy around what are potential related searches or, the, demographic information of your customer is going to be paramount moving forward.

[00:14:07] Tanner: So essential.

[00:14:09] Kelly: Does that exponentially increase the amount of effort and permutations and content that you need to be producing in order to have the right influence over there? Can you-- Does that mean that you can no longer have one blog post that universally helps your ranking, but you might need five permutations of that blog post, one that is more tailored to a wealthier demographic or a certain gender or a certain region or anything like that?

[00:14:37] Kelly: do you ha- do you factor that in, and does that exponentially kind of make the job harder?

[00:14:42] Tanner: Yeah. It certainly, it certainly adds more factors to it. but, I think it makes it easier in some ways. the quality of traffic is going to be what reigns supreme in the future, right? And being able to know your customer, know what they're searching, and then build your strategy around that, I think increases the quality of your traffic.

[00:15:03] Tanner: We see that bounce rate is lower for traffic from ChatGPT. We see conversion rate and purchases are much higher from tools that are large language models. there is a trade-off, right? It's, it's not so much a yes/no. it's, it's a, it's a yes/and,

[00:15:16] Todd: Did, did you just say conversion rate has gotten higher from- Complete.

[00:15:23] Todd: What did, where... go back to that, 'cause one of the questions I was gonna ask was about just commerce and shopping in general. I'm trying to just think about my own user behavior. I find, and this dates back to, gosh, Kelly, you remember ZMOT, the zero moment of truth that Google came out with, like, in, I don't know, 2010 or '12 or whatever that was, which was a takeoff of FMOT, which is what Procter & Gamble coined as the first moment of truth and when somebody understands what they're gonna buy.

[00:15:53] Todd: So when we think of commerce, I, as a, as a focus group of one, now I do use either the, the AI preview from Google or, or ChatGPT or whatever. I get a lot closer to knowing exactly what I wanna buy, wh- a- and ready to buy it because of that stuff, the, that sort of the AI intelligence behind my shopping research.

[00:16:18] Intro - Outro: So

[00:16:19] Todd: as a result, as a consumer, I'm clicking on maybe less sites looking at products. I don't know, let's say I have a boat, right? Let's say I'm looking for a chart plotter, to make things complicated for anybody who doesn't know what that is. I might have clicked on a bunch of different marine sort of e-commerce sites, maybe some brand sites, and gone and read a bunch of stuff about the product, and they would've gotten maybe my email or whatever.

[00:16:43] Todd: a lot of different stuff like that could've happened. That would've been my normal customer journey. Now- I might go to ChatGPT and have a whole lengthy conversation about the best chart plotter system out there for my needs, and it very well might be telling me, "Hey, you should go with the Raymarine."

[00:17:04] Todd: and then I just go directly to Raymarine's website, 'cause I know exactly what I'm looking for, and I just buy it. that's a radical change in customer shopping behavior. So is shopping, is that all changing, like, super radically for brands today?

[00:17:20] Kelly: Well, Todd, let me, let me take that one step further before Tanner jumps in.

[00:17:23] Kelly: They are pushing it further. There is now universal commerce protocol where if the AI agent surfaces that and suggests that you should buy that, you don't even have to leave to go to Raymarine to buy it. You can buy it directly in the agent and complete the transaction, and there's a whole authored protocol that Google and Shopify put out that allows you to complete the purchase end to end directly in the agent without even having to go to the manufacturer's website.

[00:17:49] Todd: I'm not ready, personally I'm not ready for that 'cause I like to buy direct because then I think about, like, warranty or return or what if there's a problem. I wanna have the email directly from Raymarine.

[00:17:59] Kelly: But I don't think you, you reflect the norm. I think that these are behavioral changes that are being ingrained, especially in the younger generations.

[00:18:05] Kelly: You see it with TikTok Shop, you see it with all of these engagement protocols where people are moving faster with less steps and more engagement in the native environments rather than the navigation and the consideration and the length of purchase. Obviously, your size of purchase is gonna matter with that, but everything is meant to streamline, shorten, and quicken.

[00:18:25] Kelly: And as these agents get better and better about understanding you and th- your trust level that it knows what you want as good or better than you do, I think the ability to just transact and move faster is gonna become more and more and more.

[00:18:40] Todd: So Tan- Tanner, I'd love to know your thoughts on this because, Kelly, what you're talking about and what I personally am not ready for yet is, for example, now it's easy to just use Apple Pay online, and it's connected to my Apple ID and my Apple account, and so I have some confidence that there's some level of security there.

[00:18:59] Todd: I'm not ready to give ChatGPT or Claude my credit card information yet and let it make purchases for me. But if that's happening, and, and even if it's in a very nascent small sort of percentage of overall global customer behavior now, we all know that in 10 years from now, that might become the new Amazon way of shopping.

[00:19:20] Todd: Tanner, like, how are businesses supposed to be thinking about selling commerce online if- They're potentially losing l- losing more control over their domain and the way people buy their products because of these AI sort of features. what would you tell, what would you tell a brand today that maybe sells on their own .com, sells in a bunch of different e-commerce environments, like, what are they supposed to be thinking about this?

[00:19:51] Tanner: Yeah. The first thing is all brands should check out, Shopify's integration and make sure that you are eligible to appear in ChatGPT results.

[00:19:58] Todd: What if you're not on Shopify? What if you're on WooCommerce or something else?

[00:20:02] Tanner: That's a, that's an excellent point, They're gonna have to figure out, make that, their schema's correct or other, type of commercialization databases on their website are all set up.

[00:20:11] Tanner: Google Merchant Center is another great place where you can have a lot of that info, right? So there, that's the first thing you gotta do. You gotta make sure that you're eligible for those types of results. Secondly, you need to consider your customer's funnel and what they're going through, because every AI agent within an LLM is a glorified salesperson, right?

[00:20:29] Tanner: So if someone were to buy a boat, right, they would say, "I'm looking to buy a boat." And then AI tools would ask them all kinds of qualifying questions about what type of boat, inboard or outboard, jet boat, right? and slowly you're gonna move through the funnel within the agent until you are, such a qualified purchaser, you are just gonna go to a website or go wherever, to then make that exchange.

[00:20:52] Todd: That's what I did. That's exactly what I did.

[00:20:54] Tanner: Exactly. Yeah. And it's so seamless, and I do believe that is the future of,shopping online is working with independent, agents that can help you, find what you need. conversely, there are gonna be buying agents someday, right, that can go out into, different digital ecosystems and shop and try to find the best deals for you and, at the end of the day, come back to you with a report on, "Hey, here are the best vendor opportunities.

[00:21:19] Tanner: Here are the ones with discounts." That's not tomorrow, but in a couple years, the, the coin will,flip and be the other way around.

[00:21:26] Todd: So aren't we ... Okay. This is, I hate, I hate how the world works sometimes. So aren't we getting back into the same- kind of BS environment that we were in 10 or 15 years ago.

[00:21:39] Todd: Kelly, you asked something I think on the last episode about gray hat. Like, is there a gray hat version of AI SEO optimization? So if what you're saying, Tanner, so the last 10 or 15 years, the gray hat hacking tactics got really good at being able to control a lot of what a user might see when they do a keyword search, and try to influence ultimately where they end up clicking and buying.

[00:22:04] Todd: and there were, certainly white hat ways of doing that, and there became black and gray hat ways of hacking customer behavior, sort of information showing up on Google, and then Google always tries to crack down on that. The one thing I've, again, I'm gonna use myself as an audience of one, that I've liked or I f- or I feel like is happening with a ChatGPT or a Gemini or a Claude, is I feel like I'm having more of an unbiased, un- unmonetized conversation about what might be the right product for my need, and I don't feel like it's been infiltrated yet today by paid advertisers trying to hack their way into making sure that the LLM cites their brand as the best brand.

[00:22:51] Todd: are we likely headed for the exact same thing that we've been headed, we had in SEO, which is people are gonna figure out how to game the LLMs and make sure that their brand is the brand that's getting, getting recommended when feels like the LLMs were supposed to be a much more unbiased source of information?

[00:23:09] Todd: Are we going back to that?

[00:23:10] Tanner: Yeah, I, I, I think you're onto something. I think that, what comes next will definitely rhyme, with what's happened previously. I think that, there could definitely be some gray hat tactics depending on, what the sources of information are from, that inform LLMs, right?

[00:23:26] Tanner: So most recently we saw, we watched Google go from indexing a lot of Reddit content to train its LLM to more YouTube content, right? So that simple shift increased the visibility of its own video platform as opposed to an organic social platform, right? That's just one example. But, I, I do think it's gonna be harder to game the system, if you will, than in the past.

[00:23:47] Tanner: I think that what businesses should honestly focus on, are having a really solid technical foundation in place to make your site as readable as possible. but there are going to be, business owners are gonna be encouraged to ask what is the unique selling proposition of their products, right? We just can't have, individual products that exist without any other context.

[00:24:07] Tanner: You have to make a case, and you have to set up, the reason why you are selling your product to particular searches, in a more intentional way than in the past.

[00:24:18] Kelly: I think for me it brings up a parallel but a different conundrum, where I think about whether or not it creates a really top-heavy system, where it's really hard for someone who can't compete with the tonnage and the sort of universal presence, that they simply just get left out of the conversation.

[00:24:40] Kelly: Where, your mom and pop or your niche or your sort of bespoke offerings, the system just is blind to them and it just sort of becomes an echo chamber of when you ask for a boat part, it's gonna go to the top three manufacturers of boat parts because they're what's out there, and the, the mom and pop who might have that nice little thing that could be in there just, it's just blind to it.

[00:25:02] Kelly: And the more we get-

[00:25:04] Todd: And I don't want that. I want a much more unbiased, almost adv- like Tanner said, like a, a, a consultant to consult and advise me on, hey, if you're into radar and chart plotting, like for your boat, for your needs, here- I'm fine if it says, "Here's the top three," but I want it to tell me it's the top three based on a careful curation of evidence and information, not...

[00:25:28] Todd: I don't want that, those results to be influenced by who's paying to influence them.

[00:25:33] Kelly: Yeah. And, and that's what I'm saying is, is it becomes interesting as the- Can the systems distinguish between quality and quantity when inherently quantity has historically indicated quality to systems like that, right?

[00:25:47] Kelly: So again, I worry about the more you sort of give over your autonomy and sort of your human decision-making and curiosity into a system that just says, "Tell me what I should buy," it creates convenience and speed, but is it that... is that at the sacrifice of consideration set and openness to discovery of interesting and unique new things that maybe get left on the periphery?

[00:26:13] Kelly: And that, that's, that's where I had go- And, and do you trade o- Is that convenience and speed and efficiency worth the trade-off of, yeah, maybe I miss out on 10% of the unique fringe stuff that I might have discovered, but the 90% I'm going after is so much faster and easier that it's totally worth it.

[00:26:31] Kelly: I- These are all personal experiences and engagements, but I find it to be a really unique challenge between how do you follow the signal but discern whether or not it's signaled by tonnage and weight or signaled by quality and uniqueness or specificity? There's so many different tentacles to the considerations.

[00:26:50] Todd: Have either one of you made a purchase At all or recently, already in your, in your life through an AI, not necessarily making the purchase through the AI platform like a ChatGPT 'cause you gave it your credit card, but have you made a purchase where all your research was done through an LLM and that left you with a knowing exactly what you wanted to buy and you went and bought that exact s- that thing?

[00:27:17] Todd: You didn't do any other research on the open internet, if you will. Have you ever bought-

[00:27:22] Kelly: I just did it today.

[00:27:23] Todd: What did you buy? Can you, can you say what you bought?

[00:27:26] Kelly: I can, yeah. So, so my daughter's starting kindergarten, and she has to have a tablet for that, and I bought an expensive tablet for that, and I did all of my research around the case to buy for that tablet.

[00:27:37] Kelly: So I put in it's a kids laptop, the model number, what it was, the use cases, what I wanted, the color schemes, everything. It gave me the top three choices. It went through. I looked at sort of the features in it. I iterated in Gemini for it, and then I landed on the one that I ordered today right off of all of that research.

[00:27:55] Todd: Wow. Okay, Tanner.

[00:27:58] Tanner: Yeah, that just screams organic content to me, right? So on that tablet case, right, web page, you need to have those specs, right? You gotta have that information, so that way it's pulled more seamlessly through into AI tools.

[00:28:11] Kelly: Yeah, it had, it had to tell me it was rugged. It had to tell me it had a screen protector.

[00:28:15] Kelly: It had to tell me that it was good for kids. It had to tell me what color options it had, if it had a shoulder strap. there were very unique things that made those options what I would ultimately uniquely need for my audience, my use case, and my desired specifications, and that's what it curated down.

[00:28:32] Kelly: And, and ma- keep in mind, this is in a space of tablet cases where I shouldn't say I only did Cha- like, I did buy it based on my AI agent. That's where I ended up, but I also looked on Amazon first. I looked at Best Buy first. I looked at a few other things, and I, and there were so many options to choose from that I defaulted into I need to have a conversation with artificial intelligence to describe what I need to pick because otherwise there's 1,000 different options ranging from Made in the USA to China to Temu and everything in between.

[00:29:04] Kelly: And so I was like, rather than me pick and choose and read every product detail page, let me just throw in all of the things I care about and narrow this thing down.

[00:29:15] Todd: Kelly, how, how, i- if you just went with the LLM research and purchase, how much time ... Did it save you time, or would it save you time? Or, and how mu- how, like, as a percentage of time, what would you guess- It,

[00:29:28] Kelly: it would've saved me a ton of time.

[00:29:29] Kelly: I, I had already started on one website where I was like, I don't even ... B- And I literally ended up being like, I don't know if I trust this provider. I like their product, but then I went and researched it, it had a bad review on Trustpilot. I was like, oh, maybe I'm overpriced. And then I looked for a discount code.

[00:29:44] Kelly: Like, there's a whole intera- interactivity. But by taking it into Gemini and a straight agent, I could all just do it in one streamlined interface really fast

[00:29:54] Todd: Wow. All right, let's start to wrap up. So, Tanner, I got a, I got a rapid fire for you. Again, Kelly, you can jump in on this, but, before we get to that, I mean, I, I am just blown away at the perplexity of the consumer shopping journey that we just talked about, because if we're going through that, obviously everyone else is going through that.

[00:30:15] Todd: And here we are as fiduciaries of advertisers' money, and now we are supposed to figure out how people are buying our clients' products and services when we just described a whole bunch of radical new ways that people are using AI to even think about buying products.

[00:30:32] Kelly: Todd, before you jump to the rapid fire, I actually have one more question that I really wanted to ask Tanner that'll be relevant in this.

[00:30:37] Kelly: The flip side of this, I'd love to have your perspective. There's a fear of mine that there's a dark side of the sentiment and the weight where I'm curious how much you think that ratings, reviews, and reputation play in. And knowing that rankings and reviews often skew towards the negative, you get so many less people that'll take the time and energy for a good experience, and you'll get so many more people that wanna complain.

[00:31:04] Kelly: And that is ... We've seen has been weaponized. We've seen it on Yelp and other things where people wanna review bomb things and boycott things and all that. Do you have any thoughts around how that sort of tooling and risk can exist? I mean, imagine a small entity that wants to sell, and all of a sudden they get bombed with bad reviews and there's a concentrated kind of brute force effort on it.

[00:31:24] Kelly: Does that just kill a business? Can ... Is that even recoverable?

[00:31:27] Tanner: Yeah. it takes a lot of work, of course. digital reputation management is the whole, strategic name for that, line of services, where essentially what you have to do is go out and figure out what is your digital footprint?

[00:31:38] Tanner: Are you happy with what customers are saying online? Are you okay with the reviews that are out there, right? And,whether it is trying to encourage people who've had a positive experience to leave reviews and come back and,outweigh those negative reviews, or minimize those negative reviews or respond to them.

[00:31:55] Tanner: The other place, that we really have to look at and is seeing more, search traffic is Reddit, right? So did you have a good experience with this company or a product? We see entire forums built discussing those lines of services. A lot of

[00:32:11] Kelly: winning And historically, Reddit is not a place you want to engage.

[00:32:14] Kelly: There's no winning in that world.

[00:32:17] Tanner: Little toxic. Yeah. Yeah, but, if you're a brand with a specific service, you should keep an eye on places online where people are discussing those products or services. And,if you are interested, digging into and doing some, community management yourself,will help you influence those results that are being pulled through.

[00:32:35] Tanner: I

[00:32:35] Kelly: mean, I guess on the positive, that means that there's maybe a certain level of accountability. I mean, obviously, if it goes to the level of weaponization, that can be a problem. But it is nice on the consumer side that you can't just ignore it or get it buried. Like, there might be consequences to bad customer service or experiences or engagements, but there's always a spectrum of that.

[00:32:55] Kelly: It's interesting to think about.

[00:32:56] Tanner: Yeah. I mean, the bar is being raised for all businesses, and it's kind of about do you show up to meet the moment, right? And making sure you build your strategy for that is really what's required today.

[00:33:08] Todd: Oh, boy. if I was a CEO of a product company today, I think I would, my brain would be mush trying to figure all this out.

[00:33:15] Todd: but good thing there's smart people like you, Tanner, out there to help, brands figure this stuff out. all right. So today, we were recapping and talking about,what's changed. So Tanner, at a ... If you could just think of one thing that you would tell a CEO, relative to our conversation today about what's changed, what would be one thing you would say, "Hey, here's what's changed, and here's what you need to know"?

[00:33:41] Tanner: If you've neglected your organic presence in the past, there's still time. the best time to start doing SEO was, 10 years ago, but second-best time is, today. So I'd say get on it, because it is a channel that compounds, it exponentially grows, and it is going to have an outsized impact, especially as customers like Kelly and Todd are searching for things and looking for unbiased results in AI tools.

[00:34:04] Todd: Got it. all right. Well, I'm gonna push off the rapid-fire stuff 'cause I don't think it's as good as I wanted it to be, so I'm just not even gonna go do it, because we also talked about a bunch of good stuff and went off on a pretty good tangent there, so about commerce and shopping, which I really, I do think is, Man, it's hard to wrap your head around it. And, and again, if, if I'm a focus group of one and you're a focus group of one, Kelly, and we both just talked about actually making purchases of products relative to our conversational engagement with an AI LLM, wow. If you're a brand out there selling product and you're not thinking about what Tanner just said, good luck.

[00:34:47] Kelly: Todd, you need to go look at the settings on your phone. I'm leveling up with my AI because I'm talking and conversationally back and forth. it's a game-changer. You should do it across the board. I'm surprised you're not delving into that more.

[00:34:57] Todd: I know that there's the ability to just use, like, voice to it, but I haven't had it give me answers back yet in voice.

[00:35:04] Todd: So yeah, I need to get a little bit more advanced with that. I just have to stop working on chart plotters on sailboats, and then I can do that.

[00:35:11] Kelly: it cr- it creates this strange stream of conscious conversation where you think through it, and it's, it, it took me a little bit of time to get used to it, but yeah, once you're, once you really go back and forth and you kind of really converse with it, it, it changes those dynamics in an interesting way.

[00:35:26] Kelly: And, and I found it in a very efficient way.

[00:35:29] Todd: That, that makes me, think about something. Note to our producer, Luray, There's an, a really curious psychological phenomenon that could be happening there, Kelly. if people are starting to talk to their AI agent, actually talk out loud into a microphone on their device, and it's talking back to them, my daughter, who is in her senior year of brain science studies and psychology, I wonder if we have her on what her academic, commentary would be around that, because that's wild and wacky if you think about the larger sort of humanitarian psychological shift of that.

[00:36:17] Todd: I don't even know where to begin trying to unra- unwrap or unpack that. But maybe we'll put a note on that one to our producer, and we'll come back with that show in another episode and dive into psychological brain sciences and the wacky world of talking to your device and it talking back to you, and that could actually inform, inform how you buy products or services.

[00:36:37] Todd: I guess Amazon Alexa does that now, but I don't, I don't use it that much. all right, folks, thanks. Thanks, fellas, for another insightful chat. we've got one more episode coming up in this series. We'll be joined by Fernanda Ford, our senior director of, of Google and Google products and services, who works alongside you, Tanner, and I know you've got some things to sort of pick her brain about and get her to chime in on the paid side of this.

[00:37:05] Todd: So that'll come, next in episode three of this three-part series. happy Monday. Have a good week. Talk to you fellas soon.

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