The Information's TITV
00:34:55 · Akash Pasricha, Catherine Perloff
[00:34:55] S0: How many people are using this? It's called Shop Direct feature? Do we have any stats at all? [00:35:03] S5: You know, it's, we, you know, we noticed two fifty million products being sold via this, which is a big expansion from March when there was only 100,000,000 products being sold. However, is anyone buying that? We don't really know. I talked to a lot of, you know, ecommerce consultants, retailers. They all really either weren't sure whether they were in the program or if they were in the program, weren't really able to tell if it was driving sales. And part of that is, you know, Amazon probably could have better sort of attribution infrastructure to help the retailers link the program to sales. But I think part of it is like maybe people aren't really clicking on these links. I mean, we don't exactly know. And I mean, do think though it is worth saying that like all of agentic commerce, even Muse is still like pretty niche. Most people aren't doing this right now. So, but yeah, right now it's kind of interesting to like they're expanding it. There's so many products available, but we're not seeing a ton of traction where it's gotten a lot of mindshare really from retailers that they've noticed a ton of sales from this.
00:35:03 · Catherine Perloff, Akash Pasricha
[00:35:03] S5: You know, it's, we, you know, we noticed two fifty million products being sold via this, which is a big expansion from March when there was only 100,000,000 products being sold. However, is anyone buying that? We don't really know. I talked to a lot of, you know, ecommerce consultants, retailers. They all really either weren't sure whether they were in the program or if they were in the program, weren't really able to tell if it was driving sales. And part of that is, you know, Amazon probably could have better sort of attribution infrastructure to help the retailers link the program to sales. But I think part of it is like maybe people aren't really clicking on these links. I mean, we don't exactly know. And I mean, do think though it is worth saying that like all of agentic commerce, even Muse is still like pretty niche. Most people aren't doing this right now. So, but yeah, right now it's kind of interesting to like they're expanding it. There's so many products available, but we're not seeing a ton of traction where it's gotten a lot of mindshare really from retailers that they've noticed a ton of sales from this. [00:36:07] S0: So how do the retailers feel about it though? Because you just mentioned they wish there was a little bit more attribution and they wish there was maybe some more data that they could have access to as well. But if I'm Warby Parker and I'm seeing more customers ultimately purchase on my site and they're redirected to me from Amazon, I mean, a retailer, I'm pretty happy about this, right? Or is this a double edged sword?
00:36:36 · Catherine Perloff
[00:36:36] S5: No, totally. I think some retailers I spoke to were definitely happy about this. Or they saw the potential. They were like, Amazon gets way more traffic than my Shopify site. So if Amazon can send all these people to my Shopify site, that's great. I think the con is that as we've been kind of covering at The Information Agents Shopping, it's very difficult to get all the product details right and to, you know, retail websites get updated constantly, prices get updated constantly. Sometimes you go to a retail site and they say like 50% off the whole site, but then when you actually go to the product, that's not true. So it's very hard for Amazon to always be getting right all of these details. They've made improvements to try to get this right, actually partnering with feed companies to try to sort of have merchants, you know, have the product catalog information so they can be sure that it's right. But I think the flip side of this is that, yeah, there were complaints earlier this year that Amazon was getting stuff wrong through this program. They were surfacing that were incorrect, out of stock, etc. So you don't want to confuse the customer. And then I guess there can also be issues where you might have a deal where you don't want to have certain products on Amazon, like that's your whole strategy, and then you don't want to kind of mess that up.
00:37:54 · Akash Pasricha, Catherine Perloff
[00:37:54] S0: Well, I'm also thinking here that we've spoken on the show previously about the advantages that Shopify might have in this realm, certainly with respect to the data and the fact that everything is literally living on its systems in some capacity, I mean, I would see them as well positioned to have a one stop shop agent that could maybe direct to all the Shopify vendors that have made storefronts with their technology. I mean, that seems like a better operating system, I guess, keep everything updated in real time in some ways. [00:38:32] S5: Yeah. I mean, Shopify has been sort of making this play. They are partnering with Meta, they're partnering with OpenAI, they're partnering with Google, really everyone they've publicly partnered with except Amazon. So you know, maybe the system comes from Shopify, maybe eventually we see a Shopify Amazon announcement with this. But yeah, for all of what Shopify is doing to sort of create the infrastructure for Agents Commerce through their existing e commerce technology, you know, they don't have all of the inventory that Amazon has, which is still, you know, primary place a lot of people shop. [00:39:06] S0: Right. And Catherine, let me ask you one last question. On the money side of all this, is Amazon at all collecting for redirecting to these sites at all? Do you anticipate some kind of a business model where they would try to take a cut of these transactions? What ultimately is the business model here?
00:39:27 · Catherine Perloff
[00:39:27] S5: So there isn't one now, but I could totally see that. I kind of... One of my like... I suspect maybe part of the reason we haven't heard more about this is because Amazon hasn't fully worked out the business model. Maybe once they do work out the business model, it'll become more pressing. They could take a cut. They could also have this as an ad opportunity. Maybe they could start chart like if you want to show up as shop direct, maybe it's an ad. You know, Mark Zuckerberg has already said that they envision taking a cut from used transactions. I mean Amazon, the you know, the reason people don't want to sell on Amazon and the reason why they keep products on their Shopify site, even if they do sell on Amazon, is because Amazon takes out a ton of fees and the margins are not very good on Amazon. So I can't imagine if this becomes popular like they, you know, they wouldn't. They wouldn't want to give an opportunity for, say, merchants to take all their products off Amazon and take them on. Put them on Shopify. Okay, because I'm not going get the fees from Amazon and but they'll still show up there like they're not going to want to do that. They I think they will eventually collect, But right now, I think they're just trying to get the program to have traction and have consumers catch on.
00:40:38 · Akash Pasricha, Gopal Srinivasan
[00:40:38] S0: Right. Great. Well, I want to thank you for coming on. That is Catherine Perloff, who covers Amazon here at The Information. Our next segment is with our partner, Gemini, and we are speaking to one of their implementation partners at Deloitte. Gemini released Gemini IV Argonne a few weeks ago as the model race continues to wage on Fast and Furious. I want to bring on Gopal Srinivasan, Principal and Global AI and Data Lead at Deloitte, who is working with businesses to integrate Gemini into their systems. Gopal, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here. [00:41:13] S4: It's a real pleasure. Thank you for having me, Akash. [00:41:16] S0: So, we're kind of at this interesting point in the AI race right now, Gopal, where you have Google, which they've been releasing models. They've been under pressure show that they can compete with the other frontier labs at the very top of these benchmark leaderboards. So that is one story that's playing out. On the other hand, you have the Anthropic S 1 out this week and you have their own admission that, Hey, our models are really good and we're still trying to get people to grow into these capabilities. These feel like two contrasting realities because on one hand, we're so focused on having the best model. On the other hand, people can't even use the best models. How does that coincide with what you're seeing on the ground right now in your business?