Amazon and Walmart continue to duke it out for dominance in the commerce realm. They represent fundamentally different approaches in online versus offline shopping, while their e-commerce platforms are increasingly competitive. Now the latest divergence is evident in their strategies: agentic shopping.
After several swings and misses over the past half-decade (looking at you, metaverse), Meta has scored a win. It really needed one. Beyond the broader win in its ad business – now fueled by AI ad targeting – Muse has come out of nowhere. And it could be a consumer shopping powerhouse.
AI glasses continue to face both rapid growth and PR backlash around their privacy concerns, à la “pervert glasses.” But the category – best known for Ray-Ban Meta Smartglasses (RMS) – has another endpoint that’s rarely discussed: the ability to upskill and elevate the work of home-services pros.
In a recent episode of Localogy Insider, SOCi senior director of market strategy and insights, Kaci McBride draws on findings from SOCi’s Local Visibility Index (LVI) and Local Discovery Index (LDI), We have the takeaways and full video.
Yelp today announced its big Fall Product Release. Carrying on the tradition of a new feature dump every spring and fall, the latest lot sees
As AI continues to evolve and gain depth along several functional vectors, it’s expanding in its utility and applicability. For example, we’ve gone from the age of apps to the age of assistants. Next up is the age of agents. Along with that agentic trend, we’re seeing another area of development: multiplayer AI.
Uber has added its latest local service: catering. With the $2.3 billion acquisition of ezCater, Uber buys its way into catering. Joining Uber Eats and other functions in its super-app ambitions, Uber is hoping to be a customer acquisition channel for restaurants that want additional revenue streams.
TikTok has become the latest player to integrate AI shopping into its popular – and increasingly eCommerce-enabled – app. Following recent moves by Shopify and Google towards agentic shopping, this gives users a shopping assistant that makes it easier to buy things across TikTok surfaces.
Google has made many attempts over the years to develop features that call local businesses for you. Including the ill-fated Duplex and others, it’s about automating the act of finding out about products, hours of operation or other details. Now, it’s out with its latest play.
ChatGPT’s ad program is gradually evolving. After some ups and downs, the program has seen better luck lately, including its recently-boasted $1 billion annualized revenue run rate. Just weeks later, it brings us another milestone: a new visual display ad format is joining its lineup.
Shopify became the latest to put up the “open for business” sign for agents on its platform. This week, it announced that agents can complete purchases on its merchants’ sites. This capability will be embedded in the platform, though individual merchants may be able to block agents.
One SMB function that we rarely discuss is shipping. It’s something that every small business uses, while some segments – including any business that sells product online – rely on it heavily. So the question is where the age of AI and automation are reviving this entrenched business function.
Yext this week signed a definitive agreement to acquire AI marketing platform Flamel.ai. The acquisition should extend Yext’s agentic marketing platform into local paid media. Flamel’s focus on franchises will also help Yext penetrate further into the multi-location (MULO) brand universe.
After big updates last week at its Connect event – including the Muse Charm wearable and new VR glasses – Meta followed up this week with an SMB-focused play. Its Muse AI agent is gaining integrations with Shopify, Dropbox, Slack, and others, meant to help SMBs operate and market themselves.
Amazon has rolled out a new program that lets local service businesses promote themselves on its high-intent pages. Known as Sponsored Services, the program partners
Scorpion held an event to define today’s home-services pro. How do we characterize them? What are their hopes and dreams? And what makes them tick? To answer these questions, Scorpion brought home-services pros and tech players like TikTok under the same roof.
To propel its ongoing efforts to make video more shoppable, YouTube has announced that creators can tag Amazon products in their videos. Doing so makes those items clickable so that viewers can see products in action and buy them on the spot. Creators in turn get an affiliate fee for any sales.
In th category of ad platform integrations, ChatGPT recently scored a big win: Amazon. A partnership between the two players lets users of Amazon’s ad platform buy and manage ChatGPT ads.
A central element of the TikTok narrative over the past several years has been the app’s SMB empowerment. As a discovery engine that lets creators get found based on their content alone – not weighted by follower counts or celebrity status – an SMB democratization play is inherent.
This edition of Local Radar highlights three startups betting that AI can reinvent some of the most established categories in local commerce. From Cascade rethinking construction job acquisition, to Bidbus reshaping the way used cars are sold, to Naive streamlining the process of starting a business, the common thread is software designed for an AI-native world rather than retrofitted for one.
