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PODCAST

Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast

Smarter Ecommerce

Feed your growth mindset. Ecommerce is growing, and so are the challenges and opportunities for online retailers. In the Growing Ecommerce podcast, Mike Ryan and other smec experts are joined by industry leaders in ecommerce, digital marketing, and data science. By sharing business trends, practical solutions, and best practices, this podcast helps online retailers solve the challenges of tomorrow.

business marketing

All Episodes

28:57

OpenAI's "Delusional" $100B Ad Target | Plus: The...

Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast ·

2026/04/21

In this episode of Growing E-commerce, Mike Ryan and Chris Scharmueller unpack two massive stories highlighting the current realities—and potential delusions—of the tech and retail sectors. First, we discuss the quiet and staggering fall of Allbirds. Once a Silicon Valley staple and D2C darling valued at a massive $4 billion, the sustainable shoe company has reportedly sold for a fraction of that cost. We explore what their trajectory tells us about the overestimation of the D2C model and wh...

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34:22

The “Amazon Killer”? How JD's Joybuy Invades Europe |...

Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast ·

2026/04/14

Is the “Zero-Click” shopping era finally here, and are European retailers ready for a three-way war between Amazon, Temu, and JD.com’s Joybuy? In this episode of Growing Ecommerce, Mike Ryan and Chris Scharmueller unpack a huge week in e-commerce. First: Meta’s new Stripe partnership for in-app checkout. With OpenAI and Google both struggling to make native checkout work, can Meta finally crack the “zero-click” model and keep shoppers fully inside its platform? Then comes the real clash of ...

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31:23

OpenAI’s $25 BILLION Loss – is Agentic Shopping Dead?

Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast ·

2026/04/07

OpenAI is facing a projected $25 billion shortfall, and their attempt to monetize ecommerce is already falling apart. In this episode of Growing Ecommerce, Mike Ryan and Chris Scharmüller ask the billion-dollar question: Is the dream of "agentic commerce" already dead on arrival? While the media celebrates OpenAI's early $100 million in ad revenue, the math tells a much darker story. Their projected 2026 burn rate sits between $14 and $25 billion. To survive, they need a massive, highly...

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32:30

How the Top 1% Retailers Run Google Ads in 2026

Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast ·

2026/03/31

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

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34:19

Temu Hits 71% Market Share – Should You Worry? Plus:...

Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast ·

2026/03/24

Is the "clash of the titans" coming for your profit margins, and is Google about to take away your website traffic? In this episode of Growing E-commerce, Mike Ryan and Chris Sharma tackle two massive, existential shifts threatening the traditional online retail playbook. First, we dive into the aggressive European expansion of Chinese e-commerce giants. While JD.com (Joybuy) and SHEIN are making aggressive moves, Temu is completely taking over. We break down the official monthly active us...

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32:39

Sam Altman SCREWS UP ChatGPT Shopping | Plus: Google...

Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast ·

2026/03/17

Why did OpenAI quietly kill its shopping feature, and what does it mean for the future of Google Ads? 🚨 In this episode of Growing E-commerce, Mike Ryan and Chris Sharma tackle the reality of the "AI takeover" in paid search. Following Chris's exclusive executive Think Tank with 20 leading CMOs in London, we are cutting through the noise to discuss the 2026 playbook. First up: The ChatGPT Shopping disaster. We discuss why OpenAI had to walk away from its "thin Google Shopping wrapper" to

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54:29

The State of PPC 2026: Live from SMX Munich w/...

Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast ·

2026/03/12

If you want to know how your peers are actually handling the grind, the Google Ads updates, and the "AI takeover," this episode is a must-watch. We recorded a special edition of Growing Ecommerce live from SMX Munich! Host Mike Ryan is joined by Wijnand Meijer (Co-founder & CEO at TrueClicks) and Frederick Vallaeys (CEO at Optmyzr) to dive deep into the freshly released Global State of PPC 2026 Report. This isn't just another PDF to gather dust in your downloads folder. Driven by the t...

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32:43

The end of Dynamic Search Ads is here! Insights from...

Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast ·

2026/03/10

In this episode of Growing E-commerce, Mike Ryan and Chris from Smarter Ecommerce (smec) tackle the massive news that DSA's time on Earth is limited. With DSA going the way of the dinosaurs, Google is pushing advertisers toward AI Max for Search. But is it actually a worthy replacement? To find out, Mike breaks down the findings from his brand-new 18-page report, The Ultimate Guide to AI Max. After analyzing 1 year of data across more than 600 Google Ads search campaigns, the numbers tell a n...

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22:22

The Expensive Problem with Google’s Search Partner...

Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast ·

2026/03/03

🚨 Breaking Google Ads News: Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) will be going "the way of the dinosaurs." As confirmed by Google's Ginny Marvin, DSA's time is limited, paving the way for AI Max as the future-proof campaign standard. Is the Google Ads Search Partner Network draining your Performance Max budget? We looked at 1,500+ campaigns and finally have the data to prove it. In this episode of Growing Ecommerce, Mike Ryan and Chris Scharmueller dive into data from over 1,500 PMax campaigns

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28:59

Is ROAS Overrated? – Why the “Revenue Trap” Might...

Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast ·

2026/02/24

Is ROAS a flawed metric for Google Ads? According to acclaimed ecommerce experts Mike Ryan and Christian Scharmüller, using Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) as your primary "North Star" metric creates a dangerous "Revenue Trap." Because ROAS measures revenue rather than actual margin, it creates an "air gap" that ignores the law of diminishing returns, ultimately hurting the profitability of mature Google Ads campaigns. In this episode of Growing eCommerce, the hosts break down how to properly use R...

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35:25

PMax vs. Standard Shopping? – 3 Google Ads Myths Busted

Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast ·

2026/02/17

In this episode of Growing eCommerce, Mike Ryan and Chris debunk three persistent myths that are still holding retailers back in 2026. While everyone is distracted by the hype of UCP and Agentic Commerce, many accounts are bleeding efficiency due to outdated structures like the "Heroes & Zombies" matrix and one-dimensional margin buckets. We break down why these old-school tactics create self-fulfilling prophecies of failure and share what sophisticated retailers are doing instead to bala...

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31:08

Google’s UCP Explained: Will "Agentic Commerce"...

Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast ·

2026/02/10

UCP (Universal Context Protocol) is a new infrastructure layer aiming to standardize “agentic commerce.” It breaks ecommerce into modular capabilities (“Lego bricks”) so AI agents can negotiate tasks like product discovery, checkout, and payments across platforms. This has become an infrastructure war: Google is pushing UCP as an open-source standard versus OpenAI’s ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol) and Anthropic’s MCP (Model Context Protocol). Big retailers such as Walmart and Zalando are alre...

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36:30

Ecommerce Trends 2026: Google AI, Temu & CPC Forecast

Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast ·

2025/12/23

In the final episode of 2025, Chris and Mike trade their suits for matching Christmas pajamas to deliver a raw, honest review of the year in digital marketing. 🎄 They break down the biggest surprises of the year, from Google’s unexpected pivot toward transparency to the "Naughty List" players who frustrated the industry. Mike reveals details about his behind-the-scenes meeting with Temu, while Chris explains why Mark Zuckerberg is on his bad side this year. Plus, we look ahead to 2026. Will

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39:35

Are Your Google Ads Lying to You? - Marginal ROAS...

Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast ·

2025/12/16

In this episode, Mike Ryan and Chris dive into the fundamental issue plaguing advanced performance advertisers: the lack of data integrity between ad platforms and a retailer’s backend systems. Why are sophisticated retailers taking optimization decisions on ad platform data when their final bottom-line evaluation comes from a different source? Mike calls this the "optimization gulf". The hosts argue that this disconnect is a major tactical issue that is driving platforms like Google and Meta...

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44:16

Black Friday Bloodbath: ROAS Down 12%, Gross Margins...

Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast ·

2025/12/09

In this post-mortem episode, hosts Mike Ryan and Chris dive deep into the data behind the last peak season to reveal the true cost of Black Friday. They confirm what many performance marketers feared: the event is a "promotional bloodbath where margins are lost". The numbers are shocking: Google Ads spend was up over 31% year-over-year, but revenue only grew 15%, resulting in a massive 12% drop in Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). But the real trouble is profitability. Mike reveals an exclusive char...

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32:11

Google is bidding on the WRONG products: The ‘Clicked...

Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast ·

2025/12/02

In this episode, Mike Ryan and Christian Scharmueller dismantle a massive technical flaw in Performance Max: the "Clicked vs. Bought" discrepancy. In a keywordless world, product targeting is your main lever. But Mike reveals that Google places its bids based on the product a user clicks, while being completely blind to the product they actually buy. This means Google is often bidding on the wrong item, unaware that your user cross-shopped into a lower-margin alternative or a different brand ...

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37:06

Google AI Max is A TRAP?! New Data on ROAS, Demand...

Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast ·

2025/11/25

Is Google's new AI Max for Search the future, or is it a hidden trap? In this episode of Growing E-commerce, Mike Ryan and Chris dive into brand-new, independent test data on AI Max for Search and discuss the strategic role of Demand Gen and the future of Dynamic Search Ads (DSA). The analysis of over 250 e-commerce campaigns reveals significant concerns: AI Max delivers an average 35% lower Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and a higher Cost Per Conversion (CPA) compared to traditional broad match c...

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27:40

Google's $155 Billion Backlog: The Real Cost of...

Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast ·

2025/11/18

Q3 earnings are in, and the consolidation is real. Hosts Mike Ryan and Chris dive into the gravity-defying numbers, confirming that Google's core ad revenue is up a strong 12.6% year-over-year (YoY), and their massive Cloud backlog sits at $155 billion USD. Chris states that Google is not the "bee-headed chicken" but remains the dominant "American eagle". The focus then shifts to Amazon, which has truly become a services business (Cloud and Ads), with its retail component no longer the ...

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33:38

CPC Crisis: 30% Inflation is Here! What now?

Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast ·

2025/11/11

This episode tackles the most urgent issues retail clients are facing right now: exploding costs and profound market uncertainty. Hosts Mike Ryan and Chris dive into the alarming trend of increasing CPCs (Cost Per Click), which are soaring at rates of up to 30% in key categories. Chris calls these increases a "fucking pain in the ass" and a potential "business destroyer," especially for businesses with paper-thin margins. They debate whether Google is responsible or if it's purely a market-le...

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26:39

Google & OpenAI are FORCING You to Pay: The AI Ad...

Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast ·

2025/10/28

It's here! Ads are officially landing inside your AI search results, and Google’s not asking for permission. In this episode, Mike Ryan and Chris break down the massive global rollout of AI Overviews (AIO) and AI Mode (AIM). They reveal the experimental phase where ads will soon appear inside the AI content itself, and expose the most critical issue: advertisers currently have neither an opt-in nor an opt-out for these new properties. This means your existing ad budget is being automati...

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96 results

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