Why do shoppers abandon their ecomm carts?

• Shipping costs (guilty! Sometimes it’s the only way to figure out how much shipping will cost.)
• Deal searching / price comparison (ecomm satisfies the game urge unlike brick-and-mortar, the hunt for deals can be half the fun)
• Waiting for a sale (shoppers have been conditioned to wait for a discount winback email or use their cart as a wish list)
• Squirrel! (they get distracted)
• Want to put eyes on the product before purchasing

Useful tidbit from The ‘Gram for those that don’t like being phished or hacked:

Emails from Instagram will only come from @mail.instagram.com

🤯

OpenAI announces leadership transition

The board of directors of OpenAI, Inc., the 501(c)(3) that acts as the overall governing body for all OpenAI activities, today announced that Sam Altman will depart as CEO and leave the board of directors.

But what does this mean?

Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.

An audio ads study found that less is more when it comes to copy.

Cutting 10 words (per minute) leads to a:

• 1% increase in consumers scoring an ad as standing out
• .25% increase in web traffic

24 extra words in a 30-second audio ad lowers ad response by -27%

Less density = fewer messages = higher memorability

An ad with four messages will have message recall of only 24% to 43% of ads with just one message. The more messages an ad attempts to communicate, the lower the likelihood of a single message being communicated.

If you don’t know what you’re trying to say, how will your customers?

Everyone loves a benchmark.

A study found…

The average month-on-month growth rate for podcasts is 1.62%

But

podcasts with less than 1,000 monthly downloads are nearly 8% more likely to double their listenership in the span of a year compared to mid-size shows with between 1,000 and 10,000 monthly downloads. Podcasts with over 10,000 monthly downloads are also the most likely to reduce their listenership, as it becomes harder to keep listeners interested.

Know what your goals are. And remember that metrics don’t always perfectly map to them.

And Snap makes 3

Amazon Reaches Deal to Run Shopping Ads on Snap

The end of the free money train means it’s more efficient for these social platforms to partner up when it comes to their shopping ambitions, rather than trying to build their own.

TikTok Shop enters its knockoff phase.

TikTok creators have been pitching apparent knockoffs of products from Apple, Lululemon, and Crocs.

leaning on creators to sell products comes with two big challenges: they’re not always honest and don’t always understand what they’re selling.

This has been my biggest warning to clients for months. Signing up for TikTok Shop feels like signing up to have your product(s) knocked off at some point, whether by others or TikTok directly.

I get it, you wish your e-commerce business were selling the way it did in 2020, when U.S. e-commerce revenue surged 28%, and in 2021, when it surged 22%. But those days are gone, even though they left their mark.

It’s important for marketers & analysts to understand trends & market happenings because businesses don’t operate in vacuums. Sometimes sales are down because everyone’s are.

Data comparisons for the past few years have been messy, and will likely stay that way for a bit. Try to figure out which changes are signs of shifting behaviors & which are on you.

The splintering of social has barely begun.

Before long, we might have a slew of new reading tools, with different ideas about how to display and organize posts. We might have new content moderation systems. We might have an entire industry of algorithms, where people compete not to make the best posts but to show them in the most interesting order. Modern social networks are not a single product but a giant bundle of features, and the next generation of tools might be all about unbundling.

via The Verge

if you turned a browser history — the most neglected piece of the software — into a robust and fully featured machine of its own. It would help you map the path you charted through a web of knowledge, refine those maps, order them, and share them.

There’s going to be an AI assistant that will do this.

I would guess a chat interface for user-driven queries. But can also see a browser extension that annotates or highlights areas of the current page you’re looking at with references to related pieces from your history.

Like a personal knowledge graph with real time node connecting.

IYKYK

☁️

I was introduced to Daniel Dennett's concept of the intentional stance via Seth Godin. It reads like marketing strategy 101 for being customer-centric with your messaging:

Here is how it works: first you decide to treat the object whose behavior is to be predicted as a rational agent; then you figure out what beliefs that agent ought to have, given its place in the world and its purpose. Then you figure out what desires it ought to have, on the same considerations, and finally you predict that this rational agent will act to further its goals in the light of its beliefs. A little practical reasoning from the chosen set of beliefs and desires will in most instances yield a decision about what the agent ought to do; that is what you predict the agent will do.

I translate this as:

1. Acknowledge the entity you are talking to is both a human being and a rational agent capable of making its own decisions (you're making an appeal—an ask—not coercing or commanding)
2. Determine what (you believe) this entity believes: experiences, values, foundations, local reality, etc.
3. Determine what (you believe) this entity desires: dreams, aspirations, self-talk, role models, etc.
4. Determine what (you believe) this entity will do, given its beliefs, to satisfy its desires: actions, means, consideration set, etc.

With that base you can then craft your messaging.

What is the narrative the entity is telling itself?

How does your brand fit within that narrative?

What is it seeking?

How do you call attention to your solution?

Not ideal

Many car manufacturers are selling car owners’ data to advertisers as a revenue boosting tactic, according to earlier reporting by Recorded Future News. Automakers are exponentially increasing the number of sensors they place in their cars every year with little regulation of the practice.

The OpenAI as platform company era has begun.

GPTs are a new way for anyone to create a tailored version of ChatGPT to be more helpful in their daily life, at specific tasks, at work, or at home—and then share that creation with others.

Anyone can easily build their own GPT—no coding is required. You can make them for yourself, just for your company’s internal use, or for everyone.

GPT Store coming soon. And maybe a phone (a Jony Ive collab)?

The Apple Playbook is in full effect.