🫢YourSurprise and it’s “thank you page”

I ordered a gift for a collegue from the HQ of the company where I work. This HQ is in Germany, so I ordered at the German YourSurprise site. Yoursurprise is a Dutch company that does very well (they are active in many countries now and still expanding). So to get my personalised gift in the German language was very easy. What stood out for me was their “thank you page”.
Instead of having a promotion (that you sometimes see), they do profiling in a very smooth way. I can imagine this can work for many company types (f.e. in travel and hospitality), yet you hardly see it.
The questions they ask are: For who did you order the gift? How old is the recipient? For which topic did you buy this present?, things like that.
Very valuable information for personalisation and retargeting.

But not only that, below the survey at the thank you page, there is of course all information one needs like the order details, but also a performance branding video of the brand. (unfortunately not localised).
After you click “submit” of the survey, they give you the opportunity to store “birthdates” so they can remind you when it’s time to buy a gift.
I think they can use these survey results also for PR purposes and by that boosting LLM visibility for “gifts”.

Very nicely done! ****** Crossborder Alex Kudo’s

🎉 Build an audience first, then the app

As you know I am also busy with vibe coding apps. Just for fun. Together with a collegue we now vibe-coded a “task manager for farmers”. Appearantly the way we made it did not yet exist yet. We are now validating it with farmers.
It seems we are not the only ones that create apps withouth (significant) usage:

So, what I already learned years ago as a niche of product sourcing, build an audience before you have the product. It seems to be also valid for these kind of things.
Building an audience or a community, doesn’t even have to be expensive i.m.o. It can be perfectly done with social media and if you are creative enough you do not need (a lot of) paid ads. It depends a bit on the goal, follow it by baking into your app “distribution” and see how it goes.

So I think it’s important to get your audience first then it’s easier to distribute and get re-usage of your vibe coded app.

This connects to something Mark Schaefer and Joe Pulizzi wrote this week that’s worth reading in full:

“you do not build a community first. you build the reason a community should exist. that’s the part most people want to skip. they launch the group. they open the Slack channel. they create the Discord server. they announce the membership. they schedule the webinar. they build the event page. and then they wonder why nobody shows up. the mistake is simple. they built the campfire before anyone had a reason to sit down in front of it.”

Now for the details:

https://businessesgrow.com/2026/06/08/content-creators-2/

and/or checkout these earlier newsletter editions, where I wrote on “Lovable” and their way of “community” building and baking into their service “distribution”.

And this earlier edition:

🦾 Inspiration: AI generated video ads that work

I am pretty convinved that I am creative enough -if I focus- to create working AI video advertisements. That’s why I read this article, to see which AI generated video ads won prices.

Check it out there are quite some nice ones like “The Watch” that I embedded above.

Details:
https://mashable.com/tech/generated-awards-ai-advertisements-videos

🇮🇳 India: Sleepyhead campaign launches city-wide treasure hunt across Bengaluru

I like those campaigns that combine on and offline. That sends people to physical stores. I always keep an eye at those. This one from India is worth a read. It’s for now Bengaluru only, but most likely they expand to other cities. Sharing it for creative thoughts! How it works?

• Starts with a puzzle/clue in a pinned Instagram reel.

• Mixes digital (online clues, QR codes) and physical activations (retail stores, physical challenges in later rounds).

• Grand prize: A full living room setup worth ₹2 lakh.

• Face of the campaign: Local creator Dumbo (@hey.dumbo), leveraging challenge-style content aimed at Gen Z.

• Tied to their “Dopamine Comfort” philosophy gamification, adventure, omnichannel engagement, and product discovery (mattresses, sofas, etc.).

Details: https://www.brandinginasia.com/sleepyhead-campaign-launches-city-wide-treasure-hunt-across-bengaluru/

🇨🇳 TechbuzzChina: Tencent’s AI action layer

I share again a techbuzz china post:

Tech Buzz China Insider

Tencent's AI Bet Is Not a Chatbot. It Is WeChat as an Action Layer

Things you might have missed…

Read more

4 days ago · 5 likes · Tech Buzz China

I think it’s interesting because it highlights how differently apps and AI are evolving across continents and it’s a bit contrarian to how most people in the west think about this. worth understanding and learning from it. Do read the article from Tech Buzz China Insider.

That gives Tencent a plausible opening. If the methods are widely available, what is scarce is access to good problems rooted in real user behavior. The company with the most daily-use products has an advantage in finding them. Yao said this was one reason he chose Tencent: the company has many products, many real user contexts, and the environments an agent needs to act. An AI can only order food if it is connected to a tool that can actually place the order.

Tencent isn’t trying to build a better chatbot. they’re turning WeChat already used by 1.4 billion people (including crossborderalex) for messaging, payments, and daily life into an AI that can act on your behalf. order food, book a ride, compare prices, all without leaving the app. The AI connects to millions of mini-programs (worth understanding how this works) already inside WeChat and completes tasks end-to-end. The model is almost secondary. the platform is the thing that is very hard to copy.

I think even if you are a smaller retailer in the West, and you do not have a complete ecosystem, like WeChat does, you can still learn from this. If you don't build your own AI layer into your app, Google or Meta will eventually sit between you and your customer and mediate that relationship for you.
Most western apps added a chatbot or even a chatbot for product details, and called it AI. The real opportunity is an AI layer that combines what the app (or it’s backend systems) already knows your purchase history, your preferences, live promotions, stock levels and turns that into outcomes. not answers, outcomes. I wrote on that before here

Most (not all) western apps have the data to do this. most are just not connecting the dots yet.

Details (Mandarin) : https://server.zhiding.cn/server/2026/0605/3189672.shtml

Checkout also this earlier newsletter (edition 121), I wrote on outcomes with these examples:

• An app that reads a lease and highlights the three clauses that matter for this renter, with plain-language explanations.

• A product that looks at Stripe data and explains why revenue moved last month and what levers to pull next.

• A mobile app that reviews photos of a home and suggests which repairs deserve attention first and why.

• Software that listens to a meeting recording and produces a short list of decisions, owners, and follow-ups.

💳 Outcomes, not answers a Revolut example

Talking about outcomes, checkout the experience the “Finance philosopher” had with Revolut. Now that’s an experience. He accidentally ordered an eSIM, the AI knew what it was about in 1 minute and started the refund automatically. no human, no email, no phone call.

Once you’re used to that level of service, you don’t want to go back. that’s the bar now.

Details here

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🔍Google report on AI mode: go read!

I am a little late with this newsletter, I had a busy 2 weeks. But this is an important report from google on ow people (in the US) use AI Mode.
Just like the “agile manifesto or conditions” :

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

• Working deliverables over comprehensive documentation

• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

• Responding to change over following a plan

There are also some SEO manifesto or conditions:

• From keywords to prompts, tasks and constraints

• From rankings to presence, citations and representation accuracy

• From single queries to follow-up journeys

• From content-only optimization to entity, product, local and feed-level readiness

• From observed traffic to a more nuanced view of visibility and influence

For SEOs and marketers, the practical next step isn’t to replace SEO fundamentals. It’s to expand how we research, optimize and measure:

As Aleyda says:

• Searches are longer and more conversational.

• Follow-up behavior matters. (Follow-up queries grew 40%+ on average per month. Brand visibility can't be analyzed only at the first prompt anymore: a brand might be mentioned, dropped, compared, misrepresented or never cited across the journey.)

• AI Mode is being used to decide, not only to discover. (The top retail attributes people look for: price, location, color, brand, availability, size, material, style, type, quality.)

• Local and availability intent is very visible. (Follow-up store queries include "near me", "in stock", "replacement parts", "car dealerships with financing".)

• AI Mode is becoming a task layer, not only an answer layer. (Planning queries grew 80% faster than AI Mode queries overall. The opportunity is to be included in plans, shortlists, comparisons and workflows, not only ranked for individual queries.)

I think all very nice topics to work on. Lot’s of possibilities and you can really take advantage early I think.

Report directly: https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/documents/AI-Mode-US-Insights.pdf

Bonus: Google just announced “search profiles” for publishers and creators.

We're launching Search profiles, a new way for publishers and creators to shape their presence on Search. Search profiles are a dedicated, shareable space to highlight content across platforms, and help audiences find accurate, up-to-date information about sources on Search.

Smart move, for now US only but keep a tracker on it, might be useful!
https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/a-new-profile-to-help-publishers-and-creators-highlight-their-work-on-search/

🦜Category Pirates: synthetic customers the biggest unlock the experience market has ever had?

I am digging into “superusers” already for a while, I think very important for product management, but also beyond that.
Now “category pirates” has a piece on “synthetic customers” in their latest video (meaning AI persona’s of your customers).
The video explaines how to use them in an organisation. Very nice! I clipped the part of the video on those syntethic customers, but in essence:

• Move beyond traditional market research: Historically, market research has focused on reports rather than reality and is often not respected within an organisation. To be effective, the synthetic customer must be taken out of the market research department and integrated directly into business functions. They pirates explain on how to use synthetic customers across departments.

• Embed in all departments: Synthetic customers should live within every function, Sales, Marketing, Product Development, and Finance, because the people in these roles are the ones with the actual questions. This allows for "war gaming" and "steelmanning" decisions, where different departments use their synthetic customers to duke out ideas and find the best answer. With todays technology those different syntethic customers can also discuss with each other (especially important for the board roam syntethic customer)

• The trap of mass commoditisation: Most AI (LLMs) are trained on public data, leading to a "reversion to the mean" where everyone gets the same average results. To avoid this, businesses must use proprietary data and train their synthetic customers on superconsumers (jaja, that’s my thing) rather than the "average" buyer. So if you setup a synthetic customer in your company it’s very important to think through which customer data sets to use.
  So don’t aim for the "Fat Part" of the bell curve: Most companies use synthetic customers to simulate the average person (the middle of the bell curve), which only serves to scale mediocrity and "optimize the average into the ground.

• The bridge strategy (supers and non-consumers): The most effective way to use this technology is to instrument your business for your “supers” first. The ideal sequence is:

  1. Run AI on the superconsumer side to understand what the trendsetters want.

  2. Run AI on the non-consumer side to understand why people aren’t buying.

  3. Connect the two: When you find the bridge between a super and a non-consumer, you naturally capture the “middle” of the market.

• The “Super of one is a super of nine” principle: If you use synthetic customers to understand your supers’ behaviors in other categories, your cost of customer acquisition can effectively drop to zero. Very smart, I hadn’t think of it this way. So let’s make it concrete imagine you own a high-end retail shop specializing in technical mountaineering gear. Traditionally, to find new customers, you might buy expensive ads for the keyword “hiking boots”. But now you discover what your superusers are also obsessed with in other categories (in this example maybe high end espresso machines. If you know that you can setup partnerships for example or you can approach them on ad level’s where you do not reach them “cold”.

• Boardroom Application: Even the CEO and the board of directors should have their own synthetic customer to stay on top of the business and simulate high-level strategy. Here questions might be like: if Sales, Marketing, and Finance all have their own synthetic customers providing different answers, the CEO uses their own version to "steelman" the various arguments and find the most robust strategic path or they discuss impact on competitors moves.

I think very very useful! Full video here. Thanks !
Would be so cool to work on a project like this and learn from it!

Oh yeah before I forget, do read to the bottom of this substack newsletter as I write about TOBII eyetracking. What if you can feed in those details of those tests you do, also in your synthetic persona’s wouldn’t that add value for many retail brands?

🇮🇳 India hit peak ad. A satirist made a video about it

I plan to go to India somewhere later this year, and I read more and more about it. So interesting all, so many things happening there, I think it’s also an advertising heaven haha, so many ads everywhere!
I found this one video that went viral over there, and it’s really creative.

Picture cricket in India as roughly what football (soccer) is to Brazil, the NFL Super Bowl is to the US, or the Champions League final is to Europe, except all year round. The Indian Premier League (IPL) is the country’s biggest cultural event, watched by hundreds of millions, and the most expensive ad real estate on the planet outside the Super Bowl.

An Indian satirist, a former ad-man, posted a short video mocking how saturated IPL broadcasts have become. In his fake commentary, every action is sponsored: the bowler is “Eveready to bowl, polishing the Surf Excel white ball to Vim brightness.” A batsman doesn’t just play a shot, he plays a “Tata Nexon smooth drive.” When a player gets out, he heads to “Naukri.com” to find a new job.

Now, I am absolutely NOT sportive and I do not understand cricket, but I do understand his point. You can only stuff so many ads into a broadcast before people stop watching the cricket and start mocking the brands. Creative and fun way to make that point!

🇸🇪 Tobii Eye-tracking just got cheaper, very cool!

I knew TOBII, read some cases about it a year or so ago. Forgot about it, but now I found they innovated.
Tobii bought a startup called Sticky back in 2017, added mobile webcam testing in 2021, and has been quietly rolling out updates since.
What is new now, is how accessible it's become. This is of course not a sponsored post, I just find this service cool, and I like it that these things become much more accessible. They can boost crossborder e-commerce and user experiences.
Read on for details:

Until recently, eye-tracking studies meant lab equipment, recruited participants in a room, and a budget of €20,000+ per study. Only Unilever, P&G and the global agencies played. Today, with Tobii Sticky, you run a study online: participants use their own laptop or phone webcam at home, the platform tracks where their eyes go on screen, and you get heatmaps and attention scores back in days, not months. Pricing starts at a few hundred euros per test.

Just a simple use case: imagine you're a local Indonesian based skincare brand competing with larger brands like Wardah and Mustika Ratu on Shopee Indonesia or in a physical store. You can now upload three packaging designs or simulate them sitting on an retail shelf surrounded by competitors and find out within a week whether your pack actually grabs the eye in a crowded retail aisle, or which design draws attention to your hero claim.
The same setup works the other way around: a Dutch or German brand entering Indonesia can test the localized pack on a simulated Jakarta shelf before printing 50,000 units.

Another use case OOH: Webcam testing won’t measure real-world walk-by attention. For that you still need wearable glasses and field studies. But you can simulate it: upload a photo of your billboard placed on a major Jakartan road and test whether people’s eyes find your brand within the first 2 seconds before scrolling past. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than guessing. I think so useful before you start expensive campaigns!

Built on the Tobii Nexus technology, the Webcam eye tracking for research-solution has been validated by researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden, who found that its performance is suitable for many adult paradigms that use Areas of interest (AOI)-based attention measures, such as preferential-looking tasks.

Details: https://www.tradingview.com/news/modular_finance:e84e4383e4be1:0-tobii-launches-webcam-eye-tracking-for-research/

https://www.tobii.com/products/software/consumer-research-software/sticky

🇵🇭 Jollibee's: humanity, baked into the culture in an age of AI

A few years ago I went to the Philippines and I made a video there on what I saw in retail (mostly Metro Manila). Of course I had to add Jollibee, the fast food restaurant chain that has expanded everywhere Filipinos live around the world. I was triggered by an article in Campaign Asia while browsing this week. Unfortunately it's behind a paywall, and a very shitty one. I tried to sign up but they made it so time consuming I quit.

This is the URL that triggered me (well not the URL but the headline) Jollibee is designing humanity into its operations in an AI age.

And that is interesting. So I searched a bit more if I could find more details, I found a few, I copy paste it here below:

The real competitive advantage increasingly comes from the things that still feel deeply human:
• empathy
• memory
• care
• judgment
• shared experience
• emotional connection

At Jollibee Group, we spend a lot of time thinking about how we design humanity into systems, culture, experiences, and operations, not as a rejection of AI, but as a complement to it.

AI can generate content.
Humans still generate meaning.

His motto "generate a culture that gives people permission to choose humanity over haste" Example he gave: a staff member stopping during a busy shift to help a family take a photo the kind of moment AI can't script

The business case: emotional connection drives loyalty, willingness to pay, and repeat purchase even when cheaper options exist

Maybe a topic more companies should think and discuss about. 🧐

😂Listing failure! This bag is so mini, even the model is scaled down😂

Hahaha, this is a feature amazon just recently started rolling out where they take an image from the listing and throw the product dimensions onto it without any consideration of what the image actually is. 😂.

Hahah : So if the man is 15 cm tall…. That makes the bag….5cmX2cmX3cm approximately!

Always keep checking your listings!

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🧐Amazon average traffic per seller: Saudi leads

I thought this metric is quite interesting: “average traffic per seller”, from Amazon. It also fits this substack as it compares countries.
I think -as a marketplace- it’s very important to have a “seller strategy”. Everything I read about marketplaces, always comes down to a healthy balance between demand and supply. This fits perfectly into that.

Higher visits-per-seller can reflect stronger shopper demand (more people visiting product pages) or improved discoverability/search ranking, and can benefit (all) sellers.

Amazon’s average traffic per active seller climbed 25% in the past year to 3,544 monthly visits, accelerating sharply from the 31% rise the metric posted across the prior four years combined.

When the metric was first established in 2021, the U.S. stood alone as the marketplace where sellers received the most traffic relative to their numbers.

That same pattern of rising traffic per seller now extends across nearly every Amazon marketplace, and the steepest gains have occurred outside the U.S., with sellers in Brazil, Mexico, France, Poland, and the Netherlands all seeing traffic per seller grow by 40% to 57%.

Note Saudi Arabia, a country I tend to follow more and more (lot’s of nice things happening there) This is a special case where traffic per seller is extremely high, but the total market is small, so it can be attractive for niche categories and opportunities to start selling there?

https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/amazons-least-competitive-marketplace-is-now-everywhere

🎥 All In Pod: Marc Benioff on AI and innovation

I saved some snippets from the ALL-IN pod from a week ago, that I thought are interesting to see in which direction things are heading.
This time Marc Benioff from Salesforce was as a guest in the pod.
Unfortunately capcut removed the auto caption feature from the free plan so I cite it here below, as well (thanks NotebookLM)

• 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE and Auto-Escalation to humans: "If you call 1800 no software right now for the first time in 27 years you talk to agent force... after it authenticates you and you get in the system and it doesn't know who you are then boom it'll auto escalate you to a human being who says oh I can see everything you've been doing”.

• Slackbot Business Insights: "We can tell you more about your business than you know because Slackbot is reading stuff that you know, nobody knew what was happening... I can ask it any question about my company. What are my top five deals? What are my employees upset about?

• Decision Tracking and Personas: "I wrote literally before I got on the show a new prompt that is every two hours in our Slack tell me what decisions are being made, who's making those decisions... if you were my chief of staff, if you were a CEO or if you were a board member. And I created personas to now evaluate decision-making going on

• Scaling Outreach via Agents: "In the last 27 years, we calculated somewhere between 20 to 30 million people. We didn't call back... because we didn't have the people to do it. So, just this week, I called back 50,000 people, you know, just through agents."

• Core Business Focus: "I just tell them, hey, you got to focus on your revenue, focus on your customers, focus on your cash flow, focus on your profitability, focus on your innovation."

Full pod here

🇳🇱 Coolblue: great personal experience again

I bought a new phone (hoezee). As always with more expensive electronics, I do this at Coolblue, I wrote about Coolblue many times before. Just wanted to highlight these experiences today:

• The smart queue, so upon entry of the store, I scanned my QR code from the coolblue app (I came for a pickup of a phone that I purchased online), I could choose my name for the display and boom there it was on the screen. Now I think about it, I should have written as a name “crossborderalex.com” 😅
  The cool thing is that it’s not a normal queue, it’s a smart queue, so you will be helped by the employee that can best serve you.
  Also I noticed the staff behind the counter, sees your language preferences.
  My Coolblue app is in English (because of my phone settings) and the staff behind the counter started talking in English and not Dutch, I asked later why and it was because they can see the preference, small things but helpful.

• The AI product expert, the second thing I want to higlight is the AI product expert on the PDP.
  That makes sense! Many companies think about it, but Coolblue already has it.
  I am sure when setup right it will boost customer satisfaction, (what coolblue focuses at) retention and conversion.

• Email at the right time, I picked up the phone that I ordered online in the physical store. At the moment the handover took place, I got an email from Coolblue informing me how to use my phone. Exactly the right time! Improvements would probably be to also send the info via the CoolBlue App and/or some AI assistant that helps me even more with installation questions.

Just wanted to share it because so many companies in Europe can learn from this.

I wrote more on Coolblue for example (but not limited) here:

🇦🇪 Very nice: UAE home center —> growth hack idea

This is a nice one, a bit older but nice!
I see it as a growth hack, and I always like these things, being creative withouth much budget.
UAE Home Centre noticed their furniture kept appearing as background in other brands commercials. Instead of creating new videos, they ran YouTube pre-rolls that flag when their products show up in someone else's ad. Very smart and nice!

I think with AI and automation, this is now much easier for retailers to do themselves. It can even be part of your growth hacking or social strategy, even if you do not create pre-rolls, a basic product tag changes the role of the content from “branding” to “conversion path.” (hence my “performance branding preference)

Regional furniture and home accessories retailer, Home Centre has launched a new campaign with an unconventional twist: turning other brands’ commercials into its own advertising platform.

Each time a Home Centre item is spotted in another brand’s ad, viewers are greeted with a cheeky pre-roll message drawing attention to the product’s presence, followed by a playful note: “This ad may not sell this table. But the next one will.” The campaign simultaneously hijacks attention while tipping its hat to the brands whose production efforts unintentionally doubled as Home Centre showcases.

Details:

https://campaignme.com/home-centre-hijacks-other-brands-ads-with-there-we-are/

Another great growth hack campaign against low cost is the Makro South Africa campaign, I wrote about that earlier, check it out here⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️

🛎️Meanwhile: growing pains on AI tools for major tech companies

Also worth noting: Major tech firms are hitting short-term growing pains with explosive AI coding tool adoption. Microsoft is dropping most Claude licenses by June 30 and switching to its cheaper in-house GitHub Copilot CLI. Uber burned through its entire 2026 AI budget by April.
Might boost innovation in cost-efficient solutions like local/open-source models, I can imagine.

🔍Google IO : biggest Search update in 25 years

I don’t write too much on Google I/O from last week as on Google IO everyone writes about and most things that are announced where for me alread in the line of expectation.
Just I will highlight this important change:

• This will be live very very soon in many countries so you really need to act, I think.

• Multimodal inputs: Users can now search with text, images, files, videos, and even open Chrome tabs as context.

• AI Agents: Users can setup agents directly from search (e.g., “Alert me when this product’s price drops at MediaMarkt” or “Monitor and compare this item across retailers”). So imagine “coolblue” where I wrote about earlier, they are in a very good position, they might be a bit more expensive but AI agents will still advice Coolblue for their excellent (pre and aftersales) services.

So yeah I think, the real competitive edge will come from superior customer experience (CX) and tightly optimized pre- and post-sale processes, just like Coolblue does. So both on and offline. I think that’s also part of an AI strategy and you can use AI to optimize those processes.

Check out the details here: https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/search-io-2026/

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📰 Dara Denney: Claude & Creative strategist

My favorite ad creator is back with a video showing how to use Claude for creative strategy. Dara shares prompts you can use in Claude Cowork to think more deeply about creative direction, and I’ve already tried a few of them in my day job and they work surprisingly well.

So think about it: as within my current job, these are currently tasks we outsource to an agency, with this, we should be perfectly able to do many of those tasks ourselves giving us more insights and better understanding of our customers.

Agency’s values can then switch to for example more on production, rapid iteration, helping companies understand the latest algorithms, and bringing an outside-in perspective.

For your convenience I type the prompts below. Watch the video for the outcome or try yourself:

➡️Persona analysis prompt via public reviews

First ask Claude to extract public reviews from your company to a csv file. Then

From this CSV of reviews, do the following:

1. Extract 5+ core personas (give each a name that fits their trigger or main problem, age range, and 1-line descriptor). For each, write a 2–3 sentence emotional narrative: what they feared, what they wanted, and what finally made them act.

2. Pull 2–3 verbatim quotes per persona that signal their core pain point or desire these are potential ad hooks.

3. Rank the personas for the ones that show up the most. Make another ranking that shows the ones who use the most emotion in their reviews.

4. End with a demographic summary (50–75 words) identifying the dominant audience segment, shared emotional triggers, and the single biggest unmet desire across all responses. Write as if you’re briefing a media buyer before a campaign launch.

➡️Reels / content analysis prompt

Can you pull the links to the top 5 performing Reels from Jones Road Beauty, Laura Geller, Ilia, and Sarah Creal and do an analysis on the content strategies that are performing best for them and they seem to be doubling down on?

➡️Personal / content creator prompt

Can you do an analysis of everything I posted last week and what performed the best? What should I do less of it?

Can you compile it in HTML with graphs and callouts?

LinkedIn: URL
Instagram: URL
YT: URL
X: URL
TT: URL

➡️Brands/competitors

Can you pull the links to the top 5 performing Reels from Jones Road Beauty, Laura Geller, Ilia, and Sarah Creal and do an analysis on the content strategies that are performing best for them and they seem to be doubling down on?

I’d like the final format to be in a summary, spreadsheet and HTML file with graphics and callouts.

➡️Ad Library analysis prompt

Can you do an analysis on {BRAND} Ad Library? The end report should be an HTML file with proper visual styling, charts, and layout.

[INSERT LINK DIRECTLY TO AD LIBRARY]

The things I am most interested in learning:

• Their format breakdown.

• The distribution between partnership ads and brand ads. (Partnership ads are the ones with “with” and a creator handle)

• Their core messaging strategies that they are repeating.

• Who they seem to be targeting as personas, from the pov of their ads only.

• A more in depth analysis of the top 10 ads with the most impressions.

• A round-up of their longest running ads and a trend summary.

• A sense of their creative velocity: how many ads they are uploading, when, and when their last upload was.

I thought this could be helpful. If you are an agency yourself, you can go one step further by creating dedicated MD files per client in Cowork and turning these prompts into repeatable, client specific strategy workflows. Cool isn’t it?

🇰🇷 South Korea: 4.8 milliion people pay with their face

Meanwhile in South Korea: South Korea might become the first country to kill the physical credit card. 4.8 million people already signed up to pay with just their face in only 7 months. No phone. No wallet. No card. Just your face.
Facepay scanners are already installed at 330,000+ retail locations and aims to reach 1 million stores by the end of this year.

“Even taking a card out of my wallet is a hassle,” said Park Eun-ha, a 31-year-old beauty product developer who uses FacePay.

Via Marcel van Oost and /or FT:

More on South Korea in earlier posts of my newsletter including how I shopped in stores withouth any employee!

🇵🇱 Allegro first European marketplace that partners with OpenAI

I’ve sold for previous jobs on Allegro, so I know them a little. Allegro always has been innovative. Things changed fast, I remember. Now Allegro is again a trailblazer in Europe, by being the first European marketplace that partners with OpenAI.

They went live on May 11 as a native app inside ChatGPT. 22 million users can now buy on Allegro through a conversation, not a search bar. So I suggest to keep an eye at it and test it!

For sellers, the ground moves in four places:

• Every listing becomes a candidate answer to a customer question, not a result on page one.

• Content stops being keyword stuffing. Specs, attributes, return rules, EPR status get read by an agent first.

• Fulfilment speed turns into a ranking factor, not a fulfilment metric.

• Paid placement inside the AI answer becomes the most fought over inch in European retail.

Interesting to follow all other marketplaces still keep their doors shot for LLM’s. With OpenAI’s advertising coming up, Allegro might be far ahead.

Via Michael Westerweel
If you are interested in selling in CEE and the Balkans, contact Hristo Radichev! Just a tip from me :)

💡Google published a long piece about "Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search

2 weeks ago in the SEO break, I already wrote about “Non commodity content”. Now Google has released one of it’s most extensive official guidances for optimizing for gen AI ever. Basically what I wrote before is still valid, just this guide has more depth/details.

Bottom line: this update reinforces the direction I wrote about earlier: create content that isn’t easily replicated. That means being original, deeply understanding your customers, and delivering real value instead of generic output.

Sharing information about how a piece of content was created can help give your readers more context. If you’re automatically generating content, consider adding information on how your content was created in a way that makes sense for your audience, such as by providing more background information on how automation was used and adding image metadata.

For ecommerce sites, Google Merchant Center has policies for AI-generated content. In particular, AI-generated images must contain metadata using the IPTC DigitalSourceType TrainedAlgorithmicMedia metadata. AI-generated product data such as title and description attributes must be specified separately and labeled as AI-generated.

Details: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide

B2B: Volume vs Quality Marketing

Great infographic from Pierre, so I wanted to share it. It’s highly recognizable, and I think it can be useful for many others too. Pierre’s message is clear: focus matters. Strategy is also about what you choose to say no to.

As Pierre writes

• Stop fearing lost opportunities → a real strategy means saying no to most of the market

• Analyze your best clients → find who you bring the most results to, build case studies, find more like them

• Identify simple tactics → repeat the same messages to the same type of client, don’t reinvent every time

I think this is very true. With tools like Claude COWORK or similar systems, you can identify your best clients, build personas based on past communication, and better understand your niche. Combined with a solid content strategy, this lets you focus more on retargeting and less on paying for cold leads.

Subscribe to ‘s substack for more content like this.

🇭🇷 When you really want to brand yourself as a low cost airline😂

Right click->save as->image.jpeg

Edit->import file:image.jpeg

File->save as->livery.jpeg

Done!

Or maybe even made in Word or MS Paint😅

🇲🇽 Duolingo Mexico creative local app engagement campaign

This is a nice one! Duolingo -the well known app- in Mexico switched to local advertising. Each “barrio” or neighborhood get’s it’s own OOH advertisement and in addition to that they also integrated (local) social activity. An omnichannel approach, I like it.

• Each board is written for one specific neighborhood/area. La Condesa gets a joke about salsa quality. Polanco neighborhood gets something else. The copy reads like Duo personally knows you and the area you live in.

• The first names on the boards (Fer, Laura, Gustavo) aren't real specific people. They picked the most common first name per area (barrio), so any Fer walking past in La Condesa feels addressed, even though it's statistical, not data-driven personalization.

• The campaign also went into the app and socials. Duo follows real users, comments on their posts, adds them to “close friends”.

• Result: 2,000+ DMs per day in those areas from people trying to interact directly with Duo.

When I think about it, while reading this, I really like this approach.
Many apps lose 70-80% of users in week one. Push notification opt-in is below 50% on iOS on average (depending the category). Getting installs of apps isn’t too difficult mostly, it’s the gap between installing and caring / frequent using.
That gap doesn’t close with performance marketing alone (even app engagement campaigns often only temporarily lift usage), or brand ads alone.
You need both: performance to capture, brand to keep them coming back. And by brand I don’t just mean a mascot or a tone of voice, I also mean constant innovation, communicated as outcomes, not features and yes, creative campaigns like these that have an omnichannel approach.

Details: https://www.produ.com/mercadeo/noticias/duo-is-watching-duolingo-lleva-la-hiperpersonalizacion-a-la-calle/

https://www.reddit.com/user/Bm_Outdoor/comments/1qk2lg7/duolingo_turns_street_ads_into_language_lessons/

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I like watching keynotes. It helps me being creative, see where things are heading. The Stripe keynote does an excellent job on that. So many product updates in it, I didn’t count them but appearantly there were 288!!
Worth a watch. The highlights for me:

• There’s a huge huge amount of new companies started in 2026! Largely because of AI. That’s nice a lot of innovation boosters I think.

• Link Agent Wallet the big announcement and releated to the heading of this post. You can now grant agents the ability to pay with Link's agent wallet, while maintaining control via spending approvals and full purchase visibility.

  • So what is happening there:

    Until now, AI helped you decide what to buy. A human still clicked pay. That’s the part that’s changing. The broader trend is that the purchase itself is becoming automated an agent buys on your behalf, within rules you set upfront. Spending cap, approved categories, specific merchants. You just get the receipt. Stripe demonstrated this with two agents performing a real value exchange (one building/selling, one buying) autonomously.

    The bigger point isn’t about Stripe specifically. It’s that the question for any commerce business is shifting from “can the customer find and buy from us” to “can the agent.” Structured product data, machine-readable catalogs, showing up in the right places that’s where the real work is. The payment rail is almost secondary.

    We’re early. But the direction is clear. Although even stripe acknowledged they do not know when agentic payments will take off, but they re-assured with Stripe you are ready for it.

• Stripe Console. It’s an AI assistant built directly into your Stripe Dashboard. You ask it a business question in plain English “why did my conversion drop this week?” and it investigates across your data and gives you a structured answer. But it also acts. You can tell it to create a product, issue a refund, pull a report and it does it, asking you to confirm before anything consequential happens.

• Checkout Studio and how it handles A/B testing. They demo-ed (is that a word?) setting up a test for Pix, Brazil’s instant payment method just by asking. No engineering ticket, no manual experiment setup. The system runs the test, tracks statistical significance automatically, and tells you whether adding a local payment method actually lifts conversion. For anyone selling cross-border, this is great.

• For in-store and restaurant experiences: Stripe announced the Reader T600 a countertop payment terminal with an eight-inch screen that can run custom apps. Not to be confused with those ordering tablets you tap through at the table (common in Asia, and increasingly in NL too). This one sits at checkout. But the idea is similar that screen isn't dead space anymore. At the moment you pay, it can show your loyalty points, suggest an add-on, or prompt you to sign up for a membership.

• Remember Libra? Meta’s attempt to build its own payment and crypto ecosystem? It got a lot of drawback, never launched.Now Meta takes a different route, with Stripe.

  The Stripe x Meta integration announced at Sessions does something simple but meaningful: checkout happens inside the Facebook ad. The gap between discovery and purchase, where most conversions die, closes.

  But here’s the implication that doesn’t get talked about enough, I think: this makes Meta’s algorithm more important, not less. If the purchase now happens inside the feed, then getting your product in front of the right person at the right moment becomes super important.

  That means understanding how Meta rewards content engagement signals, creative quality and diversity, audience fit, bidding strategy becomes a direct revenue lever, not just a media-buying exercise.

  In a way, this deepens the dependency on Meta rather than solving it. Worth realizing.🧐

🐦‍🔥B2B Emerce Digital: Plieger & it's digital transformation

Yesterday I was at this conference: Emerce B2B Digital in Rotterdam (thanks Grijs Vroom for the tickets). I like Rotterdam more and more, it really has a big city vibe. I think the only city in Netherlands that has that. One of the presentations was on “Digital transformation” and the experiences of “Jeroen Heydendael” at Plieger. I know Plieger, seemed like a company I could work at, so years ago I applied for a job there, I think maybe even this interview was with the presenter.
Plieger is a Dutch wholesale company specializing in plumbing, heating, sanitary and installation products. Founded in 1918, family business, over 100 years old, 61 locations across the Netherlands and the largest player in the sanitary category in the country. Very traditional, very B2B, their customers are mostly installers and plumbers.

Anyway, I share here the slides and some short bullets. I didn’t have the best position in the audience but I hope you can read the slides, the English text of the slides is visible in the lower left corner on the slides.

• Jeroen started with a call to identify professional mistakes you are making right now that will seem obvious in hindsight. Digital transformation often fails because leaders ignore intuitive red flags. Jeroen challenges the audience to confront these "known" issues today rather than waiting for them to become future regrets.

• While boards focus on revenue and margins, the real impact comes from "oh shit" costs like logistics, stock issues, and poor webshop search. Identifying these hidden costs is the first step in a realistic digital strategy.

• Digital teams (the “oat milk cappuccino” people ) often face a culture clash with traditional staff and must work hard to earn their trust. I fully agree to this, and while I am certainly not of the oatmilke people, I do work in tech teams but I always try to find alignment and connection with the people outside the tech teams. Jeroen also explained that: the "rough" reality is that traditional workers often view digital hires from companies like Bol.com or Coolblue with skepticism. To earn respect, digital teams must actually learn the core business understanding the specific "toilets and bathrooms" they sell rather than staying isolated in their tech bubble

• Shifting focus from raw revenue to “Profit per FTE” reveals the true efficiency of digital channels over traditional ones. Because humans have a natural performance maximum, digital tools must be used to create “superhumans” who can handle higher volumes. This metric forces the company to see that even with high licensing costs, a digital-first approach is far more sustainable.

• Middle management is often the bottleneck of transformation and must be forced to adopt a digital mindset or be replaced. Jeroen argued that while you must help operational staff, you have to be "harder" on middle management. They should be "augmented" by digital KPIs, and if they refuse to adapt, they must be given different roles or let go to ensure the company’s survival.

• Leaders should not be afraid of “hard interventions,” including layoffs and reorganisations, to clear the path for digital growth. Transformation often moves too slowly because leaders are “soft,” but the speaker highlights that sometimes the entire management or marketing team must be “swept out” to break through stagnation. Making these hard choices is a matter of principle: it ensures the remaining business can actually survive and provide jobs in a digital future.

• On paper, physical stores showed significantly higher gross margins than the webshop,. This is partly because customers often order low-margin, big-ticket items like central heating boilers online, while they visit physical stores for high-margin “last minute” items like screws and piping. The speaker pointed out that the high gross margin of the 65 physical stores was deceptive because it didn’t account for massive overhead: mortgages, rent, maintenance, local stock, and the complex logistics required to keep those 65 locations running.

• Once all these costs were factored in and the metric was shifted to profit per full-time employee (FTE), the result flipped,. The webshop and app were actually revealed to be twice as profitable per employee as the physical stores.

I thought a very nice presentation, well done, great slides a real story!

🤖B2B Emerce Digital: Marcus: top using AI as a content tool. Start building a system

There was also a presentation from the startup/scale up “Marcus” they have about 16 customers now the presenter told us. The core idea is: The core idea: stop stacking tools, start building a system.

Their platform runs on what they call a Brand Vault: a central repository where you dump everything that makes your brand yours: tone of voice, audience profile, competitive landscape, content guidelines, visual identity, business context, because your brand context lives in the vault (stored as structured files), Marcus isn’t locked to a single AI model. GPT, Claude, Gemini it doesn’t matter. Your context travels with you. You’re model-independent by design.
Technically I don’t think it’s superdifficult, you can build it yourself, but these services are very convenient and I am sure for many companies very valuable if you get a service ready to use so easily.
I was also later that week in some e-commerce/AI talks and people kept on talking on this tool/initiative this means it resonated and there is a market for it. Well done!

Now, there’s not enough space to write down the complete talk. Some short notes:

• You can assemble your own expert panel: pick 2 to 6 specialists from a library of 54+ AI personas spanning leadership, strategy, creative, execution, and what they call "Maestros" (yes, including Steve Jobs and Simon Sinek). Feed them your brief, and they don't just respond individually, they debate each other, push back, and synthesize a verdict.

• You know the posts on LinkedIN you sometimes see the speaker started. Five emojis in the opening line. That’s what happens when you prompt AI with zero context. Marcus claims and apparently tested with real engagement data that because the Brand Vault feeds your actual tone of voice, audience profile and content guidelines into every output, the AI stops defaulting to its training data patterns and starts writing like you. The difference isn’t the model. It’s the context. (true of course).

The presenter presented very nicely, a real sales guy but in the very good way, I could resonate with almost everything he told, even with his story of falling in love with ChatGPT first, then Gemini, now Claude😅.Right Bob? 😅

You can even create a free Brand Vault so you can see how it works:

Details: https://marcus.agency/

🔍SEO week: Stop organizing around channels

I found this slide from SEOWEEK, I think I fully agree: The future of marketing is a cross functional strategy where everyone cares about the same KPIs. Fewer silos. More connection.
A slide that might be worth sharing or to use in many organisations.

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😅Time for a laugh: No need to pay for a Claude subscribtion, McDonalds got you covered😅

🇸🇪 Meanwhile in Sweden: an AI manager runs a coffeeshop

Interesting to see what goes wrong, what goes right. Would you like to have an AI boss?

🔍And now a SEO Break⬇️

First of all the pictures that went viral among the SEO community from Google Search Central Lie in Toronto. I think the slides speak for themselves.
A few other notes on it:

• Crawl vs. Index: “Crawled – Currently not indexed” is rarely a technical rendering issue; it’s usually a quality signal. Google may have tried the content and decided it “wasn’t good,” or it’s a canonical/duplicate issue.

• Gemini in AIO / AI Mode vs. Gemini in App. They both use the same model, but Google Search “shapes” Gemini differently in search than the standalone app. Results from AIO and AI Mode are expected to be different *There is no benefit in converting your site to Markdown for LLM or SEO purposes. *There is no benefit to creating a llms.txt file for SEO.

Details and many more very nice slides👍👍👍 via:
https://www.jcchouinard.com/google-search-central-live-toronto-slides-april-2026/

And this is also one worth to share from Aleyda :

More and more evidence also comes out that AI generated scaled content goes up and then very fast down again, fully in line with the slides from Google’s Toronto event.

🎥Mr Beast copy from the best

Learn from the best, copy from the best, and model just like Tony Robbins teaches. For YouTube, that person or model is MrBeast.

Checkout this motivational video. Most important takout: on the algorithm: it doesn’t exist. Replace “algorithm” with “audience” every time. The algorithm didn’t like your video. No. The audience didn’t. YouTube is a mirror. If people click and watch, it gets promoted. The growth hack industry sells you a god that isn’t there.

Before you hit record, run a checklist:

What’s the thumbnail?
What’s the title?
What’s the first 5 seconds?
What’s the first 30 seconds?
If you can’t answer all four clearly, don’t film.

• On thumbnails: make them simple enough that a scrolling viewer instantly understands and feels emotion. MrBeast’s test: if you can still wonder about the story hours later, the thumbnail/title combo is strong.

• On autoplay: many people never see the thumbnail; the video just starts. You must visually and emotionally grab them in the first 5 seconds.

• On matching expectations: your title and thumbnail set the promise; the first 10 seconds must honor it. If the title says “Tether is a scam,” start with “Tether is a scam and I’m going to show you why.” Match, then exceed. The first 10 seconds are critically undervalued.

• On retention: remove every dull moment. Show your video to 10 critical people and let them roast it. Even 10 seconds of talking head with no cut loses people; adding B‑cam or a new angle at 3 seconds keeps it interesting.

• On the real metric: the most important metric is the next video. You don’t want “that was good, but enough for today”; you want “holy crap, what’s next?” so viewers binge 10 videos in a row.

Checkout an earlier post on Mr Beast, I wrote about Mr Beast in edition 18:

🔎Got a demo of Algolia’s agentic search & discovery layer

I recently joined a company tour through my network group, and Algolia gave a great demo of their B2B search and discovery engine. I recorded it during dinner (not the best angle from the back, but still very watchable).

What stood out: their Agent Studio powering AI agents that make on site search and discovery truly fun. These agents help users with complex queries by reasoning through intent, dynamically updating results in real-time, suggesting smart sidebar comparisons and filters, and even delivering expert-level insights directly on product detail pages (PDPs).

It’s a clear preview of where agentic on site search is heading. Sound on (English speaker).

If you’re working on digital product experiences, definitely worth a watch!

More on Algolia here: https://www.algolia.com

👩‍💻Vercel introduction slides

Same event, different slides, this time on Vercel, the AI coding platform. I knew them already but for many attendants is was new. They gave an introductionary presentation. (Thanks Nicky!)
Next weeks in the follow up, we get an “agentic course” from Vercel. Looking forward. I share the slides, might be useful for some.
My highlight the slides:

• Where you see different use cases in busineses for -in this example- Black friday. You see the way we work now will be transformed, with tools like Vercel it’s much easier for marketing teams to create pages for promotions.
  For Sales to get tailored insights and actions
  And for IT to pro-actively respond.

• Vercel’s internal support system already succesfully resolves 87.6% of incoming requests. Now they didn’t dive into it but my guess is it works much much better then the -so far in many organisations still used- “ticket” system.

• Know user intent: Great AI agents don’t just answer questions they understand who the user is (name, preferences, loyalty, saved addresses), what page/context they’re on, and their full history (abandoned carts, repeat visits, past purchases) to close the loop intelligently.

• “Act on user intent: The best AI assistants don’t stop at understanding they do whatever the platform allows: search, recommend, add to cart, or complete checkout. They combine context awareness with real action capabilities.”

🇦🇪 UAE governments go full AI

So what’s happening on the digital side in the UAE. Well something really interesting. UAE already a leader or close to a leader at many digital topics, now embraces AI at government level.

Announcing what he described as a new government system, Sheikh Mohammed said the plan aims to make the UAE the first country globally to adopt “agentic AI” models capable of independently executing tasks, managing processes and supporting decision-making.

I’m very curious how this will play out especially from my perspective here in the Netherlands. Many Dutch people (including me) complain that the “human touch” in government services is lost. Civil servants seem locked into rigid processes. (I can confirm that personally also for Netherlands).

UAE claims that AI might help to get or keep (I don’t know the situation in UAE), the personal touch so it’s AI and humans.

Every federal employee will receive specialized AI training. The whole transformation is being overseen at the highest levels, with a clear message: AI isn’t replacing people it’s amplifying them to create a faster, more responsive government. People still come first.

I think we can learn from this. Very interesting to follow.

Details: https://gulfnews.com/uae/government/uae-to-move-50-of-government-services-to-ai-within-two-years-1.500516798

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Wow so amazing, what a team, what a development! AI not as a feature but to help getting things done. Or as others say it: from features to interface. Revolut has released (in the UK for now) : 𝗔𝗜𝗥 (AI by Revolut).

You can ask questions like:

• Instant clarity: "How much did I spend on subscriptions last month?"

• Real-time interventions: "Freeze my physical card and order a new one."

• Lifestyle companion: "I’m in Tokyo next week. Set up my eSIM and check my insurance."

As Revolut says it: "The era of navigating through endless tabs and menus is over, with AIR we're delivering a new level of money intelligence that's both powerful and endless".

This will set the bar for other apps as well. Not only the bar but also expectations.

Details: https://www.revolut.com/blog/post/air-ai-by-revolut/

https://www.connectingthedotsinfin.tech/connecting-the-dots-in-fintech/

Incredibly cool and I am a very happy customer of Revolut because of these things! I encourage every app/web development team to look at what Revolut does and to see how these kind of ideas can be applied to your own app or service.

🌎 Vitaly Friedman with the UX localisation guide

Vitaly Friedman shared a nice infographic on localisation:

• Translation: “We adapt messaging to resonate in other markets”.

• Localization: “We adapt UX to local expectations”.

• Internationalization: “We adapt our code to work in other markets”.

In summary of what Vitaly added to this infographic:

✅ English users ≈ 26% of total
✅ Top written languages: Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese
✅ Users prefer native-language content
✅ French text ≈ 20% longer than English; Japanese 30–60% shorter

🚫 Flags ≠ languages — use text labels for languages, globe icon for country selector
🚫 Not everyone has first/middle names — use “Full name” instead

✅ Reserve ~30% space for longer translations
✅ Test visuals and colors with local audiences
✅ Share annotated wireframes with translators for context
✅ Mark special “branding moments” early
✅ Stress-test UI via pseudolocalization (make text 40–50% longer, flip formats)
✅ Adjust numbers, formats, units, addresses per locale

💡 Localization goes beyond translation:

• Arabic → more line spacing

• Chinese → higher info density

• German → detailed, precise layouts

⚙️ Always review with native speakers to ensure clarity, familiarity, and cultural fit.
🌍 Design to adapt and scale globally — you’ll learn more with every new market.

I know from experience these things are very important (for most brands) but often not followed. Do so and you will improve conversion and experiences. Now with AI I think even more important as expectations per country (may) differ!

🤖 Zapier AI fluency bar for every new hire

Let me share this here from Zapier, as I think it’s good to realise for anyone working in tech. Zapier released the AI fluency bar for every new hire. Check it out and see how AI fluent you are. I think I am for sure in Capable but also in partly in Adoptive. I will get to “Transformative” for a large part I think. On route!

Details:

https://zapier.com/blog/raising-ai-fluency-bar-in-hiring/

🇦🇷 🇧🇷 Mercado Libre and the Williams Sponsorship

Mercado Libre built its reputation on one thing: delivery speed. It’s one of the clearest differentiators they have in Latin America and their F1 sponsorship with Williams racing is a smart extension of exactly that story. Fast cars, fast delivery. It just makes sense. A campaign that makes you smile and reinforces the brand perception in one video. It’s those things that make them stand out against Amazon.

Details: https://www.williamsf1.com/articles/1b734b55-9192-45df-9211-a3dc22479449/williams-racing-mercado-libre-heritage-inspired-yellow-engine-cover

🇸🇬 Two ads, two continents, one lesson: Checkout the Grab ad

One more I stumbled upon, I’m a big fan of Grab, I use it every time I’m in Asia. Their CNY ad is fun actually it’s more of a mini movie. It showcases Grab’s wide assortment in food and grocery delivery, and they pulled it off cleverly. Most likely, I think, all the brands featured paid for their spot, making this a cost-efficient production for Grab, while what sticks with the viewer is just how much Grab actually offers. On top of that, it stands out sharply against the usual emotional, family oriented CNY ads.

Details: https://www.adsoftheworld.com/campaigns/wait-whose-cny-ad-is-this

What stands out for me

What strikes me in both ads Mercado Libre and Grab is that strong brand advertising doesn’t need to do everything. Pick one USP, make it memorable, and wrap it in something people actually enjoy watching. Mercado Libre owns speed. Grab owns assortment.
So branded ads can be useful, and brands can now create spin-offs more performance driven follow-up campaigns to convert the attention. Perfect for Andromeda for example.

📈 YouTube doubles in AI mode citations

I have written about it many times before, make YouTube centric in your content strategy. Now this research from Promptwatch makes it even more clear. YT doubled in citations for Google’s AI mode. TikTok seems also to speed up.
Crystal clear data, thanks Klaas!

https://promptwatch.com/blog

🧐4 Levels of AI marketing use, where are you at?

It’s a bit of an AI edition today.

A growth marketer from Anthropic (from Claude) called Austin Lau he mapped 4 levels of AI marketing use. I think it’s interesting you can map it against your company’s status f.e.

• level 1: automate what you already do (reporting, copy, data pulls)

• level 2: use AI as a thinking partner where its better than you

• level 3: do work that was below the ROI threshold before

• level 4: build custom tools only you would ever build

Some attention to Level 3, work that never existed before. Stuff nobody did because the manual cost was never worth it. Think of mining negative keywords across every ad group. Checking your full site for broken links every day. All work that existed in theory but nobody had the hours for. I think that could be a nice goal as it can already be done and isn’t that difficult and you can also use it in your agency for mapping out clients AI marketing maturity and help them achieve a higher level.

Details: here and here

Thank you for reading,

Alex

I am Alex Baar, I publish this weekly newsletter with links I find interesting on the topics: AI, cross-border e-commerce, marketing, retail, and a little bit of Fintech. Subscribe if you like!

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It’s great we in these days can watch lectures from famous universities for (almost) free. This is such one of them. A talk on “how to speak”. Worth watching, it takes about an hour.

"Your success in life will be determined largely by your ability to speak, your ability to write, and the quality of your ideas. In that order."

Many things in the talk make sense and most of them you probably know but the teacher also explains why and how to use these techniques. If you only take 2 things out of this talk you are already winning arguments.

A few takeouts but do watch I think for everyone there is something in it.

• Do not start a talk with a joke. (that one I have to remember I often try to start with a joke😅)

• Promise: Tell them what they gonna learn at the end of your talk.

• Make a “Fence” around your idea so that it can be distinguished from someone else’s idea.

• Don’t put too many words on a slide. Slides should just reflect what you’re saying, not the other way around. Pictures attracts attention and people start to wait for your explanation. Make slides as easy as you can – no title, no distracting pictures, frames, points and so on. (He also suggests to remove all clutter like logo’s etc, do tell your brand police😅.)

• The blackboard is the ideal tool for teaching and informing because the speed of writing matches the pace at which an audience can naturally absorb information.

• PowerPoint is intended for exposing ideas rather than teaching them, making it most effective for professional settings like job talks or conference presentations

🇳🇱 AgentForce world tour Utrecht, Netherlands

I went to AgentForce, the annual salesforce conference in Utrecht, NL. I always go to their event because it’s always inspiring, you always see where the future is heading. This edition I didn’t saw too many new things and I also didn’t take too many pictures, but what stood out or at least what I took note of:

• Actively solving problems before users know there is a problem. They demo-ed a case where an account number was not correct of a customer, the AI agent recognized it and made sure it contacted pro actively the customer (instead of the other way around). But not only that, it also created a personalised landingpage for the customer and a chatbot to solve the problem in the easiest way possible. (so no need to fill in difficult forms).

• They showcased a few times, that sales reps can now just speak (voice) their visit experiences somewhere (f.e. after a repair) and SalesForce will not only extract the voice to text, but also pre-fill the complete form! It was cool to see. So if a sales rep would voice record “the problem is a 30inch valve”, SF can automatically fill that in to the right field(s) in a form and even convert it to “cm”.

• Another cool thing I saw was, a CSAT measurement but not in the tradtional way. By analyzing audio. They analyzed conversations that customers had with agents (both physically and AI agents) and from that they could extract a CSAT score.

• What every talk came back, was that to make AI work you really need to have your fundamentals right including processes. SalesForce is actively offering solutions to merge data, to make sense of large data lakes and pools across different systems.

• I do think their AI agent who helped them plan this event in Utrecht, it might have hallucinated when it planned the toilets 😅. There was only “one” toilet bloq for the whole audience, long lines the whole day!

A few additional pictures :

🖱️ Good clicks, bad clicks

Zippy a.k.a. Cyrus, one of my favorite SEO influencers, created -again- nice infographics. I share them here, you can use them in your job. I already did and shared them among our content team.

* Is this result relevant?
* Is the content useful to answer the question?
* Does this completely satisfy the user search?

All details in the post:

Zyppy Signal with Cyrus Shepard

How Google Click Signals Drive SEO Rankings and AI Answers

It's a great irony that while AI answers can reduce clicks to our websites, AI output often relies on user-click data to produce more accurate results…

Read more

3 months ago · 28 likes · Cyrus Shepard

🏫 Claude Tutorial, free, can fully recommend

I am now actively using “Claude”. Not for chatting, ChatGPT style, but for actually doing work with Claude CoWork and Claude Code. I can seriously recommend this to everyone. It speeds up, gives much better insights and lets you be much more productive. Besides that, it is also really fun.
So I did this course, there is no certificate, but it’s very nice to do. Some parts I already knew but others not. I can fully recommend it:

https://ccforeveryone.com/

A few takouts:

• Sub-agents as your advisory board. You create persistent AI personas (a CEO, a product designer, a frontline employee) that review your work from different angles. Imagine stress-testing a proposal with a skeptical exec before sending it to the real one. (yeah this is so useful I think for so many people in daily life and work. For example, imagine before you finalize your presentation, you ask Claude to review it from different angles, simoutaniously!).

• Working with files at scale: I had a folder of 10 old marketing campaigns, customer feedback across 4 months, competitor research, and a messy CSV. Claude analyzed all of it in parallel using "agents" (multiple AI instances working simultaneously). What would take hours of reading took seconds now. (yeah you can even use it to clean up your dropbox, although that costs a lot of tokens)

• Building better PRDs: Claude interviews you with structured questions to define clear requirements before building anything. AI as your thought partner to think through EVERYTHING before you start. The result is a spec so clear that the AI (or a developer) can build exactly what you want. (This is very very very nice, for us product managers, digital marketers. It goes also beyond PRD’s but it also helps you create nearly perfect briefings for agency’s)

Bottom line CLAUDE MD files are as persistent memory. Unlike ChatGPT where every conversation starts from zero, Claude Code remembers your project context across sessions. Really nice to learn how to work with .md files.

Great to learn to work with Claude. One downside but I am sure this is only temporary, is the token bottleneck, even if you pay.

Here an X link to some free skills but to be honest its als great to write your own skills, I write them and let them refine by Grok then use them in Claude.

🇩🇪 DM Germany great app nice stores

German people go on sunday to the Netherlands to do shopping, as in Germany nearly all stores are closed on sundays (which I still find very annoying as a regular visitor to Germany).
Dutch people on the other hand, go to Germany to the DM stores to buy cheaper drugstore products. (not on Sundays).
I visited a DM in Berlin and I have to say, they have a real good APP as well. I was impressed.

So Dutch people who shop at a DM in Germany: use the DM app to be ready for your visit. It will assist you very well including gifts!

The app has a great product scanner. It’s fast and it gives all details you need on a product. There is a difference in product scanners in apps. Some work well, others not. This one does the job extremely well.

• You can also buy via the app and then get it delivered to a “box” inside a store, just pick up and go, often that is already ready within an hour or so. Super convenient.

• Everywhere they encourage you to use the app regularly. For example by showing : Jede woche ein geschenk → Every week a gift. I tried it, it works well. I also got gifts.

• In some stores they have a “bell” you can ring if there is a line at the cashier. Probably a bit obsoleet now with self scanning. And I prefer the “jumbo” approach as it was in NL (before). More then 4 in a line, you get groceries for free. You didn’t have to ring a bell to get a cashier, they just made sure there were always available.

• The app gets the job done fast, looks nice. There's more to it than just products editorial content, offers, inspiration. It rewards browsing and usage.

🙏 Thank you Cheng Lou , you made the web better!

I remember building webpages and spending way too long fighting CSS just to get text and images to align properly. I hated it as it blocked me from creating pages as I wanted them to be.
Cheng Lou one of the developers behind React, Messenger, and Midjourney just released a tool called Pretext that tackles one of the most overlooked bottlenecks in web development: accurately measuring how text wraps, breaks, and fits on screen, without relying on slow browser tricks or CSS at all.

The implication is bigger than it sounds. Right now, truly dynamic text layouts on the web are still surprisingly hard. Pretext fixes that. It opens the door to more fluid, generative interfaces and crucially, it gives AI a precise way to design and arrange layouts before they ever appear on your screen, rather than guessing. So Imagine asking an AI to generate a product page for your webshop. Today it guesses whether the product name fits on one line. With Pretext, it knows and adjusts the layout accordingly before you ever see it. No broken designs, no manual tweaking after the fact. So a bit technical all but I think very nice.

Details:

Thank you for reading,

Alex

I am Alex Baar, I publish this weekly newsletter with links I find interesting on the topics: AI, cross-border e-commerce, marketing, retail, and a little bit of Fintech. Subscribe if you like!

A thank you to “thuiswinkel.org” for providing me with a VIP pass and the conferences.

🇳🇱 Otrium & Talpa on audio advertising via a product feed

First, let me share here a few slides of a presentation I went to at the “WebWinkelVakdagen”. It’s about audio advertising. A company called “Otrium” shared their experiences in audio advertising and moving budget from performance marketing to “performance branding” a trend that continious and I wrote about many times before on my substack.
I really liked the part in the presentation where they explained, you can now use a “product feed” to personalize the audio advertising experience. By connecting their live product feed to their audio production, they can now generate audio ads in real-time. If a specific sneaker sells out, the AI-driven system automatically stops that ad and swaps it for a trending product, ensuring that every “Sonic” impression is 100% relevant and up-to-date.
Something that might also be worth remembering is the question “how does your brand sound”? The speaker notes that while 100% of marketers have clear guidelines for their visual brand identity, very few have actually thought about how their brand sounds and almost no one wrote that down. This is increasingly important.

A few bullets with takeouts and the slides in the pictures above.

• The Performance Marketing "Glass Ceiling": By 2024, Otrium found that their performance marketing had reached a limit where every additional euro spent no longer yielded the same return. Costs for CPCs and CPMs had increased by approximately 11% year-over-year, meaning the same budget resulted in less reach.

• Over-reliance on Lower Funnel: Approximately 97% of Otrium's spend was concentrated in the lower funnel, focusing on direct conversions and capturing existing demand rather than creating it. This limited their reach to only the 5% of the audience currently in the market.

• Strategic Shift to Audio: To break through the growth ceiling, Otrium shifted 20% of its budget to radio, digital audio, and digital out-of-home. The goal was to move from "demand harvesting" to "demand creation" by reaching the 95% of the market not yet ready to buy.

• The company utilized AI voice cloning of a real voice actor to create relevant, cost-effective ad variations. This allowed them to dynamically update the final five seconds of a radio spot to reflect real-time offers or specific product categories without needing a voice actor to return to the studio.

• Otrium implemented Billy Grace to centralize their marketing data and overcome the resource limitations of a small team. This allowed them to finally gain a comprehensive view of the customer journey across both web and app, which had previously been difficult to track. Crucially, they could see the impact of their marketing not just per channel, but the incremental value of specific advertisements (such as Pinterest and YouTube ads) and audio campaigns down to the individual promotion level.

• With these insights, the team could directly measure an incremental Return on Ad Spend (iROAS) of over €6 for their upper and mid-funnel activities. This data was essential for justifying the larger branding investments to their CEO and, as it proved the strategy was successfully reaching entirely new customer groups instead of just targeting the same 5% of audiences already in the market.

Very nice presentation, I hope you can also use some of the takeouts.

✈️ TUI: what if your biggest competitor is NOT a company?

TUI, the well known, travel company also gave a presentation via Suzanne Goos from TUI NL. What stood out for me was their opening slide where they said: “Our new competitor is not a company but an algorithm”. Everything they do is focused on to be where there customers are and increasingly these are LLM’s.

I thought it was a solid presentation highlighting the right angles (especially technology and trust). Sometimes it was a bit too much "high over” and some aspects were clicked on too shortly in my opinion but I summarize my takeouts here below:

• Technology is fundamentally changing commerce by shifting its role from a simple tool to a factor that determines customer decision making.

• To remain relevant, TUI focuses on three strategic pillars: Reputation, Relationship, and Reintegration: Reputation is now a differentiator based on building trust with customers, algorithms, and the broader ecosystem through reliable data.

• The "Predict" Era: We are now entering a phase where customers stop searching and start asking questions (e.g., via AI). In this world, an algorithm determines visibility and recommendations, making it a "predict" world where technology anticipates behavior.

  • Trust is no longer just about the customer's perception of the brand but also about trust from algorithms.

  • To be recommended by AI systems, an organization must provide reliable data, consistent content, and high product quality (reviews)

  • TUI is moving from purely performance-driven marketing to building emotional brand preference through rebranding (mainly via controlling and optimizing the whole journeys.

  • The goal is a seamless omnichannel journey where online, social, and retail channels are fully integrated. (ah yeah that’s what I said :)

  • In a world dominated by platforms, TUI sees value in controlling the entire customer journey, from inspiration to the actual experience at the destination.

  • By connecting distribution, data, and their own products (like planes and hotels), they reduce dependency on external platforms and can better influence the "share of search"

• This is nice: They use AI persons actively already today! They are very open that it is an AI person, and that differs from others, many companies don’t tell that. Seems to work very well. Here details on Lena the Explorer.
  Besides “Lena” (social media), TUI introduced “Lisa”, an AI assistant in travel agencies who handles intake conversations to collect data and reduce waiting times for customers.

Nice presentation, Suzanne ended also with a pretty cool video from where TUI is heading, but that one I could not find anywhere online. So stay tuned and follow TUI, there might be nice things coming up!

🍻 A story from Heineken on AI, acceptation of digital tools and some new concepts.

Yeah let’s talk about beer! I also visited a presentation from Heineken and that one was truly crossborder😀🚀 Sorry for the bad pictures, I didn’t had the best position in the large hall and also I could not upload all of them because substack only allows 9 images per gallery.

• The speaker explained that Heinken is creating "Pull" demand: While Heineken generates over €30 billion in turnover through B2B channels like supermarkets and bars, they invest more than €1 billion in marketing directly to consumers. The goal of this direct communication is to create a "pull" effect, generating the consumer demand that then drives sales for their B2B customers.

• Shifting focus to the end of the chain: Traditionally, Heineken focused on its direct B2B customers (the first links in the chain), but the speaker argues that the "real value" is at the back end of the chain: understanding the shoppers, consumers, and the market categories.

• Supporting B2B partners with B2C Insights: By understanding the end consumer better, Heineken aims to help its direct customers such as the "pub on the corner" better understand their own guests and shoppers to optimize their business.

• The speaker also explained some innovations like: "Beer as a Service" (BaaS😅): A model where customers pay per glass tapped rather than per keg, allowing Heineken to manage logistics and stock more efficiently.

• Image recognition: Customers in Mexico take photos of their fridges; Heineken uses AI to verify if products are stocked according to the "picture of success" and offers discounts for compliance. They always start small in the beginning they realised that their customers send the same picture every day, then they made it mandatory to put a date post it on the fridge. Small steps was the main message, small steps to acceptation of AI and digitization.

• Modern POS systems: Heineken has partnered with Apple to create an iOS-based iPOS system that is easy for temporary staff to use and provides deep category insights for bar owners. Its so easy he told us that staff can use it at their OWN phone and no explanation or tutorials are needed.

• Brewery optimization: Nearly 8,000 machines in breweries are connected to a data platform to optimise production and learn from global performance.

• AI-Driven sales: In Mexico, sales representatives use AI tools to determine which outlets to visit and what specific products to pitch based on data, rather than following a fixed route.

• The speaker noted that the greatest resistance to these changes was actually internal, coming from the sales representatives themselve.

  • Fear of job loss: Initially, sales reps were very resistant because they feared that AI and digital tools would eliminate their jobs.

  • From “Order Takers” to “Consultants”: To address this, Heineken promised not to cut jobs and instead reframed the role of the sales rep. They moved from being transactional “order takers” to becoming “business consultants”. In this new role, reps use data to help bar and shop owners understand their own categories and grow their businesses.

  • AI-Guided sales: Instead of following a random route, reps in Mexico now use AI tools that tell them exactly which outlets to visit first based on sales opportunities or the need to fix a customer relationship (like “drinking a cup of coffee” to mend a previous stock issue).

• Assisted orders: Many customers were initially reluctant to use the new e-commerce apps. To bridge this gap, sales reps would initially help the customers place their orders through the platform, a process known as “assisted orders”.

• Incentivising direct use: Over time, Heineken introduced loyalty programs. Customers who placed orders themselves rather than relying on a rep’s assistance earned points that could be traded for merchandise or other rewards.

❤️ A smartwatch as POS reducing transaction costs

Pretty cool!

So soon we scan the watch of a waiter/waitress to pay? Competition to Visa/Mastercard and massive POS terminals.

Your smartwatch is becoming a POS terminal, and it’s bypassing Visa & Mastercard entirely.

Huawei and YowPay just launched a smartwatch-based payment app powered by open banking.

The app turns a Huawei smartwatch into a payment terminal, enabling merchants to accept instant Sepa payments directly on their wrist.

Customers scan a dynamic QR code generated on the watch face using the camera of their Smartphone, bypassing traditional card schemes and, says Yowpay, reducing transaction fees.

https://www.fintechfutures.com/paytech/huawei-and-yowpay-bring-sepa-pos-payment-acceptance-to-smartwatches

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marcelvanoost_your-smartwatch-is-becoming-a-pos-terminal-activity-7442883707931238400-XxfN/

That’s it for today. Thank you for reading.

Slowly I am considering new opportunities (also international):
Contact me via LinkedIN → https://www.linkedin.com/m/in/alexbaar/

Checkout my archive of previous newsletters if you want to read more :

Newsletter Archive

Currently I am traveling and I am in Berlin. The city of “Zalando”. I just visited their HQ (but it was closed) and I went to their physical outlet store.
But before I write about that, their figures and some glimpse of their strategy came out a few days ago.

Zalando is doing really well with AI, and I think it’s worth to regularly test and use their app. They are trailblazers in Europe take note of these citations:

Zalando ⁠said AI-generated product ⁠images were saving money and time on ad creation and enabling it to publish 70% more content, while an AI virtual try-on was also helping shoppers pick their correct size, reducing size-related returns.

Today, more than 80% of traffic to Zalando is organic and does not come from paid advertising, according to Schröder, while the rest comes largely through paid channels such as Google and Meta. But “a low single-digit percentage” is now driven by AI. He is optimistic that the technology will help reach new customers.

Zalando is also unlocking a new, conversational way to shop by evolving its Zalando Assistant into a true personal lifestyle companion.

It seems to me Zalando is both open to agentic commerce and tries to make their own AI layer extensive and unique so they can lockin users. 62 million customers with data of size, style, and behaviorial data, that no generic LLM has. The question is, I think, whether they use that to make their own app unbeatable, or sell access to it and become the AI backbone for fashion e-commerce at large. Or maybe a combination🧐.

I have visited their outlet store today here in Berlin. It fits the brand only partly, I think. It’s very nice to visit a branded physical store and it’s very recognizable “Zalando”. But what I would have expected from such an innovative online brand, that focuses so much on AI and personalisation, is a much more phygical integration. There was hardly any. I even had to signup “again” in store, to some other portal to get an extra discount, really strange to me, as I am already a long time member of Zalando and Zalando Lounge and I have both apps on my phone.

Details:
https://english.aawsat.com/fashion/5250550-zalando-says-ai-drives-productivity-and-expects-higher-profit-shares-jump

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2026/0312/1562998-zalando-eyes-higher-2026-profit-as-ai-drives-productivty/

https://corporate.zalando.com/en/investor-relations/zalando-full-year-2025-results

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/zalando-notches-23-growth-q4-082518413.html?guccounter=1

🔍Lily Ray: Your SEO and GEO Strategies should always work together

I think this is a very, very well written article by Lily Ray and much worth a read. It’s (sorry) again the SEO/LLM/GEO topic, I wrote about before many times, but I do think it’s very important to understand how things work and things update fast.

Basically what Lily says is that if you ignore traditional SEO (the foundation), the AI will never "see" your content, and therefore will never cite or recommend you in its answers.

These bullets below are “no go’s” mentioned in the article. So never do those things. (yeah and all “no go’s” are backed by data), thanks Lily!

• Scaling content rapidly with AI

• Artificial refreshing

• Excessive Self-Promotional Listicles

• “Summarize with AI” Buttons that Promote Your Brand

• Excessive “Alternatives” and “Comparison” Pages

Checkout the details in Lily’s substack:

Lily Ray

Your GEO Strategy Might Be Destroying Your SEO

We have reached the peak of the AI search hype cycle. Lately, for those of us in the search marketing industry, it feels impossible to open any social media feed without being flooded with posts or ads about how brands not investing in GEO will be invisible in AI search…

Read more

3 months ago · 47 likes · Lily Ray

To complete this I add some snippets of a post (also shared by Lily) from Malte Landwehr called: Not getting cited by LLMs? You can debug that!. I think it can be used as a framework for your clients or the company you work for.

1. Is your website directly cited in the answer?

   Yes? Perfect. Your work is done and you should probably focus on other prompts where you are not cited, yet. No? Go to step 2.

2. Is your domain used as a source but not explicitly cited?

   Yes? Make it more citeable / quotable. Add a summary with the relevant key statement. Keep it short. Write in clear and simple language. Keep the entity density high. If relevant, explicitly express relationships between entities. If you use technical terms or abbreviations, shortly explain them. Use an authoritative, declarative voice. The summary does not have to be for the whole article. You can also summarize a long paragraph, a table, or a chart/diagram. It a summary does not fit, you can use question-answer style content blocks. No? Go to step 3.

3. Does your domain rank for the fan-out query but not get used as a source?

   Yes? Improve the content so it is more source-worthy. Make sure you agree with the broad consensus. Add unique information no other source has. Strengthen your EEAT signals. Add quotes from trustworthy sources. Explicitly name your sources. Ideally, expand your document to cover multiple fanout queries. No? Go to step 4.

4. Do you already have a relevant page for the fan-out query that does not rank yet? Yes? Make sure it is indexed. Build internal and external links. Improve the content. Make sure there are no crawling or rendering issues. In short, do SEO. No? Create that page.

Last but not least on this topic a quadrant on types of content, LLM’s like to accumulate. This comes via Emilia Moller. Very useful for every content strategy.

📘Deloitte on loyalty drivers: Digital experience is the #1 loyalty program priority across all generations

Yeah, let that sink in😅! It’s not a point system itself, it’s a product that works and innovates. The gap between what brands think drives retention and what actually does remains a major blind spot in many loyalty strategy’s.
I think its very much true. Sure loyalty programmes help, but the core functionality should be the loyalty driver itself. Just like it is with the Revolut app and up to a certain way with the Amazon app.

65% of marketers believe customers return because of “brand love” but fewer than 1 in 4 consumers cite emotional attachment as a drive.

Consumer behavior underscores the shift, as 64% prefer apps over email for loyalty interactions and over 50% engage weekly, making digital seamlessness a baseline expectation rather than a differentiator.

Consumer companies’ goals might need to shift from simply maintaining a program to designing programs that convert enrollment into enduring engagement. Three strategies can help define the path forward.

Now how will this loyalty work if we really get phones that let you vibe code your own apps or widgets? (yeah I wrote about this earlier). AI builds a widget/mini-app for your home screen, no code.)
I think loyalty via the ‘core app’ doesn’t vanish, at least not in most cases.
It transforms.
Turn a product into an open, service layer: clean APIs that let agents + vibe-coded minis pull real-time personalized rewards, dynamic offers, direct value.

Not every app needs this tomorrow, But as a Product Owner of an app, I think you better have an API-(first) strategy now. Otherwise, when agents or vibe-coded shortcuts handle discovery/rewards/offers, your brand or app becomes invisible. No icon, no opens, no loyalty just skipped.

So I think a very interesting and useful article if you are busy with loyalty. It includes a step by step approach and also highlights the importance or actually critical successfactors of AI personalisation.

Details: https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/retail-distribution/reshaping-customer-loyalty-programs.html

Or https://www.emarketer.com/content/every-generation-wants-same-thing-loyalty-programs

🇳🇱 CorenDon NL does live stream test and it worked!

As you know I have seen “live shopping” a lot in Asia. Participated myself as well, but it never took really off in Europe. I always wanted to test and try this concept in Europe, but none of the company’s I worked for supported the idea. That’s why this story from CorenDon (a Dutch airline) is so nice, they did try it and it was also a success. Imagine the possibilities in the future when platforms get much more integrated live stream options (like China).

Now the articles I link to below, are in Dutch, I translated the most important parts, if you want more info just use a translation extension.

Corendon ran an interactive livestream (nearly an hour long) on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, featuring a presenter showcasing Curaçao as a destination with visuals and engagement elements.

It featured a specialist host flown in from the island, multiple cameras, live direction, green-screen beach/airplane scenes, interactive Q&A, a game segment, and high engagement.

Key highlights and stats:

• Peak concurrent viewers: over 1,500 (Instagram/Facebook) and up to 15,000 on TikTok after algorithmic boost.

• Massive reactions: ~13,000 chat messages on Facebook in 45 minutes; nearly 16,000 reactions and 105,000 likes on TikTok in an hour.

• Audience: 77% female; strong appeal to Gen Z (despite Corendon’s usual older demographic), who asked island questions and wanted fast, direct bookings.

• Real-time conversions: 70–80 WhatsApp conversations handled simultaneously during the stream by call center staff in the studio, leading to immediate trip bookings to Curaçao via WhatsApp.

• Quote from awesome agency (production partner): “We saw it happen. People book trips via WhatsApp from a live stream. People want this.”

• Travel director Martin de Boer: “With this format, we noticeably served GenZ’s wishes. They want live, direct, fast, and transactional—even for travel and vacation.”

The experiment was inspired by Chinese live commerce examples and timed well amid global travel shifts (e.g., away from Middle East/Asia due to unrest, boosting Curaçao interest). Corendon sees huge potential: plans to run similar streams regularly (possibly every other week), extend to their youth brand Go Fun, and eventually enable full bookings without leaving the app (e.g., directly in TikTok or WhatsApp). They view it as a game-changer for shopping, inverting the traditional sales funnel with real-time, low-friction transactions.

I have been watching part of the recording and I think it’s really well done things that stand out for me:

• Frictionless choice: By offering only 2 exclusive deals, they avoided "choice problem.”

• Conversational commerce: Keeping the WhatsApp number visible throughout the stream.

• Layered incentives: They captured two types of buyers by offering exclusive show deals for impulse shoppers and general promo codes for those looking at other holidays.

• Gamification & Retention: The "Gouden Koffer" (Golden Suitcase), so users need to guess the suitcase code and its a surprise what is in there. End-of-show giveaways to let people keep on watching (and interacting_).

I exported part of the comments on Facebook of this stream and ran it through Gemini for a sentiment analysis, based on that, I think this live stream, was very good for the CorenDon brand as well, Gemini told me:

The sentiment of the livestream comments is overwhelmingly positive.

• Positive: 55 comments (55.6%)

• Neutral: 39 comments (39.4%)

• Negative: 5 comments (5.1%)

Technical/Clarification Comments: The few negative or neutral comments were mostly related to technical aspects (e.g., "Geluid is slecht" - Sound is bad) or seeking clarification on the terms of the deals.

High Emoji Usage: The chat was filled with positive emojis such as ☀️ (sun), ✈️ (airplane), 🍀 (four-leaf clover), and ❤️ (heart), indicating a vacation-ready mood.

Excitement for the Promotion: Most users expressed high excitement for the Corendon deals, particularly those involving Curaçao. Common words used include "Leuke actie" (Nice action), "Geweldig" (Great), and "Droom" (Dream).

Cool CorenDon, very very nice! Thanks

Details: https://nu.cw/2026/03/18/corendon-test-live-shopping-reizen-direct-geboekt-via-whatsapp-na-livestream/

Or https://www.emerce.nl/nieuws/corendon-boekt-rechtstreeks-via-whatsapp-uit-livestream-mensen-willen-dit

Stream: https://www.facebook.com/Corendon.nl/videos/1427760859078572

🇲🇾 Emerging spots paying more than Japan (and closing on the West)

Old story: US tops tech pay, Western Europe and Japan sit behind that, rest catch up slowly. But this is now really changing.
In Malaysia, senior tech roles now pay more than in Japan. Not everywhere, but slowly it’s happening. Same vibe in Poland: IT pay climbing fast. After tax and living costs, seniors sometimes net better savings than in parts of Western Europe (even Germany in some benchmarks). And bigger picture, Poland just overtook Switzerland in GDP rankings (top 20 now, per IMF). “The Poles are coming!” as I wrote in edition 129 entrepreneurial energy, e-commerce acquisitions, serious competition.

Details: https://asia.nikkei.com/business/technology/japan-s-key-tech-workers-are-now-cheaper-than-malaysia-s
And
https://wbj.pl/poland-overtakes-switzerland-in-global-gdp-rankings/post/146998

My previous post on Poland:

That’s it for today. Thank you for reading. Greetings from Berlin. Schönen Tag!

Slowly I am considering new opportunities (also international):
Contact me via LinkedIN → https://www.linkedin.com/m/in/alexbaar/

Checkout my archive of previous newsletters if you want to read more :

Newsletter Archive

Ja ja, yes yes, Crossborder Alex here with the Crossborder E-commerce Sentiment Tracker!
Check it out it’s free and updated daily:

https://crossborder-ecommerce-sentiment-tracker.lovable.app/

I vibe coded this sentiment tracker in “Lovable” just for fun and to test some ideas.
Now you have a destination to go whenever you want the latest cross-border sentiment pulse.

Bonus: I added an “Opportunity Gauge” as well. Because when sentiment dips, that’s when the real opportunities pop up.

Lovable is really fun. I am even a “gold vibe coder” now at Lovable. I also made a “train tracker PWA” for Dutch Railways.
Especially useful if you travel back and forth the same route to see at a glance the next trains departing.
Very easy to vibe code, once you connect the API.
Check it out here (works best on mobile). Of course there is a language switch and a retro mode!

https://alextraintracker.lovable.app

So I guess micro apps or disposable apps of which I wrote before, really take off now.

🇰🇿 Kazakhstan a true Digital Powerhouse

Kazakhstan, you might not think about it much, but things are happening there. I stumbled upon a video that explains a lot about the startup culture there. The vibe seems exceptional and very energetic. Very cool! I need to put this destination on my visit list!

• InDrive, the second most-used ride-hailing app in the world, yes, it’s from Kazakhstan.

• The startup economy has grown 18 times since 2019 (over $26 billion).

• Astana hub is central asia’s biggest techno park

• Kazakhstan ranks among the highest countries in the world for startup conversion rate, yes, in the same league as the US, China, and Israel.

• Higgsfield became Kazakhstan’s first unicorn. ( A unicorn in under a year).

• It’s all part of the “Digital Kazakhstan” programme. The government operates like a startup, with 90% of services available online.

🚫Location Fees now passed on to advertisers in some European countries

I saw it the other day at work, we also had to take it into account: Meta announced "location fees" in some European countries.
These are derived from Digital Services Taxes (DSTs) levies that governments charge large platforms like Meta based on local ad revenue.
Meta used to absorb these costs. Now they're passing them on to advertisers, as a separate line item on top of your campaign budget.

I am of course against it. These fees were meant to make the big tech companies pay. Well turns out they don’t (as expected) Meta passes them straight to advertisers. European businesses and in the end consumers, get the bill.
Less ad budget means less reach, fewer promotions, and fewer deals finding their way to shoppers: online and in store.
For retailers, that translates directly into fewer customers walking through the door and fewer conversions at the till. Crossborder Alex votes against🗳️ !
It slows down digitalisation and consumer freedom. Not a great move at all.

The fees are:

• Austria: 5%

• France: 3%

• Italy: 3%

• Spain: 3%

• Türkiye: 5%

• United Kingdom: 2%

Fees are based on the location of the user receiving the ad.

Details: https://marketing4ecommerce.net/en/meta-location-fee/

🤖 Meta AI ads become sales assistants

I wrote about it earlier on my substack, and now it’s coming, they are testing it currently: business ads that generate a conversation and potentially a conversion.

Nick Blom shared details.

When someone sees your ad, they can now start a conversation directly inside the ad itself. An AI agent responds instantly using information from your website, product catalog and the ad content.

What the AI can do:

• Answer questions about products
• Recommend products
• Share links from your website
• Send promo codes or offers
• Collect email sign-ups

I think many companies are not ready for this. This has huge potential, but you need to have very good meta data. This means an excellent product feed and up to date and complete landingpages. Very interesting to see what happens to the business AI advice, when you advertise a product that gets negative public traction on the ad.

Details: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7437879332347437056/?originTrackingId=JuRuwg3kH9PklB07QNpweQ%3D%3D

🇧🇷 Mercado Libre: scratch promotion and awareness at e-commerce packaging

Let’s take a look at Brasil. Mercado Libre the leading e-commerce giant in Latin America, started a campaign in Brasil about “removing your personal data” when you throw away a package.

Upon receiving the order and removing their data from the label, an exclusive coupon will be revealed, connecting awareness to a direct benefit for the buyer.
Nice idea to have some kind of lottery/scratch promotion on packages.

I can immediatly think of many variants of this type of packaging promotion. Nice idea!

More details: https://lbbonline.com/news/Mercado-Livre-Makes-Data-Protection-a-Scratch-and-Save-Habit

Did you know Mercado Libre is actually winning (in some ways) from Amazon? Very interesting to follow:

“Latin America offers one of the biggest e-commerce growth opportunities in the world. Penetration is roughly half the level seen in the U.S., U.K., and China, and we see no structural reason why the region should not reach similar levels,” said the company in its letter to shareholders.

MercadoLibre isn’t just Amazon transplanted south. It’s a hybrid of e-commerce and fintech that Amazon itself has never truly built. And that difference could be what makes it one of the most important growth companies in Latin America.

Amazon relies on established banking systems in North America and Europe.
To make e-commerce work in Latin America -- where large parts of the population are unbanked -- it had to build its own financial rails. That gave rise to Mercado Pago, a payments platform that has evolved into a digital wallet, lender, and asset manager. By the end of 2024, it counted 61 million monthly active users, with a loan portfolio of $6.6 billion and customer assets of $10.6 billion.

https://www.thestreet.com/retail/this-latin-american-e-commerce-giant-is-beating-amazon-mercadolibre

https://www.fool.com/investing/2025/09/26/mercadolibre-is-the-amazon-of-latin-america-or-is/

🇦🇪 UAE remains a global e-commerce hub

The crossborder sentiment tracker (see first topic in this newsletter) sits at 60 neutral today when I write this. But not every market is neutral. Some are running ahead of the curve, and the UAE is one of them.

I’ve been a fan of the Emirati digital hub for a while now. It’s one of those markets that does things deliberately: strong regulatory clarity, fast tech adoption, world-class logistics. A strategy.

Standard Chartered ranked it among the most digitally ready markets for trade in the world. And when you add free zones and advanced supply chain infrastructure on top of that, you start to understand why it’s become less of a transit point and more of a control tower for international commerce. Probably a bit similar to what China is developing in Hainan.

That’s the kind of market that moves the needle on the crossborder alex opportunity gauge. Even when global sentiment is flat.

Specialised international reports indicate that the UAE is among the world’s most prepared markets for digital trade. A report by Standard Chartered showed that the country ranks among the leading global markets in terms of readiness for digital trade, thanks to the strength of its digital ecosystem, the clarity of its regulatory environment, and the rapid adoption of modern technologies by businesses—factors that are reshaping global trade routes.

Combined with free zones, digital trade platforms, and advanced logistics capabilities, the UAE has evolved beyond a transit point to become a regional control tower for international supply chains, he added.

Details: https://www.emirates247.com/business/uae-consolidates-its-position-as-global-hub-for-cross-border-e-commerce/37

Thank you for reading

Slowly I am considering new opportunities (also international):
Contact me via LinkedIN → https://www.linkedin.com/m/in/alexbaar/

Checkout my archive of previous newsletters if you want to read more :

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I wrote about this before and more and more I see articles on this topic including -now- real life examples.
In many cases (not all) the interface can stop being the product due to MCP.

How to deal with it?

I think one should consider:

• Go API-first (and MCP-native -that if, if MCP takes off, could be API remains most important). Sounds a contradiction but I think in many cases it’s inevitable, so better be one of the early adaptors and figure it out.

• Stop building features, start shipping capabilities or outcomes. Especially important (I wrote also on this many times before) to think beyond features. Redefine the roadmap around “what can an agent compose here?” instead of “what new screen or feature, do we ship? I wrote about that already in a few newsletters among this one.

• Think about a hybrid approach: UI where it still wins, agents elsewhere. Also think about the fact that some extensions even let MCP servers push lightweight interactive UIs inside the agent chat.

• Monetize and differentiate the new way, maybe premium “agent-ready” tiers with richer context or higher limits?

• Experiment aggressively and stay agile. Run internal pilots like Revolut did. Encourage teams to connect Claude to your own APIs via MCP. you’ll discover product gaps in days, not quarters. Stay curious: new agent-to-agent protocols and extensions are coming. All fun to play with I think.

Details:

https://x.com/linasbeliunas/status/2029165197466976665

And in Lina’s newsletter:

Linas's Newsletter

AI Just Killed the User Interface 🧠🖥️

👋 Hey, Linas here! Welcome to another special issue of my daily newsletter. Each day, I focus on 3 stories that are making a difference in the financial technology space. Coupled with things worth watching & the most important money movements, it’s the only newsletter you need for all things when Finance meets Tech. If you’re reading this for the first time, it’s a brilliant opportunity to join a community of 370k+ FinTech leaders…

Read more

5 months ago · 50 likes · Linas Beliūnas

Earlier related posts from me:

Edition 119
Edition 129

🇺🇸 Amazon introduces Amazon Seller Canvas

This feature just rolled out a few days ago, free for all US and UK sellers via Amazon Seller Central. Basically it’s an evolution of the existing seller assistant AI tool, but now it’s enhanced. You can now ask things like “what if, I run a discount”.

I think pretty very cool! It will set a standard for seller support, I think.

Early reactions from sellers and industry folks (mostly from news coverage and X chatter):

• It’s being called a “game-changer” for turning raw data into quick, actionable visuals, especially helpful for performance analysis right now, with marketing optimization, inventory planning, and product launch tools coming soon.

• People like how it cuts down manual digging (hours → seconds) and supports “what-if” scenario testing without guesswork.

• Some compare it favorably to agentic AI trends, noting Amazon’s push to help sellers scale faster (e.g., reducing inventory costs or fixing account issues proactively).

• No major negative user complaints yet, it’s too fresh, and coverage is positive/optimistic, focusing on the real-time personalization and how it levels up support compared to traditional Seller Central reports.

I think smart move and it will help both sellers and consumers.

🇸🇬 Singapore free AI training and access for it’s citizens

I often wish, we in the Netherlands, had a little more of Singapore’s economic vision (and execution).
It’s all about productivity. One factor to be more productive is tech.
Singapore now offers it’s citizens free courses and AI access:

• The Government will offer free six-month premium AI tool subscriptions for selected SkillsFuture AI courses from the second half of 2026.

• This initiative aims to provide hands-on AI experience and build fluency for Singaporeans aged 25 and above, regardless of income.

• Subscriptions from providers like Google and Microsoft will align with course content, ensuring practical application for participants.

With these type of measures, Singapore ensures it remains one of the major global tech area’s in the world. Well done!

Details: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/singaporeans-to-receive-free-premium-ai-subscriptions-from-second-half-of-2026

Dubai has something similar, I wrote about this earlier in this post.

🇦🇹 Booking a hotel in Austrias so many opportunities for a better guest experience

As I am not flying to Asia due to the situation in the Middle East, and I do want to take a bit of holiday, I now go skiing in Austria. It’s been a few years since I was in Austria for the last time but in terms of hotel booking frustration, nothing really changed. They haven’t improved that experience at all.

Not a lot of hotels are bookable via booking.com or an other large platform. While I understand that, they haven’t invested at all in a good booking platform for all ski-resorts. Every ski resort has it’s own booking engine and they fail dramatically in user experience. I am already busy for 2 days trying to book a hotel and I still didn’t succeed.

• Most hotels that you can book through some kind of a portal are week basis, but it’s now outside season and I want not on a weekly basis but different. Impossible to get a good deal via the portal. I know, also from experience, that it is possible to get a good deal but you always need to do too much effort for that by manually asking and that’s very time consuming.

• This manual asking can go via a request form. Basically a quotation that is send to a pool of hoteliers and you get invididual offers back from each hotel.

• These offers come in emails that are very hard to read (tiny tiny font), not uniform and some do not have any details on how to book, so you have to “email” them first, and via that you never get a fast reply so you end up negotiating with many different hotels and pensions via e-mail.

• When I do find a hotel via this pool, often I need to go to a “geocities’ like webpage of that hotel (external not in the platform) to get more details or pictures. I also need to find the official hotel page via Google as it is not linked in the e-mail with the quotation.

• Now, I can speak and write German, but if you cannot, there is no easy language switch, which is very easy to create nowadays (Hi Clonable).

• If you do get e-mails with offers, they the template is not mobile friendly. Hard to read, way too much content and if you need additional support or if you have additional questions, you need to copy paste an e-mail adress from the footer of the e-mail.

In this case I am trying to book a hotel or pension in Serfaus ski resort but it’s the same at most ski resorts in Austria (maybe with one or two exceptions).

One of the main reasons it’s currently so difficult is that most hotels and pensions still rigidly focus on weekly stays as the default. Shorter stays, mid-week bookings, or flexible alternate-(long) weekend options are usually only released when the hotel is (almost) certain that no full week guest will appear. This creates huge friction for travelers who want weekend trips, short getaways, last-minute plans and it leaves perfectly good rooms sitting empty as well.

I strongly believe AI could completely change this dynamic, to the benefit of both hotel owners and guests.

Using historical booking data, cancellation patterns, real-time weather forecasts, school holiday calendars, upcoming events, snow reliability predictions, and current demand signals, AI could intelligently and dynamically decide when it’s safe to open up non-weekly availability with very low risk of losing a higher-value weekly booking.

For example, the system could:

• Predict with high confidence that a particular week long slot is unlikely to book last-minute

• Automatically release attractive 2–5 night options at smart prices to fill those gaps.

This would make Austrian resorts dramatically more accessible, increase overall occupancy, boost hotel revenue, give travellers way more flexibility and ultimately bring many more people to the slopes who currently go elsewhere or don’t come at all.

Update: after 3 days of haggling I finally found a nice pension. Took me lots of time (too much to be honest)

🇳🇴 Norway: A Day in the Life of an Enshittificator

This is fun!
The “Enshitificator” campaign comes from the Norwegian consumer council, a government-funded organization that advocates for consumer rights in Norway.
In late February 2026, they launched a campaign centered on the concept of enshittification (a term popularized by Cory Doctorow describing how digital platforms and products start good to attract users, then degrade over time to extract more profit once users are locked in.
Fun to watch! So do so! And think about it when you develop products!

Thanks Niels, nice one!

Details: https://www.forbrukerradet.no/breakingfree

🇮🇩 Meanwhile in Indonesia QRIS keeps expanding

Indonesia is expanding its QRIS payment method across the region and so will cross border e-commerce profit in that region. Important to follow for us crossborder e-commerce fans as the ASEAN frameworks expaning rapidly.

The planned expansion across APEC markets builds on existing interoperability arrangements within ASEAN and selected partner economies, including Japan. The initiative is expected to: accept interoperable digital payment, support local currency settlement mechanisms, reduced reliance on global card networks, and lower transaction and remittance costs.

“Indonesia’s payment digitalization has already reached South Korea, Japan, and parts of the Middle East. We will continue to promote it to other APEC countries,” Airlangga said after attending the APEC Business Council Meeting at the Shangri-La Hotel in Jakarta on Saturday, February 7, 2026.

Details: https://research.hktdc.com/en/article/MjI2NDg2NDgxNA

https://en.tempo.co/read/2085808/indonesia-targets-qris-payment-expansion-across-apec-countries

🇨🇳 China/Shenzhen and open claw: one person companies

One of the nice things in China (especially on tech) is that the Chinese people are very open to new tech but also governments really support it. Here another example from Shenzhen, I city I have been to many, many times. If you haven’t been there it’s very difficult to understand what is happening there.

Shenzhen has just released policy measures to support OpenClaw / OPC.
The main measure is: zero-cost startup as its central highlight, the initiative extends an invitation to intelligent agent developers worldwide and entrepreneurs building OPCs (One Person Companies), aiming to make Longgang the top global destination for launching intelligent-agent startups.

Now compare this to most of Europe and especially the EU where I am 100% sure 99.99% of the policy makers never tried OPC themselves or anything that looks like it.

So look East for ideas especially those one person companies with Open Claw.

Thank you for reading! This week a shorter newsletter then normal. Normally I would have been on holiday and that messed up my agenda a bit. I simply had less time to write. Hope you enjoyed reading it though and I hope to see you in the next edition again.
Thank you for your subscribtion!

Slowly I am considering new opportunities (also international):
Contact me via LinkedIN → https://www.linkedin.com/m/in/alexbaar/

Checkout my archive of previous newsletters if you want to read more :

Newsletter Archive

👱The Risk of AI content, how human written content wins

I think we all have the same feeling: purely expanding with AI-generated content without any quality checks or improvements is not good. Still, I know many companies that do just that. Let this research be a warning! Quality content helps us all, and I think it’s a very human activity to decide what constitutes quality content and in what form. You can and should ask AI for help, but you should focus on the human element.

Important considerations while creating AI content

1. Loss of user trust

2. Google can detect poor quality AI content

3. Negative user signals

4. Site-wide quality impact

5. Future algorithm changes

Google's Quality Rater Guidelines suggest the company is moving toward content with genuine human experience and expertise.

Details (and the research details) here:

https://peec.ai/blog/the-real-risk-of-ai-generated-content

🔍 Google Patent: google generates AI landingpage & chatbot -if your landingpage has low quality-

Highly interesting:
Google just got a patent granted (see link below) for generating AI-built landing pages that replace yours when your site doesn't meet their quality threshold.
The system works like this: you search for something, Google returns results, and behind the scenes it calculates a "landing page score" for each result based on conversion rate, bounce rate, CTR, page design quality, and content quality.
If your score crosses a threshold (meaning your page is bad enough) Google generates its own AI page for your brand and inserts a navigation link to it directly in the search results.

That AI-generated page pulls from your product feed, includes a chatbot, shows call-to-action buttons to your PDPs, and is personalized to the user based on their entire search history. It's not a cached version of your site. It's a net new page Google built about your brand, for your customer, using your data.

That’s something isn’t it? It should make us digital marketers and product owners aware more aware of focusing on the user experience, achieving a user’s goal and to constantly innovate.

Details: https://patents.google.com/patent/US12536233B1/en

🇲🇾 Japanese goes shopping in Kuala Lumpur and is amazed by Malay shopping tech

And rightfully so!

🗎 AI prototyping masterclass with the co-founder of Wix

Now this, I think I could do all day: generating ideas to solve problems and build prototypes and discuss with team members.
This video discusses that topic and how to do use AI in prototyping.
It’s worth a watch, they use a tool called “Dazzle” which I didn’t know but seems very nice.
My main takeouts below but watch the video!

• His team at Wix used to assign three developers for weeks to build functional prototypes for major features. Now every single feature goes through AI prototyping before a line of production code gets written. The time cost went from weeks to minute

• The 90/10 Rule: Use the prototype to cover the main 90% of user flows and use the PRD to document the edge cases (like empty states or excessive data). Zero Questions: When the prototype and PRD work together, they should leave the developer with no remaining questions about the feature.

• The Product Requirements Document (PRD) is no longer just for humans to skim; it becomes a vital context document for the AI to ensure the prototype mirrors the intended logic.

• Building Context in "Discuss Mode": Use the AI's "discuss" or "plan" mode to talk through an entire stack or spec before generating code. This ensures the AI understands the context, such as defining "what is a sentiment analysis," before building it.

• Code-to-Agent Handoff: Engineers can download the prototype project and use AI agents (like Cursor) to "copy the experience" or logic directly into the production stack, saving significant development time

• The "Speed Dial" Approach: Product Leaders should ensure PMs have a few key customers on "speed dial" to quickly put these prototypes in their hands via a simple video call.

• The goal of these tools is to move from idea to user testing as fast as possible, as usability testing is much more effective on functional products than on "Frankenstein" or static designs.

• Precision in prompting is vital to avoid the "Genie" effect where the AI misinterprets a vague instruction. For example, instead of just asking for a feature, include specific details like "show how the sentiment was collected" to ensure the AI provides the necessary transparency.

• Prototyping as an ideation Standard: No feature should pass the ideation stage without at least a few functional prototypes to test variations.

Thank you great video!

🚣‍♂️ Kayak: another really nice campaign higlighting a problem solved

When I just started my newsletter, I already wrote about Kayak, a well known travel search engine. What I like is that they really also explain their features and how they solve their users problems in their ads, and I think that’s what makes them unique.

Take a look at this new campaign from them where they focus on a very specific audience: travelers aged 25-45 and on a problem that audience knows well: the stress and doubt that comes before the trip even starts.

Instead of selling the excitement of travel like most competitors do, KAYAK focuses on the booking moment itself. Their research found that 66% of travelers feel stressed when booking. Rather than ignore that, they built their whole new campaign around that called: “Got That Right.”

They created funny short videos, each showing a different problem their audience deals with. “Big Trip. Small Screen.” is about the frustration of booking a trip on your phone. “Momfluencer” makes fun of the flood of travel advice online that leaves people more confused than before. Both videos don’t just make you laugh, they also show how KAYAK actually solves these problems.

Another problem the campaign talks about as well, is having too many options and too much information. People don’t struggle because they can’t find options, they struggle because there are too many.
That’s exactly where their Smart Filters feature comes in. Instead of going through dozens of filter options yourself, you just describe what you want and KAYAK does the work for you. Simple as that.
They made a seperate ad for that feature. And that I like. Very useful in targeted campaings, I think.

Details and all video’s via: : https://www.adsoftheworld.com/campaigns/got-that-right

🇦🇪 How to build trust in the middle of a crisis

I would like to share the experience here of mr Tushar. It’s a story of how UAE and its aviation hubs, transform a geopolitical crisis into a powerful demonstration of brand trust.

It’s totally different from what happens here in Netherlands when the non happy flow is disturbed, I can remember these 2 recent cases in the Netherlands.

• Rotterdam Airport : Because of strict local noise ordinances and “curfew” rules, when flights were delayed into the late evening, the airport essentially “timed out.” Passengers were famously told they couldn’t stay in the terminal and were sent outside, often into the snow/cold to find their own transport or hotels, as the airport simply closed its doors for the night and even recommended to stranded passengers best to stay in the parking lot. Really happened not long ago.

• Schiphol: Just very recently, Schiphol faced a massive de-icing fluid shortage and a bottleneck that grounded over 3,200 flights. Passengers were left waiting on planes for hours only to be de-planed back into a terminal that was already at capacity. The advice given was often: “If your flight is cancelled, please leave the airport and go home.” For international transit passengers, that wasn’t an option, leading to the sight of hundreds sleeping on cots with very limited services available in the terminal and for a long time a total blackout on communicatinon of what to do. Now compare that with the experience of Tushar in the UAE.

I think it’s really cool to have the flexibility, low level autonomy, and processes in a global aviation hub to respond like these airports in the UAE, do in the middle of a huge crisis.
Would be great to work for organisations that are so customer/passenger friendly.

Thank you for reading!

That’s it for this edition. Next edition might be from Asia or maybe not. Let’s see how far I get.

Take care, be safe

Slowly I am considering new opportunities (also international):
Contact me via LinkedIN → https://www.linkedin.com/m/in/alexbaar/

Checkout my archive of previous newsletters if you want to read more :

Newsletter Archive

I do promise I send out a newsletter as soon as I have nice pictures or videos during traveling, which I am sure I will find (already prepared a bit). So stay tuned! Nice inspirational videos and pictures will follow.

🇳🇱 Coolblue Yearbook 2025: sustained customer love

Every year, Coolblue, one of my favorite companies (because they are very much customer focused and a bit contrarian), publishes their yearbook. And it’s always very nice to browse through.

Coolblue describes 2025 as “een jaar voor in de boeken” (a year for the books), highlighting a record revenue of €2.563 billion (up 4.2% from the previous year), their highest-ever NPS (customer satisfaction score), strong growth especially in Germany, new store openings, and tons of operational improvements.

Check out all details at the link below. Unlike previous years there is no PDF anymore, but fo rall of us customer oriented marketers, its very nice to read:

https://aboutcoolblue.com/en/yearbook/the-coolblue-story/

🇳🇱 Three friends with no hospitality experience wildly successful with snack bar: ‘Because of ChatGPT’

I found this in a local Dutch newspaper:

Three friends that do not have any experience in hospitality, start a business with ChatGPT as a coach.

And they did so succesfully!

I think the usage of these kind of “digital advices” will only increase.

So what to do?
Get these new operators into your business orbit early: funnel via public agents like ChatGPT/Claude, or (smarter) build a specialised vertical one like in this case for “Horeca/Hospitality”.

Extra bonus it will increase the start of new businesses and that’s good for everyone.

A few citations, roughly translated from the article:

Running a snack bar without ever having worked in the hospitality industry? Don Bound (36) and two good childhood friends took up the challenge. But not on their own: “We asked ChatGPT almost everything.” And it works: “The turnover is increasing every day.”

Two weeks ago, their snack bar Snack and Slice opened. “The name was also coined by ChatGPT: a combination between pizza and snacks. It was already a hit with one prompt,” says Don, who studied communication.

ChatGPT turned out not to be infallible: “As a result, we had ordered containers for the fries that did not fit in the bags. But that was actually the only thing.”

Don emphasizes that ChatGPT is mainly supportive. “We come up with the creative ideas ourselves.” Although: “He gives good openings though.” In this way, he takes people on their hospitality adventure from the opening. Via the socials – TikTok, Instagram – everyone can follow live how they grow in the profession.

Original article (paywalled):

https://www.gelderlander.nl/koken-en-eten/drie-vrienden-zonder-horeca-ervaring-razend-succesvol-met-snackbar-door-chatgpt~aa5785d5

You can unpaywall and translate via “archive.is”

🇳🇱 Congratulations “Clonable” with 1 million euro funding

And we stay in the Netherlands, with a “Congratulations” to Clonable.
Niels, gefeliciteerd!

All the way back in edition 18, I wrote about “Clonable”, when I first met them and I still remember their enthusiasm and growht mindset.

Basically clonable is making impressive steps as a innovative SaaS platform that simplifies and accelerates online internationalization for webshops and websites. By allowing businesses to quickly “clone” their online presence into new languages and markets, often in just one day, the tool removes major barriers to cross-border e-commerce growth.

Check out the details in edition 18:

The next steps for Clonable:

In 2026, Clonable will take further steps outside the Benelux, with a focus on the DACH region and Scandinavia. The international expansion focuses on visibility through events, attracting international customers, and expanding the network of affiliates and resellers.

“Europe is a fragmented market with many languages, cultures, and rules. That is precisely why there is a need for a European platform that structurally simplifies internationalisation,” says Teun Onstenk of the Bossche Investeringsfonds.

It’s exciting to see a homegrown Dutch startup like this scale so effectively and help more retailers go international with ease. I can fully recommend this company!

Details via the friends from cross-border-magazine:

https://cross-border-magazine.com/clonable-raises-e1-million/

🧪 Pomelli (annoying name but great tool) launches photostudio for rapid fast product pictures

Google Labs has ‘Pomelli’, it’s been around for a bit now, and if you’re outside the US (or the few supported countries like Canada/Aus/NZ), you’ll probably need a VPN to access it. But, it’s good and super useful if you’re into product promotion.

I played around with it today, and their ‘Photoshoot’ feature (inside Pomelli) is seriously very nice!! You just upload one product photo, even a crappy, low-res one and in a few minutes it spits out a bunch of high-quality lifestyle shots, studio versions, in-use scenes, etc. No need for a real photographer or fancy setup.

I tested it with a not-so-great pic of an outdoor beer table setup, and the results came out looking very good, clean lighting, nice compositions, totally campaign ready, I would say.
Check out the video where I imported that rough outdoor table image and see what it generates.

I would say this is very useful especially for smaller organisation, because within minutes you have great assets. Great for ads, social posts, discoverability, performance marketing etc.
It saves a ton of time and money on visuals and it will pay off in your discoverability.

Try it yourself (but switch on a VPN switched to the US):

https://labs.google.com/u/0/pomelli/about

🇫🇷 Customer Matching 3.5 million euro fine in France

Important to know for everyone thinking about (or doing) “customer matching” in advertising in Europe. An -officially unknown- company got a fine from 3.5 million euro (Hi Intersport) for using customer matching at Meta without consent.

The core issue was transferring personal data email addresses and/or phone numbers from over 10.5 million loyalty program members (”La Team”) to a social network (widely understood to be Meta/Facebook) for targeted advertising purposes, starting around 2018 and continuing for years.

So if you are active in the EU, be aware of this and if you want to use customer matching do ask for consent.
Having said that, I think, with new targeting techniques the tech giants have introduced (f.e. AndroMeda), customer matching is less and less relevant, so do use and optimize for the new targeting algorithmes and focuse less on customer matching in Europe.

Details:

https://cnil.fr/en/transfer-data-social-network-advertising-purposes-cnil-imposed-fine-eu35-million

🇧🇹 Bhutan happy but not with crypto payments

I’m intrigued by Bhutan, I have never been (it’s on the list), but what’s fascinating is they’re the only country officially prioritizing Gross National Happiness (GNH) over GDP as the real measure of progress.

They’ve got real policies in place to help citizens actually become happier: mindfulness and meditation baked into schools, values woven through education, free healthcare, cultural preservation, all aimed at holistic well-being, not just economic growth. I read a lot about it in the past.

But apparently, they’re not so happy with crypto payments (yet). Their big tourism crypto push, Binance Pay rolled out nationwide, has basically flopped. Merchants signed up, QR codes everywhere, but almost zero real use from tourists. Power outages, low literacy, spotty internet, and visitors just sticking to cash/cards get in the way.

It shows how “modern” tech innovations can crash into realities like infrastructure gaps or digital readiness, even in a society that’s laser-focused on happiness.

Details: https://restofworld.org/2026/bhutan-bitcoin-tourism-payment-adoption-failure/

🇨🇳 China: watch your takout being prepared by a machine in centralised kitchens via live streaming

TechBuzz China has an in depth article on China’s dark - or nowadays more open-kitchens.

A few months after launching its food delivery service, JD decided to change strategy (after Alibaba began investing heavily) and move up the food delivery supply chain. It opened its own kitchens, which are partially operated by cooking machines, robots, if you like. All kitchens also livestream their operations, which has become somewhat standard, as there is widespread distrust of food safety in China and ‘dark kitchens’ have a very bad reputation.

Data show that among businesses that implement kitchen livestreaming, repeat purchase rates are 15-20% higher than the platform average, and average order value is 10-15% higher than that of similar businesses. More notably, research shows that approximately two-thirds of customers, at the same price, will prioritise businesses offering livestreaming kitchen services.

7Fresh Kitchen said it aims to be not only a trustworthy, affordable takeout store but also a community pickup canteen that can withstand the test of time in offline traffic. It aims to solve two problems:

• Help consumers solve the food safety problems caused by ‘dark kitchens’ and make them delicious, cheap, clean and hygienic through supply chain innovation, so that low-quality restaurants are completely eliminated from the market.

• Help merchants who stick to the quality of their restaurants make money, and work with them to sell their signature dishes across the country to obtain sustained good returns.

The first store’s average daily orders exceeded 1,000 within a week of launch, and its three-day repurchase rate was 220% higher than the industry average.

goes deep into the businessmodel. Interesting for everyone in hospitality, restaurants and catering.

📹 YouTube introduces ABS (no not the anti lock braking system), but attributed branded searches.

OK, I admit, I hate YouTube for its ads, but I also like it because of its ads.
Now YouTube has a new feature that I think can help brands a lot, and also in some cases it reduces the need for paid brand recall research. This feature also helps to steer the discussion on “performance branding”.

Google is introducing Attributed Branded Searches (ABS). A new metric that tracks branded Google searches from users who previously saw your YouTube ads (within a 7-day window).

In simple terms:

📺 Someone watches your YouTube ad
🔎 Later they Google your brand
📊 That search is now measurable as campaign impact

It also resonates with what I say already for a long time, The consumer journey isn’t linear anymore. People stream → scroll → search → shop in chaotic loops. Don’t stay stuck in the traditional funnel(s).

If you do not have the feature yet, ask your Google Account manager, I understood it is not yet rolled out fully.

Details via Bia: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bia-camargo_how-do-we-prove-youtube-actually-drives-search-activity-7429770163849183232-rHVw/

That’s it for this edition. Next one will be from Asia! Thank you for reading liking and subscribing!

Slowly I am considering new opportunities (also international):
Contact me via LinkedIN → https://www.linkedin.com/m/in/alexbaar/

Checkout my archive of previous newsletters if you want to read more :

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📱Nothing phone let’s you make your own apps

Vibe coding is fun, I’m liking it more and more. The trick, I think, is to really stretch these systems and try to get the most out of them. I constantly try to at least, and it’s fun to do.

A while ago, I wrote about the trend of “disposable apps,” and it feels like we’re going next level with the “Nothing Phone.” If you haven’t heard of it, Nothing phone was started by the founder of OnePlus (Carl Pei) and that matters because the guy actually has a vision and proven to execute it very well. I also like the name 😀.

Right now, Nothing has released a “playground” on their phones, where you can vibe code your own widgets.
It’s just widgets for now, but once this clicks, people will be vibe coding entire apps, on their own phone.

This is going to change how we use phones:

• App Store downloads might reduce for non financial and lower complex apps: Why go through the friction of a store when you can just manifest the tool you need exactly the way you want.

• UX becomes “uncontrolled”: We’re moving away from pixel-perfect designs forced on us by big tech. If you vibe code it, the UX is whatever you want it to be.

It’s a shift from being a user to being a creator of your own phone.

https://nothing.community/d/52739-essential-apps-enters-beta

🌎 Dara Denny’s 5 ad levels of AndroMeda maturity

You all know I like Dara’s videos a lot. Dara now has a new video that’s worth sharing and summarizing. It’s all about AndroMeda and how you can achieve success at Meta Ads. Success on Meta requires two things now: Creative Velocity and Creative Diversity. To help brands identify where they are and how to scale, Dara Denney has determined “5 Levels of Creative Diversity”. Here they are:

Ad Level 0: Statics vs. Videos At this entry level, brands are simply trying to move beyond using only images. While many start with statics, you must emerge into video to find long-term success. If you only distinguish your ads by whether they are “a static” or “a video,” you are still at level zero.

Ad Level 1: Format Expansion (Visual Diversity) This is where you seek visual diversity through different formats (e.g., UGC, green screen, TikTok response bubbles, or VSLs).

Ad Level 2: Awareness Expansion Here, you stop making every ad a direct “buy now” pitch. You must analyze where your customers are in their journey: Unaware, Solution-Aware, or Product-Aware. Many brands see ads “fall off a cliff” because they only target product-aware users; to scale, you must go upfunnel with educational content that introduces the product to new consumers.

Ad Level 3: Desire & Motivation Expansion This level taps into human psychology to create ads that feel like they were made specifically for the user. You expand your messaging by leaning into the 16 human desires or the Life Force 8 (concepts from the book Cashvertising).

Ad Level 4: Audience Segment & Use Case Expansion (Personas) At this stage, you begin marketing to entirely new groups of people. This involves identifying different personas who use your product for different reasons. For example, a single beauty product might target “mommies” wanting a quick routine, “Gen Z” looking for a no-makeup look, and “Millennials” focused on dry skin. Providing the Andromeda algorithm with diverse personas allows it to find new pockets of profit for your brand, really interesting this I think. I think you can use AI also to figure out new persona’s.

Ad Level 5: True Creative Diversity This is a mindset shift where content strategy is at the heart of everything the business does. This level is reached when a brand excels at all previous levels across a suite of products or when they capitalize on celebrity engagements and high-level creative operations. Think of episodic content, documentaries, or a highly specialized content style that lives beyond just paid placements. If your organic and paid strategies are working in tandem to put content at the center of your business, you have reached the top tier of the platform.

🇵🇱 The Poles are coming!

I have been to Poland quite some times. I worked with many Polish collegues in e-ecommerce, software development and customer service. What stood out to me as one Czech friend once said “In Poland everyone is a businessman/woman”.
I think that’s true and thats a compliment to Poland.
Earlier I wrote on how Poland’s GDP is surpassing that of some European countries.
Now we see the trend continuing when Bloomberg reports that Poland is increasing company takovers in Germany

Poland’s stage of development is beginning to resemble that of South Korea previously, according to Dominik Kopinski, a senior adviser at the Polish Economic Institute in Warsaw. The acquisitions by companies reflect Poland’s shifting away from being an emerging market, he said. The difference is that Poles are driven more by the pursuit of market share than by the acquisition of new technologies.

This means -there were already a lot- opportunities in e-commerce in Poland, but as I remember from working with Polish collegues and managing a Polish webshop, there is huge competition there, so really dive into your competition and (potential) customers.

Go for it Poland, details:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-11/poland-s-1-trillion-economic-boom-sparks-m-a-in-germany

📹 Search Engine Land on video as source of truth for AI

Earlier I wrote on this topic as well. Don’t underestimate video and repurposing content (especially but not only in B2B). Search Engine land explains why and how! I suggest this is a ‘must read’ for everyone in digital marketing and content.

To correct brand drift and prevent AI from distorting your brand message, your company must provide a canonical source of truth.

By producing authoritative videos (e.g., a demo that explicitly clarifies pricing), you provide strong semantic information through the transcript and visual proof. The video becomes the canonical source of truth that makes things clear, overriding opinions from Reddit and other sources.

The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) is developing a new provenance standard to verify authenticity. The organization, which includes members such as Google, Adobe, Microsoft, and OpenAI, provides the technical specifications that enable this data to be cryptographically verifiable.

• Identify the gap: Where is AI hallucinating elements of your story? Find the topics where your brand voice is missing or being misrepresented by outdated Reddit posts or competitor noise.

• Anchor with verified experts: Use real people with verifiable credentials. AI agents now cross-reference experts against LinkedIn data and professional knowledge graphs to weigh the authority of the content.

• Preserve the nuance: Marketing and legal departments often strip it from blog posts, making them generic. Video preserves the colloquial, detailed explanations that signal true expertise.

And there still is lots of hallucination in AI so this is really important if you take your brand and performance branding seriously.

Details:

https://searchengineland.com/why-video-is-the-canonical-source-of-truth-for-ai-and-your-brands-best-defense-468807

Related articles:

https://www.crossborderalex.com/p/global-digital-marketing-and-retail-ed108

https://www.crossborderalex.com/p/global-digital-marketing-and-retail-ed90

🇨🇳 China recognizes new cross border profession

I stumbled upon this article: a new profession for us crossborder fans: cross-border e-commerce operations manager.
To be honest it’s a profession in the direction I brainstormed with myself about many times. Someone who helps companies from China, sell in Europe. I reckon, I need to improve my mandarin skills from “beer order level” to “business level” 😅.

Zhang shuttles daily between two fronts: data and cargo ships. In the morning, she might be an analyst studying traffic trends. In the afternoon, she becomes a supervisor monitoring production schedules. Late at night, she turns into a customer service representative, verifying bill of lading information with overseas clients. This is the daily reality of cross-border e-commerce operations managers — monitoring backend data to identify market demand while ensuring each shipment clears customs smoothly.

Zhang has discovered that cultural differences permeate every aspect of business. East Asian consumers prefer individually packaged snack foods, valuing convenience and experience, while in Russia and Central Asia, walnuts are important daily ingredients, with substantial household consumption and food-processing demand making bulk wholesale trade more active. Understanding these nuances means going beyond market research reports to grasp local dietary culture, family structures and even holiday traditions.

According to the White Paper on Talent Cultivation for Cross-Border E-Commerce in China, the country’s talent gap in the sector reached 4 million people in 2025, and the shortage may continue to deepen.

I think very interesting such a job. Probably also it will increase in demand also beyond China these kind of jobs (like f.e. India or Vietnam).

Details in the people’s daily:

https://en.people.cn/n3/2026/0209/c98649-20423973.html

🇻🇳 Quick dive in Vietnam’s new e-commerce law/definitions

I always like to read about e-commerce legistlation: how do countries setup legal boundary’s for e-commerce? Some countries in South East Asia are doing a good job on it, I think, by taking care of consumer protection, but at the same time not regulate too much (Hi Malaysia). I see clearly see lots of differences between continents, for example with live streaming/social selling and the definition of platforms.

Vietnam makes a difference between these type of e-commerce platforms🧐:

Direct e-commerce platform: A platform established by an organization or individual to directly sell goods or provide services (self-operated sales, where the platform owner is the seller).

Intermediary e-commerce platform A platform that allows other organizations or individuals to register accounts to introduce, sell goods, or provide services on that platform (e.g., traditional marketplaces connecting third-party sellers and buyers, including features like auctions or promotions).

Social network operating e-commerce: Social networks or media platforms that integrate e-commerce functions, such as online contact, ordering, buying/selling features, or livestream selling to facilitate transactions (this targets social commerce models like TikTok Shop or Facebook Marketplace integrations).

Integrated e-commerce platform: A platform that allows the integration of other e-commerce platforms or tools on it, acting as a connector for sharing data and combining functions (multi-functional or hybrid models, excluding pure support services like basic communication tools).

Some of the new rules are things like:

• Verify the identities of all sellers (stronger KYC-like requirements).

• Actively monitor and control content, especially in livestreams (e.g., suspend or remove violating content on authority request).

• Foreign e-commerce platforms (e.g., those targeting Vietnamese users via local language, domains, or high domestic traffic) must establish a legal presence in Vietnam (representative office or authorized entity).

• Stronger emphasis on data retention, product information transparency, and protection against fraud, counterfeits, and substandard goods.

Details:

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1b0e2fd2-295a-482b-a5b2-e7af3193ca10

https://en.vietnamplus.vn/vietnams-e-commerce-set-for-safer-more-sustainable-growth-under-new-law-post337588.vnp

🚮Crappy Design: real life example how not to do it

Great example of bad UX or crappy design: If it looks like a button, people will treat it like a button. Humans are pattern-matching machines. With these things in design or signposting, test, I would say and /or adapt if you see it doesn’t work.
Always test: if someone glances at it for 0.5 seconds, do they know what to do?

Thanks for reading, liking and subscribing, it means a lot to me! Hope you liked it. Slowly I am considering new opportunities (also international):
Contact me via LinkedIN → https://www.linkedin.com/m/in/alexbaar/

Checkout my archive of previous newsletters if you want to read more :

Newsletter Archive

After last week’s post about the Lovable Growth Model, I decided to give Lovable a try myself again. Last time I used the tool was about 8 months ago.
So much has changed! I was able to create in about a about an hour this website: a search engine for my substack archive.

For a long time I am dissatisfied with substack’s search engine. I use my newsletters also for myself, to find back information for daily use (at work for example). I hardly can find anything with substack’s own search engine.
With Lovable you can create your own search engine for your substack and vibe code your way to optimization.
I am (for now) satisfied with the result and improvements are just a few lines of vibe coding away.

Try it for yourself. Here is the URL to the search engine I developed to search only through my substack archive: https://cba-search.lovable.app/

I am really happy with lovable, I used it now not only to build this search engine, but also to make wireframes and prototypes of improvements for apps and websites.
It helps if you can make things interactive for the product teams. It’s much easier to bring over your idea by doing so especially in remote teams.

If you want to try also, use this referal link for lovable and you get 10 credits for free (and I also get 10): https://lovable.dev/invite/J9IFDPI
It’s fun and you learn a lot when you play with the tool.

👩🏼‍💼AG Consult: top tasks & b2b research

A few times I have seen a talk from AG Consult. They are always entertaining (with humor) and always very much focused on users and user behavior. They are also a bit contrarian, they have a different opinion (often) then what you read in the main stream marketing communication, and that makes it very interesting to get fresh and new perspectives. Unfortunately I haven’t seen any recent talk, nor did they publish one on YouTube.

But this week they send out an e-mail and it reminded me again of them. Just sharing some links from that email below.

The first article they shared is on B2B and on what questions to ask directly after onboarding a new customer. I will try to use this in my daily work also as I am currently working on an onboarding document:

Focus on the following directly after onboarding:

• Why did they choose to become your customer?

• What ultimately convinced them to make the decision?

• What were their biggest doubts during the decision-making process?

• Why do some prospects decide not to become your customers?

More details in this blog post: https://www.agconsult.com/en/usability-blog/marketing-and-sales-personal-without-personalisation/

Now this is also interesting, I think: Top Task Research. AG consult talks about this concept in this post: 60% of visitors come to your website for the same 4 top tasks

The blog post does not go into detail but AG consult did not invent the “Top Task Research” concept, so a quick search in Grok tells me how to set something like that up.

Grok says (shortened):

• Gather a long list of potential tasks (100–500 initially):

  • Brainstorm with stakeholders, content owners, support teams, call center logs, analytics (popular pages/searches), user feedback, competitor sites, etc.

  • Phrase them as user tasks/goals in plain language (e.g., “Apply for a permit”, “Find opening hours”, “Pay a bill”, “Check recycling rules”—not features like “View our calendar page”).

• Refine to a shortlist (usually 50–100 tasks):

• Run the voting survey:

  • Use any survey tool (e.g., Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, Typeform, Pollunit, Optimal Workshop’s tool).

  • Present the randomized list of tasks (random order to avoid bias).

  • Ask participants to select/rank their top ones common formats:

    • McGovern’s classic “crazy” version: Pick your top 5 (or sometimes top 3–10), and assign points (5 for #1, 4 for #2, etc.) or just select without ranking.

• Analyze the results:

  • Tally votes/points per task. & Create a “league table” (ranked list) from highest to lowest.

• Follow-up (optional but recommended):

  • Use the top tasks to redesign navigation, content, or test performance (e.g., Task Performance Indicator testing: give users the top tasks and measure success rate/time).

I think very useful information if you are helping a client or in many cases in daily work for us digital marketers, product managers etc.
If you want to read more about an organisation that actually did this research, checkout the Canada.ca site as they explain their “top task research”

https://blog.canada.ca/2023/03/22/top-tasks.html

🥁The Drum: the traditional marketing funnel is dead

I largely agree with this column from The Drum (linked below). I’ve been saying it for months: the traditional marketing funnel is no longer. The phases (awareness, consideration, conversion or alternatively see, think, do ) might still exist conceptually, but the sequence is totally scrambled. and that, my friends, isn’t always clear or linear anymore.

Many agencies still sell separate flights for each phase (believe me I know), but I think that’s no longer the best option. User behavior has changed, people bounce around feeds or platforms, get influenced by comments/creators, loop back etc. Plus, ad algorithms have evolved big time recently (Hi Andromeda) Meta’s AI that loves creative diversity and blurs top/bottom funnel lines into one campaign).

This column explains that exactly, flattening of the journey, and I’m happy to read it because it confirms what I wrote earlier. Check these earlier substack posts on this topic from me:

Checkout this post that backs it up:

And this post as well

That said, I don’t agree with everything in the column. There’s more to it. Social won’t replace it all.

Sure, social often feels like the new front door now, but it’s not just social taking over everything. Other channels, like CTV ads (Prime Video, connected TV), Amazon streaming, Google Discovery campaigns, or even brand mentions in AI overviews and LLMs, can still work great for awareness, trust, or sales, especially when people aren’t just scrolling feeds.

The Drum column you can find here:

https://www.thedrum.com/industry-insight/the-marketing-funnel-is-dead-social-media-ate-it

✅A re-marketing warning by Jon

Something to remember. Jon Loomer’s (a respected Meta (Facebook/Instagram) ads expert, I follow already for a long time) primary point is that with newer tools like Advantage+ Audiences, Meta’s algorithm automatically prioritizes people who have already interacted with your brand. So creating a separate remarketing ad set is redundant and usually drives up your costs (CPMs).

📖 Fix the process first: why tech alone won’t save you (lessons from my coursera consulting teacher, John Kim)

A while ago, I followed a course on Coursera on “Consulting”. Really a nice course to be honest, and I still follow the teacher (John Kim) of that course (even bought his book). He regularly publishes on substack as well and I would like to share this post

Consultant's Mind

McKinsey: Reimagine who does the work

This McKinsey report, Agents, Robots, and Us (Jan 2026) was deserving of two blog posts. The first one here segregates the different combinations of work that will be done by humans, agents, and robots (and combinations therein). TLDR; change is coming. Be thoughtful how you stack your skills, by emphasizing flexibility and continuous learning…

Read more

4 months ago · 11 likes · 2 comments · ConsultantsMind

Read John’s article on AI and processes:

McKinsey took a look at 80 different use cases. As a simple example, a technology company had thousands of smaller accounts which were not getting attention from their inside sales force (of course, the accounts were small). With GenAI, the company had 4 different AI-agents: 1) prioritized the accounts by public & proprietary account data 2) outreach to the accounts to qualify them 3) managed follow up and stratified the leads (good, okay, bad) 4) schedule contact with a human employee. Results? Saved 30-50% of time, and raised revenue from these small-accounts 7-12%.

Change is tough. Change is glacial:

So McKinsey offers these questions to ask:

• Are you reimagining your business for future value?

• Are you leading AI as a core business transformation?

• Are you building a culture of experimentation and learning?

• Are you building trust and ensuring safety?

• Are you equipping your managers to lead teams of people, agents, and robots?

• Are you preparing your workers for new skills and roles?

Basically what the author writes is fix/redesign the process first before applying tech (speeding up broken processes fails faster) and how you can use ChatGPT to do exactly that.

The course I followed:
https://www.consultantsmind.com/coursera-management-consulting/

📖Book snippets: the most human company wins

I have read this book already twice, it was lying around on my desk today. Great book! I share here some book snippets. Important to understand how to differentiate in the age of AI with humans.

🇩🇪 Germany: AI answers viafax

We all know by know Germany is not the most digital nation on earth, despite many talented employees and citizens (believe me I know). But did you know Germany has a FAX AI business model? Yes! No AI overviews, AI Fax views. Send a fax with a question and it will reply back with a FAX with an AI answer.

So go see if you still have a fax machine somewhere and fax: https://simple-fax.de/fax-ki

Thanks for reading, liking and subscribing, it means a lot to me! Hope you liked it. Slowly I am considering new opportunities (also international):
Contact me via LinkedIN → https://www.linkedin.com/m/in/alexbaar/

Time to share a Lenny podcast again. Lovabale seems to be a great company and I even got more enthusiastic when I saw this pod. I summarize my highlights below.

• Velocity of shipping: it is our number one core value Ship things you can talk about. Yeah, I so much like that!👍👍 It forces creativity and really understanding your customers.

• Emotional investment: Since building is now fast and cheap, companies can finally afford to invest in the "emotional feel" of software, ensuring users get energy from the interaction rather than finding it painful to use. Different mindset then tradiontal PM, focus on those outcomes it might be connecting features or journeys! Very nice and in alignment with more AI PM.

• User-Driven prioritisation: Elena notes that their shipping velocity is intended to make users feel that the product is changing every week based on their interaction and engagement. Also something I have been reading a lot about the past year but most companies still NOT do, They say they are user driven, but in practice QBR cycles and revenue assumptions usually win. Quarterly Business Reviews lock teams into predefined goals months in advance. Even when fresh user data points in a different direction, organisations rarely change course because they’ve already committed to specific outcomes internally. True user-driven development requires a completely different operating rhythm: shipping weekly (or faster), collecting signals continuously, and adjusting the roadmap in real time. I believe in the latter and I think we should advocate that way of prioritization. In the age of AI it’s even more important.

• Discord community: Lovable maintains a very active community on Discord with hundreds of thousands of members where users bounce ideas off each other and explore the product's capabilities. Also very good and I think, any company can do that, maybe not on Discord, maybe not even on your own website platform, but just use Meta, or YouTube or whatever platform fits to organise an active community. I can visualize that immidiatly as useful for many companies.

• At Lovable, the concept of "Brand as Product" means that the brand is not a separate marketing function but is entirely embedded within the software itself Elena Verna explains that because the company does not yet have a dedicated brand marketing team, all brand work is funneled directly into the product experience. To give the software a distinct personality, Verna works closely with designers to incorporate "love marks" and unique interactions. These are small, deliberate elements within the interface intended to make the product feel like it is "speaking" to the user. The goal is to move beyond simple utility and create an emotional connection where the user feels they are interacting with something unique rather than a generic tool. Yeah Lovable is a tech only company but even if you are not you can still use this vision to your advantage in your own digital channels.

• Lovable mentions having a full-time vibe coder on the team, who is “not technical at all” in the traditional sense. He is self-taught in AI tools and acts as an expert who pushes the limits of what the product can do.

• They also talk about “engagement retention” I have to remember that metric. Makes sense. (This tracks whether users who engage meaningfully keep returning over time , driver of lifetime value (LTV), loyalty, and sustainable revenue). They also made difference between organic and paid (makes also sense).

🫱If you are interested in this topic I share here below another talk from Elena Verna focused at “Growth Loops”. I can recommend to listen to that talk as well for every product manager and designer but for your convenience I also summarized the higlights, see the link to edition 113⬇️⬇️

🫱🫱Note: this is also a smart move to have a linkedin integration, it will attract users to lovable who wants such certificate diplayed on their profile:

https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/28/linkedin-will-let-you-show-off-your-vibe-coding-chops-with-a-certificate/

🇨🇳 Shenzhen a city for tech lovers (I can confirm that)

For Western minds it’s often difficult to understand what is happening in Tier-1 cities in China. This video is really nicely made and as a regular Shenzhen visitor (I will be there again in early March) I can confirm this is 100% correct. Great watch for us tech lovers and also to understand life in a Tier-1 city in China.I personally like to watch always the UX of terminals used with all those robotic things, often we can learn a lot from it as I intend to do in March again when I am in that area. I will share my experiences of course in this newsletter.

The robot delivery spot in the video, in the parc is the same I visited earlier, if you want to read more about that, see this earlier newsletter:

📺YouTube Overtakes Reddit as Go-To Citation Source on AI Search

I try always not to cite the large legacy publications like AdWeek but this time I do. YouTube is often overlooked by traditional companies, but it’s the #2 search engine and now also a big “feeder” to AI tools. AdWeek explains it clearly:

According to Emberos, which analyzed tens of thousands of AI responses over the past six months, YouTube now appears about 40% more often than Reddit as a cited social source across major AI chatbots, including ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. The data found that Google’s AI Overviews cite YouTube (which is owned by Google) in roughly 18% to 25% of eligible answers, while ChatGPT shows a similar pattern, citing YouTube in nearly 18% of responses.

Besides that a relevant YT video embedded on page makes you must more thrustworthy.

Details: https://www.adweek.com/media/youtube-reddit-ai-search-engine-citations/

🔸Guy shows op at vacancies in a creative way at LinkedIN

Last week I was at an information event on “freelancing”, just to get myself informed on possibilities. Very well organised event, and they gave lot’s and lot’s of tips.
Just sharing one of them. This guy really stood out with a little “funny” but serious picture of a guy holding a sign “available now”.
Seems it works because you see him everywhere with this sign and everyone remembers. Nice creative idea.

Event organiser (dutch only) : https://www.salesmarketinggroup.nl/

🏭 One to save and act upon for B2B marketers

One to save and use if you are in B2B. I think it’s true and it connects with many best practices I read the past 6 months. It doesn’t mean the old playbook totally doesn’t work anymore, but a focus towards demand and intent is something you should try i.m.o.

So practically I think Pierre means content needs to help customers decide, not just buy cheaper.

Example : the goal is “app downloads”. In the old playbook you go just for “installs” You might said in the old playbook : now xx discount for a download.
In the new playbook you go for contextual value based on intent. So based on user data you add value in the app: “always the best possible prices for category x (as this user always purchases from this category)”, or “we help you save time by already providing your pre-arranged basket” in the app.

If you create public content, the app is embedded in the story’s not always the main CTA. I think this is very nice to brainstorm about with your product team. You will get to questions like:

• What could be a demand capture system for your organisation?

• How to identify “patterns” in user data and how to leverage that?

Go read Pierres post !

🫨Clawdbot euh Moltbot: the agentic future

If you haven’t checked out ClawdBot yet, do so. The whole internet is full of it the last days, just check YouTube for many many many ideas. Here a clip from the All-in guys who also go into the topic.

As Sacks says:

• This year will be the year of the personal assistant.

• Google's market opportunity is enourmous on this topic.

• A Shift in policy debates: Sacks suggests that the rise of AI agents will force policymakers to rethink their approach.

There is much more in the pod also with interesting information for startups and legacy organisations a like.

Try it yourself, Clawdbot know is Moltbot: https://openclaw.ai/
Full All-In Pod.

Thanks for reading, liking and subscribing, it means a lot to me! Hope you liked it. Slowly I am considering new opportunities (also international):
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🇰🇵 North Korea a glimpse into their e-commerce ecosystem

As many I am fascinated by North Korea. I have been visiting the border area’s, both on the South Korean side an the Chinese side. The South Korean side is heavily guarded but on the Chinese side (I went to Dandong), is much more relaxed. You can buy North Korean beer, North Korean money and cigarettes and you can dance with North Korean restaurant staff. Yeah, that’s really possible. Below you see me dancing in a North Korean restaurant (with all North Korean staff). North Korean food & drinks and two times a performance, where guests can join, like I did.

The Youtube channel “In the Kimdom😅” made a video on e-commerce in North Korea! It gives us a glimpse on what is happening in North Korea and I think it’s very nice to watch for all of us crossborder e-commerce fans. Some higlights:

• What “Manmul Sang” is (” hint: North Korea’s Amazon”): Launched in 2015, this platform offers roughly 30,000 products, ranging from housewares to electronics. It’s a strictly a domestic-only catalog. Check it out yourself:

  http://www.manmulsang.com.kp/?lang=en

• The Okriu Platform: Originally a food delivery service for the famous Okryuguan restaurant, it evolved into a centralised marketplace for approximately 600 products.

• It explains the closed ecosystem: These platforms are only accessible via Kwangmyong, North Korea’s internal intranet. This “walled garden” uses numeric IPs and is completely sealed off from the global internet.

• Learn about the sate run courier system: for official e-commerce, the governments operate a nationwide logistics system using motorbikes for short-distance food delivery and vans for larger goods.

• The video also has a chapter on payments such as systems like prepaid cards (Narae and Koryo) or local-currency cards. The Ulim (Echo) mobile system allows users to pay via QR codes at registers.

Go watch the video crossborder fans!

🌎International SEO Technical how to deal with multi domain sites

Brodie has a good “tweet” or X on international SEO on the topic XML sitemaps/GSC. Brodie writes on multi-domain international expansions and problems that can occur if you do not set this up correct.

The important part is understanding why groups of pages are being flagged, and whether an action should be taken. An action isn’t always required.

Details in his X post:

🔍What AI Means for Brands: how to stay visible, relevant, and chosen

This is truly a great deck, again from Aleyda and I share it because it’s very usable for e-commerce strategy. Things constantly change and this is a very actual document that you can and should use in your strategy or for your clients.
Complete deck:
https://speakerdeck.com/aleyda/what-ai-means-for-brands-how-to-stay-visible-relevant-and-chosen

☇Amazon still rules product discovery but for how long?

Now onto Amazon. The article I’m referring to below argues that Amazon still dominates “product discovery”, but they add an important nuance: for now. Cracks seems to be appearing with the rise of AI search, social commerce, and agent-driven shopping. I can imagine that but Amazon’s fundamentals are of course really strong especially, reviews, pricing, and the prime ecosystem reinforce its grip on discovery and conversion.
Many people don’t know but Amazon’s Vine Programme I think is a really smart idea. So far I have never read or saw any company who copied or adapted that idea. Basically Amazon Vine provides free products in exchange for reviews and thus sets the basics for product discovery.

I’ve seen disruption before in a much less glamorous category: carpets. Out of nowhere, a newcomer (Volero) entered the market with a focus on discoverability, filtering, and a smooth buying experience. They made ordering a carpet online simple and even enjoyable. And by doing that, they disrupted the industry in a small way, but still….

Amazon, “the biggest startup in the world,” operates on a completely different scale, of course. But the pattern is interesting. If you run a marketplace yourself, especially in a niche, there’s a lot to take from this. Discoverability can still be reinvented, and dominant players don’t stay untouchable forever. Let’s see how this plays out.

Details:

https://www.practicalecommerce.com/amazon-rules-product-discovery-for-now

Same topic, different source. Also product discovery & Amazon. I list these recommendations here as it can help sellers improve their listings and discoverability useful information also if you are an agency.

Specific searches such as "men’s lotion" display regular product grids, while broader queries like "men’s skin care" prompt Rufus to curate and label products as “Researched by AI.” This helps identify shoppers' purchase-ready versus research intents.

What this means for brands:

• Broad terms are no longer just a ranking battle: Inclusion in AI-curated routines matters more than position.

• Product role clarity is critical: If your listing doesn’t clearly state where it fits in a routine, Rufus decides for you.

• Assets must explain usage and order: Images and copy need to communicate how and when the product is used.

• Discovery is shifting to routines: Brands must think beyond single ASINs and position products within complete workflows.

Via Hunter’s insights

👍Revolut: keeps on innovating

I love this mindset! Everyone copies innovation the only way to stay ahead is to innovate faster / innovate more exactly as Revolut does.

Thanks for reading, liking and subscribing, it means a lot to me! Hope you liked it. Slowly I am considering new opportunities (also international):
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🇻🇳 Vietnam amends national advertising law in a good way

Vietnam amends their national advertising law. A law -different from the EU cookie law- that actually benefits (most) users:
Vietnam bans unskippable online video and animated ads longer than 5 seconds. Platforms must show a skip button by then. Static image ads must be immediately closable (no wait), and pop-ups can’t use misleading or fake close buttons. The goal is to protect consumers from frustrating ads, curb illegal promotions, and improve the digital experience, with additional strict rules on sensitive categories like health products and alcohol.

Even though I am a digital marketer, and I generally am interested in ads, I think this is a very good law. It might reduce “ad completion rates” but I think that only forces -us advertisers- to be more creative.
I expect very creative 5 second videos from Vietnam in the near future.
Also most likely new, less intruisive ad initiatives /formats will emerge from Vietnam.

More details: https://saigoneer.com/vietnam-news/28652-vienam-bans-unskippable-ads%252C-requires-skip-button-to-appear-after-5-seconds

🇩🇪 🇳🇱 Dutch vs German retailers in physical stores

This is a blog about retail and differences between countries or regions. Sometimes I read an article in another language, not available in English that is interesting. This article is such one.
You can translate it by any translation service, but basically it is about differences between German and Dutch retailers and Dutch retailers who succesfully expand to Germany, by doing things just a little bit different. Some translated citations from the article:

While the number of bankruptcies in Germany is increasing, Dutch retail chains like Rituals, Dille & Kamille, and Action are profiting in the German market. What is the secret behind their success? “Germans are sensitive to friendly service, a trendy store, and a relaxed atmosphere.”

How can the successful expansion of Dutch companies in Germany be explained?
“Germans are sensitive to service with a smile, a hip store, and a relaxed vibe,” says Van den Biggelaar, who has supported Dutch companies expanding into Germany for more than 25 years.

Rita Sack from Möbel-Hübner has little faith left in physical stores. But Coolblue opened its seventh German store in Hannover in November.
“The German consumer does not expect much. They aren’t used to much,” CEO Pieter Zwart said two years ago. Coolblue says it cleverly takes advantage of that.

Dutch jewellery chain My Jewellery and clothing brand Mr. Marvis are applying the same playbook, says Van den Biggelaar.
“They target a niche and offer great products—things that truly add something.”

Van den Biggelaar: “Adapt a bit to the German market—but do not deny your Dutch roots. Germans like to come to us precisely because we are more locker (relaxed).”

Details:

https://www.deondernemer.nl/actueel/duitse-ondernemers-failliet-coolblue-mr-marvis-action-dille-kamille-my-jewellery-rituals~70284f1

🥘🇨🇳 Alibaba’s Qwen and food ordering via voice commands

If you want to know how we are going to place our food delivery orders, maybe it will be like what is possible now in China.
Alibaba’s QWEN (by the way free to use, you can download it as an app on your phone or use desktop app) is now able to do grocery orders via voice:

Here’s how it works: you tell Qwen you want food delivery through voice or text. It pulls product data from Taobao Shangou helps you choose what to order, and completes payment through Alipay. You never leave the Qwen interface. This is the complete loop from intent to execution.

So it might be a trend that we use LLM’s to “direct apps” on our phone, as I also showed you earlier with another demo from China (really cool) and the US.

I think this means that companies should re-think how their app is positioned. If this trend continues one might need to:

• Put API first, so this means “headless” first then design.

• Many companies should put more effort in operational performance of the app (from speed, to error handling, to fewer screens).

• A difference can be made on the operational and fulfilment part. That’s what people who use an LLM to order via an app actually experience.

• But of course also make an app so user friendly, fun, innovative with added value that users want to keep on using it themselves! Take as example one of my favorite apps “Revolut” that keeps evolving with fresh, engaging features all the time. You really want to open this app.

Via Mario Castelli, Xie Xie Mario
Link to Qwen: https://qwen.ai/

🇺🇸 🇯🇵 🇩🇪 🥏Amazon Marketplace 2026 Trend Report

I believe this report is valuable for anyone involved in online marketplaces, not just Amazon sellers. It offers plenty of definitions and insights that could apply to your own platform, too.

Essentially, the report compares numerous Amazon marketplaces against each other and determines key success factors. Really valuable report and it also fits perfectly this newsletter because of the country comparisons.

Despite global reach, the U.S. remains the best launchpad for new Amazon brands, especially those in niche categories. Fast review velocity, buyer trust, and depth of demand create early traction that compounds into better rankings, cash flow, and ad performance.

Sellers who localize effectively and build compliant logistics systems unlock blue ocean opportunities in Europe, Canada, and beyond.

In second place, Japan offers impressive seller stability despite its smaller size. Around 15% of sellers who joined five years ago are still active today, far above other regions. Japan rewards sellers who adapt to local preferences and build trust with loyal customers.

Sellers who plan their expansion based on these insights—not just GMV—will find steadier growth and stronger results across Amazon’s global marketplaces.

• Treat inventory accuracy as your ad budget’s foundation

• Use data to iterate—don’t guess

• Localize if you expand

• Build patience into your strategy—it compounds

Total active sellers declined 25%, but million-dollar sellers doubled, meaning the platform is consolidating around fewer, but much stronger and more professional, competitors.

Amazon is now a retail ecosystem, not a gold rush. Those who master its complexity will own the next decade of ecommerce. (Success now demands institutional-level capabilities from day one (e.g., multi-disciplinary skills in SEO, advertising, inventory forecasting, fulfillment, data analytics, localization, and more)

Details: https://www.bellavix.com/what-you-cant-miss-insights-from-the-amazon-marketplace-trends-report-2026/

Direct report download URL: https://marketplacepulse.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d690a2717ca438fa2ccf2f903&id=577f1ec06b&e=2fb55ccef9&i=c33d613992, if it fails: https://www.marketplacepulse.com/reports/year-in-review-2025

🗑️The rise of micro apps or personal disposable software

The other week, a collegue of mine (Hi Naresh!) he vibe coded “Again a winner -The Amazing Prize Draw Tool-”. This was a one purpose tool to organize a prize draw at our company. We could make it really nice by adding some humor in it and do a live prize draw among all collegues.Turns out we were not the only one doing this. Micro apps are on the rise as Techcrunch calls it.

Because tools ranging from Claude Code to Lovable typically don’t require robust coding knowledge just to get to a functional app, we are witnessing the early rise of micro apps. These are apps that are extremely context-specific, address niche needs, and then “disappear when the need is no longer present,” Legand L. Burge III, a professor of computer science at Howard University, said.

Things will only get easier to vibe code so go try it out with Lovable, Claude Code or any other tool.
When I am at holiday with friends we use an app to keep track of expenses and split money, but this app at some point in time went from freemium to paid.
Now the solution is simple I vibe code my own app and I personalize it even for our holiday with some jokes only for our little holiday group.
I am waiting for a list of vibe coded apps as this might be a huge inspirator for creativity.

Checkout the details here:

https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/16/the-rise-of-micro-apps-non-developers-are-writing-apps-instead-of-buying-them/

🤖 Rand : quote it, cite it, link it share it

This video I will use at work to inform people about the importance of “mentions” for your brand. I share it here also, I wrote about the topic already many times, but this video makes it simpler. A simple start on this topic.

1. Quote it

2. Cite it

3. Link it

4. Share it

Start with that.
Yes, I know it’s more complicated then that, that also information from your own site is taken into account and that with the query fanout technique you can get a lot of details on where LLM’s get their data from, but this video might be a very good start to get the basics explained in some organisations.

Specially for Rand because of this nice video:

Sparktoro is: An audience‑research tool that uncovers where your target audience spends time online. It identifies the podcasts, YouTube channels, newsletters, and social accounts they follow and surfaces the influencers who shape those opinions.

Details: https://www.similarweb.com/blog/marketing/marketing-strategy/best-competitor-analysis-tools/

🇹🇭 Never skip Thai Ads!

Never do that! They are so funny! I share this one with you, but you can find many on YouTube.
Want to know more on Thai commerce? I once wrote about it on my old blog you can find it here:

https://www.abaar.net/2023/04/retail-and-e-commerce-in-thailand.html

🫡Open to new opportunities

Thanks for reading, liking and subscribing, it means a lot to me! Hope you liked it. Slowly I am considering new opportunities (also international):
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📖ChannelEngine Marketplace shopping behavior report 2026

Channelengine is a great company, I have been there a few times and I also know some people there. Very knowledgable people especially in international e-commerce via marketplaces.
They just released there shoppingbehavior report and it’s just a short quick form entry away so check it out!
I think it aligns perfectly well with other trends in ecommerce like changing shopping journeys, particularly that are in the recent SEO trend reports: fragmented, trust-driven, and multi-channel paths to purchase.

Details and full report: https://www.channelengine.com/marketplace-shopping-behavior

More on changing journeys and trends in SEO in my previous newsletter:

🌍E-commerce in 2026: faces a structural reckoning in 2026

Well, its 2026, I guess time for many organisations to publish reports or overviews, so let’s do another one now we are at it.
I always try to see if I can find patterns between reports or outlooks, because then I think it’s more valuable.
Just like the marketplace report above, this overview, also aligns a bit with other things I read or experienced. What I found especially interesting in this article is:

Marketplace algorithms are now factoring operational performance — reliability of delivery promises, regional carrier capability, refund patterns and backorder frequency — directly into search ranking. (That’s interesting, Amazon had this for a while but now it seems to get mainstream for other marketplaces as well)

“The era where fulfillment was an expense center is over,” Steinz said. “In 2026, fulfillment becomes a demand accelerator or a demand suppressor. Nothing in between.”

“The mistake in 2025 was forcing every buyer through the same experience,” Owide said. “In 2026, separating these journeys — and measuring them separately — will be essential. If you put friction in front of a long-tail buyer, they won’t ask for a quote. They’ll find someone else in two clicks.”

This latter one is also very interesting, it’s a move to, maybe I can call it like “Coolblue does”: product journeys for some products or category’s at a marketplace and for others products or category’s to make sure the focus is at the most rapid purchase ever.
More on product Coolblue’s journey’s here
Take special attention in the article to the term “long tail buyer”, it basically comes from Chris Anderson’s 2004/2006 concept, I found out.
Instead of focusing only on a few blockbuster (”head”) products/customers that drive most revenue, the internet allows profitable sales from a huge number of niche, low-volume items/customers (the “long tail” of the demand curve).

So one can define:

• A long-tail one-off consumer/business (wants instant prices + easy buy)

• Or a contract buyer (wants account pricing, bulk options, approval workflows, tailor made product journey’s)

Forcing the second experience on the first type kills conversions, the warning: “If you put friction in front of a long-tail buyer, they won’t ask for a quote. They’ll find someone else in two clicks.”
That’s why I think in many cases a combination, depending on f.e. category is the way forward.

Details:

https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2025/12/30/ecommerce-faces-a-structural-reckoning-in-2026/

🌍Africa’s growth could outpace Asia in 2026

Often most international e-commerce or economic news is focused at Asia, but Africa is really booming economically and that means there are also many opportunities in digital commerce. I share here this FT article on the situation in Africa. It’s paywalled but as you know there are ways around that (hint: www.archive.is).
One citation:

Africa will grow faster than Asia. If the 54 African economies manage to outpace their Asian counterparts, it would be the first time in modern history that this has happened.

Details in the FT: https://www.ft.com/content/204482a2-677c-42a0-bcec-a4cdac00eb92

I wrote earlier in my substack on Africa’s e-commerce potential, for example here:

https://www.crossborderalex.com/p/global-digital-marketing-and-retail-ed55

✈️ +++Passenger Experience +++

Just watch and hope your airport provides these kind of services!

🇬🇧 Dishoom’s $400m Restaurant Playbook

Sometimes story’s on how businesses started or how they grow are very nice to read or listen to, for example this one with Howard Schultz on Starbucks.

This fellow substacker, Trung Phan has a great story on a UK-based Indian restaurant chain that’s now valued at around (~$400m). What makes it stand out?
The founders cleverly “gamified” the dining experience with a fun dice roll promotion inspired by Bombay’s old underground lottery (Matka), giving groups a 1-in-6 chance to score a free meal if they roll a 6. It keeps customers come back.

Reading this story for sure get’s you in “Creative Mode”.

<Creative mode ON>:

SatPost by Trung Phan

Dishoom's $400m Restaurant Playbook

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7 months ago · 36 likes · 17 comments · Trungphan2

🇦🇺 Meat & Livestock Australia’s new lamb campaign focuses on national happiness

I’ve been following Meat & Livestock Australia for three or four years now. Every Australian summer they release their annual Summer Lamb commercial, yes actually annual, and people genuinely look forward to it.

The 2026 edition plays on Australia dropping out of the Top 10 of the World Happiness Index, flipping the idea by saying real happiness isn’t a ranking, it’s shared moments, often around one of Australia’s top activities, BBQ.
The familiar face delivering the message is Sam Kekovich, a former footballer and long-time “Lambassador” who has become inseparable from the campaign. His presence alone signals: this is the lamb ad.

I like that the ad, sells lamb, but it also subtly promotes Australia itself, making it feel bigger than just another product ad.

• Making a campaign truly annual creates anticipation and cultural relevance, not fatigue.

• Consistency (same timing, same character, new insight) builds brand memory far better than constant reinvention.

Watch the video, it’s fun to watch!

Details: https://marketech-apac.com/meat-livestock-australias-new-lamb-campaign-focuses-on-national-happiness/

🇺🇸 Amazon aims to make AI-assisted discovery a standard part of shopping

It’s more and more clear that Amazon aims to make AI-assisted discovery a standard part of shopping, shifting how customers explore products from traditional keyword searches. This can and will also impact your brand and your consumer’s journey’s. Wether it is at Amazon itself or that Amazon might set a standard it’s worth understanding what is happening and to adapt.

• Rufus Auto-Opens on Search: The AI assistant loads automatically without waiting for user interaction.

• Persistent Left Navigation Placement: Rufus now consistently occupies screen space during browsing.

• Traffic Source Agnostic: Users coming from Google are also directed into the Rufus experience.

• Increased Adoption Efforts: This is the most assertive rollout of Rufus to date.

So for example, but not limited to, I think, that PDP’s are becoming training data for Rufus, so this means you really need to think about how to optimize PDP’s both for consumers and Rufus.
Brand stories are going to matter more as well, but in a way Rufus can understand them.
This exactly fits into the narrative of brand connections news that I read the other day on Google Ads. Google Ads also is testing with “brand links”. I read that on LinkedIn:

Thanks Hunter for the insights.
Thanks Bia for the news

🫡Open to new opportunities

Thanks for reading, liking and subscribing, it means a lot to me! Hope you liked it. Slowly I am considering new opportunities (also international):
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