Aaron Conant 0:18

Happy Thursday everybody. My name is Aaron Conant, I'm the co founder and chief digital strategist here at BWG Connect. We're a giant networking and knowledge sharing group of 1000s of brands at this point in time, we networking knowledge share together to stay on top of the newest trends, strategies, pain points, whatever it is shaping digital, I spend my days talking to brands, we'd love to talk with anybody on the line, just shoot me an email, Aaron Aaron@bwgconnect.com. More than happy to knowledge share across the board what's going on. But I also want to pick your brain and the topics we should have events on for sure. And the people that are helping you out the most, we do a ton of service provider selection as well never hesitate to shoot me a note. If you're in a major metropolitan city, a tier one, tier two city, let us know we're probably going to have an in person event near you. But now we're gonna jump into the topic for today generative AI, you know, so this year how generative AI is transforming the search marketing world. You know, Udayan, and I were talking just a little bit ahead of time how quickly this is ramped up, I was saying we might have another six to nine months in Udayan, like you might have another quarter before you need to get on top of it, which is exactly why we're having this it's a top of action says I'd say 95% of the people I'm talking to this is top of mind for them to figure out, but they don't necessarily know where to start. So Udayan, if you want to jump in, you know, thanks for being such a great resource for you know, brands in our network, but also our network as a whole where we can reach out and say, Hey, let's do it an event like this. And you'll jump in and put together a slide deck really appreciate appreciate you and your team if you want to jump in, you know, brief intro yourself. And absolutely, NetElixir, that'd be awesome.

Udayan Bose 1:58

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. And we're and excited, very, very excited about this topic. And before I even get started on the topic as such, Aaron, I mean, just a little bit of a flashback, right? I mean, when you look back, we started these sessions with the BWG group, or you Aaron very specifically in 2019 2020. Right. And that seems like a prior life almost. I mean, this was a prior life. This is this so much has changed. That's insane. Absolutely insane. It's

Aaron Conant 2:28

weird. It's three years ago, four years ago, almost nothing really counts from then exactly exist. It is rare. Is there any other field where literally almost nothing counts? Things?

Udayan Bose 2:44

Wow. That's insane. Anyway, with that, I think it's going to be an interesting discussion, I have a request with every every guest who's sort of joining today, we wanted to make it very conversational. So sort of, please feel free to sort of add your questions and anything at all, or even a point of view, because, as I mentioned, I think it's extremely important for us to really figure all of this out. And the only way for us to figure this out is together. I don't think I don't think without having that knowledge community. Anyone, irrespective of the size of the company, a number of people, etc, can really figure it out. Let me move on with a quick bit of an agenda. So I'll share for those of you who may not really know about NetElixir, I'll talk a little bit about as to who we are, then obviously get to the core topic generative AI and search. We we are very focused on the search marketing part. And we are seeing as to how generative AI is really changing the future, the search and what does the future of search marketing look like? I'm pretty sure many of you would be advertising on Google ads, and so on and so forth. So some of our points of view in terms of how exactly can you win in this new search ad landscape. And last but not least, this has been one of the more popular parts of our sessions is says, we have been tracking this eCommerce data for about 80 Plus midsize and large eCommerce retailers by category. And I'll be sharing some sort of the press eCommerce trends as well as Google Ads CPC metrics with us well, and just sort of wrap it up with some concluding remarks. We have about 50 minutes 5055 minutes. And again, the request would be to keep it as conversational as possible. Let me dive in a little bit about our company NetElixir. We have been around for almost 20 years now. And we have a significant presence in international search marketing. We are one of the one of the top 27 agencies for Goobie in the US and out of more than 7700 agencies. That's that's a pretty unique distinction we are lucky to have. One of the areas that we really have invested in lot is our product innovation lab in 2017 that we set up in Hyderabad at our office in India. And we have built an analytical AI platform which in today's the new Google advertising The Performance Max world and, and the Facebook advantage plus world is proving to be a huge advantage for us. And last but not the least we we have our own nonprofit Foundation, which supports the education of young girls from the underprivileged societies back in India as well. And we sponsor their high school as well as college education as well. So anyone who's interested in contributing or feels passionate about this course, you can really scan this QR code and feel free to I mean, even a $10 contribution from your side really means a lot for some of these girls or start. A little bit about me, I mean, started the company in 2004. And so much has changed. We have really gone through and seen the multiple phases of evolution of online marketing, specifically Google search, when we started off, Google hadn't even come up with its IPO. And now here we aren't, we are talking about Google, essentially, in very interesting times. I am also fortunate enough to be an Innovation Fellow at Columbia Business School. I and I, a lot of our clients really call me that I'm more of a frustrated academic trying to really run a business and be lucky enough to really be a guest lecturer at the Johnson School of Management in Cornell, the CUNY Baruch and Indian School of Business as well. Feel free to contact me LinkedIn. That's my email udayan@netelixir.com. So before we just jump in, I wanted to share with you all three dates. Can anyone ping as to what is so remarkable about three dates? Right, April 4 1994, Jan, ninth, 2007, and November 30 2022. Any guesses? There are no prizes for this, but we'll be sort of handing out some prizes. For some of the poll questions. We have two polls, we'll be giving out air tags, essentially, but there is no prize for this one. But any guesses? What is so special about these three dates? aren't any guesses from your side? And I let anyone anyone who wants to really add in November 30? Is ChatGPT. Absolutely, yep. You're right. It's basically I think some of you got it. Right. It was April 4 was when Netscape browser was launched. Jan, ninth was when this gentleman called Steve Jobs introduced something which has become a part of our lives called iPhone. And November 30, was ChatGPT. And I mean, boom, essentially, our lives changed forever. So when we talk about generative AI at this point in time, I really have to start with a disclaimer, the disclaimer, is

Aaron Conant 7:36

this. Okay? Are we able to, to share this deck? Absolutely. Yes. Okay, cool. Canada, a couple of Kevin. Awesome, absolutely. So I

Udayan Bose 7:45

think that these are going to want mention this, because at this point in time, I really with all humility, or at least start this presentation, that whatever I'm going to share and discuss, et cetera, et cetera, et we're not even even a small, small, tiny particle in this entire ocean, which we essentially have just stepped into called j, the world of generative AI. So what I wanted to do is I really wanted to one of course, I think the word transforming now should be changed to disrupt the Yeren say, first of all, let me change the topic a little bit and disrupting is a more accurate word, I believe at this point in time. And just agree, she has some of the point of view some of the insights, some of that stuff that we have done. Like Aaron and I last week, were at the shoptalk conference before that we have been on the conference rounds, right, the typical circuit. And it has been fascinating to really talk to a lot of eCommerce companies, a lot of service providers, a lot of technology providers, lot of channels out there from Google. Mehta being, of course, and so on, and they just have been fascinating as to how, how transformational These times are. And everything started with a very simple thing, this ChatGPT Right. So I asked ChatGPT, and this is more of a ChatGPT three, not ChatGPT. Four, can you please explain generative AI in a way that can be understood by a high school student? I want you to go through the entire thing. But just the second paragraph, if you really look at it, how beautifully it has really explained something which may seem like a very complex topic, right? Think of it like an artist who can draw portraits of people they've never seen before, just by using their imagination and the knowledge they have gained from observing other faces. Just that word. One is it just simply sort of creates a tremendous amount of all, but it creates a fair amount of nervousness and anxiety as well. Because you are essentially trying to probably add clauses that technology has ever gone to really replicating a human being are somehow really replicating some of the capabilities which really differentiated the human being as well. And I think ChatGPT Though it was launched in 30th November, it really got into the primetime It Microsoft to sort of jumped in. And on the seventh of Feb, almost exactly two months back when Microsoft, Bing just came out in the open and just mentioned all of their ambitions to really integrate ChatGPT. In the new Bing was introduced at that point in time, they talked about the Edge browser and everything was getting sort of ChatGPT. That was when it sort of started taking off. It was fascinating. So I was, I was speaking at this event etail, just about two months back. And at that point in time, it was so interesting that only about 20% of the of the eCommerce companies or retailers were talking as much about generative AI. And last week, Aaron and I were there at the shoptalk conference. And I think each and every track, which was there a shop talk talked about generative AI. So in a span of one and a half months, from 20% of the tracks talking about generative ai 100% in the conference, is now talking about generative AI. So understandably, that the interest and is just enormous in this entire area such. So what we'll try to do is in the next few slides, let me share with you some of the point of view some of the thoughts as well. And again, as we, as I mentioned earlier, feel free to add in your thoughts, comments, anything, I mean, any point of view would really help immensely. So I'll start with this new Bing. This is how the new Microsoft Bing looks like. Right? So we are pretty used to the left side, those are the classic search results page. But what is new is that chatbox? Right. Now, if you really take a step back, let me ask you a question right with this chat box. Suddenly, we have really gotten to a whole new world, a whole new opportunity for brands to build what is called the deeper zero moment of truth, right? Google introduced this concept of zero moment of truth engagement with potential customers, suddenly, you have really opened a completely new new channel altogether. So think of that search page being a two dimensional page. Suddenly, the Chatbot has made it three dimensional, right? When it's a three dimensional, obviously, the page is not becoming three dimensional. By adding a separate tab, you can really direct the customer flow and the customer stream into a different tab altogether. It's a very big concept that I'm talking about a huge concept, the concept is called conversational search. Right? So again, a two dimensional page suddenly has become three dimensional. And this entire third dimension is yet to be monetized. I mean, Bing has started putting out some ads now. But that's more of a test. And at this point in time, the only thing that I can absolutely absolutely Lily forecast is going to be a massive, massive land grab massive amount of experimentations fail faster to really figure out as to how exactly how exactly can we really tapping into and monetize this third dimension, which is called the conversational search. But what does it really mean in terms of the overall part of search? We also have to think about Google because I mean, Google, as we all know, is very much linked to I mean, searches Google, right? That's how we have really gotten to know Google. And this was the article which came out in the New York Times, a few months back. And they activated code read for a reason. And before I go into the reason, let me let me ask you a question. This is an this is our first poll question. Any guesses? What percentage of Google searches every year? are brand new, that these are first time searches ever on Google in a year? Right. So let us say in 2022, what percentage of all the searches that people did on Google? were brand new that no one else never, ever had been done? And 1% 10% 1%? Okay. Any Any other guesses? Brand new.

Never has been ever done on Google. Any year?

Aaron Conant 13:57

Point 1%. Oh, streaming. And now.

Udayan Bose 14:02

So let me see. I'm sorry, did I hear 15? Somewhere? Yeah. And that's the actual right answer, because this is 15% 15% of Google searches have never been searched before. And this is Feb. 2015.

Aaron Conant 14:17

Last year. It was yeah, you're the first one. And that's awesome. Nicely done.

Udayan Bose 14:20

Let's enter Google searches. I've never been searched before, right. Never ever been searched before. And that really is the big reason why Google is Google. When you really have really built a flywheel where 15% constantly top of the funnel, you're able to get the searches. Understandably, a longtail keeps on building and building constantly as such right. Now, let me sort of take a pause around and let me ask you a question. What if this conversational search or this new form of search eats 5% And this 15% falls to 10%. These are hypothetical situation I hope this never happens. Right. But nothing can be ruled out in the world of generative AI and ChatGPT. So what happens if that happens? Understandably, Google has to really activate Code Red, isn't it? And the reason becomes even more apparent, because if you really look at Google's funnel, we already saw that tick tock and Amazon where tick tock was already creating a lot of inroads, essentially top of the funnel and middle of the funnel as well. Right? I mean, there is a there is a saying that about 1514 or 15% of all the Gen Z searchers start their searches with tick tock, not on Google. That's a big number, right 14%. And this has been announced by Google. I mean, you can really do a Google search to find this out. So Google declared about 14% of all the Gen Z searchers are starting their search behavior search process on tick tock. And secondly, as we all know, that Amazon and now with all the other retail media networks, they are essentially eating into the bottom of the funnel, right? So almost about 70% of the product searches happen effectively on Amazon. Now, let us say one of the product marketplaces. Now in that scenario, the thing which sort of kept Google going and growing constantly was the 15%. What if Aaron, that conversational search funnel suddenly takes that liberty of what if that 15% of brand new searches 5% Suddenly slowly migrate to the conversational part? And suddenly being which was literally out of nowhere? From absolutely a position of obscurity suddenly gets into the picture? What would happen? I think these are the things at this point in time. I think my entire idea behind this presentation is just ask a bunch of questions, because no one has answered as Aaron mentioned. Well, I really wish we had the question answers.

Aaron Conant 16:49

Yeah. And I've heard you know, this description that, you know, Google is a search engine. Right. But GBT is an answer engine. Right? It's kicking you out answers not like Google, or it gives you a 1.8 trillion results in point 007 seconds that you can sift through. Yeah, it's sifting through everything and combine it in to give you an answer. Right. And it's simplified it. So when I think about it from that aspect, it's dwindling down searches. Yep. Right. And me scrolling and me trying to find and then it's not quite right. So I go do another search, which is really, it'd be really interesting. If we get ever see how many of that 15% were tagged to this. Were a stream of you know, I asked a question. It wasn't quite right. And that was a new search. So I asked another one a little different. And that was a new search, you know, from maybe that was from, you know, only 3% of overall users. Right? That we're just tapping away as opposed to right. And every one of those when you think about marketing standpoint, there's a new search new ads pop up. What if I only typed in one time? And it gave me the the answer?

Udayan Bose 18:08

Absolutely. So I'll give you two examples. One of them are more recent, my personal example, Aaron. So we just got back from Portugal, we are taking a vacation and so on. And my entire trip itinerary was created by ChatGPT 100% 100% of my itinerary was created by ChatGPT. Right? So that's, I think, one personal anecdote and and it was very successful the trip. So essentially, the answers were right, they were like, absolutely spot on one. The second part, I would really want to share an interesting stat, which probably many of you may be aware of, it was said that you can really hide a dead body on the second page of Google. Right. And only because less than 20% of all the folks who are searching even bother to go to the second page of Google. Now, if that is the case, only about So only about 20% even go to the second page, suddenly the ChatGPT becomes a new funnel, there is a very serious possibility of diversion happening, which really takes people down to a different path altogether and a different funnel altogether. And as you rightly mentioned that and to get my portable itinerary, I was researching as to what what should we do maybe a three day trip to Porto. And the entire thing which has become super important now is a sequence of prompts. So the most important part in my opinion, or the most important skill set any marketer any, any human being, at this point in time can build essentially is learning how to really create those smart prompts. Because one prompt gives you an answer using that to make the second prompt using that to make the third prompt I'll give you a simple example Aaron,

Aaron Conant 19:54

you're gonna straight along just because Nathan is shot and some questions here. What our best price actress's for integrating generative AI into existing digital marketing flows. It kind of fits in with that, as well as what is the skill set? That fits in there as well?

Udayan Bose 20:12

Exactly. So I'll give you a simple example. So again, listen to your point, one of the things that our SEO team has been sort of trying to do, I think the entire long tail has been a big challenge for entire digital marketing thing, whatever you take Amazon meta, any channel, the problem was monetizing this long tail of for any digital marketing channel. And I mean, Chris Anderson had written this phenomenal book called The Long Tail many years back, which exactly talked about this thing. Now, in this case, I'll make a very bold statement out here, I believe ChatGPT can help you get some semblance of traction within that long tail of Google search. Let me explain how and we ever tested it. And we have really proven that it really works. Now, when you talk about SEO, typically, your SEO team or your SEO agency probably goes ahead and selects and optimizes your website for SEO and maybe 30 keywords for the keywords, 4000 keywords, 40,000 keywords, whatever the number is, right. But when you consider that 15% of the Google searches are absolutely brand new. I mean, even if you have a maybe a million keywords for which you are optimizing your SEO on, it is not even the tip of the iceberg, right? So please understand that piece. Now one of the things that we tried out all our SEO team led by Silas Guzman, he's our SEO director he tried out was the third level prompt concept. So you start with maybe just your brand name, right? So just your brand name keywords? What what do you know about NetElixir? Right? So ChatGPT, tell me a little bit more about NetElixir. So you will get a response from ChatGPT, you will find maybe one word, which you may not have thought of optimizing your site on the SEO part, use that to come up with a second level prompt, you will be surprised that you probably get about four to five keywords, which you're probably not even considered for SEO, use those four to five keywords to create the third level prompt. And suddenly, you will be surprised you probably have about 30 keywords that you never considered for SEO. The more important part was those 30 keywords are in the long tail of Google. And essentially, it's free money for you. Because no one else is advertising. No one else is essentially optimizing for those keywords for you. So third level prompt and SEO is something that again, a very, very practical tactical approach or an idea how can you can really go in and really expand your overall keyword reach and grab those new users by tapping into the long tail of let us say Google search that data is one of the examples. There are many examples in that if you are interested, we have an entire list of ChatGPT LED hacks that our SEO team has put in probably about eight to 10 of them. And I can share all of this stuff with you. And these are some of the things which we have been using all of these combined to really get into the long tail of Google search. And outcome has been just incredibly powerful. So again, getting to the point, Aaron that you mentioned, as long as we are able to think of generative AI as a very smart assistant, which creates the first draft which helps us to really, really unleash this power of human creativity, ingenuity, whatever it is, we'll just call it will be extremely successful. I believe ChatGPT regenerative AI is the most important invention. Probably since the internet started, I will probably even sort of make it even bigger than the iPhone, maybe if you really look at the dates, just because you can really unleash a whole different world of possibility. And I know I'm probably heard of digressing a little bit. And but I really wanted to give the name of a of a book or prescribe a book. I don't have any affiliation to this, it will help you understand as to how powerful AI is. And how can you really tap into the power of AI. There is a book written by three professors in University of Toronto called prediction machines. It's called prediction machines, I'll probably just put it on chat. It's, I would highly recommend everyone to really sort of read this book, buy this book, etc, etc. They give a model as to how exactly every decision is made, right? Every task is broken down and decision. And what it says is generative AI or even analytical AI would be significantly stronger than human beings in doing those regularized tasks, but they are the first draft. It really frees up an enormous amount of time for you to really come up with those divergent ideas, those new paths, the strategic paths and the directions that you did not get even trying to think of earlier. So I think that's where I'm like, super excited. It's called prediction machines. Yep. So so that's where I think the entire piece effectively comes in So I think it's the most powerful assistant, which can really take, I mean that the human creativity to a different level altogether in our eyes, and we have come up with a list of all of these things. I mean, how ChatGPT is going to transform search or everything. And the human ingenuity and creative excellence, I believe will become the key differentiating factors. But agencies, marketers, everyone, anyone, and you can you can

Aaron Conant 25:22

now, I'll put a link, I'll put a link for everybody in the chat right now. And but Anyways,Udayan, and you can keep rolling, because this is work. This maybe should have been a three hour webinar. So we gotta slow, but we'll have a, you know, we should already plan a follow up and make sure everybody on here, because my guess is we're not going to get through everything the next 30 minutes. But let's,

Udayan Bose 25:45

so that's where I think sort of getting it. So I think one of the things is simple, simple tip is, I'll, again, I'm sort of being a little professorial here, pardon my being pretty direct on this one. The first request is, I have an assignment for all of you. And my assignment will, if you can really spend at least one hour every day. And not only do they are entire marketing team, every person spending one hour every day, just playing around with ChatGPT, ask prompts, ask questions, because that is a skill set that your team would really need to build. That's, I think, the first request. The second part is, and this is just a guess, I don't know what we don't know. But at this point in time, we believe that even though it's may seem like a humongous task, you can still train the generative AI or let us say, ChatGPT, in this case, algorithms as such. So this may be a great opportunity for you to let ChatGPT know how you want to position your brand. Right? So how do you do that? You sort of keep on asking questions about your prime, right? Tell me a little bit more about NetElixir, then it comes up with the response. By the way, I heard that NetElixir it does this as well, can you really help me understand if they're doing this also? So by constantly asking the question, and when I say you are not talking about only you as one person, you're the entire company should not do that. We still believe that there is a possibility that you can really influence the responses with ChatGPT really provides you. And this would be extremely valuable, extremely valuable in the long run, as you really work on this new conversational search, SEO, whatever it is called, effectively, I think will be a key component in this one. So that would be my request, the third request and the final one. So first one is, if it can be made mandatory, almost one hour a day, everyone in the marketing department plays around with ChatGPT. And just knows as to how to really ask the right prompts and questions. The second request, if you can really keep on asking questions about your brand, your company to ChatGPT and keep feeding the answers to it. The third request which I have the final one, we are seeing an exponential growth, Aaron in the overall traffic and the number of searchers who are using the new Bing. I mean, the new Bing, we believe is getting a lot of attention from the right, or the early adopters, and so on. We would recommend if you're doing Google advertising, invest about 50 to 15 to 30%. Or maybe, maybe it's sort of boost the budget of the new Bing by about 15 20%. And see if you're able to get the still the same ROI. And you will so far, we have not been disappointed. We work with about 140 companies. We have tested it so far with about 70 companies and we have in each and every case, got a higher return on investment for the incremental spend that we have been able to invest in the new thing. So my request is do test it out. These would be my three requests of the two dues for the entire team, if I may, essentially. But let me pause any I'm unable to see any questions. Any any questions at all, please feel free to

Aaron Conant 28:56

just a quick note, Bing gets a 15% daily traffic bunk from ChatGPT integration, which is huge. What are potential risks associated with using generative AI in digital marketing?

Udayan Bose 29:10

I think I mean, these are some other thing. But anyway, so I didn't generate the either. The first part is it can lead to very quick commoditization as well. And if you do not really use the output of ChatGPT as a first draft, you are likely to use the same type of simply content, right, the same content with ChatGPT can probably do better than you. But I think the opportunity is using that as the first draft and building on that because that's when your creativity sort of comes in. So I fear that it may sort of lead some amount of commoditization. There has been a lot of talk about the deep fakes. Understandably, the deep fake is definitely a big significant threat. And specifically, that's the reason I am requesting everyone to really focus on their brand and build the presence for their brand on on all the A bit of validity is discarded or the ChatGPT, and so on and so forth. So I think that's something, don't let anyone else own your brand, you should be okay with the brand. So those are I think the two, which I could definitely highlight very specifically point out. Yeah. Awesome. So let me keep moving on. These are the four articles I would highly recommend as well. And again, we'll be sharing this presentation right after this. And then the first one is with the Sequoia Capital, I think they this article came up in the month of Jan, and very comprehensive, more about the generative AI and a creative new world, Sam Altman of the open AI at the main guy behind the ChatGPT. Very interesting note from his side, because we really have to really look at it from a more slightly more responsibility perspective as well. And I think he sort of brings in a very interesting, sort of adjudged commentary on that. The third one is more of Bill Gates, the age of AI has begun. It just, he's talking about, again, the same stuff, right? Yeah, just a whole different world altogether. It's just the Internet has just started a few months back. And the last one is more of our what NetElixir has at NetElixir, we have been thinking and doing a lot of research on this part. We were lucky enough to be early on in terms of the new being testing out the new Bing, etc, etc. Some of our thoughts as well. Let me move on to the second part of the presentation, which is future of search marketing. We talked about Google a lot of threat. Understandably, Google today announced that it is Google search would be including barred, etc, etc. But I mean, to be very honest, they're playing a catch up game at this time, and they are continuously playing a catch up game, because others will check that the challenge is basically this is an exponential technology. Right? How did they miss this? I think they were, it is the class, there is a classic book by one of the greatest management thinkers of all time. So strategic thinkers, calculating Christians, Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School called The Innovators Dilemma. So when a company becomes too big, it spends more time and effort to really protect what it has, rather than essentially trying new experiments, which are disruptive of this part, right. So that's where I think these disruptions happen. And Microsoft didn't really have anything to lose, right? I mean, being I don't even know as to what their market share was probably about 10% 5%, or whatever the percentage was, they didn't have much to lose. But having said that, I think the leader there was a lot more bold, effectively in the head rolling it out. But what I am fascinated about in the Microsoft, since we are talking about this, they seem to have about 20 steps, or 20 moves of chess game really mapped out in advance. It was like one after the next after the next and so on, so and they knew that bird would probably come back with a result, obviously, they didn't really know that bird would sort of goof up so badly that Google lost or alphabet lost about 100 billion dollars in literally a day. But effectively, they, they really had this entire thing planned well in advance. And that's the reason when I talked that I started with this thing by saying that, in certain cases, when we really look back in 2019, the pandemic actually was quite a transformative time, right. And it is fascinating to see how some companies really, really maximized the opportunities during this time. To really leapfrog in a disruptive manner. And that, to me, is a massive message, which I really wanted to share out there. I still believe at this point in time, anyone who jumps onto the generative AI bandwagon and takes charge and experiments and does stuff and fails faster. Will will have a strong opportunity of really riding this rocket ship. But everything has to be questioned. I'll give you a simple example. Why do we need to have websites? Like the static pages that we have, right? I mean, there is no point in having a website, why don't you really introduce the conversational search flow within the website? I mean, why can't the website all of the website be personalized, like Aaron sees a different website page compared to me seeing and why shouldn't really be done dynamically? Now with generative AI, all of this becomes possible. So we'll see things like personalization, or hyper personalization go to a different level altogether, right? But companies really have to ask these questions. They really have to create that knowledge ecosystem of partners, friends, people who really sort of know so that they are able to succeed and thrive in this new world. So that's what it is. If you really,

Aaron Conant 34:37

really do want to get into the future search marketing, because yes, we love what you just said is the so think about having an AI plugin on the back end of your website that is truly personalizing based on who's there and generating real time images, potentially, of an own Most look of like, of that person. Yeah. With the products you have, they're carried wearing using. Yeah. But that's a reality. That's going to happen. It's, it's,

Udayan Bose 35:15

it's going to happen. It's bound to happen. Right. So I mean, so that's good. Yeah. cookieless world is interesting. And I know.

Aaron Conant 35:22

Yeah, let's get that's another whole rabbit hole. We need to go down. But yeah, sure. Search Marketing. Let's do

Udayan Bose 35:27

this. So now, let us say or let me put you on the spot. Right? If you are Google, what would you do? Right? You know that BART is already number two. I mean, there is a reason why other other search engines have not been able to catch up with Google, the same thing is I don't think it's possible for Barr to catch up with ChatGPT. Making a very bold statement. I don't think it is possible, right? Unless Uncle ChatGPT messes up really big time, which, I mean, given the mark Microsoft's cloud and focus, it's unlikely. So in that case, what would you do? You would really focus on expediting the entire progression into the cookieless world? Because it's almost like at this point in time, what is that one thing, which every company needs, which only Google has one thing? They have this 15% of the searches which are happening? Brand new, right? Never ever. I mean, Google has the traffic, Amazon ate into Google's traffic, they I mean, Amazon is the largest advertiser for Google. Tick tock is one of the largest advertisers for Google as well. So everyone has been feeding on to this traffic that they have been grabbing from Google, where advertising and Microsoft is, again, advertising on Google as they're getting this traffic flow. So Google has to really, somehow shut down this traffic flow that they are really passing on to the other channels. Right? And how does it do? And it does by effectively going ahead and expediting this chrome, Cookie deprecation? In my opinion, okay, there's that purely my point of view, that they would expedite this chrome cookie application just because of this walled garden has to be built. But that is where I think it's extremely important for marketers to understand what are some of these trends? What are the things we are going on? As a marketer? We are already seeing lack of control, I'm pretty sure many of you would be doing performance Max, right? What is the control? You can't really see much? What are the benefits? What are the things on other stuff. And that is happening because of decreased visibility, and that it would even be worse, I can assure you, in the next few months, the costs have risen. And you unfortunately, because you can't really control as much there is a challenge. There is a limited addressability as well, right? So you can't really exactly pinpoint once it is a first party world effectively to as to what was the entire tracking source attribution gets impacted? And there is a massive amount of channel fragmentation going on as well. Right? So earlier, we were able to tie all of this stuff inside. And we saw it very clearly. Right? So how can digital marketers win in this year and beyond. And that's the reason I want to bring in in the next three months, I feel will see a tremendous amount of disruption. And I'm telling you, I mean being we started as a search marketing agency, and that's what who we are. And we sort of talked about being in the top 27, etc, etc. All there's just a number, but the classic search marketing agency model is obsolete now. So I mean, you probably will hardly find any other agency CEO going ahead. And so openly mentioning this, primarily because it's a combination of utilizing AI. Having that culture of experimentation, and really combining that human ingenuity, which really has that foresight into the future. If your agency or if your team doesn't have that you cannot compete, you're competing with AI, right? It's almost like you are on a Formula One fast track race, essentially, Aaron, you can't go there riding a bicycle there, right. So effectively, anyone who's trying to still do the stuff, as it was in 2019, is probably going to be riding a bicycle in the Formula One track, if there is no way zero chances of you're competing zero. And that's the part that I really wanted to impress on now. And there is AI is the only solution simple, really quick,

Aaron Conant 39:02

how do you affirm the relevancy of ChatGPT? S outputs? Given? It's only trained up on data until 2021? Or is that a limitation actively changing?

Udayan Bose 39:10

That is a limitation is actively changing? Right? Because if you really look at the new Bing, effectively, they're bringing in the Bing search right now, again, I'll be the Bing search results are not as much as Google it, it's a steal. But there's still substantial data. It's a real substantial, being claimed to have gotten beyond about 100 billion active daily users now, which is the first time they've ever really scaled that milestone, sort of passed that milestone on the seventh of March. So I think they're moving in the same direction. They're combining all of these parts. They already have the chat results, which really has those very specific references, through which they are able to pull the data as well. And I think that 2021 part already has been broken. I don't think that really argument essentially holds good any longer in the new game. Is that and this AI effectively is driving all of this part. So how do you really win in this new search ad landscape? What Right. So what we are seeing very clearly, you really need to focus on the inputs for your winning variable, right? Suddenly, you're talking about a black box, black box called performance Max, how do you really even when you can control only about three or four things, one, you can control the audience's that you can ask Google advertising campaign to really target. So who should I target, you obviously can control the the creative differentiation, or the initial account structure or the account setup that you can really get Google to see if this is an optimal account, strip setup, right. And in many cases, we're seeing that the account structure has to be very different, compared to the 2019, the old Google ad, which essentially it was a different setup dial in the new Google ad, it has to be a different setup. The third thing is you really have to have to have a culture of testing. Because you I mean, that incrementality testing is no longer an option, that's a must. And we got to do all of this stuff, collect this data and continue, it has to be constantly a circle in a very, very privacy safe environment, a very specific value centric measurement practices as such. So suddenly, the entire ecosystem of Google ads, which still led people to really go ahead and change the beds, and those keywords are always gone. It's not coming back again, ever, right? Audience goals video, obviously set heard is your account structure is it really even optimized for the new Google ads and the experiment that you run, that's it, even control anything else, and you really have to retrain and retrain your team to be able to use ChatGPT as an assistant to help you do it faster, smarter, and an ongoing, continuous basis as such. And that's the part which I think is exciting. So effectively, I mean, we are getting a bit of a plug for Alexa and sample we are seeing some tremendous results aren't from it's more of an analytical AI platform that we built. And our goal was very simple. Our goal was in the first party data world, can we really build a platform, which is able to identify those high quality audience signals that we can feed into Google AdMob Ads, that's it. Only one problem that we are solving right are the audiences. And we are able to see some tremendous results using Alexa insights. And our team is able to really how to utilize it constantly. And the way that we are doing that is we have created about four AI models. Now all these are analytical AI models, not generative AI, like we are able to predict with almost a 92% accuracy, which one of your first time buyers is likely to buy again, we are able to predict to the level who is likely to return in the next two months and buy from your website, and what is their lifetime value predicted to be. And most importantly, who are the customers at risk. We append it with your CRM data, we have rarely been our we have set up a separate experimentation lab. And all that they do is come up with the list of experiments, which is unique to your brand and your website, and go through this process of iteration. So when I talk about 2019 versus now at that point in time, we used to spend a lot of time in terms of identifying those keywords, we usually go ahead and sort of create those small ad groups, we used to do sort of go about creating the separate brand and non brand of creating the entire part changing those bids and this thing, all that is gone. Now suddenly, the competencies said that we need to have trained the entire thing, we are lucky. Now looking back, we are lucky this we started building this tool way back in 2017. But if I didn't have a tool, I wouldn't be able to compete. Right? You can, as I mentioned, ride a bicycle on the Formula One track, essentially. And the list of experiments is something which our team has really had to get get trained on. So it's a very different world altogether, we are sort of getting into. And yeah, we have been able to have gave some great results like performance Max, as you can see, I mean has been one of the big challenges, we have been able to get some phenomenal results using all of this stuff. So it's a it's a different world. And by my request to the entire group, all the attendees who are sort of investing in paid media leaders like Google ads, Facebook, meta ad, whatever it is, you cannot compete if you don't have an analytics platform, which is driven by AI. So please, please, please do it primarily because we believe very firmly that Google's cookie deprecation is happening sooner than what we probably would want. And at that point in time, if you really don't have the entire ecosystem created infrastructure created, I think you are at a significant disadvantage while really advertising. Let me quickly move on to the next part. And the final part of our presentation, which is more of the q1 q2, the first quarter eCommerce and Google Ad metrics. But before I go in, I have the second poll and we'll be giving out the prizes around this one. Any guesses? What was the year on here change in online sales revenues, the eCommerce revenues entirely from the website? I've not included the marketplaces. We don't have the numbers for that. But any guesses in terms of percentage was it minus 5% 0% plus 2% plus 10%. Any guesses on this? And we'll be giving out those air tags per one person.

Aaron Conant 45:05

All right, we've got 12, a 910 713 12, three, negative 10.

Udayan Bose 45:14

Yeah. Yeah, I think so overall, I think at least for our database, we're gonna move on to the next slide, we have seen a total about plus 5%. As the increase in terms of revenue, in terms of orders, it's a little lesser plus 4%, average order value, nominal jump plus 2%. But and we have really tried to, this is like sample categories that we really have been able to really hurt to break out, right. So if you really look at this entire part, fashion and beauty, at least for our data set is continuing to outperform other categories. And it's interesting, because in home decor, we have included home furnishings, as well as the home improvement part as well. But some of the categories like pet supply has been pretty flat. We work with a lot of pet supplies clients, a lot of tools client as well, they've been pretty flat as third. So the second question again, 2019. Versus now, we have been amazed as to how, once the post pandemic bump really receded, effectively how lopsided the entire online sales growth has been. Now, we still feel fairly confident that we are on track to get to maybe 25% of the entire retail sales by 2025, still will be online. And I'm pretty confident of that. In fact, Nike came out with this, I think 27% of their overall sales was essentially eCommerce or online. So I think 25% We're getting to what, that 25% may not all be from the same categories, right? So different categories would have the different growth part as well. The question is, how exactly are you really comparing with any one of these categories? Metrics are such the second. And my final slide on this one is more of a Google Ad CPC trend. The reason I'm showing this, because we have seen that the Google Ad metrics are a great indicator as to how the overall demand is, and, and so on and so forth. This is a CPC metric. Very interestingly, we have seen the CPC soften in the month of March. Now again, the question I don't know. Right? Because normally CPC is a direct function as I mean, all of you, I'm pretty sure know what advertising and Google ads is the demand and supply function. Right. So I mean, you have more demand, the CPC is go up, you have less demand, essentially, the CPC has come down. So is that an indication that there may be some budget migration already happening, Aaron, to the new being? Question mark? I don't know. Right, potential hypothesis. The second part is, is it just because already maybe the there is some amount of divergence between companies who are doing extremely well, and others who are really lagging behind in terms of eCommerce sales, and the folks who are lagging behind or going on to the defensive by pulling back their spend, which becomes their immediate defensive mechanism? Potentially, maybe? The third question which I have is a fundamental one, which I think is an important one, to emphasize as well. In the AI world, it is our firm belief that the gap between those who really embrace AI, let us say ChatGPT, analytical AI tools, etc, etc. And those who don't, will really diverge at a very fast pace. The question is, how prepared is your organization to really write this AI wave, the AI wave? Again, the only analogy Ultra Iwan again, emphasizes the Netscape browser introduction in 1994. Interestingly, almost exactly about 29 years back around April 4 was when Netscape was launched. And we are talking on April 6, my request if there was a message is, AI is the present and the future, right, and generative AI will continue to drive rapid disruption. The speed at which we are seeing companies adopt in many cases is not driven by how quickly you want to move. It is basically how quickly the market forces are getting you to move, and conversational search, we believe is likely to grab a fair share of volume for the internet searches. And we also believe that new strategies will have to get created for so called the new SEO and the new SEM and so on. We also feel that Google is likely to speed up its effort to make Google ads 100% ai driven in an effort to secure its walled garden, right because everyone is feeding onto the Google huge flywheel. Marketers really have to abandon old school paid search tactics, you can't really drive or ride a bicycle in a Formula One racing track, and embrace AI power tools, and I sort of make a shameless plug for elixir insights. It has been proven to be very successful for all of our clients and we have about 140 clients. It's not a small number across categories to succeed in this new Google advertising landscape. play close attention to the new Bing the powerful chat feature will attract search As advertising revenue would as essentially follow. And last but not the least, despite all of these things around, how much are the online, the pandemic, boom, etc, we feel that eCommerce have penetrated quite substantially. And we believe that in the foreseeable future, online sales will keep on growing. And it is very much on track to cross 25% of total US retail sales by 2025. So that's what I had effectively in this entire part. So if I were to define q1, since that was, I think the topic essentially, on this one, I would say q1 Was the was a very remarkable quarter when all digital was entirely disrupted by something called AI. And in q2, let us all really join hands build that knowledge community to really usher in the new digital. That's essentially what my talk track was today. Any questions happy to answer, we are also offering a complimentary because we are talking about, we are seeing time and again that most of the companies are not future ready. As I mentioned, you can control only three things for your Google advertising campaign. The audience's you target is your account structure even future ready, that is succeeding performance packs, etc. and experimentation. So this is a DIY tools that we are launching today, you can really go ahead and do the test yourself netelixir.com/futureready, and see as to whether your account structure even really structured in the right way for this new Google advertising world. We also will be happy to share this deck. And if you're interested in a list of ChatGPT hacks, similar to what I mentioned about the third level prompt, essentially for SEO, send me an email then@netelixir.com Thanks again for this opportunity. And looking forward to some exciting times ahead on the generative AI bot. Thank you. Awesome,

Aaron Conant 51:48

Udayan, thanks for being such great friend, partner supporter that network. Again, as we kind of get here. You know, I dropped Udayan is one of the many people that we rely on, I just dropped a link to the digital deep dive podcast where we bring people on like this to have these conversations on a weekly basis. We're going to have a good day and on hopefully in the next month, I would hope my friend if we can get a time squared away to do a deep dive on this. But also, I want to say thank you to everybody who dialed in. I know we didn't quite get to all the questions. But I always like to wrap up just a few minutes early. Give everybody a chance to get on through the next meeting without being late. I'd love to have a conversation with you. If you have any questions in this space, or you just want to a great chat on digital overall Strategy. That's where I spend my times if you need help with partner selection, that's where I spend my time with brands startup, the fortune 100 up every vertical and we'd love to connect with you. I'd also encourage everybody to follow up with your day and the team over at NetElixir where they're helping a ton of brands out in the network. Their leaders, they're sitting there at the cutting edge, it's it's worth that follow up conversation to have them take a look. See if you're future ready or not. Also, they're also a fantastic agency to use as well. So with that, I think we're going to wrap up this session. Thanks again, Udayan. And thanks everybody who dialed in. Yes, we will get everybody the deck. And yes, we will have a recording of this available on the website. We usually send it out to have the front and back end edited but they will have that out there as well. You can just go ahead and request it and we will shoot it over to you. But with that, everybody take care stay safe and look forward to having you at a future event. That was awesome, my friend. Thanks