Vuong Nguyen

If you're a marketplace PM uncertain about your role in the AI-empowered future, this well-researched deep dive should put your mind at ease - or at least give you some direction. Marketplaces as we know them are changing, that's for sure, but with disruption comes opportunity! Colin Gardiner does a fantastic job outlining the current landscape, gaps, and potential trajectories, and most importantly is realistically optimistic about the impact smart and thoughtful humans can have on shaping the new frontier of agentic AI-driven marketplaces.

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🎯 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲 / 𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐱: 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬𝐧'𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 Just came across a fascinating insight: While 99% of business leaders plan to overhaul their marketing technology / customer technology stacks this year, 21% still lack a clear modernisation strategy. It's not about having the most tools – it's about making them work together effectively. Some eye-opening statistics from recent research: ❗ 66% of businesses report overlapping tech functionalities ❗53% say these redundancies actively hurt their marketing performance ❗70% of marketers juggle 6+ tools simultaneously As one compelling quote notes: "The companies that thrive in the future won't be the ones with the flashiest new tech. Those that modernise with purpose and clarity will lead the pack." The future is composable, with 60% of brands moving towards modular marketing technology / customer technology solutions. But here's the kicker – while AI dominates conversations, less than half (46%) of companies are meaningfully using it in their marketing. Why? Because AI needs strong data foundations to deliver results. Digital transformation isn't about piling on technology – it's about building connected ecosystems that drive real business value. What's your take on this? Are you seeing similar challenges in your organisation's digital transformation journey? Credit: Paul Armstrong #MarTech #DigitalTransformation #MarketingStrategy #AI #BusinessInnovation #CustomerTechnology

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Google’s UGC Push: Sullivan Explains The Shift In Search Results from Matt Southern on Search Engine Journal My thought: Maybe as SEOs purge all that "non-performing" content from Websites they'll mistakenly remove some of the crap they've been creating "for SEO" and help clean up the indexed Web. But I'm not holding my breath. #seo #webmarketing #searchengineoptimization #google #searchengines #digitalmarketing https://lnkd.in/ezu42CAg

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Good points here. (A "gatekeeper" company is going to get a lot of unwanted attention if they make it really easy to turn off every competitor's cross-context user tracking while leaving their own cross-context user tracking turned on. Whatever form the cookie preference ends up taking, it's going to also have to control Google tracking that isn't technically cookie-based but would otherwise be unfairly/illegally advantaged)

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We spent $75,000 on a logo that we accidentally (maybe?) stole from Leonardo DiCaprio. In 2022, we spent months working with one of the top design agencies in NYC. We went well above our budget because we loved the agency, and believed they could craft the perfect logo for our company rebrand. The whole team was pumped. We had everything ready to go. - New website - Business cards - Branded swag - Launch emails drafted ... All of this scheduled for a regular Monday morning Then, on Sunday night, I got a call from a co-worker who saw that Leo had just launched a new Climate Tech VC fund.... WITH OUR EXACT LOGO I am talking about the same exact logo. Not similar. Not inspired by... IDENTICAL. Every curve, color, and detail was a replica of our $75k design. This was statistically impossible to happen. Two teams, independently creating the exact same unique logo, and planning to launch one day apart? We investigated how this was possible and we never found a connection or any way this could have happened. The agency was stunned. We even called Leo's fund and they couldn't find a connection or how this was possible. I don't actually think Leo or his team stole our logo. I also don't think our agency stole it from him. The timing makes it virtually impossible. But try explaining that to our design team who spent months on this. 🤯 We had to scramble to create a new logo at the last minute. It was pure chaos. There is a silver lining though - the new logo ended up being even better. 👉 I guess sometimes the craziest setbacks lead to better outcomes. This is just one of the crazy stories we had to overcome at Broadlume.

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Ah hot new gossip of the tech world. Welcome to the Wordpress drama 👀 🍿 https://lnkd.in/eaPJ3HMN TL; DR -- ➡️ WordPress's business model has always relied on having its source code open, offering ease to creators to redistribute their own tools for free.  ➡️ WordPress, hosting around 40% of the sites that exist today, expects those who use its source code to contribute to its maintenance, fixing bugs & testing new features.  ➡️ Company WP Engine, built on this Wordpress open-source model, believes they are using the software fairly, & doing everything within the T&Cs of the ecosystem.  ➡️ Recently, Wordpress CEO Matt Mullenweg accused WP engine of violating their T&Cs, calling WP Engine a "cancer on Wordpress." ➡️ The dispute has left many businesses, websites, & blogs - i.e. THE CUSTOMERS! - that rely on the two companies with unforeseen challenges.

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I have a RL task that I have been struggling with for a while and decided to test 4 AI chat tools with it: create a detailed itinerary for my NYC Christmas trip. I didn't make it easy - 7 days, 15 must-visit places, a wish-list of restaurants, rooftop bars, jazz bars, and specific dishes to try. Plus, everything had to be optimized considering the hotel location, pre-booked tickets, and existing dinner reservations. I was surprised! 🤯 📊 My ranking order: 1. Claude 2. Chat GPT 3. Perplexity 4. Gemini Here's why: 🥇 Claude.ai dominated: - Super organized with perfectly placed activities - Optimal distance planning - Loaded with additional tips - Restaurant and rooftop recommendations with great ratings - Suggested a rooftop bar in the same building as the dinner spot for late night drinks - Gave me multiple itinerary options based on my interests when I asked to change something - Great additional tips on hidden restaurant gems, transportation, holiday markets, convenient subway lines, and evening activities - MINUS points: Made one mistake (a non-existent restaurant) 🥈 ChatGPT solid runner-up: - Provided the most additional tips based on my interests, locations, and time of year - Very well-structured daily planning - Smart hotel rest breaks before nearby activities - Strong attention to detail - Made some mistakes (suggested Brooklyn Bridge in afternoon when I specifically asked for sunrise) 🥉 Perplexity (far behind the leaders): - Well optimized but very basic itinerary - Zero additional recommendations - No reasoning behind suggestions - Just did the bare minimum (no mistakes tho) 😕 Gemini (the disappointment): - First try: "Cannot complete request" - Second attempt: Mixed up my arrival dates (said 04.12 when I specified 03.12 evening) - Least structured of all - Activities poorly organized and hard to follow - Worst optimization for locations and activity types - ZERO additional tips While Google is really struggling with their core: search quality, they are falling behind with the AI game. They are really getting it from both sides. What shocked me most was the massive gap between the top two (Claude/ChatGPT) and the others. The difference in quality, attention to detail, and extra value was mind-blowing. What's your experience with these AI tools? Have you noticed the same performance gaps?

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IAB Tech lab recently released the "ID-Less Solutions Guidance" article. Programmatic Advertising is undergoing a seismic shift within the next years. With privacy regulations tightening and platforms like Apple and Google prioritizing user privacy, traditional tracking methods like third-party cookies and mobile IDs are becoming obsolete. But then again, this is the same topic we've talked about the last couple of years with third party cookie deprecation 🤷🏻‍♂️ What’s Next? 🤔 We’re entering an ID-less future, where targeting and measurement will rely on privacy-first solutions: - Contextual Advertising: Reaching users based on content relevance, not personal data. - Cohort-Based Targeting: Grouping users with shared interests while maintaining anonymity. - Aggregated Measurement: Shifting from granular user-level data to privacy-safe reporting. Key Challenges 🤓 - Reduced precision in targeting and attribution. - Increased complexity with platform-specific rules (e.g., Google’s Privacy Sandbox, Apple’s AdAttributionKit). - Ad fraud risks without user-level signals. This shift is more than a challenge - it’s a chance to innovate. By leveraging first-party data, strengthening publisher relationships, and adopting new technologies, we can lead in this privacy-first era. 🎉 Article reference: https://lnkd.in/d4qKb68g #Advertising #AdTech #Privacy #Innovation #IDLessSolutions #IABTechLab #programmatic #STEPNetwork #publishers #AdOps #publisherNetworks #digitalAds #privacy #PrivacySandBox

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I recently rebuilt my Fierce Performance Marketing LLC website with an AI assistant. The process was easy, and the output was much better than anticipated. TechCrunch covered the emerging market of #AIcodeassistant startups. It noted a Gartner survey that found over half of enterprise organizations are currently piloting or leveraging AI code assistants. It will be interesting to watch the integration of AI into traditional #developer service models and its potential impacts on agencies. Thoughts?

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Striking illustration of the massive opportunity to digitalize linear TV inventory besides betting on digital native inventory. And the biggest reason I work with the great folks at Broadpeak to make TV operators the cornerstone of this #Linear_Digitalization, with 3 key features : 1️⃣ #Spot2Spot, to enable the insertion of digital ads on linear, one spot at a time 2️⃣ #DataProxy, to enable TV sales houses to target with operators' data 3️⃣ #Click2, to enable operators to send SMS on behalf of sales houses to bring performance advertisers to the TV table

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The Creator Economy generates nearly $250 BILLION annually, Yet 99% of Twitch / Live Streamers earn less than $1 PER MONTH... Crypto will solve this, and it is happening already. Check out my full breakdown on Vodra now. #crypto #contentcreator Vodra

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tl;dr: Devs notice every detail. Take your cues from Stripe and GitHub, and keep your design clean and functional to drive adoption that sticks. Design ALWAYS matters. But it matters even more when you’re building a product for devs (speaking from experience here). Whether you’re a developer yourself or just dev-adjacent, you know that nothing gets past these folks. In their eyes, the devil’s in the details, and they’re constantly on the lookout for even the slightest sign to validate their inherent skepticism. Animations, subtle fade-ins and fade-outs, iconography, typography — you name it. These aren't just aesthetics; they're the unspoken language of a tool’s usability. In that way, design is the ultimate double-edged sword. Done right, these kinds of features have the power to oh-so-subtly tell the developer, “Look at how seamless I am to use.” Done wrong, they can create a frustration so powerful it leaves them running for the hills. So, how do you get it right? What I’ve learned from building both ScraperAPI and TLDR is that the easiest way to nail your design strategy is to follow the lead of the best examples. My two personal favorites? Stripe and​​ Github. When they hit the market over a decade ago, they set a new standard for the type of design developers have come to expect. For Stripe, the real showstopper wasn’t just the clean and intuitive dashboard we all know and love. It was things like clear, readable docs and all the little micro-interactions (think button and form field hover effects) that made the interface feel responsive and interactive. For Github, it was also a series of subtle features that made the developer experience smoother — like color-coded syntax highlighting or how merging a pull request would trigger a satisfying (yet not distracting) animation to emphasize the action. And while those are still the gold standard, there’s a whole new generation of companies on the cutting edge of dev design: - Resend - Vercel - Linear - Replicate - render.com So if you’re still in the early stages (or in a re-design phase), don’t be afraid to poke around the market to see which kinds of features are sticking and which aren’t. While us devs are particular, we’re also quite predictable in terms of what we do and don’t like (Hint: save your GIFs and confetti animations for another audience 😉).

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THOUGHTS ON THE APPLE WWDC KEYNOTE - Definitely one of the most feature-packed WWDC’s in a long time with some long-overdue AI announcements. - The reality distortion field in action: Semantic Index does pretty much the same thing as Microsoft Recall (which ironically got recalled) except the latter was positioned as “we take screenshots of your desktop every 30 secs and store it in the cloud” whereas Apple spoke about it more from a POV of privacy and showcased the benefits of apps being able to talk to each other.  - The privacy talk was backed by real innovation: Apple’s ‘Private Cloud Computing’ actually takes confidential computing to the next level. It’s SO secure that they can’t even comply with law enforcement requests. https://lnkd.in/g73AQmiF  Seems like Apple has been working on this well before the GenAI project, presumably for cloud processing of sensitive data off AR glasses.  - ​​Anything running locally or Apple's Secure Cloud is an Apple model, not OpenAI. All the OpenAI interactions are treated as external tools and need your approval before any information is shared. Other models will be options eventually. This fact should have been played up a bit more as it directly addresses Elon’s concerns on the partnership with OpenAI. - Not a big fan of all the GenAI slop in Messages but that was inevitable. Can’t wait for iOS to look like Nana’s Facebook feed soon. Also hard pass on the endless wallpaper/icon customization that was showcased on stage. There’s a distinct change in tone from the old Apple which believed that the masses have terrible taste and therefore must be strictly guard-railed from making their own design choices to what is now an Androidification of iOS where every aesthetic decision is up for grabs. - R.I.P to 1Password, Grammarly, AllTrails, Bezel, and all the other startups that Apple ripped off and killed yesterday.  - Also goodbye to contact list harvesting - growth hackers had a good run! - Apple's keynote showed how AI assistants like Siri could route questions to different AI models based on whether the query requires on-device data or broader knowledge. In the future, AI agents in different applications may interact to answer user questions, though this introduces challenges around authentication, permissions, and response times. - The big one for our industry is the evolution of SKAN into AdAttributionKit. We should have more information in the coming days on the details and how it affects attribution dynamics.    - Below is a summary of the Apple Intelligence announcement courtesy Andrej Karpathy.

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One of the potential benefits of opening up competition for payments in both the Android and iOS ecosystems will be forced innovation on the incumbents. Google is already doing some great stuff with changes to the Play Store that allow for custom listings based on keywords (every app should use this) and some additional payment options. I’m super curious to see how apps integrate installment payments for 1 year subscriptions. https://lnkd.in/gE9x5hJZ

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We just supported our 4th Sprouts Innovation Set. Here’s what we’ve learned so far: You can definitely game the game here. Retail media is a great way to earn a permanent spot on the Sprouts shelf. There are a couple of options that work nicely. (Both are through Instacart.) Here are the most important tips: 1. Don’t wait to see how it goes, go HAM from day 1. -> Some of the smaller stores will pull you after only 3 weeks. -> The clock is ticking faster than you think. 2. Set up products on IX-One ASAP. -> You won’t show up on Instacart or Sprouts.com without them. -> Whether using retail media or not, you will need these channels. 3. Press hard on competitor search terms. -> If you’re in the innovation set, you’re probably already outside of the box. -> Target brands with similar customer demographics. 4. Leverage electronic coupons and BOGO’s. -> Figure out how many units you need to drive first. -> Leverage coupons and BOGO’s if you need to hit your goals. 5. Make sure you ask Instacart for free spend early. -> You need all the extra horsepower you can muster. -> $300 is a gimme. Do t leave it in the table. Sprouts is a powerful channel. This system works to keep it. Just don’t half-step it. ——— 🔹 We increase velocity in Whole Foods, Walmart, Target, Walgreens, CVS, Kroger, Sam's, COSTCO, and lots of other cool retailers. 🔹 We grow brands on Amazon. #cpg #cpggrowth #retailgrowth #retailvelocity #omnichannel #retail #amazonagency #retailmedia #shoppermarketing #instacart

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Zyn is the fastest growing CPG in 50 years. 22m pouches are consumed by Americans every day. What can we learn from the rise in mascuzynity? A little background. Zyn are sachets of wood pulp, nicotine and sweeteners that you tuck between your lip and gum. They are supposed to give you a buzz and make you more alert. In 2019, 50M tins were sold. In Q1 2024 alone, more than 136M tins were sold. Fuelled by "zinfluencers" like Tucker Carlson on social media, nicotine pouches (unlike tobacco and vapes) can be advertised and sold in different flavours. In 2022, Phillip Morris acquired Swedish Match, the parent company of Zyn. For many, the appeal is the nicotine. Peter Thiel often states that nicotine provides a 10 point IQ boost. Zyn reflects a shifting perception of male identity and reinforces certain attitudes. “A man with nicotine, protein, caffeine, and creatine coursing through his veins is an unstoppable force.” - Greg Price, a conservative political operator. We talked about this in the End of Men at Nearly Now 2024. Amongst a certain segment of disaffected men, the masculine archetype of strong and stoic has shifted to the hustle bro. Mascuzynity, a term coined by Anna North is about the constant self optimizing "hustle bro." This is the target zyn consumer. Consumers are buying and "popping a cool mint upper decky" because it is a totem of identity around a set of masculine traits that many find desireable. It is a connection to a lost sense of virility that the sensation the nicotine provides reinforces. While seeming abstract, this is an important shift in cultural values and mores to be aware of. Developments like Zyn demonstrate the importance of scanning for early signals of change. That something can get to the scale of Zyn and not be on our radars makes you wonder what else is out there that we are missing. Many of us are aware of the challenges arising from shifting concepts of masculinity and identity. The growth in products like Zyn highlights the scale of the issue.

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New Post: Revel’s latest pivot: Ditching all-employee ride-hail in favor of gig worker model - https://lnkd.in/gaQ9KrNr - New York-based Revel has made a lot of pivots since initially launching in 2018 as a dockless e-moped sharing service. The BlackRock-backed startup briefly stepped into the e-bike subscription business. It launched and now operates a handful of electric vehicle charging stations across the five boroughs. And it started an all-Tesla, all-employee ride-hail service, in © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. - #news #business #world -------------------------------------------------- Download: #Google #Font #Tester - https://lnkd.in/gKAZYbVN

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Here's this week's column, about layoffs, format changes, and how the listeners are the last to know, which sucks if you're trying to build loyalty and engagement: https://lnkd.in/eJbnKga4

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