POPULARITY
4 episodes with Biffy
2 episodes with Biffy
3 episodes with Biffy
2 episodes with Biffy
2 episodes with Biffy
2 episodes with Biffy
2 episodes with Biffy
2 episodes with Biffy
2 episodes with Biffy
Wilfred "Biffy" Dunderdale: A Life of Espionage On today's Spybrary, host Shane Whaley sat down with Lt. Col. Tim Spicer OBE, author of A Suspicion of Spies: Risk, Secrets and Shadows – The Biography of Wilfred ‘Biffy' Dunderdale. The book offers a glimpse into the life of this iconic British spy. Drawing upon years of research, Spicer's biography explores the remarkable life of a man who navigated the treacherous world of espionage, leaving an indelible mark on history. Early Life and Introduction to Espionage: Born in Odessa in 1899, Wilfred "Biffy" Dunderdale's life was marked by adventure from a young age. Spicer highlights Dunderdale's multilingual upbringing, fluent in English, Russian, French, Polish, and German, as a key asset in his future espionage career. By 16, Dunderdale was already immersed in naval studies in St. Petersburg, hinting at a future intertwined with maritime affairs. At the tender age of 17, Dunderdale found himself at the helm of an Imperial Russian submarine. In a daring maneuver, he engaged and sank five German ships, an act of valor that earned him the prestigious Order of St. Stanislav and the Order of St. Anne, the highest military honors bestowed by Tsar Nicholas II. This early display of courage and strategic thinking foreshadowed Dunderdale's future successes in the world of espionage. A Career Forged in Conflict: Dunderdale's exceptional language skills paved the way for his recruitment by British Naval Intelligence in 1918. During this time, he conducted numerous intelligence operations in Crimea, distinguishing himself with two Mentions-in-Despatches and a military MBE for his role in suppressing a Bolshevik mutiny aboard the submarine 'Outka'. The Rise of a Spymaster: In 1921, Dunderdale's talents caught the Secret Intelligence Service's (SIS) attention, leading to his posting in Constantinople. His responsibilities expanded to encompass intelligence work in Turkey, the Caucasus, and Southern Russia, further solidifying his reputation within the intelligence community. Dunderdale's meteoric rise within the SIS culminated in his appointment as Head of Station in Paris in 1926, at the remarkably young age of 26. This achievement marked him as the youngest SIS Head of Station ever, a testament to his exceptional abilities and the trust placed in him. In Paris, he collaborated closely with the French Deuxième Bureau, focusing on anti-Bolshevik and, increasingly, anti-Nazi operations. Crucial Contributions to World War II: One of Dunderdale's most significant contributions to the Allied war effort was his involvement with the Enigma machine. Working in conjunction with Polish and French intelligence, he played a key role in the development and understanding of this crucial German encryption device. Notably, Dunderdale facilitated the smuggling of the first Enigma machine to Bletchley Park just before the outbreak of World War II. This daring act provided Allied codebreakers with a critical advantage, enabling them to decipher German communications and significantly contributing to the Allied victory. Throughout World War II, Dunderdale maintained a vast and effective intelligence network in France, gathering invaluable information on German U-boat operations, Normandy's coastal defenses, and the development of V1 and V2 rockets. These intelligence coups proved instrumental in both the D-Day landings and the broader Allied war effort. A Legacy of Espionage and Intrigue: Dunderdale's postwar activities remained shrouded in secrecy. However, his influence continued to be felt in the shadowy world of espionage. Spicer's biography sheds light on Dunderdale's involvement in clandestine operations behind the Iron Curtain, his role in the Suez Crisis, and his connection to the "Buster Crabbe" affair. The Bond Connection: Dunderdale's life story reads like something straight out of a spy novel or 'like Commando comics' says Spybrary Host Shane Whaley. Biffy's long friendship with Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, has fueled speculation about Dunderdale's influence on the iconic character. Many believe that Dunderdale, with his taste for adventure, his network of informants, and his deep understanding of the world of espionage, served as a key inspiration for the suave and resourceful James Bond. Unveiling a Shadowy Figure: Lt. Col. Tim Spicer's A Suspicion of Spies offers a captivating look into the life of one of Britain's most enigmatic and influential spies. Through meticulous research and engaging storytelling, Spicer brings Wilfred "Biffy" Dunderdale out of the shadows, revealing a man who dedicated his life to serving his country in the most clandestine of ways. The biography stands as a testament to Dunderdale's unwavering commitment to his duty, his extraordinary courage, and his lasting impact on the world of espionage. 'An exhaustively researched, detailed and gripping account of the life and dramatic times of one of Britain's foremost secret agents - the inimitable Wilfred 'Biffy' Dunderdale. A fabulous hero to quicken any schoolboy adventurer's blood, Dunderdale remains an iconic figure in the world of British and allied secret services. Read this book to understand why.' Damian Lewis About the Author Lieutenant Colonel Tim Spicer OBE has led a life filled with action and adventure. During his twenty years in the British Army he saw active service in Northern Ireland, the Falklands campaign, the Gulf War and the Balkans, as well as serving in the Far East, Cyprus and Germany. Key appointments have included Chief of Staff of an Armoured Brigade, Staff Officer at the Directorate of Special Forces and Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion Scots Guards, among many others. Over the course of his illustrious military career, Spicer has developed extensive knowledge of intelligence, counter-terrorism, complex relations and protective security. In 2001 he founded the private security company Aegis, which has counted the UK, US and Italian governments among its clients. He is the author of An Unorthodox Soldier: Peace and War and the Sandline Affair (2000), a fast-moving account of his military life, including the events surrounding his time in Papua New Guinea when he was captured and held at gunpoint, as well as the notorious 'Sandline Affair' of 1996, and A Dangerous Enterprise (2021) that charts the history of the little-known, yet remarkable 15th Motor Gunboat Flotilla, commanded directly by the Secret Intelligence Service. Join Us Next Time: Stay tuned for more thrilling spy content on the Spybrary Spy Podcast!
In this episode, we have a recording taken from the launch of Follow Your Gut, with co-creators Briony Barr & Gregory Crocetti, writers Lisa Stinson & Ailsa Wild and illustrator Ben Hutchings. In this graphic novel, one meets the ecosystem inside them ... A timid Bifidobacterium named Biffy is forced to leave their family and become part of a new community, in the gut of a newborn human baby. Follow Your Gut is a comic that ate a biology textbook. It's an epic adventure set over the first three years of a new life, exploring one of the most important relationships you will ever have - the one with your gut microbiome.
In this episode, Jackson speaks to the author and historian Tim Spicer about his new book 'A Suspicion of Spies: Risk, Secrets and Shadows – the Biography of Wilfred ‘Biffy' Dunderdale' and they discuss the life of Biffy, how he was recruited and how a spies work is perhaps never finished. Buy A Suspicion of SpiesKeep up to date with Tim on his Insta or his FBIf you want to get in touch with History with Jackson email: jackson@historywithjackson.co.ukPlease support us on our Patreon!To catch up on everything to do with History with Jackson head to www.HistorywithJackson.co.ukFollow us on Facebook at @HistorywithJacksonFollow us on Instagram at @HistorywithJacksonFollow us on X/Twitter at @HistorywJacksonFollow us on TikTok at @HistorywithJackson Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Tim Spicer – A suspicion of spies: risk, secrets and shadows- The biography of Wilfred “Biffy” Dunderdale...with TRE's Giles Brown
This week Dom & JD are joined by new co-host Tiffany to bring you our TOP 5 HORROR MOVIE BARS/CLUBS!There is now a video version of the show on Patreon uploaded early, unedited and ad free to www.patreon.com/postmortemshow Thanks for listening! Can't get enough Dom, Tiffany & JD? Check out our Patreon at http://www.patreon.com/postmortemshow for hundreds of bonus features as well as early access to ad-free episodes. Part of the TCHS Network. For more shows like the one you just listened to check out http://www.truecrimehorrorstory.com.
EP319 - Amazon Q1 2024 Recap http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Episode Summary: In this episode, Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg and Scot Wingo dive deep into Amazon's first quarter results for 2024, analyzing the company's performance in various segments such as retail, offline and online sales, marketplace, AWS, and advertising. They also explore the impact of AI on Amazon's business and provide insights into the company's future guidance for Q2 2024. Amazon Q1 2024 Earnings Release Amazon Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript In our latest episode, Jason and Scott cover a range of topics, starting with their reflections on recent events such as May the 4th and Cinco de Mayo. Jason shares intriguing stories from his extensive travels and interactions with listeners worldwide. Scott delves into the intersection of e-commerce and the auto industry, honing in on Carvana. The duo also delves into the U.S. Department of Commerce retail indicators data, shedding light on trends in retail sales and e-commerce growth. The conversation pivots towards Amazon's recent earnings report, contextualizing it within the realm of AI investments by tech giants like Meta and Alphabet, offering valuable industry insights and analysis. The discussion continues with a focus on Amazon's earnings report, zooming in on concerns around AWS amid heightened competition from Alphabet and Azure. The rising trend of AI investments, particularly in data training applications, is explored, alongside the growing popularity of open source AI models due to cost and privacy considerations. Despite a conservative Q2 guidance, Amazon impresses with robust revenue that surpasses Wall Street expectations, particularly in operating income. The retail segment shows exceptional growth, exceeding operating income estimates for both domestic and international divisions. Notably, Amazon's performance in brick-and-mortar stores, spearheaded by Whole Foods, demonstrates resilience with a 6.3% growth rate. AWS stands out with a 17% growth, dispelling market share concerns and showcasing accelerated revenue growth, illustrating Amazon's continuous growth potential and innovation prowess. Scott delves deeper into Amazon's positive quarterly earnings report, emphasizing the remarkable revenue performance, especially in operating income. Insights are shared on Amazon's successful agnostic approach to LLM models and the potential advancements in generative AI. The conversation shifts towards the burgeoning ads business at Amazon, underlining its profitability and future growth prospects. Scot also outlines Amazon's Q2 guidance and the potential impacts of consumer spending patterns on the retail sector, including concerns about changing consumer behaviors and economic pressures shaping market dynamics. Jason complements the discussion with additional perspectives on consumer behavior and economic influences reshaping the market landscape. Furthermore, we embark on a detailed exploration of supply chain logistics, with a spotlight on Amazon's expansion into third-party logistics services, revolutionizing traditional retail strategies by sharing proprietary capabilities for wider adoption. Insights from Andy Jassy shed light on Amazon's logistics business approach. The conversation expands to include how companies like Spiffy are embracing a similar model of sharing proprietary products to drive innovation and revenue growth, showcasing an evolving landscape of retail innovation. The podcast unpacks the complex world of grocery retail, highlighting Amazon's experimental forays like Just Walk Out technology and the Amazon Dash cart, while examining the challenges in delineating Amazon's grocery sector strategy. A comparison is drawn between Amazon's strategies and those of rivals like Walmart and Target, who are adapting their product offerings to match evolving consumer preferences, offering a comprehensive view of the dynamic retail and supply chain management sphere. Dive into our engaging discussion, explore retail dynamics, and keep a lookout for more insightful content. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 319 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Sunday, May 5th, 2024. Chapters 0:23 The Jason and Scott Show Begins 2:56 World Travel Adventures 5:53 Commerce Tools Elevate Show 6:53 Jason's World Tour Plans 7:22 Where in the World is Retail Geek? 20:43 Amazon's First Quarter Earnings 23:23 Sandbagging Strategy 26:45 Amazon's Dominance in E-commerce 27:44 Online Segment Growth Analysis 28:53 Offline Store Segment Analysis 31:35 Spotlight on AWS Performance 34:32 Data at AWS 42:02 Gen AI Revenue Growth 46:24 Consumer Pressure 49:56 Supply Chain Evolution 53:46 Leveraging Technology 58:08 Disruption in E-commerce 1:01:54 Amazon's Grocery Strategy 1:05:01 Retail Industry News Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scott Show. This is episode 319 being recorded on Sunday, May 5th, 2024. I'm your host, Jason Retail Guy Goldberg, and as usual, I'm here with your co-host, Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:37] Hey, Jason, and welcome back, Jason and Scott Show listeners. It's been a while, but first, happy Cinco de Mayo, and also a belated May the 4th, Jason. Did you have a good Star Wars day? Jason: [0:49] I did. I did. I feel like Star Wars Day always makes me think of the podcast because I feel like we have spent many of them in my latter life together. Scot: [1:01] Yeah, absolutely. Any exciting new Star Wars experiences or merch? Jason: [1:08] No, I understand you got some vintage merch. merch. Scot: [1:13] It's not, but they, back when I was a kid, you would go and if you went every week to, I think it was Burger King, you would for the, I think it was Empire. I have the Empire right here. So definitely Empire, but you would get a glass. Now it turns out these were full of lead paint, which would kill you, but that was the downside. Jason: [1:32] Not recommended for drinking. Scot: [1:33] You got a very, yes, I never, being a collector, I never drank out of them. So that's good. Jason: [1:37] Saved your life right there. Scot: [1:38] Yes, but I did drink out of the Tweety Bird. So that me, me. I'm sure I got some yellow lead paint from a twitty bird glass. Anyway, so they came out with a Mandalorian kind of homage to those glasses and they were at the Hallmark store of all places, not where I usually hang out, but I got to go to a Hallmark store and the little ladies that worked there were, I wish them all an awesome May the 4th. And they looked at me like I was from another planet and it was hilarious. My wife's like, stop, they don't know what you're doing. Jason: [2:07] Wait, they didn't have a big May 4th section in the Hallmark store? Scot: [2:11] They did. The little ladies didn't know. Jason: [2:13] The overlap of people that still buy Papyrus cards and celebrate May 4th is probably not great. Scot: [2:21] It was very humbling. It was a humble May the 4th, but I got my glasses and I was happy. I'm happy for you. And then tonight we had tacos for dinner, so I'm hitting all the holidays. Jason: [2:30] I feel like we should have tacos for dinner every night, whether it's Cinco de Mayo or not, but I'm i am happy for that. Scot: [2:35] We do have a lot of tacos but this was a special single denial edition. Jason: [2:42] Well, very well done, my friend. Scot: [2:44] Thanks. Well, listeners of the pod have been all over me. They're like, why aren't you recording? And I said, it's not me. It's Jason. It's Jason. Because you have been traveling Scot: [2:55] the earth, spreading retail geek goodness. Tell us, we are way far behind on trip updates and all the different countries. It's like you're playing, do you have like a little travel bingo where you're just like punching, what is it, 93 countries? Jason: [3:09] I do. They call it a passport. Oh, nice. Yes. Scot: [3:13] That, uh, little book that you get to carry. Yeah. Jason: [3:15] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have been on a lot of trips and it sounds like you and I may be telling complimentary lies because I also, I've had an opportunity to meet a lot of listeners in the last, we'll call it seven weeks and which they're always super nice. And it's always super fun to talk to people. And obviously they're, you know, strangers recognize my voice in line at Starbucks at all these e-commerce shows. And then we strike up a conversation. And then the next question is always, where the heck is Scott? Because they're always disappointed to meet me and not you. And now the new thing is, and why aren't you producing more frequent shows? And my answer is always that you're dominating the world at Get Spiffy and that you're too busy. Scot: [4:00] Uh-huh. I see. Okay. Jason: [4:02] Well, we're both very busy. Scot: [4:05] You're traveling more than I am. I'm busy washing cars. Jason: [4:08] Yes. I think both are fairly true, but I did finish a grueling seven-week stint where I got to come home a couple of times on the weekends, but I basically had seven weeks of travel back to back. In my old life, that would not have been that atypical, but post-pandemic, The travel has been a little more moderate. And I have noticed that I have my travel muscles have atrophied and I don't really want to redevelop. Jason: [4:35] So the seven weeks was a lot. Please don't ask me for trip reports for all the commerce events because I kind of can't remember some of them. They're all a little bit of a blur. But I was at Shop Talks, I think, since the last time we talked, which is, of course, probably the biggest show in our industry. And that was a very good show. I did get to see a lot of our mutual friends and a lot of fans of the show there. So that was certainly fun. And maybe in another podcast, we can do a little recap of some of the interesting things that came out of Shop Talk. I did produce a couple of recaps in other formats for work clients, so we could certainly pull something together. I also went to a vendor show. One of the e-commerce platforms out there is called Commerce Tools, and they had their annual customer show, which is called Elevate in Miami. So I got a chance to go visit there. They're one of the commerce platforms that I would say is winning at the moment in the kind of pivot away from the old school monoliths to these new sort of SaaS-based solutions. And commerce tools in particular are kind of pioneers in pushing this actual certification around a more modern earned stack that they they coined mock. And I think I think we've had Kelly from from commerce tools on the on the podcast Jason: [5:51] in the past to talk about that. But that was a good show. I got to meet a lot of listeners there. And a funny one, several listeners were like. Jason: [5:59] I would apologize for the, the, our publishing schedule lately. And they're like, I'm cool with it. I like that. Like you don't do a show if there's not something worthwhile. And then, you know, when I do get a show, it's like a treat. So I don't know if they're being honest or not, but that made me feel a little better about some of our, our, our Tardis shows lately. So those, those were good events. I also spent a week in India with some clients and that super interesting, a lot of commerce activity going on there, a lot of different market dynamics than here. So that's kind of intellectually pretty fun to learn about and see what's working there that might be working here or what, you know, why things tend to play out differently there. So that's interesting. And then I have a lot more international trips booked right now. Jason: [6:48] So coming up, I'm going to Barcelona, London, Paris, and Sao Paulo. So if anyone either has any favorite retail experiences in any of of those cities, please send them my way. I'll be doing store visits in all those cities. And if you're based in any of those cities, also drop me a line. Hopefully we can do some meetups while I'm out there. Scot: [7:07] Cool. It's Jason's world tour. You can do a little pod while you're there. Jason: [7:12] We have done a bunch of international pods in the distant past. I remember hotel rooms in South Korea and all over the place, Jason: [7:19] Japan that we've, we've cut shows from. So, so totally could. Scot: [7:23] Yeah. We'll have to do it. Where in the world is retail geek? That could be the theme song. I just sampled that. Jason: [7:30] Yeah. So besides cleaning the world's cars, what have you been up to, Scott? Scot: [7:35] Well, it's kind of funny. My worlds are colliding. So a lot of the analysts that you and I know from the e-commerce world are creeping into the auto world and their gateway drug is Carvana. So in the world of retail, we have Amazon, obviously. Well, Carvana is kind of Amazonifying used cars. They had a bit of a drama kind of situation. They were the golden child of online cars. And then they totally pooped the bed. They did this acquisition. They loaded up with debt. And then after, I think it was 21. So they had a good COVID. They surged. And then the debt got in front of them. Used car prices bop around and they kind of like got in an open door situation where they had bought a lot of cars for more than they were worth suddenly. And then they plummeted and everyone thought they were going out of business, but they have had a resurgence. So it's causing a lot of the internet analysts to now pick up auto tech or mobility or whatever you want to call it. So it was fun. I got to do a live chat with Nick Jones. He's been a friend of the show. I don't think we've had him on due to some compliance stuff that his company has rules around, but he's at this firm JMP and it was kind of wild to talk about, with someone about both Amazon and what we're doing at Spiffy, which is basically a lot of Amazon principles applied to car care. So it was interesting to have someone reach out and say, hey, I think this is a thing. And everyone tells me I should talk to you about it. And I was like, oh, yeah, I would love to. So it's kind of fun. Jason: [9:01] That's very cool. And isn't it also a thing, I think half the vehicles on the road are now owned by Amazon. So I assume that's an overlap too. too? Scot: [9:09] Yeah, not half, but a lot are. The number of last mile delivery vehicles are very, very large. And we work with a lot of them, so it's kind of fun. I started spiffy somewhat to get away from Amazon and still all I can talk about. Nope. So embrace it. I love Amazon. Love me some Amazon, Jason. Jason: [9:29] I'm glad you do. I love them too, but I feel like I spend most of my career You're unsuccessfully helping people compete with them. Scot: [9:38] Hey, got to play one side of the coin. It's a gig. You're going to be more like them or how to fight them. Jason: [9:43] It's a gig. It is indeed. Yeah. Scot: [9:46] Cool. I thought we are going to talk about some Amazon news. But before we jump in, you have done your magic with your data analysis interns. And I'm sure there's an LLM and an AI thrown in there. Let's start with some of the things you're seeing in commerce trends from the data that's out there. Jason: [10:07] Yeah. So as everyone knows, I have a little bit too much of an infatuation with the U.S. Department of Commerce retail indicators data. And these guys, you know, publish monthly estimates of retail sales in a bunch of categories. And, you know, we've talked about this many times on the show, but broadly over the last several years have been really interesting in retail. 2020, 2021, and 2022 were the greatest three years in the history of retail. Like we mailed like $6 trillion in economic stimulus. People didn't travel or go to restaurants as much. And so we sold way more goods than ever before. And so those three years, retail grew respectively at like 8%, 14%, and 9%. The 20 years prior, retail averaged about 4% a year in growth. So normally pre-pandemic, you'd expect 4% growth. We had these three, you know, wildly pandemic influence years where we grew really fast. And then last year we finished a little below 4%. So, so we were around, I want to say it was like 3.6%. So it was growth. It would, it would have been in line with pre-pandemic growth, but it certainly felt like a significant deceleration from those heady pandemic years. And so, you know, people are super interested to see how does 2024 play out? Does it? Jason: [11:32] Kind of return to pre-pandemic levels, like what is the new normal? Jason: [11:37] And we now have the first quarter's data from the U.S. Department of Commerce, and I would call it kind of a mixed bag. If you just look at the raw retail data that the U.S. Department of Commerce publishes, they're going to tell you that retail grew in the first quarter 2.8%. So that's a little anemic, right? Compared to historical averages, that's not a great growth rate. Most of the practitioners that follow this podcast care about a particular subset of retail that the National Retail Federation has dubbed core retail. And so the National Retail Federation pulls gas and automobiles sales out of that number. And gas is a decent size number and it's very volatile based on the commodity prices of gas. And auto is a huge number that has, as you're well familiar, its own idiosyncrasies. And so that's how they justify taking those two out. And if you take those two out and you get this core retail number, retail in the first quarter grew 3.9%. So kind of to align with how the NRF talks about retail, we'll say Q1 overall was 3.9%, which is very in line with the pre-pandemic historic average. So disappointing by pandemic standards, but kind of traditionally what we would expect. Jason: [13:05] What is unique in that number is. Jason: [13:09] That it's very bifurcated. There are clear winners and losers, both by categories and specific practitioners. So if you break down the categories, e-commerce is the fastest growing chunk of retail. I'm sure we'll talk more about that. Restaurants were the next fastest growing categories. And categories like mass merchants and healthcare providers outperform that industry average, every other segment of retail underperformed the industry average. So things like furniture stores did the worst, building materials did really poorly, gas stations did very poorly, electronics did poorly, and side note, electronics have been the worst performer since the pandemic, which is kind of interesting and challenging. So you've had this weird couple categories doing really well, a bunch of categories doing really poorly. And then within the categories even, if you look at the public company's individual earnings calls, what you tend to see is a couple of big players performing really well in overall retail, that's Amazon and Walmart. And then a lot of other retailers really struggling. So that even that's like in general merchandise, it's Amazon and Walmart that are lifting the boats. And it's folks like Target traditionally that have performed really well are actually struggling at the moment. So the average is kind of hard to follow at the moment. Jason: [14:37] But that is kind of how things play out. And then we have some preliminary e-commerce data, but the actual Q1 e-commerce number that the U.S. Department of Commerce publishes will publish on May 17th. So that's 12 days from now. Jason: [14:53] And crunching the numbers that we have available at the moment, that growth is likely to come in at somewhere between 8% and 10%. I'm guessing more like 8% or 9% growth. And so that also is twice as good as overall retail, and it's more than twice as good as brick-and-mortar retail. But that is noticeably slower than the historic e-commerce growth rates pre-pandemic. So kind of file those two numbers away. The overall retail industry is growing at 3.9%. The overall e-commerce industry is growing at about 9%. And then we have our friends at Amazon that dropped their earnings announcement just before May 4th so that they could celebrate May 4th, I think. Scot: [15:39] Yeah, yes, that's a good setup. And without further ado, let's talk about Amazon's fourth quarter. It wouldn't be a Jason Scott show without a little bit of... Scot: [16:01] That's right. On April 30th, Amazon announced their first quarter results. And the setup coming into these, so you had the data you talked about, but like to drill in a little bit. We had Meta, the artist formerly known as Facebook, and Alphabet, the artist previously known as Google. They announced and they both basically told Wall Street, AI is the cat's pajamas and we're going to spend anywhere between $10 and $40 billion of capital expenditures on it, meaning NVIDIA chips. So it turns out the way to play all this is basically buying NVIDIA. So hopefully you bought some NVIDIA stock. Maybe this is not a stock recommendation or when it's too late, so... And also don't take stock recommendations from podcasters. Anyway, so there was all this angst and people were a little freaked out coming into the Amazon results because Meta was down like pretty substantially, 20 to 30 percent. And Alphabet was also up substantially. You also had Microsoft come in there and they really crushed it. Their Azure is really lighting it up with AI. And they announced that they were going to invest a lot. And there's this rumor that a $100 billion project, it's got a name like Starship or something, but it's not Starship. Spaceship? Stardust? I don't know what it is. But it's going to be this mega data center, and they literally can't find a place to put it because it's going to consume so much power. So they're going to have to maybe build a nuclear plant next to it or some wacky thing. Scot: [17:31] Anyway, that was the setup. up. So coming in, Wall Street was very, very concerned about Amazon's AWS division, which is their cloud computing. Because if Alphabet is building out their infrastructure, and so is Azure, that's the two biggest competitors for AWS. And is AWS getting its fair share? And is it going to announce that it's going to have to go build some $40 billion kind of a thing? Also, another Another thing, and I'm kind of curious on if you're seeing this with your clients, but in the, I follow this, you know, the AI, you can't do much without seeing AI everywhere. But the part I'm most interested in is what are big enterprises spending money on? This is like your Fortune 500s. They're all experimenting and really getting into it. And where they're finding a lot of good use cases is training on their data. So they'll say, you know, hey, I'm Publisys. How many documents do you think are inside of Publisys? I don't know, 8 trillion documents. Documents and you know wouldn't it be helpful just the ones I created and who is this retail geek and he's he's created uh you know 90 of those and you know so you know imagine you're starting new at publicists you're gonna be like where do I start going through some of these documents for us and if you had a chat bot that was like hey I've read all that you know I can navigate you through everything that's been published or you know whatever I'm certainly you. Scot: [18:50] Providing a very big metaphor, certainly be more divisional and all this kind of stuff. But that's where big companies are spending the bulk is they're taking their data in whatever format it's in, be it a relational database, a PDF, whatever it is, they're trying to train it. They don't want it to go up into the, they don't want to train the LLM so that other people get the benefit of that and can see any confidential data. So that's really important. So it needs to be gated in these types of things. Because of that use case, open AI is not great because people are very worried. A, it's very expensive and it's only an API. So OpenAI hosts itself and you call it through an API. Scot: [19:25] Those API calls are very expensive. They're getting, as OpenAI has gotten more popular, there's more latency. It's taking forever to get answers out of this thing. And a lot of people are very concerned that even though there's ways to call the API such that it's in a window and not being trained, that maybe it leaks in there. So because of all these elements, the open source models are becoming very popular. And right around the time Meta announced, they announced their Llama, which has become quite popular. And what's nice is you can host it wherever you want. And it's kind of like WordPress, where if you are a serious WordPresser, you can host it somewhere yourself, and you can kind of understand that. Otherwise, there's other people that will host it for you. But it has the nice feature of you're just getting the weights and whatnot, and it's it's pretty clear, it's pretty obvious, it's not training itself on your data. So a lot of people like it because it's quote unquote free. It's not an API usage based. It's a pay once to set it up, pay for some resources type thing and you're done. And it's also not going to train on the data. That's one of many. There's probably 10 or 20 pretty commercial grade open AIs out there. Scot: [20:38] Okay. So that's kind of the setup to get to the earnings. things. So from a big picture, this was a really good quarter. Asterix, the guide made Wall Street a little bit nervous. So- Scot: [20:53] And one of our research analysts just said it's Stargate, which is also a sci-fi series. They must have that on Prime Video or something. There's probably some callback there. Scot: [21:01] So they beat for the quarter Q1, but then they also kind of tell you what's going on the next quarter. Amazon doesn't provide fully your guidance. They just kind of give you a snippet. So when they report one quarter, a quarter, they then tell you what they think the next quarter is going to do. So Wall Street got a little bit ahead of its skis, and the guide for Q2 was below what Wall Street wants. So it wasn't what we'd call a beat and a raise, which is the current quarter was a beat and the next one they increased. It was a beat and a guide down. So that probably tampered Wall Street. But ever since Jassy came in, Andy Jassy, this has been his MO is to be pretty conservative because Wall Street's very much an expectation engine. And the more, if you can beat and tamp down expectations, it makes it, it's a little bit rougher in the short term from a stock price, but it makes next quarter better and then so on and so forth. So it's a smart way to manage the long-term vibe of the stock, the mindset, the expectations around your stock. Okay. So revenue came in at $143 billion versus Wall Street at $142. So pretty much in line. But most importantly, where Amazon really threw people off was on operating income. Yes, Amazon is profitable. This is the proxy for operating income. True Amazonians would tell you, no, it's cashflow. We can go into that, but this is kind of the way they report to Wall Street. So this is kind of the standard operating system, if you will. So this is what we're going to use, but it's a proxy for cashflow. Scot: [22:28] That was 15 billion for the quarter and Wall Street expected 11. Well, you know, 4 billion on a world of 143 doesn't sound like much, but between 11 and 15, that's a very material beat. What is that? Like 38%, something like that. Scot: [22:44] So that was a really nice surprise. And, you know, Amazon goes through these invest and harvest periods and everyone's been feeling like they're going to be back in investing which would mean they're going to start lowering operating income as they invest but it's actually kind of beating expectations, also this is the fifth quarter amazon has come in at the high end of its guidance or above its guidance since basically you know on operating income and that corresponds with when jassy came in so this is his mo right now is to kind of like beat and lower beat and lower you know exceed expectations tamp them down not get not get ahead of his skis and it's working really well. Jason: [23:24] Sandbagging for the win. I like it. Scot: [23:26] Yes, it is. Having run a public company, this is a lesson I learned painfully. So that's something we can talk about over beer sometime. Jason: [23:33] I will book that date. Yeah. And the retail business sort of followed in line with that. They had like some nice growth, but like the real standout number was the improvement in margins and the significant positive operating income from the retail segment. So I think the actual operating income from U.S. Retail was like $5 billion and the Wall Street expectations were 4.3. So again, that was another strong beat. Total revenue, which revenue is not the same thing as retail sales, as we've talked about on the show many times, that we would use GMV as a proxy for that. But revenue was $86.3 billion for the quarter, which I think was in line with the analyst expectations. Jason: [24:27] And I think this was the largest operating income that Amazon has ever reported for the retail business. So that was super interesting on the domestic side. Traditionally, domestic has done pretty well and international has been a money loser because, you know, they've been less mature. they've been investing a lot in growing international and they haven't had the same kind of margins. This was the first quarter that they reported positive operating income for the international division. So that's another super encouraging sign for investors that maybe they've kind of passed that inflection point on a lot of their international investments that they've made in the EU and Japan and the UK, which reminds me is not part of the EU anymore. Jason: [25:13] So so they kind of beat beat international expectations across the board on income. Revenues were lower. So revenues were like thirty one billion dollars, which was below expectation. Jason: [25:25] But they they earned like nine hundred million in operating income. And I want to say the the the Wall Street expectation was like six hundred million. So so again, like a 30 percent beat, which is pretty, pretty darn good. Good. They also, a bunch of analysts have, you know, taken these revenue numbers and they try to back into a GMV number. And I would say the bummer at the moment is there's a fair amount of variance in the estimates, like different analysts have different models. So I have kind of been putting to a model of the models together and trying to kind of find a midpoint. And like Like based on that, the Amazon's GMV globally probably went up 11.5% for the quarter. So if you're comparing this to other retailers or the U.S. Department of Commerce number, overall GMV went up 11.5%. The U.S. was stronger. So the U.S. probably went up at 12.2%. So again, we talked about core retail was up 3.9%. Well, Amazon U.S. GMV was up 12.2%. So, you know, three times faster growth than the retail industry overall. Jason: [26:39] And again, Amazon is mostly e-commerce, very little brick and mortar, Jason: [26:44] which we'll talk about in just a minute. But even if you're comparing Amazon to that e-commerce number, if e-commerce comes in at 8% or 9% and Amazon's at 12%, they're by far the largest e-commerce player out there and they're still substantially outgrowing the average, which, you know, is very impressive and should be very scary to every other competitor out there. Jason: [27:08] One analyst kind of put together an estimate of what they thought the earned income contribution from Amazon was for retail and ads together, pulling AWS out. And they had it at $27 billion in earned income if Amazon was just a retail with no AWS. And that puts them right in the ballpark of Walmart that spent off about $29 billion in earned income or operating income. I keep saying earned, but I mean operating income. So, so that is all pretty impressive and simultaneously super scary. Jason: [27:45] Scott, did you drill down into the online segment at all? Scot: [27:49] Yeah. And, you know, what I would tell listeners is picture a block diagram where you have this big, big rectangle, that's the whole Amazon entity. And, you know, so what we're going to do is talk about the segments. And the first segment is the biggest one, which is the retail business. And that, that's what you just. Jason: [28:04] Biggest and best. Wouldn't you say? Scot: [28:06] Coolest. Jason: [28:07] Coolest. All right. Scot: [28:08] Cool. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'll, you know, I don't know. Jason: [28:11] It is for you. Scot: [28:14] Um, I think the whole enchilada, I like the, the way they do this and I'm trying to replicate it. It's 50. We'll talk about that in a second. The, so then the, you know, so then another segment is AWS, another segment, I think marketplace should be in some segment, but they don't break it out. So it's just kind of in kind of hidden inside of the blob that is retail. So we tease some of that out here on the show. They purposely hide it in there. So no one knows how awesome it is, I think. And then they've got AWS ads and a couple other things, but we'll talk about this. So as you dig into the retail business, there's a couple of ways to look at it. You can look at it by domestic and international, which Jason just did, Scot: [28:50] or you can look at it by online and physical store. So the online biz grew 7% year over year, which if I remember your stats, well, you don't have it until may 17th so on may 17th we'll be able to know how that compared but probably the one you can compare is the offline biz which is the the store comp that they have, And Jason, you saw on that one, what'd you see? Jason: [29:16] Yeah, so physical stores grew 6.3%. So again, like, you know, when we say all of retail grew 3.9%, a big chunk of that's e-commerce. Brick and mortar probably grew at like two to 3%. So Amazon's brick and mortar growing at 6.3% is actually super impressive. And it's kind of interesting, you know, for several years, Amazon has had experiments in a bunch of retail formats. So they've had these Amazon Go stores, stores. They had Amazon five-star stores. They had bookstores. They had a fashion store. They're trying all these things. And of course, the biggest chunk of their stores is they own Whole Foods. And so offline stores for Amazon was kind of a mix of all these different concepts. In the last couple of years, they've kind of cleaned house and gotten rid of all those concepts. And so, you know, nominally there's a few of their own grocery stores called Amazon Amazon fresh open, but the vast majority of online offline retail for Amazon is, is Whole Foods. And for it to be growing at 6.3% in the current climate is, is a really good sign for Amazon. And, and I would say somewhat impressive, you know, on the earnings call, they, they announced that they're working up a new format for Whole Foods, which is a smaller format store that's It's going to open in Manhattan. So I have that on my ticker file to go visit when that's open. Jason: [30:38] You know, the whole grocery space for Amazon is super interesting, but maybe we'll talk about that a little bit more later. But I will call out, they did launch a service that there's been some controversy over. They launched a $9.99 a month grocery delivery service, which essentially lets you have all you can eat free grocery delivery to your home for an incremental fee of $9.99. And they're spinning that as, you know, a cool new grocery service and enable more people to shop for groceries online. And there are a lot of articles about it, like. Jason: [31:13] They used to have free grocery delivery included in your Prime membership, right? And so they've kind of like, I look at the big arc of all this and say, there used to be a lot more free services in Prime that they've kind of peeled out. Then they started charging for, and now they'll let you get it free again for another $120 a year. Jason: [31:32] So interesting things happening with grocery that we could probably talk more about later. But I'm kind of eager to dive into some of these other businesses like AWS. Scot: [31:42] Yeah. So that's the one that everyone was really waiting on the call to hear how it went. And good news, AWS exceeded expectations. Everyone thought it was going to grow 14% and it came in at 17%. And if Wall Street likes, they like a lot of things, they like beating expectations, that's important to them. But their favorite thing is ARG. And that is not a pirate day thing, ARG. It is Accelerating Revenue Growth. Wall Street loves that more than anything. And that's what they delivered for both the ads and the AWS part of the business. And what that means is that as the law of numbers kicks in, so back on the retail business, the only time we see that accelerate is in the fourth quarter and that seasonal acceleration, right? We've gotten used to that for decades now. It always happens in the fourth quarter and whatnot. So it's what you would expect. But this is quite unusual for a relatively mature business. This thing's $25 billion a quarter. So this is a $100 billion business that accelerated. And so that tells us that there is a lot more wood to chop here. It has not gotten near its addressable market. And it really allayed fears that they were losing massive market share because they're, quote unquote, behind on AI to Azure, which is Microsoft offering, and then the Google hosting solution as well. Scot: [33:05] That does not seem to be the case. So they did very well. So they came in at $25 billion and Wall Street was expecting $24.6. So that was really, that accelerating is what really made everyone very happy. And then the operating income came in at $9.5, way ahead of Wall Street at $7.5. So another pretty material 20% beat on this component at the bottom line. And this is really interesting. There was some really good language around this. And this has been Jassy's statement all along, and it's coming true. His early Amazon's early play was we're going to be agnostic on models and it's kind of like bring your own model we'll work with anything now with open AI they're not going to ever host open AI but they'll they're not going to stop you from working with it and then they for these open source ones they've made it very easy for you to spin up an AWS instance throw a little llama in there and I would make a llama noise if I I knew what they said I guess they make like a sheep sound. So you throw a little alarm in there and it does its thing. And, you know, the benefit of them being agnostic on these LLMs is most likely they have some or all of your data, right? Because they've been at this so long that if you're doing cloud computing versus on-prem, most likely a lot of, if not all of your data is in AWS. Extracting that data, you know, imagine you had terabytes or or what's the biggest, Scot: [34:31] bigger than terabytes? I always forget this one. Jason: [34:33] Petabytes. Scot: [34:34] Petabytes of data at AWS. They literally have a product that they can send a truckload of hard drives around and get your data. That's how much data there is that you could never push it across the internet, that there's so much data. So if they have that data and that's what you want to train on, you don't want to have the latency of the internet between your data and the training. So you'd really need the LLM to operate near your data. And this is what they predicted two or three years ago, kind of around the, the, the launch of chat gpt when all this stuff really started to accelerate and it's coming true so everyone feels a lot better about that then their body language this time a lot of times they were kind of like this is what we're doing and we're pretty sure it's going to work now they're like it's working and people really felt relief around this because everyone there was a set of people that believed it but then you know open ai's pitches nope our lm is going to be we're spending, billions of dollars we're going to be so far ahead none of these open source things are going to keep up. If you don't have us, you're going to be so far behind, you'll be like playing with crayons and everyone's going to be playing with quill pens. Scot: [35:42] So it was really good to see that this is not what's happening, that people are embracing, enterprises are embracing these open source models. They are in the same zip code performance-wise from results and much cheaper than OpenAI's offerings. And what Amazon said specifically was very positive around what is It's kind of abbreviated Gen AI for generative AI. And it's kind of a way to encapsulate this. And they said that it already is a multi-billion dollar run rate business. And you always have to parse what they say. So multi-billion can be anywhere between 1 and 9.9, right? And you'll see why I drew 9.9 there. Scot: [36:25] And inside, as part of that big AWS number, and they believe it can be rapidly tens of billions. Billions so they're basically saying it's not double digit billions so it's a single digit million which is where i get one to nine point nine but they basically hinted that that it is growing so rapidly inside of there that it's gonna be tens of billions and this is why they saw accelerating revenue growth which made everyone happy it wasn't just people you know moving some more you know loads on or something boring loads around relational databases or something it was the juicy ai stuff so this got everyone so lathered up that three analysts did price increases and they cited that this was one of the reasons the biggest price increase was from sig susquehanna and they put the price up to 220. At the time all this happened the stock was at 175 and today it's around 185 so it's been up nicely but 220 is a pretty big big you know even. Scot: [37:20] From where they expect that's where they're thinking i think most these guys look at a year to two years as a time horizon on these prices so and that's the the high i have you know again there's a wide range some people think it's going to go down some people think it's over price so go do your research this is not a stock recommendation but i just thought it was interesting that people get really really excited by by this whole gen ai largely the body language that, and it's, Amazon doesn't pound their chest much. So the fact they were, was kind of a new, new way of managing Amazon and Jassy's pretty conservative. So he must've felt pretty good about it, but also that they needed to ally, allay, allay, allay, whatever the right word is, get rid of these competitive concerns everyone's been talking about. Jason: [38:05] Yeah. It feels like a pretty big prize out there. Jassy and the whole team always talk, Just AWS, even before you get to Gen AI, they always remind everyone, hey, 85% of the workloads are still on-prem. So like this, as big as AWS looks, if the long-term future is 85% of the workloads are on the cloud and only 15% are on-prem, there's a lot of headroom still in AWS. And then, you know, you add this new huge demand for AI on top of all that. And like this, it's almost a limitless opportunity. And I want to tie the AI back to retail, though, for just a second, because there's another bit of news that I haven't seen covered very much, but is super interesting to me. Jason: [38:51] There's a particular flavor of AI out there, a subset of generative AI that's now being called agentic AI. And that's sort of a clever amalgamation of agent-based AI. And there's a very famous AI researcher, this guy, Andrew Ng. He's the founder of Coursera. He's done a bunch of things. He was the head of Google Big Think, which was one of the first significant AI efforts. And I want to say he was like on People Magazine's 100 most interesting people list in like 2013 as an AI researcher. So the dude's been around for a long time. He is one of the biggest advocates for this agentic AI. And the premise is that if you just ask an LLM, you take the best LLM in the world, and you ask it to do something for you, that's called zero shot. You give it an assignment, and you take the first result you get. It's a zero shot. You get pretty good results. But if you... Jason: [39:53] Turn that, that LLM into multiple agents and break the task up amongst those agents and potentially agents even running on different LLMs, you get wildly better results. Jason: [40:05] And so his, his research kind of showed that, Hey, if, if Jason goes write a PowerPoint presentation for his client, explaining what's going on in commerce. And I just give that to the turbo version of ChatGBT 4, I'll get a pretty good deck. But if I say, hey, I want to create four agents. I want to create a consultant to write the deck and a copywriter to edit the deck and an editor to improve the deck and three people to pretend to be mock customers to poke holes in the deck and have all those agents work on this assignment. I could give that assignment to chat gbt 3.5 and it would actually output a better work product than the the newer more advanced model was by by breaking the job into these chunks and so in retail you think about like this is the idea of assigning higher level jobs to shopping right so instead of saying like going to amazon and saying oh now it's a ai-based search engine and i'm going to type a long form query into search and get a better result. Jason: [41:09] The agentic AI approach is I'm just going to say to Amazon, never let me run out of ingredients for my kids' school lunches. And the agent's going to figure out what is in my school lunches and what my use rate is for those things and what weeks I have off from school and don't need a school lunch. And it's just going to do all those things and magically have the food show up. And this is a long diatribe, but the reason it's relevant is is this dude, Andrew Ng, was named the newest board member at Amazon three weeks ago. Scot: [41:40] Very cool. Jason: [41:40] I did not see that myself. Yeah. And so if you're wondering where Amazon thinks this is going, like this, in my mind, ties all this tremendous opportunity in generative AI and the financial opportunity in AWS directly to the huge and growing retail business that Amazon runs. Scot: [42:02] Very cool. Oh yeah. I had not seen that. So maybe Wall Street picked up on that. I'm sure. And maybe that was another part of the excitement. Jason: [42:09] Yeah. But all of that is just peanuts compared to the real good business in Amazon, which is the ads business. So again, you know, Amazon used to, to obfuscate their ads business. They've for a number of quarters now had to report it as earnings because it's in their earnings separately, because it's so material. And it was another good quarter for the ads business. It's hard to say whether it's actually accelerating growth or not, because the ads business is very seasonal. So the ad business grew 24.3% for the quarter versus Q1 of 2023. Q4 grew faster. So Q4 grew at 27%, but the 24% growth is much faster growth than other... Q1 year-over-year growth rate. So however you slice it, it's a good, robust growth rate. If you add the last four quarters together, you get $29 billion worth of ad sales. There's lots of estimates for how profitable ad sales are, but there's no cost of goods for an ad, right? Jason: [43:13] And so it's very high margin. So if you just assume, I think 60% gross margins is a very conservative estimate. But if you assume 60% gross margins, that means the ad business spun off $29.5 billion of operating income over the last 12 months. And to put that in comparison, AWS is big and profitable as it is, twice as much revenue at over $100 billion now, but it spun off like $23 billion in operating income. So the ad business is a much more meaningful contributor to Amazon's profits than even AWS. Jason: [43:51] And another way I've been starting to think about this is what percentage of the total GMV on the Amazon platform are the ads? And they are now 6.5%. So that's a very significant new tax. You know, as Amazon has hundreds of millions of SKUs available for sale, no one's ever going to find your SKU or buy it if you don't do some marketing on the platform for that SKU. And that's this 6.5% tax that Amazon's charging. And in the same way we said, hey, AWS is a really robust business. And then there's this thing called generative AI that can make it even huger. All of this ad revenue we're talking about is really coming from their sponsored product listings, which is like basic search advertising on the retail platform. Last quarter, Amazon said, by the way, we have this huge viewership streaming video service called Amazon Prime. And we're going to start putting ads in the lowest tier version of Amazon Prime. So unless you want to pay more, you're going to start seeing ads on Amazon Prime. And that's another huge advertising opportunity that hasn't been very heavily tapped yet. So the analysts are pretty excited about the upside of Amazon potentially tacking on another $6.5 billion in Prime video ads onto the $50 billion of search ads that they already have. Jason: [45:11] And so ads are a pretty good business to be in, which is why every other retailer is trying to follow suit with their own sort of version of a retail media network. Scot: [45:22] Cool. I imagine you get a lot of calls to talk about that. Jason: [45:25] Oh, yeah. I actually, I'm sick of talking about it. So one nice thing about working at an ad agency is there are now thousands of other experts. You know, I was one of the early guys in retail media networks. Now there are thousands of other experts that are way more credible than me. So I don't have to talk about it quite as much, but it still, still comes up in every conversation. Scot: [45:43] Very cool. All right. So then that was the basic gist of the corridor from a high level. And then it came to the what's going on in Q2. So that did come in lighter than folks expected, as I said, and they guided the top line to 144 versus 149. Let's call it 146 and change at the midpoint. They always do this range kind of thing when they're doing their guide. And Wall Street was at 150 consensus. So, you know, a tidge below two or three percent below where they wanted. But the operating income guide was above Wall Street. So they're kind of, we'll take it. Como si, como sa. Scot: [46:21] So that was, you know, I think Amazon tapping things down. Yeah. Now they did talk a lot about consumers being under pressure. So they said in the, it wasn't in a Q and a, it was in the prepared remarks and Jassy said it, which is kind of like the more important stuff. And I will say it's really nice to have the CEO of Amazon back on these calls because Bezos basically ditched them after, I don't know if, I think he came the first two quarters back in 97 but i honestly can't remember but he has not gone to the calls and jassy's been to them all so it's really nice to hear from the ceo and he answers very candidly i feel you know he doesn't feel as kind of like robotic as many ceos when they get on here because it is a stressful thing that you're going to say something wrong, but there was this exchange well first of all he he in his prepared remarks he talked about. Scot: [47:12] I forgot to put the exact language, but he said, we're seeing a lot of consumers trade down. So they're seeing, you know, we're seeing this in the auto industry. Tires is this huge thing where it's under a lot of pressure right now because people are just waiting. So there's a lot of this, you know, it's not showing up in the data that I've seen, but there's, you know, maybe the inflation data, but not the GDP and some of the other unemployment data. But it feels like the consumer is under a bit of pressure here, and they talk about that a lot in the prepared remarks. So I thought our listeners would find that interesting. Jason, before I go into this longish little thing that I wanted to just cover, what do you, did you pick up on any of that consumer stuff? Are you hearing that? Jason: [47:55] Oh, yeah, that's very common. And remember, in the beginning, I mentioned that there's this weird bifurcation that some retailers, even in categories, are doing well and others aren't. And some categories are doing well and others aren't. That's super complicated to get to the why. But the most obvious why is that consumers feel like they're under a lot of economic pressure and are trading down and are deferring certain types of purchases. The easiest way to see this is own brands and private label sales going up and, you know, national brand sales stagnating, see things like chicken protein going up and beef protein going down. You know, there's lots of examples out there, but the retailers that are best able to follow the consumer as she trades down are tending to do well. And the retailers that only cater to the luxury consumer, the super luxury is still doing fine. They're somewhat insulated. But the folks that haven't been as able to cater to the value consumer as much have struggled more. And the non-mandatory categories have struggled more. So Andy's comments exactly mirror what we're seeing going on in market dynamics and what other retailers are saying in their earnings. It is slightly weird because if you just look at the macros. Jason: [49:18] It's objectively, the consumer is doing pretty well. There's actually a lot of favorable things, but there's a ton of evidence that the consumer sentiment is that they're really worried about their household budget and are making, you know, hard, hard financial decisions. Scot: [49:36] Yeah. Yeah. It's tough out there. Well, hopefully it'll get better. So one of the questions I want to just kind of pull out some tidbits, because this has been a theme on our pod for a long time and I thought it was really, really interesting. And this is going to get into the weeds of supply chain and this kind of thing. So sorry if that's not your jam. We like to talk about logistics. Scot: [49:56] Side note to you, Jason, I saw that deep dive we did on Amazon logistics is still like our number one show and all the stats and stuff, which is kind of fun. So someone cares about it. Anyway, one of the friends of the podcast, Yusuf Squally asked a question. He's one of the analysts and he said, as it relates to logistics, so he's talking to andy on the call back in september you launched amazon supply chain can you help us understand the opportunity you see there where are you in the journey to build logistics as a service on a global basis and does that require a huge increase in capex a function increase in capex which means huge so jesse said this was a very long answer so i'm going to pull out two snippets you can go read the transcripts can you put a link to that in the show notes absolutely yep yeah so so i'm just gonna give you the the snippet the whole thing is worth reading but it would be like another 20 minutes to do that. But so Jassy starts out and says, I think that it's interesting what's happening with the business we're building in third party logistics. And it's really kind of in some ways mirror some of the other businesses we've gotten involved in AWS being an example. And even though they're very different businesses, and that we realized that we had our own internal need to build and launch these capabilities. Scot: [51:01] We figured that there were probably others out there who had the same needs we did and decided to build the services out of them so this is this model that really blows the minds of traditional retailers where you know so walmart has this huge data you know capability there's this this urban legend that they know when people are pregnant before they do they can see changes in their habits or they know who all is on weight loss drugs they they see your buying habits so intricately that they can do that that's a neat capability but they view it as proprietary and And that's old school thinking. Scot: [51:32] What Amazon does is says, well, that's a cool capability. Let's certainly someone else needs it. Let's open it up. This is one of my favorite things at Amazon. And it's so counterintuitive that in my current car world, I talk about this and everyone's like, why are you, we're doing it a lot at Spiffy. And they're like, well, why are you doing that? That's like your proprietary thing. And we're like, well, that's just how it should be. And like, this is a better way to do it. And it's really interesting that still today, Amazon's built what I say, $100 billion business out of AWS, which has used this and people are, are befuzzled by the whole thing. So I, I thought that was an interesting use case. And then he, he goes into some details there that are pretty obvious for our listeners, like how this is gonna work. But then he basically kind of brings it back around and then he says he wraps up and says, I would say that supply chain with Amazon is really an abstraction on top of each individual block services. And in those services, he talked about all the things that, that, you know, FBA and last mile delivery and buy with a prime. He talks about each of those kind of and how awesome they are. So he's basically saying Amazon supply chain wraps a bow around all that. And it gives this collective set of business services is growing significantly. Scot: [52:43] It's already what I would consider a reasonable size business. I think it's early days. It's not something we anticipate being a giant capital expense driver. So it's because they've already invested in all this that doesn't require additional capex. And then he finishes and says, we have to build a lot of the capabilities anyway to handle our own business. And we think it will be a modest increase on top of that to accommodate third-party sellers. Scot: [53:05] But our, there's a typo in the thing. Our third-party sellers find very high value in us being able to manage these components for them versus having to do it themselves. And they save money in the process. So I thought that was a really interesting, interesting. So they're really leaning into this supply chain. I think that ultimately they'll open this up to more consumers where you can send Aunt Gertrude in Detroit something from Chicago for three bucks a package and just throw it in an Amazon box, maybe a return box, and it kind of makes it way cheaper than you can FedEx it. I think that's coming, but it's really interesting to see. The way they think about things and his articulation of it was very crisp, Scot: [53:45] and I really enjoyed that. I was geeking out on that when I was listening to the call. Jason: [53:50] Yeah, for sure. That actually came up in some of the conferences I was at that he, you know, Jeff Bezos famously wrote this memo a long time ago about kind of being an object oriented, company and having all these building blocks that people could easily access and use internally and externally. And, and that this was kind of Andy Jassy doubling down on that. Yeah. It's Biffy is an example of that. Like you inventing some cool products that make it your jobs easier. And then you're selling those products to, to your potential competitors. Scot: [54:20] Yeah. So two examples, we have some devices we've developed for ourselves. One is a tire tread scanner. So it does 2D and 3D tires, tire tread scans. It's called Easy Tread. And we developed it for ourselves because we touch 3,000 cars a day right now and we wanted to measure the tire treads. And the state of the art is a Bluetooth needle. And it's, you know, you have to lay on your back. The cars are on the ground for us most of the time. So you have to like get underneath there, measure three things, and then it Bluetooths to a phone. Then you have to take it, the data entry, it doesn't have an API. Then you have to like take what it measured and then now cut and paste it into something else. It's kind of, kind of redonkulous in our world. So we developed a solution for that and we're selling it externally. And then the big, the big one is from day one, this has been the plan is we've built a ton of software for Spiffy. So we're, you know, we've got 400 technicians, 250 vans doing all kinds of services across the US and there's no operating system for that. So we, there's no like Salesforce for that or Shopify. So we had to go build our own. And so we've built, you know, route optimization specific to this parts integration, fitment integration, VIN lookup, all these things that are required integration with tire suppliers, oil filter suppliers, oil suppliers, parts suppliers, all these things. So we have like 150 things we've integrated with and pulled in from all over the place. Scot: [55:44] And then labor management, all the reporting that comes along with it, all that stuff. And we're starting to license that out as its own platform to anyone that wants to do auto services. And so these dealerships and large auto service companies are coming to us and finally saying, this seems kind of obvious now that we need to provide the ability to go to our customers. They call it at their curb. They use a different language than we do. But basically what you and I would call mobile, you know, last mile delivery of the service. And we're starting to license that out. And it's a lot like AWS, right? So we had to build this for our retail business, which is doing the services and now we're licensing it out a lot AWS and we have this device business. So it's been, I would not have, it comes intuitively to me now. Cause I've been, you know, basically living this lifestyle for 20 years and watching Amazon do it, But it's been fun to kind of build a company with this mindset of we're going to take these things we build and give them to other, not give them, but sell them to other people. And then that makes them better. And they help us pay for all the R&D that we've done on it. Jason: [56:48] Yeah, that's very cool. And that gives listeners a very tangible example of why we haven't been able to podcast quite as frequently as we'd like. Scot: [56:56] Yes. Jason: [56:56] I do, at the risk of making this the world's longest episode of our show, I do have a geeky add-on to the supply chain conversation. Yeah. So a lot of these services that they're adding to specifically what they call supply chain with Amazon are around importing services, because an increasingly high percentage of all the stuff Amazon sells is. Jason: [57:20] Amazon is taking care of importing it, right? And most often from China, but from all over the world and taking care of all that logistics and getting it ready to sell and deliver via the world's most impressive last mile to consumers in America. And there's tons of complicated, high friction touch points and processes to flow all those goods. Well, the big competitors out there to Amazon at the moment that we've talked about ad nauseum on the show, like Shein and Timu, had this kind of direct from China model where they're putting all the goods on 747s, flying them over, and they're taking advantage of this loophole in the postal treaty called the de minimis provision to not pay taxes or duties or have all these goods inspected that they ship into the U.S. and U.S. Jason: [58:07] Businesses have been complaining it's unfair. There's like all kinds of talk about it. We've done shows on this and I'm sure we'll do others. So here's the new thing in supply chain. Jason: [58:15] All the people that have been complaining about this are now doing it because guess what's happened? A bunch of these companies have been born that now help every other brand in the world take advantage of the de minimis provisions to near shore their goods. So you're a footwear manufacturer, you make your shoes in Vietnam, Instead of shipping them to the U.S. On a pallet and paying taxes and duties, you ship them on a pallet to Mexico, and then you send them individual parcels across the border from Mexico into the U.S. and never have to pay taxes or duties on the stuff. So I don't know if that will last in the long run, but that's a very disruptive, significant change happening in the whole world of e-commerce supply chains as we speak. That's pretty interesting. Interesting. Had you gotten wind of that yet? Scot: [59:07] No, no. That's all new to me. Thanks for sharing. Jason: [59:09] Yeah. That's probably how you're going to have to start getting your spiffy stuff into the country now too. I won't, I won't, we won't go there. But the one other piece that did not come up in the earnings call, but a controversy around Amazon since our last show is news articles came out that Amazon was de-installing its Just Walk Out technology from its grocery stores. So Amazon had built Just Walk Out into several of these Amazon Fresh stores and they built it into Whole Foods. And if you know the history of Just Walk Out, this was the original intention of Just Walk Out was was to do it for grocery stor
You ask, we answer! Join Mercury and Ant for the latest mini-episode where they are answering questions put forward directly from listeners! In this episode we are answering questions about buying or selling first, conveyancers, borrowing capacity and credit scores. --- ⭐️ Keen to start your homeowner journey? Book a meeting now with Ant or Mercury!
A man in Lakewood, CO was caught using the bathroom. We say "caught" because he had tripped an alarm breaking into the place. Police busted through a door to find their suspect with hands in the air and his pants around his ankles.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Matt brings one of the most viral video's he's ever brought to The Social Ammo.. AND Dave and the team here from a listener with a very interesting hobby...
You ask, we answer! Join Mercury and Ant for the latest mini-episode where they are answering questions put forward directly from listeners! In this episode we are answering questions about loan defaults, mortgage prisons and information misrepresentation! There is also some thoughts about Melvin Gibson and some very, very unfiltered content. You have been warned! Enjoy! --- ⭐️ Keen to start your homeowner journey? Book a meeting now with Ant or Mercury!
You ask, we answer! Join Mercury and Ant for the latest mini-episode where they are answering questions put forward directly from listeners! In this episode we are answering questions about red flags to look out for when dealing with a broker or a bank, and also whether "pre-approvals" are still available and even worth the effort! --- ⭐️ Keen to start your homeowner journey? Book a meeting now with Ant or Mercury!
In this episode we're discussing one of the best modern rock bands out there, one of our favourite bands: Biffy Clyro. Check out our Biffy playlist at the link below!
You ask, we answer! Join Mercury and Ant for the latest mini-episode where they are answering questions put forward directly from listeners! In this episode we are answering questions about finance implications for bankrupts, what exactly is a "mortgage prisoner" and what happens to a home loan when the home owners are parting ways. Some slightly grim topics this month, but as we always stress - everyones journey is unique and there is no shame in any circumstances! --- ⭐️ Keen to start your homeowner journey? Book a meeting now with Ant or Mercury!
You ask, we answer! Join Mercury and Ant for the second mini-episode where they are answering questions put forward directly from listeners! In this episode we are answering questions about when to refinance, the process involved with knock-down/rebuilds and three uncommon things that first home buyers should be looking for!
You ask, we answer! Join Mercury and Ant for the first in a series of mini episodes where they are answering questions put forward directly from listeners! In this episode we are answering questions about overcapitalising, what we would have done differently if buying our first home again and, how to be cool!
https://youtu.be/MhfCII-topY contact me on IG: @bodaciousbiffy
For episode 51 we welcome Nick S Chandler from the Reel Talk podcast to talk about Kerrang's Best of 2004 cd from November 2004The cd's full tracklisting is -1 - Rammstein - Mein Teil2 - The Rasmus - Time To Burn3 - My Chemical Romance - You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison4 - The Offspring - (Can't Get My) Head Around You5 - Green Day - American Idiot6 - Bad Religion - Los Angeles Is Burning7 - Velvet Revolver - Slither8 - Incubus - Megalomaniac (Live In Osaka)9 - Taking Back Sunday - A Decade Under The Influence10 - Slipknot - Pulse Of The Maggots11 - Mastodon - I Am Ahab12 - Biffy Clyro - There's No Such Thing As A Jaggy Snake13 - The Bled - I Never Met Another Gemini14 - Cradle Of Filth - Medusa And Hemlock15 - Head Automatica - Brooklyn Is BurningFind Nick's podcast Reel Talk at pod.link/reeltalkWMTand his other podcast Kinotomic at pod.link/1506171710You can find his website with essays about movies at https://superatomovision.com/and find him on twitter at https://twitter.com/NickSChandlerListen to all available songs on our ongoing Spotify playlist - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1mzWOWEfQ5LklJyUZkpfs2?si=LbWBi9-oTl-eXjkUJbpx2Q You can buy a copy of the cd from Discogs here - https://www.discogs.com/release/4547521-Various-Kerrang-Best-Of-2004Hosts - Ian Clarke & Colin Jackson-BrownRecorded/Edited/Mixed/Original music by Colin Jackson-Brown for We Dig PodcastsPart of the We Made This podcast network. https://twitter.com/wmt_network Twitter – https://twitter.com/thismonthsissue Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/freewiththismonthsissue/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/freewiththismonthsissue/ Find our other episodes at www.wedigpodcasts.com Find other We Made This shows & writing at www.wemadethisnetwork.com
In this episode, Kierra chats with former committee member Stephen Badry! They talk about Stephens' start and journey with Amplify, upcoming projects, and perplexing slang from generations past and present. Find Stephen on IG @badbadbadry or Spotify under The Sunday Edition, Stef.N, and or Cypress! Check out the new release from Stephen under Stef.N on Spotify!! https://open.spotify.com/album/0ThzBiMNou4fNwwbLLYSZm?si=CGJ7EX9SQFyMLyDmHVTMdA
BLUE ARMY! Hello there, and welcome to another episode of Trve. Cvlt. Pop!, the best music podcast in the world... so we say. This week the World Cup starts... which is a bit bizarre, but we thought we would get in on the act and talk about the relationship between football and music. Steve knows all about the game, Sam probably calls it soccer, THE IDIOT, so we needed another voice to help us through, and who better to join us than frontman of Therapy? and massive Chelsea fan Andy Cairns.We look at 8 pre-tournament tunes to see if they hold up to musical scrutiny, from New Order, Baddiel and Skinner, Black Grape, Collapsed Lung, Fat Les, Ant and Dec, Dizzee Rascal and the England World Cup squad (on numerous occasions)... oh, and, yeah, James Corden as well. FFS. There's also talk of a few songs we've been loving this week, from Mina Caputo, Letlive and Girls in Synthesis. Plus Steve reports of Biffy and Architects big London show at the O2, and a much more intimate affair at Gang of Youths. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
View our full collection of podcasts at our website: https://www.solgoodmedia.com or YouTube channel: https://www.solgood.org/subscribe
Further proof, as if you need it, that second songs are exceptional....Biffy have 5. FIVE! Biffy Clyro have a bunch of class second Songs…I think they are only, excuse me, second to The Killers in the ratio of albums to barnstorming second tracks… again, we have covered this in a recent episode where Ben disagrees with the theory, citing that the opening track is by far the most vital one on an album…
For our 45th episode, Lewis Clark from the Cast Iron podcast joins us to talk about Kerrang's High Voltage: A Brief History of Rock cd from June 2006. The CD's full tracklisting is - 1 - Fall Out Boy - Start Today (originally by Gorilla Biscuits) 2 - Aiden - Die, Die My Darling (Originally by The Misfits) 3 - Avenged Sevenfold - Walk (Originally by Pantera) 4 - Killswitch Engage - Holy Diver (Originally by Dio) 5 - Biffy Clyro - Buddy Holly (Originally by Weezer) 6 - Fightstar - My Own Summer (Shove It) (Originally by Deftones) 7 - The Dillinger Escape Plan - Jesus Christ Pose (Originally by Soundgarden) 8 - Still Remains - Head Like A Hole (Originally by Nine Inch Nails) 9 - Deftones - Simple Man (Originally by Lynyrd Skynyrd) 10 - The Answer - Sweet Emotion (Originally by Aerosmith) 11 - Bullet For My Valentine - Crazy Train (Originally by Ozzy Osbourne) 12 - 36 Crazyfists - Digging The Grave (Originally by Faith No More) 13 - Arch Enemy - Symphony Of Destruction (Originally by Megadeth) 14 - Atreyu - You Give Love A Bad Name (Originally by Bon Jovi) 15 - NOFX - Straight Edge (Originally by Minor Threat) Find Lewis on Twitter at https://twitter.com/kronkblats Find his podcast Cast Iron at https://pod.link/991544357 where each episode Lewis & his cohost Alan discuss a metal album ranging from Napalm Death to Dream Theater. You can find his Hardcore/Crust Punk band Cranston at https://cranstonpunk.bandcamp.com Listen to all available songs on our ongoing Spotify playlist - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1mzWOWEfQ5LklJyUZkpfs2?si=LbWBi9-oTl-eXjkUJbpx2Q You can buy a copy of the cd from Discogs here - https://www.discogs.com/release/2050292-Various-High-Voltage-A-Brief-History-Of-Rock Hosts - Ian Clarke & Colin Jackson-Brown Recorded/Edited/Mixed/Original music by Colin Jackson Brown for We Dig Podcasts Part of the We Made This podcast network. https://twitter.com/wmt_network Twitter – https://twitter.com/thismonthsissue Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/freewiththismonthsissue/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/freewiththismonthsissue/ Find our other episodes at www.wedigpodcasts.com Find other We Made This shows & writing at www.wemadethisnetwork.com
For our 45th episode, Lewis Clark from the Cast Iron podcast joins us to talk about Kerrang's High Voltage: A Brief History of Rock cd from June 2006.The CD's full tracklisting is -1 - Fall Out Boy - Start Today (originally by Gorilla Biscuits)2 - Aiden - Die, Die My Darling (Originally by The Misfits)3 - Avenged Sevenfold - Walk (Originally by Pantera)4 - Killswitch Engage - Holy Diver (Originally by Dio)5 - Biffy Clyro - Buddy Holly (Originally by Weezer)6 - Fightstar - My Own Summer (Shove It) (Originally by Deftones)7 - The Dillinger Escape Plan - Jesus Christ Pose (Originally by Soundgarden)8 - Still Remains - Head Like A Hole (Originally by Nine Inch Nails)9 - Deftones - Simple Man (Originally by Lynyrd Skynyrd)10 - The Answer - Sweet Emotion (Originally by Aerosmith)11 - Bullet For My Valentine - Crazy Train (Originally by Ozzy Osbourne)12 - 36 Crazyfists - Digging The Grave (Originally by Faith No More)13 - Arch Enemy - Symphony Of Destruction (Originally by Megadeth)14 - Atreyu - You Give Love A Bad Name (Originally by Bon Jovi)15 - NOFX - Straight Edge (Originally by Minor Threat)Find Lewis on Twitter at https://twitter.com/kronkblats Find his podcast Cast Iron at https://pod.link/991544357 where each episode Lewis & his cohost Alan discuss a metal album ranging from Napalm Death to Dream Theater.You can find his Hardcore/Crust Punk band Cranston at https://cranstonpunk.bandcamp.comListen to all available songs on our ongoing Spotify playlist - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1mzWOWEfQ5LklJyUZkpfs2?si=LbWBi9-oTl-eXjkUJbpx2Q You can buy a copy of the cd from Discogs here - https://www.discogs.com/release/2050292-Various-High-Voltage-A-Brief-History-Of-RockHosts - Ian Clarke & Colin Jackson-BrownRecorded/Edited/Mixed/Original music by Colin Jackson Brown for We Dig PodcastsPart of the We Made This podcast network. https://twitter.com/wmt_network Twitter – https://twitter.com/thismonthsissue Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/freewiththismonthsissue/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/freewiththismonthsissue/ Find our other episodes at www.wedigpodcasts.com Find other We Made This shows & writing at www.wemadethisnetwork.com
A Scottish Podcast About Scotland!We are back with part 2 of our look into the incredible, unpredictable and prolific career of the boys from Kilmarnock. This week we look at their career following the release of their incredible album Only Revolutions, and pick out some of our favourites bits from their new documentary, audaciously called Biffy Clyro: Cultural Sons of Scotland Restock your festival bag and stretch out your headbanging muscles and rock out to this week's episode of Thistle Do Nicely. Also, check out our Biffy playlist on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5wJAEzdzNeJEiI8PBs6Bv8?si=2f572e6b3eb6411dSláinteCONTACT:Instagram: thistledopodTwitter: @thistledopodFacebook: www.facebook.com/thistledopodEmail: thistledonicelypod@gmail.comwebsite: https://www.thistledonicelypod.com/Google Voicemail: 4844 TDN POD (484 483-6763)SOURCES:https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5wJAEzdzNeJEiI8PBs6Bv8?si=2f572e6b3eb6411dBiffy Clyro: Cultural Sons of Scotland (2022) Jack Lowehttps://www.amazon.com/Biffy-Clyro-Cultural-Sons-Scotland/dp/B09T29Z2Q2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biffy_Clyrohttps://www.biffyclyro.com/releases/the-vertigo-of-bliss/https://drownedinsound.com/releases/3366/reviews/7231-https://comics-albumcovers-blog.tumblr.com/post/79457594897/milo-manara-questions-and-answers-biffyhttps://www.discogs.com/artist/269159-Biffy-Clyrohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biffy_Clyrohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBHEEbPW9hEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seoE_4Z5qSkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk15ytjtHA0&t=2718shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNEFkg8B2oM
When children are young, they believe their parents are impressive in about every way. As they grow older and create proper categories for living well with others, they begin to see their parents' good and bad behaviors. Observing flawed lives in the family dynamic does not have to be harmful to the children if the parents consistently clean up their messes by active repentance. However, suppose the husband and wife are not modeling a practical picture of Christ and His church while repenting along the way. In that case, it can have a detrimental impact on their children, even pushing them away from the family and Christ. Biffy was one of those kids, as you are about to read from the letter he wrote to his dad. Read Here: https://rickthomas.net/dear-parents-will-you-stop-your-arguing-please/ Will you help us so we can continue to provide free content to the world? You can become a supporting member here rickthomas.net/recurring-membership/ Or you can make a one-time or recurring donation(s) here https://rickthomas.net/donations/
What would you do in this situation?
Biffy has fallen in love. Well, he fell in love. Then he lost the girl. Like, he couldn't find her. Then he forgot her last name. And the name of his hotel. Is it really “better to have loved and lost”? P.G. Wodehouse, today on The Classic Tales Podcast. Welcome to The Classic Tales Podcast. Thank you for listening. Many, many thanks to those of you who have so generously donated to Basil's Student Residency fund. Last week we discovered that Basil, my eldest, after four years at local art academy, was accepted for a month-long residency to The New York Academy of Art. We are so very proud of him. We've come up a bit short, and we need some help to get him there. We need to raise $6,000, and we are halfway there. Thank you so much for helping him out. We've been blown away by the generosity of our parents, friends, family members, and especially YOU! We've done what we can, but things have really slowed down. We're still $3,000 shy of what we need to send our boy to New York for the experience of a lifetime. Basil has actually been on the podcast team. He started proofing the podcast for me when he was in seventh grade, and he did it all through high school. So, if you've listened to Pride and Prejudice, Uncle Silas, or the first Arsène Lupin stories, you've heard his work. I've set up a Go Fund Me account for Basil, and all of the proceeds go directly to fund his residency. It's actually not connected to me or the podcast at all. It all goes to help Basil make this next milestone in what is sure to be an illustrious art career. The link can be found in the description of this week's episode. Follow this link to go to Basil Harrison's New York Residency Go Fund Me page. Thank you so very much. It really wouldn't happen without your help. And now, Carry On, Jeeves, Part 6 of 10, by P.G. Wodehouse. Follow this link to go to Basil Harrison's New York Residency Go Fund Me page.
During this episode, we discuss the awareness needed when choosing to work with business partners as a part of “The Dark Side of Entrepreneurship" series. Join us! Biffy's Link Tree- https://linktr.ee/Bodaciousbiffy Biffy's Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/bodaciousbiffy/ Sponsor Link- https://ljhaywood.samcart.com/products/podcast-2-profits/ Sponsor Offer- 10% off w/ Promo Code "JAISON" Jaison's Link Tree (Hire a Logo Designer)- https://linktr.ee/Iamjdesigns Jaison's Website- https://iamjdesigns.co/ Become a Guest on our show- https://iamjdesigns.co/guest Advertise your Brand / Business with us! - https://iamjdesigns.co/advertise Support the "Brand Identity Design" Podcast- https://www.paypal.me/iamjdesigns #entrepreneurship #talk #coaching
Michael Glover, Biffy and Tyler Sutton have some stories to tell of what was known as "The Devils Playground". Known for a section of the Haunted Acres and scaring those who dare to walk through, but also a raging concert hall the rest of the year. All kinds of bands, shenanigan's and stories were made at the playground until one fateful day when it burned down. Hear some of the stories of both The Playground and Haunted Acres, some behind the scenes of the haunt and maybe a possible comeback of a new playground to explore. Follow us here: YouTube (video version) All other socials Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, Apple, etc Haunted Acres: Facebook The Playground Facebook
Last show of 2021 and we celebrate all the amazing music that we heard this year. I am joined by the wonderful Andy of The Draft Pod and Flow & Tell. It's a hoot!
EP283 - Year End Review It's our final show of 2021! We recap the US Dept of Commerce November Advanced Retail Sales Data. We do a deep dive into the retail industries growth from 2019 through November 2021. In those 23 months, the retail industry grew 22%, historically fast growth. There were clear winners and losers. If you want to follow along on with all the data, here is a visual recap of retail growth 2020-2021. (PDF Download). We also highlight the six most important trends of 2021. Amazon fulfillment capacity growth (Amazon and Walmart become shipping companies) Social Media becomes the discovery channel for e-commerce (led by live-streaming) Ultrafast delivery services Amazon invents and starts to scale a grocery store (Amazon Fresh) with just walk out technology Retail Media Networks explode, led by Amazon's $30B in ad sales. Retailers now compete with social media networks for eyeballs Apparel has shifted from designer led to consumer led, as evidenced by the meteoric rise of Shein We're so very grateful to our audience, both for the time you have shared with us, and for generous opinions, feedback, and knowledge that many of you have shared. We wish you all the very best holidays and New Years, and look forward to seeing you in 2022! Episode 283 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Tuesday, December 21st, 2021 http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 283 being recorded on Tuesday sept December twenty first twenty Twenty-One I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners Jason how are the holidays treating you so far. Jason: [0:46] They are treating me really well it's been super interesting what's going on in our industry and getting ready to take the family to California to see my mom and brother. Scot: [0:59] Very fun California versus Chicago seems like a smart smart choice this time. Jason: [1:04] Yes early and my relationship with my wife we agreed that we would visit her Michigan in-laws and Thanksgiving and my California relatives in December seems weather prudent if nothing else. Scot: [1:16] Yeah smart I like your like you're negotiating strategies so we are recording this here live on December 21st so we are in the very last tail end of holiday 21 and Jason you had some some interesting data that you had parse through that I thought we could start with it's going to be largely kind of the November data but it's kind of the best data we have, until we get into January and see how the holiday played out and then we'll do a quick checkpoint on what you're hearing from clients and then I think both of us wanted to kind of share our big stories for retail and e-commerce for 2021 so why don't you kick us off with some data. Jason: [1:57] That sounds amazing so yeah so the data we are talking about is the US Department of Commerce data we get a an update every month so you know last week we got the, the update that includes November and in general November sales were up sixteen percent from November of twenty twenty so I always coach people that we should look at year-over-year not month over month so pretty healthy growth in 2021 from 2020 if you look at year-to-date so January through November we are up about 18% from 2020 and if you look at e-commerce we were up about 12 percent from November of 2020 so I you know I always put this data out on social media and I got a ton of, interesting responses this year on that data everyone's like hey Jason why are you comparing to November of 2020 like we're in the middle of the pandemic everything was all topsy-turvy like it's like comparing, pandemic 2021 numbers to pain demick 2020 numbers isn't very helpful to me because everything is so confusing. [3:13] And so I kind of took that to heart like you know it is the best kind of comparison we have about how we're doing but I said oh you know the more interesting comparison is maybe we take. One step back and we compare the. The the last two years of data to two years ago so we kind of compare how much growth we've had during the pandemic with what girls look like before the pandemic and I hadn't hadn't really done that in a while and what I found was interesting and in a few cases it surprise me. Scot: [3:46] I feel like we should create a new word for this I'll work on it in the vein of a ship again yeah that's just boring I don't know. Jason: [3:54] Yeah yeah de or. Yeah every CEO in America has learned to say you're over two years ago by the way and for it's super funny for non-gaap metrics in the and in the 10-qs they. Like it's they kept they completely cherry-pick like if the number is good they take versus last year and if it's bad they take versus two years ago. Scot: [4:18] Yeah yeah that's the nice thing you need everything every number needs to be up into the right. Jason: [4:23] My takeaway there is you CEOs are oily. Scot: [4:25] We know we're strategic. Jason: [4:29] Got it potato potahto. Scot: [4:31] Cool what did this year over your year over year over last year review. Jason: [4:37] Yeah so if we say hey from how much has retailgeek grown in 2020 and 2021 as a two-year stack it has grown 22 percent, so you know people talk about like all the struggles and challenges we had during the pandemic but if I see if I got in a time machine and no pandemic just told every retail CEO how would you feel about growing 22% over the next two years, the vast majority of CEOs would have jumped at that and then if you said and our life is going to be totally disrupted by this pandemic. [5:14] I think every retail CEO in America would have said I'd be thrilled to get through the next two years with 22 percent growth so that was interesting and then I said I wonder how that compares historically so I got in the hot tub time machine and I pulled all the data from 1990 through today and I restated every year as its growth versus the previous two years to kind of come up with this standard metric to compare against the 22 percent and 22% is unprecedentedly high it's by far the biggest two-year growth we've had since 1990 there's only a few years that that just tickled 15% so I can 2000 we hit 15 percent and in 1994 we hit 15% but like, most of the. The this last decade we were kind of tickling in the kind of six to eight percent growth so 22 percent growth. On average for the whole retail industry is a huge win and unprecedentedly more growth than we would traditionally get does that surprise you at all. Scot: [6:26] It doesn't sort of make sure I understand it's all retail so it's offline and online in Aggregate and then you can't just divide it by 2 right because there's compounding in there so it's not really two years of 11 it's probably like I don't know 12 in an 8 or something. Jason: [6:41] Yes so you are correct now and. That 20 yes and all of this data it does include compounding the the compounding is an interesting point which will come up in a another piece of data in in just a minute but yeah so this is all like literally looking at the. Aggregate sales for 2019 and the aggregate sales for 2021 and saying how much bigger was 2021 than 2019. Scot: [7:08] Yeah did you run a kegger so in MBA school they would say well you can actually unpack the compounding by look at the compounded annual growth rate. Jason: [7:17] Yes yes I am familiar with the math I did not. Scot: [7:21] Okay it was two years it's not going to be that substantial yeah repeat. Jason: [7:24] No that's the yeah it's right typically like with like a five-year Horizon it makes a lot more sense but yeah it would have been interesting but it just I had to your data so I was just trying to come up with an Apples to Apples. Scot: [7:36] Not feels feels like a wind. Jason: [7:38] Yeah so then I said alright well that's interesting on average retail is a huge win. [7:44] Very obviously there are winners and losers so I said alright well let's look at all the categories that the US Department of Commerce gives us. Based on that 2-year stack and there were you know and who was at the industry average who wildly outperformed the industry average and who underperformed the industry average and there are some things that made total sense to me and we're not surprising and then there were some pretty big surprises in there so, the the category that out of the US Department of Commerce data that grew the fastest was, non store sales which is kind of our e-commerce proxy right and it grew 39 percent so almost twice as fast its total retail that's pretty intuitive you know again you're hearing a lot of. E-commerce growth is slowing. Wagon November as more people went back to stores you know compared to this like you know pandemic impacted 20/20 but when you look at onto your stack, e-commerce is still the fastest growing part of retail at group 39% from 2019 and that certainly didn't surprise me the next two categories sporting goods and building materials, also really didn't surprise me because we kind of talked about them being, the big pandemic winners that like you know people then go to the gym so they bought stuff from Dick's Sporting Goods people didn't go on vacation so they built a new patio with materials from Home Depot and so kind of all the that Services Revenue. [9:14] Shifted into retail and that gave sporting goods and building materials a big a big kiss. Motor Vehicles which at one point people were saying like oh my God that's going to be a horrible category in the pandemic Motor Vehicles actually outperformed the industry average so they grew at 24 percent versus 22 percent for total retail. And then here's where we start getting surprises. Slightly below the industry average was furniture and Home Furnishing so that grew at 21 percent versus the industry average of 22 and if you just asked me to bet I would have said in the same way that building materials and Home Improvement stores. Got extra spending from the pandemic I would have expected furniture stores to get extra spending from the pandemic as well and so it surprised me that they were only at the industry average and the only my only hypothesis is. Did they have more disruptions from supply chain like why. Was it just harder for them to scale up to make more sofas to meet the increased demand and so they, they grew healthy but they didn't grow as healthy as they might have because they they couldn't double their us Workforce to build more couches. Scot: [10:23] The feels right the furniture industry has been here in North Carolina that's our primary one and they're just destroyed by the supply chain they can't there was a series of events that couldn't get phone because of the fire and awesome remember that that seems like a year ago but it actually wasn't go to the summer and then with this quote-unquote Supply pain they haven't been able to get the other inputs like anything fabric while that stuff made in China and shipped over here and sitting on a boat somewhere. Jason: [10:50] Yeah and I feel like it's a double whammy for them because it's harder than ever to make stuff but there's actually they could sell more than ever before if they could make it so it's like, it almost feels worse than knowing there's demand that you can't meet. Scot: [11:01] Yeah it's painful. Jason: [11:03] Yeah so then general merchandise grew at 16 percent versus of retail 22 percent and then the one that surprised me most that I talk about a lot is grocery grew at 16 percent versus the industry average of 22 percent and I would have said man a ton of spending shifted from restaurants to grocery stores they were another pandemic winner and so I'll be honest I don't have a perfect hypothesis for why. Again sixteen percent is Healthy Growth and by historical standards it's better than any two-year period since 1990 so I don't want to say oh you know they had a rough time they had a good time but surprising that they were below the industry average to me a little bit. You have any great Insight that I didn't think of on why that would be. Scot: [11:52] I don't maybe it's like a mix thing underneath the hood like the e-commerce grew so much doesn't it like well I'll be in this category are rules so if. Jason: [12:02] Imperfect yes so you are right like one of the wrinkles in all of this is. The way the US Department of Commerce treats e-commerce as another category which is unfortunate right because you know when someone shifts from buying a exercise bike in a Dick Sporting Good to buying a dick exercise bike from Dick's Sporting Goods.com. The sale leaves the sporting good category in enters the non-store category and so that's. That's not really Apples to Apples and then of course this is all done with surveys that are in perfectly filled out by human beings and so how different retailers respond to that survey is also inconsistent so you got it. This data is super helpful directionally but you definitely don't want to get too wrapped around the axle of the minutiae of the data because it's just an imperfect methodology. [12:52] And so then the the categories they did the worst, do make sense with one outlier for a couple hours for me so gasoline only grew at 14%, you know again make sense to me that they you know underperformed when people aren't commuting to work surprising 14% sales are still pretty good growth clothing is near the bottom at 12% growth so again clothing over the last two years did not shrink they still grew at 12% which might have been their average rate of growth I should do that waiters pulled just the category growth over the last 30 years. But compared all these other categories obviously closing was was poor and the Very lowest category is restaurants and bars which still grew six percent so that all makes sense but then there were two two categories in the cellar that I would have expected to do better health and personal care grew at 11% and Electronics and Appliances grew at seven percent so those are both pretty far under the industry average and you know those are two categories. They had some complication they had pros and cons you know within that category but by and large I guess I was surprised to see them so well. Scot: [14:06] Yet Health and Beauty one because Aaron was zooming like the makeup sales shot way up so it's got to be a you know it was e-commerce. Jason: [14:15] Lipstick sales actually went way down because of the Mask but mascara and skincare went way up it's so funny bye. Um so, then I just did one other sanity check so you know people like a couple people a couple of Industry analysts even like responded to my data and said yeah just don't believe the numbers and I'm like just some understanding you you're saying you don't believe the US Department of Commerce numbers not like I didn't make any of these numbers upright bike. [14:45] And and the US Department of Commerce data is imperfect I would argue it's. The best we have access to and it's it's a bunch of you know PhD in statistics that have you know the force of law to you know to enforce compliance with their survey so I it's better than any other survey out there for whatever that's worth but so I thought how can I do a chance sanity check on this data and I'm like oh all the public retailers are required to report their growth every quarter so we could try to create a year over two year growth for all of these public retailers and compare it to the industry data and some of these public retailers are in a particular category so you can you know pretty safely assume all their sales are in that category so you could kind of use that as a sanity check so I pulled I don't know I guess it's about 25 companies and I converted their quarterly growth into a two-year stack and here I will confess I took a shortcut and if there's any mathematicians that want to help me solve this problem I will toy do it these. Draws numbers are not compounded growth so the problem is we don't have annual growth rates from the Retailer's we have quarterly growth rate so basically you have to. Aggregate for quarters of growth and then. [16:11] Calculate it over two years and so I took a lazy shortcut and I just added their. 20 growth to their 2021 growth so we have basically seven quarters of growth for most of these retailers and it's it's what they call a two-year stack which means growth from 2019 plus 2020 and while the math is not right there by the way right because of. Like the compounding problem of your 2020 growth include your you know growth over 2019. This is how most retailers reported in their earnings so when they talk about to your growth for these non-gaap measures where they try to put themselves in the best light and they report their two year growth they're almost never talking about a compounded number like if you read the footnote. They're they're adding the growth from those two years so this is how they're doing the math in most cases for whatever that's worth but so that's way more precursor than we need the retailer that grew the public retailer the grew the most over the last two years total shocker to me I would not have expected in a million years is Burlington Coat Factory. That Drew 85% and to put that in perspective, they sell apparel which did not do very well in the pandemic and they turned off their website their e-commerce site the month before the pandemic. So they didn't sell any a long line. Scot: [17:34] They're not really opening a lot of stores either. Jason: [17:36] No I mean they may have opened a couple stores over the whole two years but like this is mostly comp sales growth so it actually kind of, factors out new store. Scot: [17:46] Okay so it's cops okay. Jason: [17:47] Yeah this is these numbers that ye are based on currency adjusted comp sales just in the u.s. wherever possible so so Burlington's a total outliner congratulations to them surprising to me Amazon is was the second fastest grower and all public retail at 61 percent over two years which. Doesn't surprise me that super impressive but you'd expect to see them near the top of this list then you see Dick's Sporting Goods at 57 percent and again, like from from the industry data Sporting Goods was the second fastest growing category behind e-commerce so Amazon as a proxy for e-commerce and dicks is approximately for sporting goods makes total sense but then things start getting interesting the next fastest grower was Ulta which is personal care at 36 percent so they grew much better than did the. The personal care category now they're less than half the personal care category the slightly bigger version of them would be Sephora but Sephora is actually owned. Buy a house of Brands and so it's harder to get their data. [19:01] Bed Bath & Beyond group 35% which is impressive Target group 34 percent, Home Depot which again was in one of these these outperforming categories grew 33% was group 28% by comparison Best Buy grew 29% in this it doesn't surprise me the best bike route 29 percent but this is. Makes that the fact that Electronics was one of the slowest growing categories at 7% make even less percent make even less sense I guess it's it's hard to imagine how. Electronics only grew seven percent over the last two years when you know everyone bought all this extra equipment for homeschooling and home entertainment and then with Best Buy growing 29 percent it's even harder to imagine. Scot: [19:53] Yeah maybe in a perfect world you could then split like something like that into store non-store store / e-commerce and maybe that would tell the story. Jason: [20:00] Yeah yeah again that's like one of the few the, my few answers to to a number of these anomalies and then I know this is like all these numbers in a podcast sock but like then you start getting into like Abercrombie & Fitch 28% Costco 26 percent, Cole's Nordstrom's Walmart grew at 21% which again for you know a huge company, the fortune one company to grow at the industry average is pretty good Nike grew at 20%. T.j. Maxx at 15% and the the bottom three. A surprise into not surprises so the second worse and third two words were Dollar Tree in Dollar General at 10% growth which is kind of surprising. You know consumers were kind of flush with cash with all the extra economic stimulus they weren't really slowing down their spending and so like you know maybe it wasn't a great season for the value shoppers but a lot of the news was about how these dollar stores were opening tons of stores and we're really thriving so interesting that they both only Drew. 10% and then the the worst performing public company on this was Macy's which grew six percent over the two years not totally surprising. Scot: [21:18] Isn't that the one that Prophet G said was going to crush. Jason: [21:24] Be there be there the future of retailers Macy's not Amazon yeah this chart unfortunately yeah contradicts that prediction so we'll have to wait and see are you Scott Galloway fans you just hang on hang on to your stick to your guns. Scot: [21:38] Good luck with that. Jason: [21:41] Yeah so that's my the rabbit hole that the stupid November numbers took me down so as you can imagine none of my clients got any deliverables in November. Scot: [21:52] When people tell you they don't believe the data what are they reacting to. Jason: [21:57] I think there's a couple categories there are people that are like hey it's the the month-over-month is interesting but like. Who cares right because these are all anomalous months and that's why I went for this two-year stack and and so. My point was I think like when people are saying hey I don't I don't believe the data I actually don't think they meant they don't believe that this is the data that the US Department of Commerce reported I think they're both saying in some cases, I don't think the US Department of Commerce can count very well and what they mostly hang their hat on is is the non store sales not being right and that's fair right like when someone at Best Buy fills out a survey the US Department of Commerce would like them to put their e-commerce sales in one box and their store sales in another box. [22:47] And do they do that I don't know right and does every retailer do that. Properly and consistently I can tell you that the person assigned to fill out the surveys is generally not the most senior accountant at the it's usually not the CFO. Um so so that is imperfect and then what I think they're saying more is. Maybe don't make all your future plans based on like this snapshot of the world because you know we are looking at a unique set of circumstances that resulted in this data right so if you mistakenly thought my takeaway was retail is better than ever and you know everybody should double down because you know retailers is the most thriving industry in the world 22 percent growth is amazing and it's going to continue forever. [23:36] Yeah no that's not what I'm saying I'm just saying that like it's interesting there were positive and negative impacts on all these businesses as a result of the pandemic but on the aggregate. The impact was disproportionately positive and I don't think that that is sustainable right like I you know I think we will hope to drop down to the regular the sort of pre-pandemic growth levels and potentially. We pulled some growth forward and we might even see some more lean years because we you know absorb so much growth this time. Scot: [24:10] This a long way of you saying you now agree with the the Goldman Sachs chart that showed five years of acceleration. Jason: [24:15] No no I think that still is pretty clear and they were primarily talking about e-commerce which definitely didn't happen. Scot: [24:23] Checking. Jason: [24:25] So that's my my deep dive into data and if there's there can't be anything more fun than listening to a podcast about a bunch of dudes being a bunch of numbers so I will I'll do two things I'll try to put some of this data in the show notes but what I'll do is I'll put a link in the show notes to download some charts with this data in it. Scot: [24:46] Very cool I actually like you spewing data so maybe I'm just an audience of one. Jason: [24:53] You may be in a liar. Scot: [24:56] So what are you seeing so that kind of gets us through November what are you seeing here in December I poked around on the usual spots for the Adobe and the sales force and a couple others and it's really weird they've been kind of quiet since since kind of the Cyber week what what are you hearing from your clients. Jason: [25:17] Yeah so I don't know like there's not good data that's already reporting December sales for holiday but so anecdotally talking to a bunch of clients and talking to some of these companies that do have internal data. December is looking like a good month right and so the. My kind of aggregate estimate is holiday for 2021 is going to end up being about. Nine percent bigger than holiday 2020 and again you say well as nine percent good or bad by historical standards it's pretty darn good most most years we get about a holiday grows less than the rest of the year because there's so much extra volume in it so most years we get about five percent growth in holiday in 2019 we got four percent growth 9% is a big number and last year was a pretty big growth year and so. Um you know also around nine percent so nine percent on top of 9% is a. Pretty big deal I have seen some estimates that think it'll grow even more than nine percent this year to put that in perspective the last time before last year there grew nine percent would have been like 1999 so so not only do we have great growth over two years we do have great holiday growth one huge caveat. [26:43] The trend up until about a week ago was, that more people were returning to the store store traffic was going up we were seeing kind of pre-pandemic shopping behaviors and e-commerce was still a big deal bigger than ever before but the rate of growth was swelling because, there was so much pent-up demand and go to stores lots of people were planning on getting together with their family like there was a funny Walmart stat about you know how much bigger the turkeys were that got sold this year than last year because people were, we're entertaining a lot more so, unfortunately in kind of real-time chats with most of my clients in the last week we have seen foot traffic to stores dramatically curtail and it feels like. We're very quickly getting a lot of negative Media news around and I say media but I guess it's based on the data about Omicron and the hypothesis is there either, Omicron has people scared and so they're not going to stores or a second hypothesis is everyone desperately wants to have their family gathering so they're being extra cautious leading up to Christmas but in either case, we're seeing this last-minute pivot to e-commerce and that has some impacts like the shipping companies that actually been doing. [28:04] Much better job this year than last year on keeping up with ship again in but if suddenly everyone you know runs towards e-commerce these last two weeks that could really put. [28:15] Shipping in Jeopardy in a in a really vulnerable time when they have a lot of Labor challenges so yeah I don't know it's kind of a Debbie Downer bit of news in this whole thing. Scot: [28:26] Yeah yeah I'm a crime that has a it's going to put next year kind of up into a question mark of what happens is and then. The thing that's really frustrating trying to operate a business during this time frame is the bookmarks of good and bad are so wide that. Dirty you have no idea but you drive a truck through and right there 180 degrees so you read one new source it's like oh it's super mild and it's almost going to act like its own vaccine then you see another source and it's like we're all gonna die. Somewhere hopefully we're somewhere in the middle there. Jason: [28:58] Amen Ya Know It's Tricky yeah and kind of evaluating all these data sources that's like the new the new societal challenge right. Scot: [29:09] It really is. Jason: [29:12] So I'm wondering so that's that's kind of my holiday snapshot some good news and some bad news in there I wanted to take a couple minutes on this podcast because I think this is going to be our last show of the year to kind of zoom out from the minutiae and just kind of think about the year in totality and kind of, don't know you know highlight what we think are the big things that happened in our industry this year that might impact us going forward how do you feel about that. Scot: [29:39] Let's do it you want to go first. Jason: [29:41] I mostly wanted you to go first because I thought I would surprise you and make you get bet answers while I thought about it. Scot: [29:48] Okay I'll go first so so I'm going to try to limit it to three because we. Yeah we could go on for for a long time here so I think the highlights of this year for me, it would be a Jason and Scot show if we didn't think a little bit about Amazon the. Build out of Amazon's shipping infrastructure and I feel like we say this every year but it's accelerating and there's some really good data we want to have a guest on that's publishing some data on this just Amazon has built more capacity in the last two years than they had in the last 10 so they've used the pandemic as a you know the response to it and they've gotten kind of cover I guess you could say is to really. 10x down on fulfillment infrastructure where where you get the most feeling of that is that the last mile which is this DS p– program that they've just really scaled up massively. This touches my my day job because it's Biffy we'd service a lot of these folks and they're just they're everywhere and, you know it used to be they would kind of work out a fulfillment systems then they built these fulfillment centers now they've got these see the last word of station what are they call them. [31:02] Delivery stations that have a whole new nomenclature where they now are have these forward-deployed areas where the dsps are almost housed and Aggregates you'll go to these places and it's pretty well that I've seen several of them now and they'll be like 20 dsps operating out of there these little micro businesses and you know just. [31:22] Prime Vans as far as I can see. Where is the stat that I think is kind of the most interesting is the Amazon did disclose that they plan to ship more than then FedEx this year and then I think they said in the next couple of years they'll exceed the USPS as far as package delivery it doesn't surprise me just given the scale that they are throwing at this thing. For example you can't buy a van today because the Amazon is just pretty ordered all the vans so it's pretty fascinating the scale they've done there. The thing that in our will do our annual predictions but I've been annually predicting that they would compete more directly with FedEx and UPS by offering just package delivery to anybody I just feels like we're a lot closer to that but I say that every year so we'll see, the other surprise for me is the explosion of this 15-minute grocery delivery world the most people have probably their first experience this or the first company heard was go puff and it wasn't really a 15-minute thing it was just kind of faster it was almost hours then you had instacart really scale up and then what's happened is the service level on these things it's got lower to the point where they're all trying to get you something in 15 minutes. It's a smaller number of skus than you would get with like Amazon's 300 million skus available so it's typically going to be. [32:43] You know you probably have a cool word for it but it's like snacks and oh my gosh I'm out of a soda I need or ice cream things that you kind of have an urgent hankering for and are willing to pay to scratch that itch a little bit more. On the shipping and handling fees and those kinds of things these are kinds of things when I talk to people they're like yeah that little the economics will never work in the be no one will ever use it and then everyone's always surprised because you can never underestimate the convenience or any consumer that when you give them the choice to do something with convenience they will, they will do it and they will order things you would never have thought about. I remember when Amazon rolled out Prime now they were shocked that the toilet paper and personal products were such a high considered item and it's just you know. People people don't plan ahead and they run out of stuff and they want it right then and there willing to pay extra for it so that one's pretty interesting and you track this probably even better I do Amazon's going after this one and then there's like, 10 startups in there that are have all raised, billions of dollars go puff just announcer one and a half billion dollar extension of their last round by layering on some debt so there's one called like gorillas or gorillas and. [33:55] Tons of these things out there but Amazon scaling it up too so it's gonna be interesting to see if any of these guys can make Headway against Amazon or Famas on will just crush them. [34:05] And then the last one is live-streaming this one sputtering in the US, every data point outside the US indicates it's a thing and I do think this one's going to translate from I've seen it I've seen data that shows that as a has expanded out of China and that's kind of where maybe a year ago we were talking about it largely on Alibaba platform. But now I think it's there's European startups I'm starting to see some categories in the US where this is interesting I followed the collectible category and there's a couple of the hot companies are they do these live streams where they will do. Unboxings so they will they will buy a pack of cards from like the 80s and then they will open them live and and see what's in there and and you know, it's kind of riveting if you're if you're into that and you're like I wonder you know there's a one in 100 chance that this has a Michael Jordan rookie card or something and they pull that the column poles that can be fascinating so there's a lot of. Kind of very specific category activity going there that I think I think a lot of us thought okay Amazon's and do this Amazon is tried and it's been pretty terrible but I think it's going to come from these really niche of Articles at first and they're going to figure it out and then you'll see it get more more momentum up into the broader retailers so those are those are my three. Jason: [35:27] Wow those are three good ones I feel like you stole my three I'm just kidding um no but I totally agree with all those I do think like we've actually seen Amazon launch some. Selling of shipping services and I've seen Stan said they're going to deliver 90% of their own packages this holiday so like I think that definitely is a thing even Walmart is now, selling shipping services to other people including Home Depot so that's totally interesting Trend hundred percent agree on the live streaming like I kind of call it the D bundling of shopping and you know we have all these e-commerce sites that are good at buying things but we're not very good at product Discovery and it seems like social and video or where a lot of the, the new product discoveries coming from and then that that ultra-fast delivery for filling orders to give you all the words you are asking about the that that's a huge thing and if you think about you know how much retailers are struggling with with grocery profitability like it's a double whammy that wow they're trying to figure out how to solve for profitability the consumers moving to this even you know inherently less profitable order so it's going to be that that's going to be an interesting disruption of the industry so if I were to add 3 to that. I do think just the whole pandemic. [36:41] Acceleration of great digital grocery like is when I talk about a lot and I still think that that is a huge thing like all those predictions about how much the pandemic was accelerating e-commerce for probably wrong but grocery delivery Ecommerce probably did get accelerated five years and to me maybe you know what will ultimately end up being one of the most important things that happened during the pandemic is Amazon invented a new grocery store right this Amazon Fresh concept and it's starting to scale there's more than 30 of them now they have just walk out technology in them which I would have bet against them having this quickly and there are there are lots of investigative journalists that have found. Some interesting real estate footprints that would imply that it's going to scale their that there's a business plan footing out here that had like 300 of these in the UK which is a small island um I think we could look back five years from now and see Amazon is a very meaningful brick-and-mortar grocer and and I think 20:21 is the year it it happened without us totally acknowledging it so I think Jay W groceries an interesting Evolution one that I end up talking about a lot with my clients also driven by Amazon is retail media networks right so you know Amazon, is that a run right now of about 30 billion dollars in ads it's probably the most profitable business Amazon has I think this this. [38:08] Battle for eyeballs between retailers and traditional digital platforms is super interesting and I think you know you set the layer who is. One of the the. The key guys at Amazon media like we had him on the show when he moved to Fresh Direct and he's now running Walmart Connect Four for Walmart so you're seeing the Retailer's hire these like credible media sales people and I think that's a. [38:37] A going forward a significant part of every retailers plan is how to be their own media Network how to get eyeballs and how to monetize those eyeballs and that's a new new skill for a retailer so I think that's a big deal and then the last one I'm gonna throw out, is one that I am surprised doesn't get talked about more but it's the apparel retailer she in and I think they are super interesting they've had phenomenal success they're probably globally the largest apparel reseller on the planet right now and their their annual revenues are more than than H&M and Zara combined so so remarkable. [39:18] Story of fast acceleration but the bigger story here is, to me Sheehan is very representative of the democratization of apparel that like for the longest time we expected Mickey Drexler or Versace or Yeezy to tell us like what was cool to wear and then we waited until we can buy those clothes and we bought them and I just I think that model is totally dead now I think the apparel that sells best the stuff that she and sells the stuff that target cells the stuff that Stitch fix cells is frankly based on customer data it's watching customers finding out what they like and then making it really fast and so Sheehan isn't isn't fashion driven by a stylist It's Fashion driven by Tick-Tock right and an Instagram and I think that's a, a lot of apparel companies haven't gotten the memo yet that the consumer is now squarely in charge of these fashion trends. Scot: [40:18] Yeah saw an article about these guys were this this one lady she did this Argyle Sweater outfit and. It was on Instagram it got some viral love they took that and it created a hole the outfit they had copied it or I guess fast fashion and I don't know how the how the IP Works in this world but they had replicated it and they I think they even used her picture which I think was with articles about that she didn't really you know, realize that that effectively shows open sourcing this thing to the world and then it became a top seller for them like in 60 days it was insane how fast that they identified the trend and get the. The product out there it was like you know NASCAR fashion or something. Jason: [41:03] Yeah it's crazy if you think about like the fashion traditionally worked like. Dudes would show up in Paris at the Fashion Show and show these cool Styles and then everyone would steal those Styles and send them an effector he's and two years later those fact those Fashions would be available at Neiman Marcus. Two years later and in so the genius of Gap was that they got those Fashions to the mall, 18 months later instead of two years later and the the disruption of H&M and Zara was that they got them to the mall six months later instead of 18 months later right. She and sees that woman in the crop-top Argyle Sweater and they have they have that fashion available in a week and here's what super interesting they don't make a million of them and hope they sell which is what all those other retailers had to do, they make 12 of them and if those 12 sell in 8 seconds versus 20 seconds then they make thousands of them. Right and so it's really data-driven real-time a/b testing on apparel trans at a speed that that these kind of traditional apparel Brands can't even imagine. Scot: [42:13] That's because they have the factory right there that they're able to do that or like to have some. Jason: [42:17] Yeah and they. In Shane's case they don't own the factories they have a net like that it's a gig worker economy for factories right like so in the same way that boober recruits a bunch of Uber drivers she and recruits a bunch of factories that they then go to and say hey we've got some some ideas for some new models and find one of those factories that accepts the order and makes the the stuff and so in sometimes there's our Factory driven ideas sometimes there she and driven ideas but but yeah that's that's the model and you know there is a Dark Side to this I got you know a lot of its there's a lot of questions about the labor standards and practices at a bunch of these factories and of course there's. You know a lot of the stuff that gets bought on Shion is super cheap and gets worn once and so it's a ecological disaster I would argue the industry it's disrupting is also. Kind of a you know it has a lot of dark sides and and is not very sustainable so I like I'm not sure she and improves on on any of those problems but from a pure consumer demand standpoint, I don't think we're ever going back to you know these like anointed tastemakers that like decide what we're all going to wear for the next year. Scot: [43:32] Yet clearly clearly that model is sailed having. Jason: [43:36] Indeed well listen Scott I know we both have to run but that is probably a great place to wrap up our final show of 20:21 I need to take some downtime not to see my family or anything like that but in early January we always like to record the forecasts show and hit traditionally you crush me and so I feel like I need to spend a lot more time thinking about my forecast before the forecast show comes up. Scot: [44:07] Yeah challenge accepted I will also be thinking about this in a background processes I'm enjoying the holiday I think this is a good time to thank our listeners you know we've you know we've seen our listenership grow pretty steadily over the years and we really appreciate everyone giving us time to your day to talk about the topics we talk about and we get a lot of great feedback and really engaged set of listeners and we really appreciate you listening and if you want to share your appreciation one of the ways you can do that is through a five star rating so fire up your favorite podcast listening technology and if you would leave us a five starters we that would be the perfect holiday gift for us. Jason: [44:47] Yeah that's exact five stars is exactly my size to Scott. Scot: [44:50] How about that. Jason: [44:53] Awesome well most of can't appreciate enough the listeners for spending this time with us every week this is a lot of fun for us to do and I learned so much from the the chats I have with folks after they listen to the podcast so I'm that is one of the things I'm super grateful for. Scot: [45:10] Everyone have a great holiday Jason you how enjoy your trip to California. Jason: [45:14] Thank you you have a wonderful holiday as well and until next time happy commercing!
Historically Thinking: Conversations about historical knowledge and how we achieve it
In 1924 the eminent nerve-specialist Sir Roderick Glossop urged Bertie Wooster and his friend Charles “Biffy” Biffen to attend the British Empire Exhibition being held at Wembley. “It is the most supremely absorbing and educational collection of objects,” Glossop enthused, “both animate and inanimate, gathered from the four corners of the Empire that has ever been assembled in England's history.” After arrival at Wembley, Bertie's genius-level manservant Jeeves shimmered off, and the heat, exertion, and education of it all became so overwhelming that Bertie and Biffy sought solace inside an ice-cold glasses of Green Swizzle, served up by a bartender in the Jamaican Tent. Perhaps Jeeves, who was known to curl up with a volume of Spinoza in his off-hours, attended the principal intellectual attraction at Wembley, the Conference on Some Living Religions within the Empire. This awkwardly named meeting of world religions is one of several chronicled by my guest Tal Howard in his new book The Faiths of Others: A History of Interreligious Dialogue. In doing so, he traces how inter-religious dialogue was defined; how it in turn defined religion; and how it reflected and reinforced ideals and concepts such as pluralism, cosmopolitanism, and orientalism—not always in the ways one might expect. Tal Howard is Professor of History and Humanities, and Richard and Phyllis Dusenberg Chair of Christian Ethics, at Valparaiso University. This is his second appearance on Historically Thinking; he was previously on the podcast talking about the historian Jakob Burckhardt.
This month we're back travelling through time, but just a short trip this time, back to the seemingly very recent 2013, where we were all still regularly listening to cds (and even cassettes in colin's case as his car back then was impressively primitive), but other than that, pretty much wearing the same clothes as we do now. Listen to us battle eachother to discover our collective favourite songs of the 2013 and alog the way uncover Ian's traumatic Japanese Noise flashbacks, Colin's language blindness, Tracey's utter desperation to obtain more points, and we question exactly how tall Ed Sheeran actually is... We've each chosen our 10 favourite songs of the year and sent them over to Ian's wife Lydia, who put the playlists together and distributed them so we were each given a playlist of the 20 songs from the other two hosts, along with our own 10. We then ranked the playlists in order of preference and sent them to Colin's wife Helen, who totalled up the points and worked out the order. Helen also joined us on the episode to read out the countdown, which we found out as we recorded so all reactions are genuine. Now, admittedly, in parts we're a little bit brutal to some of the songs in the list as we're three separate people with differing music tastes, but please remember that to be in this episode at all the songs have to have been in one of our top 10's of that year. Bands featured in this episode include (In alphabetical order, no spoilers here!) - Arcade Fire, Courtney Barnett, Biffy Clyro, David Bowie, Bring Me The Horizon, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Childish Gambino, Clutch, Daughter, Ghost, John Grant, Grouper, How To Destroy Angels, RM Hubbert, Lanterns On The Lake, Adrianne Lenker, Lorde, Low, Macklemore, Major Lazer, Melt-Banana, Nine Inch Nails, Paramore, The Pastels, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, This Many Boyfriends, Waxahatchee, Kanye West, & Steven Wilson. Find all songs in alphabetical order here - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/71SXqZsOFGgQl477yIKLXm?si=781e27b7728c4ecd Find our We Dig Music Pollwinners Party playlist (featuring all of the winning songs up until now) here - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/45zfDHo8zm6VqrvoEQSt3z?si=Ivt0oMj6SmitimvumYfFrQ If you want to listen to megalength playlists of all the songs we've individually picked since we started doing best of the year episodes, you can listen to Colin's here – https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5x3Vy5Jry2IxG9JNOtabRT?si=HhcVKRCtRhWCK1KucyrDdg Ian's here - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2H0hnxe6WX50QNQdlfRH5T?si=XmEjnRqISNqDwi30p1uLqA and Tracey's here - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2p3K0n8dKhjHb2nKBSYnKi?si=7a-cyDvSSuugdV1m5md9Nw The playlist of 20 songs from the other two hosts was scored as usual, our favourite song got 20 points, counting down incrementally to our least favourite which got 1 point. The scoring of our own list of 10 is now slightly more complicated in order to give a truer level of points to our own favourites. So rather than them only being able to score as many points as our 10th favourite in the other list, the points in our own list were distributed as follows - 1st place - 20 points 2nd place - 18 points 3rd place – 16 points 4th place – 14 points 5th place – 12 points 6th place – 9 points 7th place – 7 points 8th place – 5 points 9th place – 3 points 10th place -1 point Hosts - Ian Clarke, Colin Jackson-Brown & Tracey B Guest starring Helen Jackson-Brown. Playlist compiling/distributing – Lydia Clarke Recorded/Edited/Mixed/Original Music by Colin Jackson-Brown for We Dig Podcasts Thanks to Peter Latimer for help with the scoring system. Say hello at www.facebook.com/wedigmusicpcast or tweet us at http://twitter.com/wedigmusicpcast or look at shiny pictures on Instagram at http://instagram.com/wedigmusicpcast Part of the We Made This podcast network. https://twitter.com/wmt_network You can also find all the We Dig Music & Free With This Months Issue episodes at www.wedigpodcasts.com Support the We Made This podcast network on Patreon: www.patreon.com/wemadethis
This month we're back travelling through time, but just a short trip this time, back to the seemingly very recent 2013, where we were all still regularly listening to cds (and even cassettes in colin's case as his car back then was impressively primitive), but other than that, pretty much wearing the same clothes as we do now. Listen to us battle eachother to discover our collective favourite songs of the 2013 and alog the way uncover Ian's traumatic Japanese Noise flashbacks, Colin's language blindness, Tracey's utter desperation to obtain more points, and we question exactly how tall Ed Sheeran actually is...We've each chosen our 10 favourite songs of the year and sent them over to Ian's wife Lydia, who put the playlists together and distributed them so we were each given a playlist of the 20 songs from the other two hosts, along with our own 10. We then ranked the playlists in order of preference and sent them to Colin's wife Helen, who totalled up the points and worked out the order. Helen also joined us on the episode to read out the countdown, which we found out as we recorded so all reactions are genuine.Now, admittedly, in parts we're a little bit brutal to some of the songs in the list as we're three separate people with differing music tastes, but please remember that to be in this episode at all the songs have to have been in one of our top 10's of that year. Bands featured in this episode include (In alphabetical order, no spoilers here!) - Arcade Fire, Courtney Barnett, Biffy Clyro, David Bowie, Bring Me The Horizon, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Childish Gambino, Clutch, Daughter, Ghost, John Grant, Grouper, How To Destroy Angels, RM Hubbert, Lanterns On The Lake, Adrianne Lenker, Lorde, Low, Macklemore, Major Lazer, Melt-Banana, Nine Inch Nails, Paramore, The Pastels, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, This Many Boyfriends, Waxahatchee, Kanye West, & Steven Wilson.Find all songs in alphabetical order here - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/71SXqZsOFGgQl477yIKLXm?si=781e27b7728c4ecdFind our We Dig Music Pollwinners Party playlist (featuring all of the winning songs up until now) here - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/45zfDHo8zm6VqrvoEQSt3z?si=Ivt0oMj6SmitimvumYfFrQ If you want to listen to megalength playlists of all the songs we've individually picked since we started doing best of the year episodes, you can listen to Colin's here – https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5x3Vy5Jry2IxG9JNOtabRT?si=HhcVKRCtRhWCK1KucyrDdg Ian's here - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2H0hnxe6WX50QNQdlfRH5T?si=XmEjnRqISNqDwi30p1uLqA and Tracey's here - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2p3K0n8dKhjHb2nKBSYnKi?si=7a-cyDvSSuugdV1m5md9Nw The playlist of 20 songs from the other two hosts was scored as usual, our favourite song got 20 points, counting down incrementally to our least favourite which got 1 point. The scoring of our own list of 10 is now slightly more complicated in order to give a truer level of points to our own favourites. So rather than them only being able to score as many points as our 10th favourite in the other list, the points in our own list were distributed as follows -1st place - 20 points2nd place - 18 points3rd place – 16 points4th place – 14 points5th place – 12 points6th place – 9 points7th place – 7 points8th place – 5 points9th place – 3 points10th place -1 pointHosts - Ian Clarke, Colin Jackson-Brown & Tracey BGuest starring Helen Jackson-Brown.Playlist compiling/distributing – Lydia ClarkeRecorded/Edited/Mixed/Original Music by Colin Jackson-Brown for We Dig PodcastsThanks to Peter Latimer for help with the scoring system.Say hello at www.facebook.com/wedigmusicpcast or tweet us at http://twitter.com/wedigmusicpcast or look at shiny pictures on Instagram at http://instagram.com/wedigmusicpcast Part of the We Made This podcast network. https://twitter.com/wmt_network You can also find all the We Dig Music & Free With This Months Issue episodes at www.wedigpodcasts.com Support the We Made This podcast network on Patreon: www.patreon.com/wemadethis
an exotic pet from a far off land... theme music by joey loboda music by thomas prislac find thomas prislac's music https://youtube.com/c/PDXVoiceTeacher thomas prislac on amazon --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hauntedbyproxy/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hauntedbyproxy/support
Slash, Elton John Ft. Eddie Vedder, Together Pangea, Feeder, The Cribs, Stubborn Trees en singles du jour et on termine la découverte album de Biffy clyro. Bonne écoute du podcast radio rock. L'article Emission Sensation rock du lundi 25 octobre 2021Slash, Elton John Ft. Eddie Vedder, Together Pangea, Feeder, The Cribs, Stubborn Trees en singles du jour et on termine la découverte album de Biffy clyro. Bonne écoute du podcast radio rock. est apparu en premier sur Sensation Rock.
Die schottische Rockband Biffy Clyro veröffentlicht in diesen Tagen ihr neuntes Album „The Myth of Happily Ever After“. Etwas mehr als ein Jahr ist es her, seit das Trio sein letztes Werk „A Celebration Of Endings“ präsentiert hat – und nun folgt die dunklere, rockigere Schwester davon. Im Podcast-Interview mit den Brüdern Ben und James Johnsten geht es vor allem um den Zusammenhang der beiden Alben. Außerdem klärt Lena im Gespräch, was es mit der blauen Farbe auf sich hat, die sich wie ein roter Faden durch ihre Werke zieht und wie sich die unglamouröse Albumproduktion in Schottland auf die neue Musik ausgewirkt hat. Außerdem wird über den Popanteil auf dem Album diskutiert und geklärt, woher die Liebe zu Rätseln stammt, welche sich immer wieder um die Releases des Trios bilden.
Welcome to a special Riot Act Reviews podcast, an opportunity for Steve and Remfry to take a look at some of the more notable recent releases in the world of alternative music. We cast a critical eye over the 9th studio album from Scottish alternative rock megastars Biffy Clyro; The Myth of the Happily Ever After. Coming just a year after their previous album, A Celebration of Endings, Biffy are back, and it's not too surprising to see them. After all, this is a band who have often made a point of releasing a companion piece alongside their recent records, but on this occasion A Celebration of Endings “sister” album might be the first of its kind to stand up proudly on its own. Certainly it is being marketed that way, and, rather than the unconstructed and half baked group of experimental ideas that many bands are left with at the end of their album sessions, The Myth of the Happily Ever After does feel much more coherent and thought out than a mere b-side record. But how does it stand up to scrutiny alongside the rest of Biffy's stellar back catalogue? This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy
High there. Part of the J-mafia is back and we soar again through the clouds of humanity and back again. We revisit past events, past video productions by V1, talk about how headshops receive their product, what actually gets you a buzz, and if wax and dabs are drugs now instead of "grown and consumed." We touch on comics and a growing collection of them. Spark it up and join us for a session. Follow us here: YouTube (Video Version here) Facebook @obscuredstateofmind
An update on apologies, garbage pyramids, and traffic signs.
This week Dom & JD give you their TOP 5 HORROR TELEVISION SHOWS! In addition, there is horror news and the good and bad movies of the week.Thanks for listening! Can't get enough Dom & JD? Check out our Patreon at http://www.patreon.com/postmortemshow for hundreds of bonus features as well as early access to ad-free episodes.Part of the TCHS Network. For more shows like the one you just listened to check out http://www.truecrimehorrorstory.comhttp://www.postmortemshow.com
Biffy joins me for an all around discussion on how he started rapping and the rise and fall of an era. His long time friend Joshua Rosalas shows up to crash the podcast only after finding out his other long time friend Jessie Sutton is doing cams for the podcast. These guys are known as a group called J-Mafia, started by Rosalas himself. You dont want to miss this podcast. Video and other material here: Subscribe on YouTube Follow on Facebook @obscuredstateofmind
Bertie Wooster is determined to save his pal, Biffy, from his dire fate (marriage to Honoria Glossop). Bertie's brilliant scheme somehow goes awry and it is up to the inimitable Jeeves to set things right, as only he can. It all plays out during a riotous visit to the Great British Empire Exhibition. The conclusion of a two-part story adapted from P.G. Wodehouse.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/mysteriousjourney)
EP257 - Cookies, IDFA, and Commerce Deep Dive Changes in mobile tracking (IDFA), and browser tracking (third party cookies) are likely to disrupt digital commerce. Here is everything you need to know. Background Privacy Law Changes California Consumer Privacy Act of 2020 (CPRA) California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA) EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Third Party Cookies Safari (19% share) 3P cookies blocked as of March 2020 Firefox (4% share) 3P blocked as of Sept 2019 Chrome (64% share) will block 3P January 2022 Mobile Tracking (Digital License Plates for Mobile Users) Apple Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) – Goes from Opt Out to Opt In Q1 2021 Google Play Services ID for Android (GPS ADID) – Still Opt Out Use Cases that are impacted by IDFA/3P changes Audience Activation and Retargeting Frequency Capping and Suppression Media Attribution Audience Insights and Segmentation Personalization Alternative Solutions 1P Walled Gardens (Facebook, Google, Amazon) Real ID Systems (Trade Desk, Liveramp, Epsilon) Clean Rooms Cohorts – Google Privacy Sandbox: FloC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) Impacted Businesses Google – Biggest winner, built a business based on relaxed privacy standards, now pulling the ladder up behind them Apple – See Google, but with a smaller share of browser market Facebook – Lose ground to Google/Apple but gain on everyone else Amazon – Winner. Forcing more ad dollars to Amazon walled garden Shopify – Loser. Forcing Facebook to capture more commerce instead of referring to Shopify sites. Publishers – Loser. Harder to make ad model work Other Retailers – Loser for customer acquisition, slight benefit for retail media networks Conclusion Advertising rates go down which depreciates ad based business models (content sites and games). More businesses pivot from ad based to paywalls. Greater focus on Customer Lifetime Value (via subscription and platform approaches), more cleanrooms. Much harder for new businesses to challenge incumbent walled gardens. Episode 257 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Wednesday March 17, 2021. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 257 being recorded on Wednesday March 17th 2021 I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:41] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners. Jason has you know when we look at our analytics and based on feedback we get from listeners some of our most popular shows over the years are where we get super-dee-duper geeky and we go really deep on one topic. We call those with what I think is a genius of marketing we call those deep Dives. Jason: [1:05] Jason and Scot show Deep dive. Scot: [1:18] So we have been I’ve been reading a ton about a big change coming to the overall ecosystem of advertising and it’s initiated by Apple and it’s called idfa. And as you know I read a lot of Wall Street stuff and some of the Wall Street folks are freaking out because they’re basically saying this is going to be big and the world’s not paying enough attention. And you know in my mind I’m kind of that sad world that doesn’t really impact e-commerce but then I started to see it getting really noisy around the impact to folks on the converse side too. So I looked around and called everyone I know and none of them were experts on the so I last ditch effort I said maybe my podcast co-host knows a little bit about this, seeing as he works for one of the world’s largest ad agencies and lo and behold I was right you do you are a Ninja on this. So I know enough about this topic to have a lot of questions but I have no answers so, we’re going to kind of flip it a little bit here and I’m going to interview you on this topic how does that feel how does it feel to be in the chair. Jason: [2:28] I’m terrified I like being the one to ask the questions and know the questions in advance so I feel like that the I should have come to rehearsal. Scot: [2:38] Yeah put some curveballs in here and we’ll see how it goes so. Let’s start at the top the maybe a little bit of background on this issue kind of starts with cookies so if we if we do the Wayback machine let’s start at cookies and I think a lot of us know the basics of cookies but just to kind of make sure, because a lot of some people in e-commerce start really worried about this just because it works right you don’t really have to worry about it per se but you know, I’m pretty familiar with first-party and third-party cookies but maybe maybe start at the beginning and why do cookies exist what’s the difference between first and third party cookies and then we’ll go from there. Jason: [3:19] Yeah awesome and let me be one precursor I you’ve are vastly oversold me I definitely don’t want to claim to be an expert in this stuff the. Scot: [3:30] You’re the chief digital retail cookie tracking idfa officer. Jason: [3:37] You would so one would think therefore that I was at Tech Guru but let me just say this stuff is super complicated. It’s an alphabet soup by the way anyone that’s an expert in the space is apparently not by contract not allowed to use any full words they can only use acronyms for everything which is super complicated. And it’s been my experience like I’ve been in the room with CMOS that spend a fortune on all these digital ad products and programmatic products, and the more you talk to them you start to realize oh my God they don’t understand these ad products either so I would just say like, no one should feel bad that doesn’t completely grasp this topic because it is really complicated and you and I will do our best to simplify that and so what so great Point let’s start with cookies. Scot: [4:28] I’ll also give you a pass because this thing the idfa we’re going to talk about isn’t even out yet so so we’re anticipating a lot of stuff and it’s sure to be I think will be closed and there’s enough to know kind of the general topic but some of the specific details may change once it’s released. Jason: [4:45] Yeah a lot of changes still in flight for sure. So cookies cookies are just a simple little text file that sits on your computer that stores data from your browser and so the. Kind of fundamental first use case is. You like to read The Wall Street Journal every day and you have an account with the Wall Street Journal and you don’t have to type your username in every single time you go to the Wall Street Journal so you check that little boxing remember me. Um so the way the Wall Street Journal remembers you is they get to write a little text file on on your hard drive, that says I’m the Wall Street Journal cookie and username equals Scot Wingo, um so it’s a way for websites to store data on your computer that they can use in future visits. Scot: [5:34] Side note Wall Street Journal is the worst example because they apparently ignore my cookie but go ahead I know that’s the intent but they’re like the absolute worst. Jason: [5:42] So so that I mean but the original intent of what are called first-party cookies is for a website to store data about their user that could be used to improve, their experience in subsequent visits right and it was originally about user experiences but pretty quickly. Evil advertisers figured out that it was a valuable tool to improve and Target advertising. And to facilitate that the browsers were extended to support a new kind of cookie called a third-party cookie. So a first-party cookie is the Wall Street Journal storing your username on the Wall Street Journal. And and literally the I want to say the name of that cookie file on your computer is like is the Wall Street Journal URL, and so that websites allowed to open that cookie, what third party cookies are is a way for one website to write a piece of information that then can be read by another website. [6:45] So by default the New York Times can’t read The Wall Street Journal cookie so it can’t like steal your username from The Wall Street Journal. But now websites could write these third-party cookies that became really useful for advertising so for example. You could be shopping for some skis on Backcountry.com and they could write a third party cookie that says you have a ski, in the cart that you didn’t buy and then when you go to read The Wall Street Journal, you could see an ad for those skis because the Wall Street Journal is allowed to read Backcountry dot-coms third-party cookie and then run a retargeting ad for you. So those third-party cookies are super useful for tracking you across the web and spamming you with ads from each others. Websites. And that is one of the things that is being phased out in the Privacy world is the use of third-party cookies. [7:53] Just getting one thing so a ton of people call this the Cookie list future and that’s kind of a misnomer because no one’s doing anything to first-party cookies like so there, they’re not going away third party cookies have been turned off by two of the big browser so Safari are ready. Has third party cookies off by default you can opt in the turn them back on and Facebook blocks third-party cookies and so that the only browser that still supports. For third-party cookies is the browser that’s owned by the largest advertising Network in the world which is Google. And they have now announced that they’re going to be eliminating third party cookies in early 2022. Scot: [8:41] How about Microsoft with ie or Edge I think is the official new name of their browser are they have they already. Jason: [8:49] Here’s what I’m getting into a slightly gray area there are two flavors of edge there’s kind of Microsoft’s old browsers and the modern versions of edge are based on chromium. And I believe but I’m not certain that the that third-party cookies are not. Have not been depreciated in any Chromium browser as of yet but I could be I could be mistaken. Scot: [9:21] Okay and then give us an idea of the scale of this like if third party cookies all went away. How many users are being tracked with them and you know what are some of the you mentioned what’s classically called retargeting that seems to be like squarely in the cross hairs here but what are some of the other things that would be if I if I do a Google CPC at is that going to be impacted by this. Jason: [9:47] Yeah so. [9:50] So scale wise as we sit here today in this moves around a little bit but as far as about 19 percent of the worldwide browser share so third party cookies already don’t work there, Firefox is like 4% third-party cookies don’t work and chrome is about 64 percent so it’s it’s. Third party cookies have been going away for a couple of years I think this started in 2017 that Safari started turning off some third-party cookies and. When Chrome turns them off like they will essentially be dead, the turnoff has been very graceful so far because like Safari didn’t even just say all third-party cookies are off what they said is third party cookies are going to have a very short life span so maybe they used to live forever, now they automatically get deleted every two weeks and then they automatically get deleted every week so we’ve kind of had this, slow gradual erosion of third-party cookies but once Chrome turns them off. The expectation is that nobody’s going to bother to use them because even if there’s some Niche browsers that still leave them on or a few people opt-in for them they’re just not going to be. [10:58] Ubiquitous enough to be very useful for advertisers and so so yeah when you think about the use cases for those third-party cookies, one very definite one is the retargeting add that we just talked about that you’ve got something in your cart and you didn’t buy and now I as a merchant can buy ads on other websites you go to to advertise that item right so that’s a highly personalized 121. [11:22] The what you may not notice is there’s a much more mild version of that that’s happening to you a lot more right so. [11:32] Lexus wants to sell sell you a car and so they want to show you Lexus car ads right well, one of the best places Alexis could buy a car at would be on Car and Driver webs.com right because. By default the majority of people on car driver.com are car enthusiasts there they’re more likely to be in market for a new vehicle and so you know the. One of the most affected places I could place an a car ad would be on a car Enthusiast website. That’s also the most expensive place to buy a car ad right and so maybe. Dubai some car ads on that site or maybe I can’t afford any car ads on that site but I’d like to advertise to car enthusiasts even though I can’t afford the the car and driver ad rate right, so what third party cookies let me do is say I would like to buy an add-on cnet.com. [12:31] For people that have previously visited car and driver.com right so it’s not a personalized ad it’s not a unique add to Scot Wingo, but it’s an add to a cohort of car Enthusiast and I probably don’t specifically say I want to buy, visitors from Carmen driver.com I probably say I want to buy ads from anyone that has visited anyone of a bundle of car enthusiasts websites. So so there’s a ton of ads you see on the the the web that are lightly targeted. Based on your previous browsing Behavior. Scot: [13:09] Right and the so they’re kind of like these real-time options right so someone’s going to see net and CNET says hey I’ve got a pageview coming up here from this this cohort you know that we’re going to call car buyers who wants who wants to pay for this person and there’s like a little mini auction that goes on that’s kind of how the Ed ad networks work right. Jason: [13:28] Exactly and so they’re highly efficient they get the maximum amount of money they can’t that the market will bear for all of those ads and by the way. Well advertising people love these and AD Network to have sewing these ads like it’s it’s debatable how effective they are because in my hypothetical example you’re never going to buy a Lexus. Like I like I know you’re a Tesla guy the fact that you go to turn car and driver doesn’t actually mean you have a greater affinity for buying a Lexus if you see a net. [14:00] But that’s the supposition and in all of these ads so they’re more likely to be more more buyers in that pool so that they like their clearly has some efficacy but sometimes people go overboard and thinking about how effective they are. Um but third-party cookies are useful for a couple other use cases as well, um so so one that I suspect we’ll talk about a lot later is our friends at Facebook right and Facebook invented one of the most evilly genius things on the web, they invented this like button and so you know when you’re on Facebook you see these these like buttons you can click for various content to say you like it and they’re a bunch of reasons that useful for Facebook. [14:40] Facebook conda bunch of other websites in also having a like button on their website right and almost every time you see an article there’s probably a like button that you could click on that article. And guess what that’s doing like that’s putting data in a third-party cookie that Facebook can read. And so it actually gives Facebook a ton of insight about how Facebook users behave. All across the web and so Facebook absorbs all that data and they can use it in two ways they can actually sell ads on. Properties other than their own and both Facebook and Google do this so they sell ads off of their their endemic properties and Those ads are highly targeted just like on their endemic properties, and they’re targeted using this third-party cookie metaphor. But then also Facebook is collecting a bunch of data that they put into their machine learning models and learn more, how customers behave and what their propensity to buy and do certain things is so one of Facebook’s most popular. Add products is this thing called a look-alike audience and so essentially you go to Facebook and you say. I’ve got a thousand customers it gets Biffy that are my most valuable customers. [15:58] And I would like to buy ads that get shown to people that are exactly like those customers. And Facebook says great give me their email addresses and they look at the you you hand them your email addresses for your thousand favorite customers and they use a. Super secret Black Box algorithm of machine learning that they run that through they find those users which they likely already know those users to through all of these these various Network touch points. And then they say what similarities do they have with the other billion users we have on Facebook and they. They find you a gentleman we 50,000 more customers that are probably pretty similar to your thousand best customers and then they run a really expensive auction to get you to buy. Ads targeting those those customers and so even if that ad shows up on Facebook and they didn’t need a third party ad to show that a third-party cookie to show that ad. They relied on a lot of data they collected from third-party cookies in order to build that look-alike audience in the first place. Scot: [17:05] Got it so when I say give me a look like audience they’re not just saying okay it’s you know females that are 22 to 40 their the demographic they’re saying and they also go to these websites and they also you know, login to so there that 3p data the third party cookie the first party stuff they know already like what you’re doing on Facebook but they’re also tracking all that off Facebook activity and that helps them build a better profile. Jason: [17:32] Exactly so like like a dumb or programmatic at is to just Target the ad based on the demographic or psychographic I want to. Buy ads for people that live within you know in a geography where gets biffy’s offered right I don’t want to waste money running ads and geographies in the few geographies where there’s not a good spiffy yet, so that that makes sense as an ad that super simple it’s just a kind of a hard rule show that in these zip codes not in these zip codes, um but maybe you know people in a certain age range or certain gender have a better propensity or or even a certain income bracket or something like that you know you can, you can Target based on all these apps are Buttes and and most of these at networks offer hundreds of demographic and psychographic attributes, but the look-alike audience is even fancier than that they they won’t tell you what goes into the look like audience. It’s more likely to yield customers, that behave the same way as the customers you give them then just a demographic or psychographic profile would get you. Scot: [18:37] Got it. Okay so that’s good setup so third-party cookies are under assault and we have you talked about idfa it so Along Comes This idfa and this is kind of like step I don’t know six to ten somewhere in there of a multi-step Journey where you know more and more privacy issues or initiatives are limiting, not only cookies but any tracking so maybe give us a little background on these these these other things that have kind of led to idfa. Jason: [19:09] So so again I’m trying to avoid the acronym soup idfa is a. Is an acronym from Apple and it’s called the Apple identifier for advertisers. And the this is something that’s specific to mobile apps in the way to think of this is It’s a, a unique serial number for every mobile device that has Apple. Apple’s operating system so some people like to call this like a nice metaphor for this is It’s a digital license plate so that see you know people can identify. Your car uniquely when it when it drives drives through the mobile echo system, um the of course your device has a unique number on the modem called the MAC address which is the actual leg serial number of your modem and you have a unique number from the wireless carrier, um so but those numbers it’s been illegal for for. App developers to use for a while like the because of privacy concerns and so and so the idfa was invented so the Apple would have a unique number for every user the advertisers could use and marketers could use. But that a user could change or delete or opt out of if they wanted to write like you can’t delete your your modem serial number which is why I advertised are not allowed to use that but you can and have been able to for a long time. [20:37] Opt out of having your idfa be public so by default your idea phase public everyone can see it you can in fact opt-out and and, allegedly about 30 percent of Apple users opt out of idfa so so today about 30% of users already have turned this off, um but they had to know how to dig into the Apple settings and turn it off, it said the big change that Apple’s talking about is instead of making idfa opt-out they’re going to make it opt-in which means everyone that wants to use the idfa in their mobile apps is going to have to, explicitly as your permission before they do that and I know you have some questions but side note. There’s a an exact equivalent that Google offers for the Android operating system. And it’s called Google Play service ID for Android which you’ll hear This Acronym way last but it’s it’s GPS a d ID so. Apple and Google each have a yeah digital license plate and Apple has some time last year Apple announced that, sometime this year and probably March or April is the the latest date they’re going to Pivot to from opt out of that digital license plate to opt-in for that digital license plate. Scot: [22:06] So that means on my so they recently did a change on my iPhone where you know I would, the default was you would share your your your location for example the GPS and then it got like. Now for example it will very occasionally pop up and say hey this apps tracking where you are do you want to allow that never just while it’s running or always so is that going to be what the user experience is down the road I’m going to some I’ll be using an app and it will say hey this app is tracking you do you want to allow it or not is is that kind of what. Jason: [22:44] So if you were starting in in iOS from scratch you buy the new device you and you install that you know from scratch, every time you installed an app that wanted access to your your digital license plate your idfa, um a a requester would come up saying this app intends to do x y and z. Do you allow tracking or not allow tracking and there’s some controversy over that language so we could talk about that later if you want, um so that’s how it would work on a go-forward basis but as you pointed out, you likely already have a phone that has hundreds of apps installed on it and you’re likely going to upgrade to this new variant of Apple’s IOS 14 when it comes out, and and you have a bunch of apps where you by default already opted into idfa so the way Apple handles that is over some short grace period, every time you try to use one of those apps, it’s going to reconfirm that you’re still okay with idfa being turned on by popping up this requester and saying, Facebook has been tracking you across all the mobile apps you use on the website do you want to continue to allow them to track or do you want to disallow it. Scot: [23:59] Got it okay so just to reorient a lot of the cookie stuff is really kind of browser-based a lot of this this idfa and these these little digital license plate you things they’re more app-based but they’re both under pressure and the idfa is essentially the same as getting rid of third-party cookies but. Way abstract use that is that a. Jason: [24:21] For iOS yes. Scot: [24:22] Fireless got it and this is this is material because you know we see these stats all the time that you know over half of e-commerce you know transactions now I guess our mobile and more than 60 70 percent of traffic is mobile and then you know iOS is something like 60 70 % of e-commerce for some reason it over index is even though you know there that’s about I think, Android has higher market share iOS has higher e-commerce share is that. Jason: [24:54] In general worldwide shares about 50/50, between Android and Apple but Apple users 10 in a variety of ways to spend more money so from a consumer standpoint they’re more valuable. Scot: [25:10] Got it and then I think you said it in there but this is going to come out in Spring of 2021 it’s going to be a part of a new 14 iOS 14 release, I heard today someone say end of March so maybe that’s maybe it’s coming pretty soon. Jason: [25:26] Yeah it’s the beta is out so this Behavior like developers and even if you’re not a developer I think you can now install there’s an open version of this beta so it’s just a matter of when they push it and they haven’t announced the exact push date but it’s you know given that, that it’s in open Beta right now it can’t it’s not going to be too long. Scot: [25:48] Yes so our listeners are out there and hopefully they’ve stuck through this and so they’re kind of thinking what’s this mean for me. So number one third party cookies a lot of them rely on that but then number two a lot of us in the e-commerce ecosystem and. Full disclosure this is true it’s Biffy. You know it seems like the Google type of AD spend will still work pretty well because you got your keyword and all that stuff’s pretty linear if you will. But it seems like this could really break Facebook because Facebook so you know, Facebook’s largest shares through the app there’s some bazillion people logged into that app all the time every day doing a lot of activity and when I say Facebook I’m including Instagram in the whole family there and you know so now. Now either Facebook won’t be able to track, totally or there they will be hobbled because they’re no longer able to use a bunch of other data so seems like this will decrease the efficacy of e-commerce people that are using Facebook as a channel is that, is that kind of how it all ties together. Jason: [26:56] Potentially I think it’s definitely fair to say that Facebook is kind of that odd man out in all these games right because essentially we haven’t really. Explicitly said this but there’s there’s this interesting conflict between two popular Trends right right, there’s a there’s a popular privacy Trend in the world where users are saying we should have more privacy and big corporations shouldn’t be allowed to do a bunch of stuff with our data and monetize us without our permission right so there’s kind of you know a lot of laws that have been passed in California and Europe that you know kind of impact how we all do business on the web that are more privacy Centric and so you, um and Google Apple and Facebook have all been sued, um for violations of these privacy laws right and and some of the things they’ve explicitly been sued for are these mechanisms like third-party cookies and idfa advertising, and so one way to avoid getting sued is to, make these more privacy Centric changes right and so you know if you asked them if you ask Google and and apple why they’re making these changes it’s because. Because users want privacy and we don’t think that you know these things are the right thing to do would be there kind of. Like not completely credible self-serving. Scot: [28:17] Yeah they want to know legislations coming and they’ve kind of want to get in front of it like you can either you can be legislated or you can solve. Jason: [28:24] And that is for sure the talking point and that it has the added advantage of being at least partially true right, but the the second huge Trend in the world the I know is your favorite topic of all times is antitrust right and, like are there certain companies that have this monopolistic power and they’re so powerful that they can do things that aren’t in a, in a consumers best interest and there are a lot of people that accuse. [28:52] Apple and Google of using their their alleged Monopoly power, in in this privacy dispute right right because for example, Google the main Google ad product is buying ads that show up in search results on Google right and those are not impacted by any of the changes we just talked about right if you type Lexus into a search term, Google can show you a Lexus ad and they make a fortune. [29:24] Doing that right and so they’re they’re collecting unique information about Scott searches and. Selling ads to advertisers based on your search Behavior, um what they’re what they’re saying is other people shouldn’t be allowed to do that using web browsing behavior in the same way we do it for search Behavior right and, um a lot of people would say Google built this huge business they that business enabled them to get a ton of traffic and now that they have a ton of traffic and users are locked into their echo system, now they’re making it way harder for anyone else to come behind them and do what they did right. Apple equally like one of the kind of Nefarious things and all this is Apple, sells ads you can buy an ad in the App Store. Shows up in search to try to entice users to install your mobile app that you then make money on right and, the number one place you’re competing with for that ad is an ad on Facebook to get you to install an, and so what is Apple doing they’re making it way harder for Facebook to sell an ad to get you to install an app but it’s exactly. [30:39] Equal I mean it’s exactly as easy as it’s always been for Apple to sell you that ad and so, the there’s this weird conflict between antitrust and privacy and apple and. Google are both rapping their themselves in the flags of privacy and potentially getting a little more smelly an antitrust, and Facebook is the odd man out here right because, privacy is controlled by the echo system the browser echo system in the mobile app ecosystem right so Google is the big winner because they have a mobile app and a browser the biggest browser, um Apple has the most valuable mobile ecosystem Facebook has neither right so they’ve been a huge beneficiary of, of programmatic ads and tracking consumers to create better add products and monetizing their customer base and now they’re their Destiny is the least in their own hands because, all of that data you know is is going through these these doors that are controlled by. By their there sometimes Rivals Apple and Google and so you know one way I like to talk about this. These companies built these huge businesses and they’re trying to make it harder for people to follow in their footsteps it’s kind of like they climbed up a really tall ladder and now that they’re the top of the hill they’re pulling up the ladder behind them so that no one can follow them. Scot: [32:07] Yes so Apple and Google or winners in this because they just control so much and then Facebook is going to be under pressure but there. Ginormous so they’ll be fine but it’s you know there’s an argument to be made it will stifle innovation in this this whole world because you know it’s going to get it almost impossible for another ecosystem to be born at this point because the new rules favor the the existing folks. Jason: [32:33] Yeah so the way they think of that is definitely Facebook is a loser compared to Apple and Google in these changes but the only compared to those two compared to anyone else, Facebook has this huge Advantage because they have a ton of their own users and they still get to collect first-party data about their own users when they’re on. Facebook great so so a way bigger loser would be Conde Nast like someone that produces content and tries to monetize that content through ads, the doesn’t have near the user base that Facebook has right so all of these content publishers. Get more hurt by this than Facebook does and who gets more hurt than any of them is, some new startup content Venture that that you know is going to be born tomorrow and it’s going to be much harder for them to build their business than it was the incumbents. Scot: [33:23] Because the Publishers are almost all getting the optimization of their ads through either an app kind of a thing like we’ve talked about or through third-party cookies so they’re getting kind of the effectively ad-supported content is going to be under a ton of pressure. Jason: [33:38] Exactly and and that’s particularly where yeah the third party cookies come in is the. A lot of the ads you see on all those Publishers are placed by Google or Facebook using these look like audiences and and the third party cookies so that’s one of the. The services that gets be diminished, as third party cookies are less popular and increasingly people are consuming a lot of content and news through mobile apps, so they would use the idfa to do those same services and and so the all of those things are breaking if if you were a mobile app. Um that that monetized yourself by selling ads in your mobile app as many games for example do. It’s the ads you can sell are going to be way less valuable after idfa is opt-in than they are today and so like yeah. Scot: [34:33] Yeah how about user behavior let’s say I’m Best Buy and I have an app out there and I’ve got all this cool tracking where you know. Maybe log in and out who you are but maybe you don’t log in and I try to do some personalization or something or even I have a little ad Network inside of there what’s going to broke break in the Best Buy app if someone this idfa thing goes into effect I get that question and the way they’re working the question it’s essentially like you know do you want to sell your soul to the devil yes or no so so I assume a lot of people are going to say no do you have a point of view on how many people will say yes or no. Jason: [35:07] Yeah so it’s all speculation and in the beta the the language has changed a bunch of times and so how, the language matters a lot in the likelihood of opting in, um so for example like same question it’s the same idfa question if I say this website uses your behavior across the web to improve your customer experience can I continue, um [35:34] A lot of people will say sure but if the if the question says this website tracks you across a bunch of other websites and uses that to sell ads to you. Um Can can they continue to track the way you’re going to say no it’s. So so the vernacular matters a lot it started out in these betas more friendly and it’s getting more overt. I don’t think that that we’ve landed on the final language I actually do believe that in the release the Publishers going to be able to make a case for why you should opt in so I think they’re going to be able to provide some of the language, but the text on the button they don’t get to control and the text on the button right now is pretty negative it says. Wow to track it doesn’t say like enable experience or anything like that it says like allowed attract and viscerally people don’t want to get trapped, so today the estimates are that about seventy percent of people have idfa turned on because you, it’s opt out you’d have to opt out to not do it the. [36:49] The speculation is that only 10 or 15 percent of users will click allow to track now. Some of that is Chicken Little saying the the sky is falling right like Facebook is saying no one’s going to opt into that, because they’re arguing in favor of changing it and not doing it right and so they’re trying to paint the most dire version of this for now I don’t know if they really believe that diversion or not but that that that’s kind of the order of magnitude we could go from. Fifteen percent of the mobile apps having users that are identified or 70% having apps that are identifiable to 10. Scot: [37:28] Got it okay back to my Best by example sorry so so now I’m Best Buy I’ve spent billions of dollars in this awesome app and yeah I pop up this thing that says hey we’re going to try to offer you a custom experience and then the button says allow tracking then you know most people say no what’s going to happen to my Best Buy up like what’s you know what am I going to lose as the retailer. Jason: [37:51] Yeah so the in the app a couple of things like you. You there maybe retargeting app ads in some mobile apps right so maybe you read The Wall Street Journal in a mobile app. Maybe you read it through Apple news feed or you read it through Google news or some other app, um their best by may have popped up a retargeting add-on that in that mobile app when it sees that you had a Sony PlayStation 5 in your box and they finally got them back in stock. Hypothetical because I know they don’t have any the. So the their ability to do those retargeting ads in other apps goes away the, but the bigger deal I would argue for retailers and their mobile apps is, the the amount of insight they get about their users goes away right so at the moment when your opted in and you’ve installed the Best Buy app on your phone Best Buy can use that idfa to see what other apps you run, and so they can build. [39:04] Profiles of you that they put in their customer database what they would call their CDP their customer data profile, that you know say hey Scott is a Best Buy Rewards member he has the Best Buy Mobile app installed and we also know that he spends an awful lot of time in Pokemon. [39:23] And so that they may find other hypothetically speaking of course, and so they may find that like oh there are other other people in Scotts age bracket that are also rewards members and and spend a lot of time in Pokemon do this and so. They could use that in a whole variety of ways so it gives them, less visibility about their users I would argue that the third-party cookie changes more material for a wholesale retailer like Best Buy than the idfa changes because just to be honest. Outside of a few retailers it’s a very small percentage of a Retailer’s traffic comes through a mobile app retailers haven’t been super successful at getting. Getting their mobile app used but if you’re a publisher and particularly if you’re a gain in the game industry, um the or if you’re in advertising and particularly if you’re advertising for installation and mobile apps those are all the. The segments that are likely to get most wall up by idfa. Scot: [40:29] Cool that is a good segue because it wouldn’t be a Jason Scott show if we didn’t talk about Amazon. So Amazon is the one retailer you know you and I are we get a lot of the data and when you look at the comps core data their app is kind of in the pole position it’s always the highest use retail app they’ve said, think publicly that you know over half of their volume comes from the Apple app or the Amazon App what’s the impact to Amazon on both the app side and then also if they lose this third-party cookie thing what happens to Amazon. Jason: [41:06] So there are negatives for Amazon in both, so again because they have way more mobile app users then than others they get to they’ll lose some insight that they’re gaining right now about a big chunk of their customer base, um they do run a bunch of ads all over the Internet and so they’ll have a little less visibility about how those customers are behaving on on third-party sites but, all of that is outweighed by the fact that. It actually makes buying an ad from Amazon way more valuable right so when when. The idfa and the third party cookies are really about. Um using behavior on one property to Target a user on another property, and fundamentally when that practice goes away then the best advertisers are going to be the ones that have the most eyeballs on their own properties, and the the cust the companies that know the most about those users about those eyeballs right and so you think about. Scot: [42:22] And they have ads inside their property to it. Jason: [42:24] Exactly and exactly so those those are called first-party ads and like they’re not affected by any of these changes so Amazon can still use. Every browsing behavior and purchase Behavior you’ve ever done in the Amazon Echo System on their website or their app too. [42:43] Run their own ads to you when you’re on an Amazon property or run any other advertiser’s ads for you while they’re on their own property right and so what happens is, when the the open internet becomes harder to advertise on because of all these changes. Um you’re more likely to want to buy ads in a Walled Garden where the ad network has a bunch of data about their users so you’re more likely to buy an ad that shows up on Facebook. For Facebook users you’re more likely to buy a search ad on Google in their first party echo system and you’re way more likely to buy an ad on Amazon, because you’re your ability to do cross-site advertising on Conde Nast content sites gets diminished so. I would I would argue that well there’s some I’m sure there’s some negatives for an Amazon and some annoyances net-net, it’s going to dry consolidate more advertising on to Amazon and and help them more to a lesser extent, it actually makes it more appealing for other very large retailers to lean into their own advertising networks for that same reason so I would also argue, Walmart for example is a beneficiary, of this trend and you and we’ve seen them in the last year making huge investments in selling selling their ads they’re not as successful as Amazon. [44:07] Their upside is actually as big or bigger than Amazon because they can also sell ads and now do, two customers that walk in a Walmart store they show ads on the self-service checkout and they show ads on the TV wall and you can buy programmatic ads and all of those things through Walmart connect which is kind of their version of, Amazon marketing. Scot: [44:31] Publisher thing was interesting because it almost made me think well if I’m Amazon I go to Conde Nast and say Let me let me host your content and I can actually, monetize it for you and you know I know Google and you know to some extent Facebook do that through that that accelerator you thing what does that three letter acronym for it where they do it because they claim it’s faster right. But I wonder if you think you think that’s going to be part of what this does is it starts. Jason: [45:00] It does it gives them leverage to keep more users on their echo system and it potentially Force other people to, Syndicate experiences and content to them that otherwise might not want to do that right and so, for sure like Amazon is a significant Publishers you know like they have their own you know the wildly popular TV channel and am in Prime video, and now they’re doing live streaming video and they’re doing all these these and twitch that they already are a publisher so it’s it’ll be Supernatural for them too, to leverage this endemic Advantage the another Super interesting impact along those same lines is, today Facebook was perfectly happy to run an ad on its Network and then send you to a Shopify site to buy something. [45:51] Right because they using third-party cookies they could actually know that you bought that thing on on the Shopify site and tell that Advertiser that they had worked, um and and they had a nice little Echo System well with third-party cookies going away it’s actually way better for Facebook to say you know what we should be selling stuff on Facebook and so in in my mind. Increases the priority on Facebook to capture the Commerce activity, on their platform because otherwise they look at Amazon catch nipping at their heels and saying oh my God Amazon’s running a lot more about their their consumers in their Walled Garden and we are in our Walled Garden and we’re going to keep leaking advertisers from Facebook to Amazon and so I think. Facebook had already figured this out but I think this like really accelerates Facebook’s need to win endemic Commerce and I would argue in the long run, that’s that’s not super favorable to Shopify because there’s a ton of the D to see companies that, that have been most successful on Shopify like their primary source of traffic is buying ads on Facebook and increasingly Facebook is going to want to say hey let’s close those sales on Facebook. Scot: [47:04] Yes one of the reasons I really want to talk about this because I started to read some articles that are. And I can’t tell how Chicken Little they are but they’re essentially saying you know look a big chunk of the Shopify world is going to be the attacked so supervised getting attacked from Amazon we’ve talked generally you know we’ve talked about this and you and I have different opinions of how, how that’s going to happen but I think I think we all agree that Amazon has Shopify in their sights but now you have effectively Facebook’s been a good partner for Shopify, but this change caused by Apple has a domino effect that if I’m now Facebook I want to cut Shopify out of that because I want to own the checkout so that’s another side and then you know. Some large percentage of Shopify sales are driven through these DMV bees and these brands that are by influencers that are really living off of either the third-party cookie to track that stuff, or the you know the idfa changes it’s an app it’s going to change pretty dramatically is there a way to. First of all do you agree with that and then second you know is this a 2% thing is this like half of half of Shopify I know they don’t disclose it but I’m just kind of wondering. Jason: [48:21] Yeah I don’t think there’s any way. Scot: [48:22] Scale of them packed. Jason: [48:23] For really know and and again like this I think the. The force behavioral changes are going to be pretty significant, whether that Force Behavior change like really Wallop Shopify or not I think is even harder to predict and like again at the moment like everybody’s crying pop or right and it’s a little bit like, everybody who’s under antitrust investigation you know says oh my gosh if we’re forced to split up like it’s going to be the worst outcome for consumers ever, um and internally they may or may not really believe that but they want to paint the most dire picture so that you know they can mitigate what happens to them, a lot of that’s happening right now right so I you know Facebook is saying hey an individual advertisers ad Effectiveness might go down by 50% because of this change. So Scot: [49:16] But it’s Amplified because they’re trying to make the same worsens. Jason: [49:19] Yeah but they’re they are painting the worst-case pit picture and what they really mean is, a Facebook ad that’s not on Facebook right which is like seven percent of Facebook sad so, so seven percent of their ads might go down by 50% and but the as they’re on Facebook might be a little less effective because Facebook gets a little less data but it’s probably not as bad so. I think it’s hard. Um quantify these things but I do think it’s it’s potentially in a hate to use this word but like I think it potentially is a paradigm shift for some of these things and just just. Scot: [49:57] A paradigm shift we need an audio for paradigm shift. Jason: [50:00] Yeah we’ll have to get one of those but I do I think fundamentally like you have this open web and there’s this like notion of, of interoperability between multiple sites and experiences across multiple sites and and as these privacy changes get locked down essentially what it does is it says. The best most effective experiences are going to be, for users inside of a Walled Garden and an inside of a large well-established wild garden the got built before these changes were implemented so it’s really favorable to the incumbents, it’s really favorable to the the kind of fang. Um guys of you will and I and you know they were already winning but I do think this this makes it harder to imagine. You know some some new version of Instagram emerging and growing really big really fast or Tick Tock you know or you know monetizing as quickly or any of those kinds of things so. It’s. Scot: [51:00] Do you think it’ll be like a severe enough that like it’s interesting you mentioned Fang because the in and Fang is Netflix and you know they have a massive amount of first-party data right so you know are they going to add like some publisher e kinds of things because they have all this data. Jason: [51:15] I bet you they are all all of the good walled Gardens are right now saying hey some of that money that’s getting broken that was out in the rest of the internet like how do I get you know it’s more than my fair share of that. Scot: [51:27] Right so we got some good stock picks from Jason straight away here. Jason: [51:33] Yeah yeah side side out yeah I’m the world’s worst stock picker. Scot: [51:39] Don’t take Financial advice from a chief digital retail idfa officer. Jason: [51:44] Yeah you probably shouldn’t even take like digital Commerce advice from you for sure should not take stock advice. Scot: [51:50] But here you are listening this show okay. Jason: [51:52] I put all my money and get spiffy franchises. Scot: [51:55] Awesome summer okay where do we go from here so I think that’s all interesting but let’s project forward a little bit you know cookies they’re kind of on their deathbed mobile app tracking is all this. Open internet going to more clothes internet what were some of the Alternatives that are people and then I saw Google also just announced not only at the Chrome level but just generally they’re going to get rid of. Tracking old school tracking. But then they talked about this new thing which is kind of like some machine learning thing will just kind of assign you it was even keep your like because the machine will just decide. Jason: [52:28] Yeah it has an awesome acronym but I’ll wait to unveil it for a. Scot: [52:31] Okay alright where do we go from here and be sure to highlight all the awesome acronyms. Jason: [52:36] Yeah so there’s a couple of alternatives to cookies right like so what. The fundamentally the cookie got processed in a server and so what Google is saying is we think I’m more privacy Centric way is, to keep all the personal data on the on the browser and never send it to the server so so a lot of these ships are too kind of move from server based solutions to browser-based Solutions, um the and I’ll come back to Google specific alternative in a minute as we already talked about like what this does a ton is push people onto walled Gardens for all of these highly targeted advertising networks because they get to all. Um work with their first party data and nothing really changes. [53:21] There are a bunch of third parties that have what I like to call real ID systems and so. Side note cookies always suck they were they were highly imperfect we treated them like they were a person but they weren’t they were a, a specific browser and a lot of people ran three browsers on their laptop and then they also had a different browser on their mobile device, and oh by the way they may have set cookies to get deleted every two weeks or whatever like so cookies were pretty broken before and could only track you on the web, so the big evil marketing Geniuses would say, hey let’s make our own serial number for Scot wingo and let’s collect a ton of data about him, um across all of his devices and let’s by data from the Publishers about how he behaves on the publisher site and let’s buy data from the credit card companies about how he spends money and we can build this huge. Um database about Scot Wingo not some random cookie but about Scot wingo and then we can use that data to Target Scott so, said the big evil ad tech companies have have these real ID systems and so. [54:33] There’s a company called trade desk that has the unified ID they’re partnering with Walmart now live ramp is a big data provider and they have this authenticated traffic solution, and my evil corporate overlords own a huge data provider called Epsilon and we have a product called core ID so so a lot of us are saying hey we have a better idea system then, then idfa or third-party cookies anyway and and side note Google, published a letter last week saying we think like we’re not going to ban those approaches but we don’t think those approaches are very customer privacy Centric and we don’t like them, so there now is a dispute about the future of those but that you can buy those services from from any of these marketing agencies. In the short run they’re certainly going to benefit from the these more popular options going away. [55:31] A lot of people used to do what’s called browser fingerprinting which is they used a lot of signals from your browser to identify you without your cookies that’s mostly been banned by privacy laws so we won’t see a lot of that. Um there’s increasingly this thing called clean rooms where a publisher and an advertising Network might bring their their uniquely personally identifiable data together too, too kind of a, a safe room that’s not on the internet and temporarily merge their data to build a targeting cohort or to build some some cross-channel analytics take the insight and then both take their data and leave so that they never kind of. Give the other party a chance to see your steal their data but they get to marry their data temporarily so so there’s a lot of products kind of, that are leveraging these clean rooms to do kind of batch processing now that we can’t do this real-time third party cookies and then the. The the Google approach is to do what we what I would generally call cohorts so instead of saying hey we’re going to advertise uniquely to Scot Wingo because we know he’s a car Enthusiast and we’re going to show him Alexis. [56:42] Google is going to build a cohort of people that it thinks are in the cars. And it’s not gonna put that cohort on a server it’s going to put a store your membership in that cohort on your browser, so an ad can pop up for Scott that’s a car ad in the car company can buy an ad for just people that have a high affinity for cars. [57:05] The. No personally identifiable information about Scott ever get sent to a server only Scott’s browser knows to show him that ad and so Google calls this kind of browser-based cohort, um a Federated learning of cohorts and they’re using machine learning to build them and so that the that F loc is an acronym flock f f loc and so Google’s, official replacement for third-party cookies is the advertisers can buy, ads based on on these these machine learning Black Box generated machine learning cohorts called flock. Scot: [57:50] Okay Federated learning of coal that just rolls right up I like Flock better than Federated learning of many. Jason: [57:58] The idea is just that like hey there’s going to be some taxonomy on your browser and there’s going to be a checkbox next to things that your browser thinks you’re interested in, and then those are the things that you know they’re going to be like ads that only trigger when when your browser has one of those boxes. Scot: [58:17] Got it okay awesome, so as is our custom at the Jason Scott show we’re kind of getting past time but and you’ve talked about a lot of implications but it’s probably a good kind of summary to kind of walk through all right you know so listeners out there they are they’re loving the Deep dive what’s this mean for e-commerce world and then also the larger add world and the internet. Jason: [58:42] Well so I think it is likely that a lot of digital ads a lot of programmatic digital ads are likely to be. Either a little or a lot less effective than they were before and so the net impact of that is the amount that an Advertiser should be willing to pay for one of those ads should go down so the. So CPM rates for advertisers will go down and in general what that means is if you built your business based on selling ads you gave away your game for free but you show Dads in the, in that game you gave away your content for free on your new site but you sold ads in that content. [59:21] That ad based business model is less attractive than it used to be so I suspect, that one impact we’re going to see is a lot of people are going to Pivot from ad based business models to Alternatives right so that meat might mean. [59:36] Some newspapers that were on the fence about ad-based or pay walls are more likely to move to pay walls because, the ad model Works glass it means a lot of people that use Dad’s to find you and sell you one thing I’m more likely to focus on. Customer lifetime value they’re more likely to want to sell you a subscription they’re more likely to want to lock you into a platform because all of these kind of, one-time ad-based sales are just more expensive less effective than they used to be so I think those are kind of some of the, the key changes I do think this cleanroom thing you know continues to grow and overall the big winners are the people that have the most first-party data have the most traffic to their own property so the walled Gardens the the big retailers, ten to win. You know I think this privacy versus antitrust thing is gonna you know get really ugly and play out in terms in all kinds of governmental actions and legislative actions and things and who knows how any of that, that plays out. And I doubt Facebook gets creamed by any of this but they you know they do probably slightly lose to Apple and Google and all these changes. Scot: [1:00:56] Well it is happened again we’ve used up all our allotted time for listeners that are with us and and enjoying these deep Dives we would love to get your review, you know the the best place to review this is over on iOS in the Apple podcast listener so even if you listen somewhere else head over there leave us a review we would really appreciate that if you like this kind of content that’s what keeps us going Jason appreciate having you on the show this week if people want to track you on the internet or learn more about this this idfa topic work in the where would you send them. Jason: [1:01:34] Yeah well they should listen to the Jason and Scott Show podcast first and foremost but you know you can also always find me on Twitter under under retailgeek and, just a quick disclaimer the Jason Scott showed doesn’t track you or know you in any way and never will so. Exactly so we but we sure do appreciate you listening and until next time happy Commercing.
Bertie Wooster is in Paris and life is good. That is, until helpless, hapless, brainless Biffy (a very dear chum) turns up with a tragic tale of woe. It is up to Bertie and Jeeves to set matters right, only Jeeves absolutely refuses to intervene. Wooster is on his own as he plunges into peril to save his pal, with predictable results. Part one of a two-part story adapted from P.G. Wodehouse.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/mysteriousjourney)
The Black Band T-Shirt chaps are back, and with our first guest in tow, Chris' brother and My Eyes Are Old And Bent drummer Alex Morrant! He suggested The White Stripes for us, and in this first part we go in on why it's not ironic that a drummer chose The White Stripes, their incredible covers, and how Jack White can, on one song, sound like Jack Black. Follow our band My Eyes Are Old and Bent @meaoab on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram and Grim Heart Promotions on Facebook & Instagram on @grimheartpromo. Ollie is on Twitter @olliexcore and Chris is on @cmgrumps. Check out our Spotify Rank Bank playlist for all the choices from this week's episode and from the Biffy, Dillinger, Reuben & Björk episodes, link here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7GZMXr0eHTICa0TcZ3AYsE?si=xio1dp-2Qoi9ZPoIZC28Yw
The Black Band T-Shirt chaps are seeing in 2021 with a bang, ranking the discography of Björk! In the first part we cover her nineties output plus Vespertine, and have a brief chat about her pre-solo career. Chris and Ollie also discuss which version of the greatest song of all time is better, Lars Von Trier (eurgh) and being “horny for Björk”. Content warning for this episode: stalking, harrassment, violence and suicide are all mentioned so if you'd rather skip this one, please check out our Biffy, TDEP & Reuben episodes instead :) Follow Ollie on Twitter @olliexcore and Chris @cmgrumps. Our band My Eyes Are Old And Bent can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @meaoab and follow Grim Heart Promotions @grimheartpromo on Facebook and Instagram for when we're all vaccinated and gigs can happen again.
Here's the finale of our holiday double feature of "Romancing the Werewolf" by Gail Carriger. Biffy and Lyall are drowning in babies, pine boughs, and plum-colored curtains, but still manage to thwart a mysterious cult. But it might take a Christmas miracle for them to actually discuss their feelings...Citrus: LimeSweetness: Wassail/mulled ciderGore: crunchTrigger Warnings: mentions of past sexual assault, cults, werewolf typical violence
Back at it FHP, Tonight I have on my Buddy From Detroit and Host of the Average Joe's MMA Show Jeff aka Biffy the Beat Slayer. Its been a while so I asked Jeff to help me break down some ECW. Where you an ECW guy? Drop your comments Smash that Like and Subscribe to the channel for Weekly shows #ECW #NovembertoRemember #WWE #WWF #AEW iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/full-heel-podcast/id1238500437?mt=2 … PodBean- https://rafaelchaidez88.podbean.com/ FaceBook- https://www.facebook.com/FullHeelPodcast/ … Stitcher- https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/full-heel-podcast?refid=stpr
A huge week for Gordon as he was joined LIVE in the studio by Radio X hero, Richard Ashcroft. If you've ever heard him before, you'll be unsurprised to hear him being very frank and candid!! There's also a look at Canadian Comedian Katherine Ryan's Rider and who Ed Sheeran met at the urinals! All this plus a Classic Album from R.E.M!! Tune in LIVE every weeknight from 7pm-10pm to hear Gordon on Radio X.
© 2020-2025 Ivy Podcast Discovery LLC
