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This Week in Digital Marketing

• OpenAI Integrates Shopping Capabilities, With Many Trailing Closely

• China Announces AI Self Sufficiency, Perplexity Expands Reach, OpenAI Curbs Sycophancy

• GEO Emerges as the New SEO

• and more…

POINT OF CONTACT

Newest Insights on Customer Engagement

🛒 Add to Cart: OpenAI is seeing an overhauled ChatGPT's “search” functionality to deliver personalized shopping suggestions, product reviews, and multiple citations in search results. Unlike Google Shopping, ChatGPT's recommendations will be organic and ad-free, instead leveraging user preferences for personalization. Code snippets suggest a deeper Shopify integration is also in development, potentially allowing purchases directly within chat conversations. While neither OpenAI nor Shopify has officially confirmed the collaboration, the implications are big. Shopify’s merchant network would instantly gain access to ChatGPT’s vast global audience and vice versa, with no added integration work required.

💰Monetization at Last: The integration of shopping within ChatGPT is seen as a challenge to incredibly lucrative traditional search engines like Google. However, OpenAI has not yet fully explored how affiliate revenue models will work within this shopping experience, though it plans to experiment with different approaches. While OpenAI's primary focus is on delivering a high-quality user experience, the company has significant revenue goals, potentially including affiliate revenue as part of its future earnings strategy.

💳 Payment Revolution: This move is well timed. The conversational commerce space is heating up beyond just product discovery. Financial giants are jumping into the AI shopping arena, with Visa introducing Intelligent Commerce, Mastercard releasing Agent Pay and Paypal announcing Agentic Toolkit. These solutions address critical friction points by enabling AI agents to securely handle transactions with appropriate consumer guardrails.

🛍️ Shopping Spree: Microsoft, Perplexity AI, and Google are all developing their own AI-powered shopping experiences. Microsoft has launched its Copilot Merchant Program for sellers to create in-assistant storefronts, while Perplexity offers one-click purchases with "Buy with Pro." Who knew that one day we'd have AI assistants fighting over who gets to spend our money? The future of retailTopic: Content

THIS WEEK IN THE LOOP

Headlines on Digital Marketing, AI, and More

🇨🇳  AI Red Alert: At its Create 2025 event, Baidu unveiled budget-friendly upgrades to its ERNIE models while throwing shade at DeepSeek, as China’s AI labs race to undercut costs without losing edge. Meanwhile, Butterfly Effect’s agent Manus just scored $75M, flexing OpenAI-level chops with a tenth of the buzz. As President Xi just declared, AI self-sufficiency is now a national priority—because nothing says “innovation” like state-backed speedruns.

🕸️ Hungry Comperplexion: Perplexity really wants your user data. Perplexity AI's strategic expansion reveals its dual appetite for user data and platform reach. While CEO Aravind Srinivas has expressed interest in keeping Chrome under Google's control, he's simultaneously building a proprietary browser to collect comprehensive user data for premium ad sales. Meanwhile, the company has expanded to WhatsApp, where users can now access "answers, sources, and image generation."

😘 Flattery Fallout: OpenAI has rolled back last week’s GPT‑4o update after it veered into “overly flattering or agreeable—often described as sycophantic” territory. The revised approach favors long-term trust over instant affirmation, with refinements to training methods, clearer behavioral guardrails, and expanded customization tools. When a chatbot starts sounding like a yes-man, it’s not just unhelpful—it’s unsettling.

TO INFINITY & BEYOND

How Businesses are Scaling Today

📐 Evolving Search: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is emerging as the next frontier after SEO as AI search engines like Perplexity, Claude, and ChatGPT transform how users discover information. ChatGPT alone garnered 3.8 billion visits in 2024, underscoring the shift towards AI as a primary source of information for 8% of Americans, emphasizing the need for a revised approach. GEO transcends traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) by focusing on embedding content within AI training datasets and real-time crawlers, rather than solely pursuing high rankings on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)

🔎 GEOmetry Lesson: While SEO aims to improve visibility on search engines, GEO targets direct integration into AI-driven conversations. The shift from keyword-focused optimization to context and relevance presents both challenges and opportunities. As one expert notes, "The algorithms powering these AI engines prioritize authoritative content that demonstrates genuine expertise." While SEO success is often measured by backlinks and keyword density, GEO prioritizes “unlinked brand mentions” across platforms like Reddit and LinkedIn, where content accuracy, information freshness, and domain authority is recognized — requiring a complete rethinking of digital visibility strategies.

🎭 Shifting Queries: With forecasts suggesting that 25% of queries will be handled by AI by 2026, GEO implementation is becoming increasingly vital. Analytics for generative AI performance differs dramatically from traditional search metrics, but tools like Goodie AI now track “citation frequency,” and platforms like Perplexity are prioritizing fresh, crawlable content. But, there’s still a chance your content might be absorbed and synthesized without users ever seeing your brand name. Who knew we'd someday miss the simplicity of Google's algorithms?

SPOTLIGHT

INSTANTLY CREATE AD VARIATIONS WITH AI

• Go to ChatGPT and select GPT-4o as your model.

• Upload your ad image as a reference.

• Prompt ChatGPT to create new variations.

• You can ask it to change the color scheme, name, style, design — even swap out the subject if needed.

Sample Prompts: "Create an ad like this sample for a [product] called [name], using [color], with the headline '[headline]'." OR "Create an ad like this, but for a [new product], and make the [subject] a blonde."

• Quickly test different headlines, color palettes, styles, or even full design changes — all in seconds.

• Save your favorite variation and launch it in your campaign!

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