Editorial
Research Report
Your Reputation Is On the (Phone) Line
The Gist
- AI shopping still asks too much of consumers. Most AI-assisted gift buying required multiple prompts and detailed guidance, revealing a personalization gap that limits mainstream adoption.
- Email inboxes hold the missing context. Purchase receipts, seasonal buying patterns, promotions, loyalty offers, and social signals make email the richest untapped data source for AI commerce.
- Data access will decide AI commerce winners. Google’s deep integration of personal data sets a high bar, pushing competitors toward inbox access, acquisitions, or alternative data strategies to stay viable.
The majority of consumers used AI to help them make gift-buying decisions this past holiday season, according to a Zeta Global survey. But that doesn't mean the experience was smooth. Most consumers had to enter lots of guidance about the gift recipient and preferred brands, typically over several prompts, before they got recommendations that were on target.
For AI commerce to truly take off, that barrier has to be broken down. And it has to be broken down with data about our friends and family members, but perhaps most importantly by data about what we've purchased. Preferably, lots of data about what we've purchased. Oh, plus data about deals. Preferably, including data about deals that are just for us, as well as loyalty program offers and redemption opportunities for us.
Now, where would future AI commerce leaders find this information?
Table of Contents
- Your Inbox Knows You Best
- Access to Promotions & Loyalty Program Offers
- A Truth and a Prediction for AI Commerce
Your Inbox Knows You Best
The long-reigning and unkillable email inbox may be the secret sauce that makes AI commerce offerings irresistible to consumers. That's because it contains much of the essential data to make AI commerce amazingly compelling:
- Purchase history. Your email inbox is the account of record for all of your online purchases, plus some of your offline purchases, thanks to the rise of e-receipts.
- Seasonal purchases. The timing of purchases from individual brands reveals seasonal buying patterns and seasonal brand preferences, including once-a-year brand purchases and gift purchases.
- Promotional offers. Supplementing the brand affinity learnings available from your purchase history, the promotional emails you subscribe to provide a read on those brands you value the most currently. The offers in those emails can also inform AI commerce results from a pricing perspective.
- Loyalty program offers. These function similarly to promotional emails, with the added wrinkle of redemption opportunities.
- Social graph. Interpersonal emails allow for the construction of social graphs, which can inform gift-buying recommendations.
Of course, texting and messaging inboxes and social media networks can provide some of this information as well, but email is better established and more deeply entrenched with most consumers when it comes to data about purchase histories, seasonal purchases, promotional offers and loyalty program offers.
Related Article: Email's Enduring Advantage in an AI-Disrupted Marketing World
Access to Promotions & Loyalty Program Offers
While brand loyalty and affinity are powerful, prices are still incredibly influential—and are the most important factor for some consumers. So, to present the most compelling product recommendations, AI engines need access to detailed pricing information. There are three levels of potential pricing data:
- General available pricing: The price that's available to any brand visitor
- Members-only pricing: The price that's available to every person who subscribes to a brand's promotional marketing campaigns, to every member of a brand's loyalty program, etc.
- Individual-level pricing: The price that's available to an individual based on personalized offers, offers received via segmented or automated campaigns, the redemption of customer loyalty points, etc.
Those second and third levels are critical to surfacing the best pricing. This is something that Google seems to recognize.
As of last May, Google began signing up for brands' promotional marketing campaigns and using the content from those to better understand "new product arrivals or collections, sales events, and ongoing promotions." However, I've recommended that most brands opt out of this program via the Google Merchant Center, because this program risks circulating members-only pricing and individual-level pricing as though they were generally available. That can lead to frustrating customer experience for brands.
Perhaps in recognition of the significant limitations of that program, last month Google launched Personal Intelligence, which connects Gemini to your Gmail, Photos, YouTube, and Search activity. Giving Gemini an unprecedented amount of high-quality personal data, this is a power move that none of Google's AI competitors can make. For those Google users who opt into this connection, Gemini should be able to make unrivaled personalized recommendations.
Related Article: Gmail's Email 'Upgrades' Are Actually a Step Backward
Competitive Implications
A comparison of major AI and commerce players and their access to the inbox-level data that increasingly determines AI commerce advantage.
| Company | Inbox & Data Access Position | AI Commerce Implications |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | Through its strategic partnership with Microsoft, the ChatGPT operator could potentially get access to consumer outlook.com accounts and corporate Outlook accounts. | That shift may require the upping of Microsoft’s current ownership stake of 27%, but it opens up potential on both the consumer front with AI commerce and on the business front with better AI answers and stronger Copilot product. |
| Meta | The king of social networks has access to great social graph data, along with ad engagement signals. | While insightful, Meta’s commerce efforts would be of limited help with understanding brand affinities broadly, and Meta would struggle with a lack of offer data. |
| X | While xAI benefits from X’s social graph data, it significantly lags Meta in terms of the data needed to succeed at AI commerce. | X Founder Elon Musk has alluded to starting an email inbox provider, a move that may now carry greater competitive urgency following Google’s Personal Intelligence announcement. |
| Amazon | Among retailers, Amazon is best positioned natively to have enough purchase data for some of their customers. | Amazon can do an adequate job out of the gate on AI commerce, but launching its own email inbox provider business would significantly strengthen its position — an argument that is even more compelling today. |
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A Truth and a Prediction for AI Commerce
Personalized context is extremely powerful, and will be a huge differentiator when it comes to AI commerce. The AI model with the access to the best data wins. Google has clearly recognized that it's central to the success of its AI commerce efforts. This approach to personalization will define the next era of digital commerce.
With that in mind, here's my prediction: One of the above players will acquire Yahoo Mail this year. They have a valuable cache of consumer data that AI commerce players need if they're going to have a chance of matching Google's latest moves.
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