Featured Post: My Reading & Podcast List
Here are recent books I’ve read and podcasts I enjoy. If you’re looking for something interesting to listen to or read, these are a few that have stood out to me. Let me know if you have a recommendations.
First-Time Coaching Flag Football: How It’s Going & What I’ve Learned
It’s my inaugural season coaching 5th/6th-grade flag football. Here’s how our season has gone so far, from my overall philosophy and play design, to teaching route running, defense, sportsmanship, and the number one thing that loses games.
The Brief: 40K Store Closures, Livestream Commerce, and the AI ROI Problem
Today's brief covers the looming wave of retail closures driven by tariffs and labor costs, livestream shopping platform Whatnot's integration with Shopify, the declining share of marketers who can prove AI ROI, and Walmart's aggressive AI push highlighted in its annual report.
The Brief: Sam’s Club’s One-Hour Delivery, MarTech Replacement Rates Slow, Affiliate Content Performance, and Ulta Beauty and Agentic Commerce
Today's retail and marketing brief covers Sam's Club's aggressive move into ultra-fast delivery, the slowdown in MarTech platform churn, growing attribution challenges for affiliate marketers in the AI age, and Ulta Beauty's deployment of agentic commerce through Google Gemini.
The Brief: Staples-Party City Partnership, Amazon's GLP-1 Program, Record Mother's Day Spending, and Parents' Digital Shopping Surge
News: stories Staples and Party City announced a strategic partnership bringing party supplies to 700+ stores, while Amazon One Medical launched a GLP-1 weight loss program starting at $149/month. Also: Mother's Day spending is expected to hit a record $38 billion, and new research shows parents engage in 50% more digital shopping days than average consumers.
The Brief: Tariff Refunds, Amazon Price-Fixing, Consumer Spending, and Walmart's Fulfillment Test
News: stories The US government launched a tariff refund portal for up to $166 billion in illegal duties, while California released documents alleging Amazon coordinated price-fixing with Walmart and Target. Also: March retail sales rose for the sixth straight month driven by tax refunds, and Walmart is testing store backrooms as fulfillment centers.
QBs in the NFL Draft and Should Your Team Draft Them (Updated 2026)
Which QBs are in this year’s NFL Draft, and will they be any good? A quick assessment of who teams should, and shouldn’t, draft, from someone who is better than most NFL GMs at picking them.
Google’s AI Landing Page Patent: What It Means for Ecommerce and Brand Control
Google’s newest patent signals a shift from sending traffic to your website to potentially replacing it altogether. Instead of ranking pages, Google may generate its own AI-powered version of your storefront, tailored to each user. That raises bigger questions about brand control, data ownership, and what the future of search actually looks like for businesses.
AI Shopping During the Holidays and What It Means
Holiday shopping offered an early look at how consumers are using AI to research products and guide purchase decisions. The results reveal important signals about how ecommerce may evolve in 2026.
Buffalo Bills Hire Joe Brady. Really?
I wanted to turn the page from Joe Brady before the season even started, but watching the Bills’ offense unfold only reinforced my concerns. From predictable bubble screens and conservative red-zone play-calling to a lack of urgency around the wide receiver room, the same issues surfaced at the worst possible moments. If Joe Brady is going to be the coach who finally gets Buffalo past the playoff wall, major changes in philosophy, staffing, and execution are non-negotiable.
Holiday 2025 Shopper Mindset: What Marketers Need to Know
Shoppers are still buying this holiday season, but they’re taking a more careful, value-driven approach. Greg Zakowicz shares a few observations from his MarTech Cube guest article on how shopper behavior is shifting and what it means for marketers heading into the holidays.
ChatGPT Atlas — Initial Impressions and Takeaways for Ecommerce
I am playing around with ChatGPT Atlas and have done a few trial searches from an ecommerce perspective. Here are a few initial takeaways.
Results may vary across ChatGPT Atlas and ChatGPT
Big stores dominate the results
Price tracking for the consumer, but only sometimes.
How Google and ChatGPT Atlas compared
How to Make Your Product Feed Discoverable in ChatGPT
If you want your products to show up in ChatGPT’s shopping and discovery experiences, you’ll need to set up a product feed that matches OpenAI’s official spec. Don’t worry — while the spec looks technical, once you break it down, it’s not too different from filling in a structured spreadsheet about your products.
Changes to the Gmail Promotions Tab and What Email Marketers Need to Know
Gmail is shaking up the inbox again. With a new Purchases view and Promotions tab sorted by “most relevant,” email marketers will need to rethink how they drive visibility and engagement. Here’s what to know.
BFCM Marketing: How to Adjust Email Automation for Black Friday & Cyber Monday
Learn how to adjust your welcome series, product abandonment, and cart abandonment email automations for Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) to maximize urgency, engagement, and holiday sales.
Agentic AI in Ecommerce: How It May Transform the Brand-Customer Relationship
Agentic AI is starting to make purchases on behalf of consumers, raising a new question for e-commerce: who is the real customer—the shopper or the AI? Traditional tactics like emotional branding and retargeting may not work the same way. Brands that adapt early by optimizing product data and strengthening identity will be best positioned for this shift.