Podcast
Future Commerce
Hosted by Phillip Jackson, Brian Lange · EN
Future Commerce is the culture magazine for Commerce. Hosts Phillip Jackson and Brian Lange help brand and digital marketing leaders see around the next corner by exploring the intersection of Culture and Commerce.
Trusted by the world's most recognizable brands to deliver the most insightful, entertaining, and informative weekly podcasts, Future Commerce is the leading new media brand for eCommerce merchants and retail operators.
Each week, we explore the cultural implications of what it means to sell or buy products and how commerce and media impact the culture and the world around us, through unique insights and engaging interviews with a dash of futurism.
Weekly essays, full transcripts, and quarterly market research reports are available at https://www.futurecommerce.com/plus
42episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
After Dark: "You're Not A Visionary, You're A Vendor"
6d ago01:06:41Tap to summarizeGet all After Dark releases by joining Future Commerce Plus: www.futurecommerce.com/plus.Future Commerce Plus members get 20% off STRATA: www.futurecommerce.com/strata. An AI agent burns $12 building a fake Android phone nobody asked for. From there: Pope Leo's encyclical, a tick crisis blamed on vanishing chickens, a website that's cookied Phillip into Spanish forever, and The Devil Wears Prada 2, feat. why media was the visionary all along. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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LIVE @ Google Marketing Live: The Infrastructure Connecting Your Agent to 60 Billion Products
1w ago00:22:42Tap to summarizeRecorded live at Google Marketing Live 2026, Phillip and eCommerce reporter Nicole Silberstein sit down with Ashish Gupta, VP & GM of Merchant Shopping at Google, who is behind the foundational commerce infrastructure powering the Shopping Graph and Universal Commerce Protocol. Gupta breaks down the GML announcements: UCP's expansion beyond shopping into hotels and food delivery, the multi-item Universal Cart that spans Search, Gemini, YouTube, and Gmail, and why the future of agentic commerce still depends on merchants nailing the fundamentals. A Shopper for Every Shopper Key takeaways: UCP is expanding beyond shopping into hotel bookings and local food delivery, giving every shopper their own personal shopper. The Universal Cart lets shoppers buy multiple items at once across Google surfaces, streamlining the buying experience as shoppers venture from inspiration to discovery and comparison. Merchants remains the seller of record no matter where the transaction is completed, tackling industry concerns about disintermediation. Conversational attributes enrich product feeds so AI can match nuanced shopper intent. Winning in agentic commerce starts with the fundamentals: feeds, first-party data, and UCP readiness. In-Show Mentions: Google Marketing Live 2026 and Google I/O 2026 Universal Cart & Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) Further Reading: Google Imagines a Future Where Everyone Shops in Ads — A special edition of The Senses that distills the week’s key announcements Episode 463: LIVE @ Google I/O: Universal Cart, Agentic Payments, and the Protocols Powering the Agent-Mediated Economy — Companion interview with Suresh Ganapathy Episode 464: LIVE @ Google Marketing Live: How Google Is Taking the Drudgery Out of Shopping— Companion interview with Nick Fox Google Solidifies Its Place in the AI Race — Insiders coverage of Google's UCP debut at NRF 2026, the foundation for this week's announcements [Member Brief] Agentic Commerce and the eCommerce Site's New Existential Crisis — How agentic platforms are reshaping the role of the branded eCommerce site Associated Links: Learn more about Check out Future Commerce on YouTube Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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LIVE @ Google Marketing Live: How Google is Taking the 'Drudgery' Out of Shopping
2w ago00:14:11Tap to summarizeRecorded live at Google Marketing Live 2026, Phillip sits down with Nick Fox, SVP of Knowledge & Information at Google — the executive overseeing Search, Ads, Commerce, and geographic mapping products. Building on the prior day's I/O announcements, Fox unpacks how Gemini is reshaping Google's consumer and advertising products, why the Universal Cart strikes a balance between human taste and agentic convenience, and how two-plus decades at Google inform his view of building technology that shapes the lives of billions. Enabling People To Be People Key takeaways: Gemini 3.5 is the foundation supercharging Search, Ads, and Commerce across Google. The Universal Cart keeps humans choosing while agents handle the drudgery. UCP adoption has accelerated faster than expected across the industry. Conversational search has shifted user behavior toward natural, multi-word queries. "I think there are people that think everything's gonna be about agents talking to agents. I don't subscribe to that view." — Nick Fox "I am the person putting things in the cart. But then the cart is helping us agentively at the same time." — Nick Fox "We're building products that billions of people across the world are using. That's a responsibility we take seriously." — Nick Fox In-Show Mentions: Google Marketing Live 2026 and Google I/O 2026 Universal Cart & Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) More from Future Commerce: LIVE @ Google I/O: Universal Cart, Agentic Payments, and the Protocols Powering the Agent-Mediated Economy Google Solidifies Its Place in the AI Race [Member Brief] Agentic Commerce and the eCommerce Site's New Existential Crisis Associated Links: Check out Future Commerce on YouTube Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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LIVE @ Google I/O: Universal Cart, Agentic Payments, and the Protocols Powering the Agent-Mediated Economy
2w ago00:14:31Tap to summarizeAt Google I/O 2026, Phillip sits down with Suresh Ganapathy, Senior Director of Product Management for Consumer Shopping at Google, to unpack the day's announcements: Universal Commerce Protocol's expansion into new verticals, agentic payments arriving in Gemini Spark, and the debut of Universal Cart. We trace what these foundational pieces mean for how a billion daily shoppers, and the merchants serving them, will operate in an agent-mediated economy. Enter the Delegation Era Key Takeaways: Universal Cart maintains shopper state across Search, Gemini, YouTube, and Gmail. The cart works on your behalf: tracking prices, flagging restocks, and catching product incompatibilities. Agent Payments Protocol’s (AP2) tamper-proof contracts make agent purchases verifiable and accountable to shopper intent. Merchants remain seller of record, preserving customer relationships inside agentic flows. Gemini Spark becomes Google's first consumer agent with purchasing authority this fall. Key Quotes: "We're laying the foundational building blocks of agentic commerce." — Suresh Ganapathi "People come to shop at Google over a billion times a day, and we want to make sure that we're delivering the best experience to them when they do." — Suresh Ganapathi "We want to make it really simple for shoppers to enjoy the fun parts of shopping and then delegate some of these more tedious aspects to agents." — Suresh Ganapathi "Spark is the agent. AP2 is the payments protocol. Universal Cart is the ability for consumers to have less friction." — Phillip Further Reading: More on Google’s AI play: Insiders: Google Solidifies Its Place in the AI Race More on agent-mediated commerce: Member Brief: Agentic Commerce and the eCommerce Site’s New Existential Crisis Our 2026 Predictions: The Age of Autonomy Learn more about Google I/O Google’s Universal Cart Announcement Our Links: Check out Future Commerce on YouTube Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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AP x Swatch x Mass Brand Psychosis
3w ago00:37:09Tap to summarizeThe Swatch x AP "Royal Pop" arrived after a week of generative AI fan renders, watch-Twitter speculation, and a 24-hour emotional rollercoaster from disappointment to "actually, this might be iconic." Phillip and Brian sit down with Michael Miraflor to unpack the speedrun spectacle, the high/low collab playbook, and why the purchase is just the tip of consumer participation. The Royal Pop Heard 'Round the Internet Key takeaways: AP x Swatch’s collab sparked a flood of fan-prompted, generative AI images of anticipated designs The participatory economy now renders the product before the product exists “This is kind of a match made in heaven, which is why I think this is something that will sell out for a long time.” – Brian Lange “I wonder if people react differently based on everyone else’s reactions” – Michael Miraflor “Purchase of the product is kind of a cap on the experience.” – Michael Miraflor In-Show Mentions: Read our 2025 Field Notes on Swatch – available to Future Commerce Plus members AP x Swatch design reveal Follow Michael Miraflor on X Associated Links: Check out Future Commerce on YouTube Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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The Internet’s Aperture Is Shrinking
4w ago00:51:35Tap to summarizeMatt Maher, founder of M7 Innovations and the thirty-fifth member of the MIT Media Lab Consortium, joins Phillip and Brian to interrogate what really happens when enterprises leap from "zero to one" to "one to a hundred" with AI. The conversation moves from the productivity paradox (studies showing AI can add 20% to completion time even as users swear it saves them work) to the human hand-off in commerce, the limits of agentic shopping, and the shrinking aperture of the internet. The big takeaway is that 2026 is the year of assessment, not aspiration. Paleolithic Brains; Medieval Infrastructure; Godlike Technology Key Takeaways AI has created a productivity paradox. Although it may feel like a magical solution that unlocks productivity and throughput, it often lengthens time to completion. Cognitive atrophy is real and happening faster than we realize. Net-new ideas still need human intuition. AI learns from and mimics existing experiences and content. The human-AI handoff should be designed for where the agent stops and identity begins, mapped across three tiers: low-emotion, middle-emotion, and high-emotion products and content. Fix your site for LLM crawlers now. Agentic checkout can wait. Key Quotes [00:06:30] "We did not have a digital information superhighway… that was zero to one. And now we are in that one to 100 moment… we snap our fingers, and we're at parity with all these capabilities." — Matt Maher [00:17:30] "It objectively takes more time. Our dopamine receptors are feeling good when we're that productive. So we'll happily take 20% more time and claim we didn't." — Matt Maher [00:23:30] "AI could literally never have created [the elevator screen] because it did not exist in the world before. It is a reduction to the mean." — Matt Maher [00:51:30] "The aperture of the internet continues to shrink, and everything becomes more personalized for each of us. If you are not in that aperture of what people see, you don't exist anymore." — Matt Maher In-Show Mentions M7 Innovations The METR study (late 2025) on AI developer time savings E.O. Wilson’s The Origins of Creativity Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings Amazon v. Perplexity lawsuit Associated Links What AI and Watchmaking Have in Common The Death of Slop and the End of Time Get STRATA by Future Commerce Check out Future Commerce on YouTube Check out Future Commerce+ for exclusive content and save on merch and print Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we're witnessing in the commerce world Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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POSSIBLE’S Potential: The Hallway Track Leads to the Beach
May 400:57:13Tap to summarizeThe funnel’s compressing, content volume is exploding, and everything is quickly descending into AI slop. But the Miami heat and chilled coconut water hit just right, so everything is juuuust fine. We’re unpacking our hot takes fresh out of POSSIBLE, Hyve’s sprawling beachside conference at the Fontainebleau and Eden Roc resorts. Between Walmart's "Who Knew" thesis, EMARKETER's no-safe-channels reset, and Phillip's case for what it would take for POSSIBLE to rival Cannes, the team weighs what makes a conference culturally relevant and what's still missing from most experiences. Great, Now We’re Drowning In Pod Slop, Too Key Takeaways: POSSIBLE's beach-party-meets-marketing-conference format makes activations feel organic, not transactional. The customer journey isn't collapsing anymore; it's compressing. Pinterest now suggests 10 posts to break through feeds. Meta wants 50. Is the new playbook all about volume and velocity, not relevancy? Walmart leverages AI in 73% of its marketing investments, but it’s still hiring. POSSIBLE can only rival Cannes if or when the city itself has skin in the game. Key Quotes: [00:29:37] "People will not become comfortable with AI until it's indistinguishable." — Sarah, on the EMARKETER-led "No Safe Channels" panel [00:38:35] "Being AI first doesn't mean people last." — William White, CMO, Walmart US [00:45:25] "Ops fulfills the promise that marketing makes." — Chris Gosser [00:45:55] "Marketing's job is changing beliefs and behaviors." — Phillip, on William White's framing Associated Links: Get the post-POSSIBLE dispatch on The Senses Get our in-depth analysis of the modern conference industry Buy STRATA by Future Commerce Check out Future Commerce on YouTube Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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Paris Hilton's 11:11 Media is at the intersection of Celebrity, Social Commerce, and Culture
Apr 2900:35:05Tap to summarizeWhat happens when a cultural figure with 20 years in the limelight decides to become a brand operator? Adam Domian, SVP & Head of Commerce and Audience at 11:11 Media, joins Phillip and Brian to break it down. From Walmart shelves to TikTok lives, Adam shares how Paris Hilton's portfolio balances licensing cash flow with equity-driven brands like Parive, and why "founder energy" is becoming a moat in an AI-saturated marketplace, especially with someone “sliving” such a dynamic and coveted life. Commerce Is Hot Key takeaways: The licensee-licensor era is giving way to the celebrity-as-majority-owner era. US social commerce lags Asia because of consumer habits, not the technology itself. Trust travels with the person—platforms just shape the dialect. Once everyone has AI, cultural instinct becomes the differentiator. Archive footage is the new commercial inventory for legacy IP. Key Quotes: [00:14:31] "She is the same person across those platforms; it just allows us to lean further into different aspects of her life." — Adam Domian [00:19:15] "She was in the labs with the chemists from day one. [Parivie] product development took two and a half, three years." — Adam Domian [00:23:44] "We have Paris and her cultural pulse as an asset to these businesses, but 80% of it is running a traditional playbook." — Adam Domian [00:26:16] "When everybody's leveraging AI, there's a moment of parity. The humanness becomes the differentiator." — Adam Domian In-Show Mentions: 11:11 Media M13 Parivie Associated Links: Get Strata by Future Commerce Check out Future Commerce on YouTube Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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AI Can Be Your Therapist, But Never Your Partner
Apr 2400:46:06Tap to summarizePeople will let AI be their therapist but not their partner, their assistant but not their manager. Gillian Katz of Hannah Grey VC joins Phillip and Brian to unpack the firm's newest Cultural Vibrations journal and the qualitative study behind it: a read on how people are actually negotiating AI's role in their lives, domain by domain, role by role; from anthropology to sommelier frameworks to Goodhart's Law. You Can Manage AI, but AI Can’t Manage You Key Takeaways: People accept AI in almost every domain, but reject it in specific roles within them. Naming a cultural signal may be what stops it from moving. Qualitative research captures what dashboard culture flattens. The next frontier isn't the technology, it's the governance around it. Key Quotes: [00:11:04] "No one wants to be managed by a machine, but they're okay to sort of put control over one." — Gillian Katz [00:27:08] "It's exactly like the way you wish every person interacted. But if you did actually have that experience time and time again, you would be so frustrated." — Gillian Katz, on AI sycophancy [00:29:22] "We give people the benefit of the doubt, but we expect a hundred percent accuracy from AI." — Gillian Katz [00:40:56] "If you only use AI to go build your business, you're gonna lose the discernment that's required to actually use AI well in the first place." — Brian Lange In-Show Mentions: Learn more at hannahgrey.com Read the latest issue of Cultural Vibrations, featuring Brian Lange Associated Links: Check out Future Commerce on YouTube Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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We Already Lost the Power Race to China. Now What?
Apr 2201:07:18Tap to summarize"There will be a lot fewer people employed doing existing work in not just insurance, but in all business." Phillip reports from the press pool at Semafor World Economy 2026, where 500 CEOs, a quarter of the US Senate, and 20 G20 finance ministers spent two days in Washington DC sketching out the next decade. Inside: why the AI race is really the electricity race (and why we may have already lost it to China), the $10 trillion and 250 gigawatts Meta says AGI will cost, Senator Mark Kelly on the new commercial space economy, Levi's 50% DTC milestone, Ralph Lauren's experience-economy flex, and why Balzac saw the "exterminator economy" coming 200 years ago. Plus: white smoke from Apple Park. Key Takeaways: Space is getting a concentric-circle economy. NASA hands low-Earth orbit to private industry; the moon is next; Mars is the horizon. Sen. Mark Kelly laid out the vision at Semafor. AGI has a price tag, and it's $10T. Meta's Dina Powell McCormick framed the path forward: trillions in capital, 250GW of power, and geopolitical fallout to match. The AI race is actually the electricity race — and the US lost it five years ago. Chips and lithography aren't the bottleneck. Power is, and China builds more in a year than the US builds in a decade. NIMBY has evolved into BANANA. Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone is the new posture from Virginia to Maine, and the quiet threat to American AI competitiveness. The heritage brand isn't dead; it just needs a thesis. Levi's built a three-layer AI framework — process, product, people — and is posting 16 consecutive quarters of DTC growth to prove the strategy works. Everyone's becoming an exterminator. The age of sovereignty is producing a wave of DIY micro-entrepreneurs using ChatGPT as their back office. Every job AI takes, it seems to hand back, just in a flat-brimmed hat. The American consumer is less bearish than the algorithm suggests. Ralph Lauren, Kickstarter, and Chime all reported data at odds with recession narratives. Spending is healthy, savings are up, and creators are launching. In-Show Mentions: The Commerce Department is a hedge fund now Dispatch from Semafor: Pritzker on what beats fear [POLICY BRIEF] The Halo Effect of the New Economy Future Commerce Podcast: Marcus Collins Associated Links: Check out Future Commerce on YouTube Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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