Nathan Werst
Appearances
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
What if every marketing decision was backed by real-time data, every dollar spent was maximized, and your campaigns evolved without you lifting a finger? Today on Lead with AI, we're joined by Nathan Wurst, founder of Shoptimized, a company that's reimagining e-commerce advertising through powerful custom-built AI to the tune of neural networks.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
I'm amazing. And thank you so much for being an Illuminarian guest on our podcast today.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
So, you know, we're trying to really improve the whole the whole flow for all parties involved.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
So Nathan, as you know, we have a segment that we call from one genius to another. So Ben Arnon, my last guest has a question for you. And that is we're experiencing AI transform in industries that have remained unchanged for decades, which is so very exciting. What dormant human capability or experience do you believe AI will unexpectedly awaken or enhance that we have yet to recognize?
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yeah, I think that is a great question. I think it's super cool too because I think there are very few industries that have remained unchanged over the past few decades. Almost everything has been transformed by the dot-com bubble and the rise of smartphones. And one area that I think has a ton of potential and that's already kind of started is... like the fast food industry in a sense.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Thank you for having me.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
You know, it's already kind of happening to an extent. There is like a fully automated McDonald's in Copenhagen, which is super cool. But I think we're going to see kind of a rise of like, you know, super fast like coffee places, right? Like people aren't like hanging out in Starbucks in the same way that they were 10 years ago or like in coffee shops in general.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Absolutely. So let's start off. Just tell us a little bit about you. Who are you at your core? You know, I believe that every great AI product starts with a deeper vision. So talk to us about that.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
And I think there's going to be sort of a rise in like automating these tasks that are you know, very repeatable and, uh, like time consuming, right?
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Like if you're a, you know, if you're a barista and you're running around and you are having to like, you know, make a, an espresso shot and make foam, some milk for a cappuccino and then pour it in a cup and then clean all this stuff out and then do it again, you know, a hundred times in an hour, I feel like that's something where some somewhere in that process could be repeated.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
or it could be and could be done by ai right like that's something that we could change the area that i'm really hoping ai changes and impacts is laundry because i would really like it if someone could come up with an ai to fold my laundry for me that would be a dream come true like just you know take it out of the dryer throw it in some mysterious machine and let that thing calibrate it and fold all my clothes for me that would be the really the dream
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Well, you do know there are humanoids out there that will do that, so we're not that far from it.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yeah, it would be nice if they were a little more accessible, I'd say. I don't have room or money for a humanoid robot wandering around my basement.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Right, a little compact.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yeah, exactly. We've got a ways to go for sure, but fingers crossed we'll get that one in the next five or ten years.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
All your chores for you. That's amazing. Well, yeah, stay tuned. I'm actually working on a couple of projects related to that. Okay.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Amazing.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Awesome. Well, make us believers. I love the CTA of this. So what's the one thing that any of our listeners can try, build, or explore with Shoptomize today to get a taste of it this week? Talk to that
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
marketing manager, talk to that product manager and your customer base and tell them what they can do this week to see the type of results that ShopDemise provides.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yeah, I think, you know, in my core, really, I'm a problem solver. I always have been, you know, I like solving all kinds of problems, whether it's, you know, puzzles or crosswords or, you know, business cases with AI. You know, I really just like that little moment where you see all the dots connect and where you get a solution to this thing that's been bothering you for a while.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
For sure. I think the easiest way to see the impact that ShopDemise can have for a marketing manager either at an agency or a retail company is right now Go and Google one of the products that you sell that's not in season. And you will see, you know, keep it, keep it generic, right?
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Just use the, just use like tank top or boots or shirt or whatever, you know, don't use your brand name, but use, you know, describe that product, put it in Google and watch how many results come up from your company and from other companies that are all selling this product out of season and likely not driving purchases with that ad.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Right, right. No, that's amazing.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Thanks.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Amazing. And then when you do that, reach out to Shopify so they can help you.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yes, please do.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yes, please do. And we're going to get to how people can get in contact with you. Let's do our rapid fire now. Most overrated tech trend.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Oh, this is going to be controversial, but LLMs in general, I think, you know, they have amazing capability. I, you know, I work with LLMs. I think they're great. I think there are, you know, it is super cool tech and I think it is going to be revolutionary.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
I think that all these people making companies that are just like, you know, open AI wrapper, like trying to do something new because it has an LLM in it is vastly overrated. And I think that that's something that is not going to last.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
All right. Okay. Next, the most underhyped AI breakthrough.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yeah, I think this has received a decent amount of hype in the bio community, but I think it's not being talked about enough in general, is AI ability to recognize proteins and the way that they fold. This is stuff that previously took ages and ages for humans to do. People got their PhDs analyzing a singular protein, and now we have a technology,
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
that has done that for hundreds of thousands of proteins, like even ones that we haven't found in nature. So it's absolutely incredible, absolutely a monumental breakthrough for biology, for medicine, and it's going to have absolutely huge impacts on health and research and everything in the next, you know, who knows how many years.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
And it's really not being talked about outside of, you know, these spheres at all.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Okay. Well, it's on here now. So now it's going to blow up. One book everyone should read about the future.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Again, a little, uh, I feel like it's a decently well-known book. And it's actually kind of about the past, but I think it tells us really how to think about the future. And that is Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman by Richard Feynman of the Manhattan Project fame and MIT and all that. It's just one of my favorite books. It's super clever.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
It really gets in the mind of how you should think as a scientist and puts you in the brain of someone who's just way, way smarter than myself, which is why I like it. I won't speak for everyone, but Feynman's a pretty genius guy.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Got it, got it. So tell us about Shoptimized.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
And so it's really great to get inside his mind and hear about his experiences and see how that can be, how the revolutionary technology that he was building can be applied to the revolutionary technology that we're building today.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yes, amazing. The boldest AI prediction you believe.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
All right, this one is a very hot take, almost scalding. My take is that I would say within probably the next 15 to 20 years, we will get a perfect March Madness bracket.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yeah, so Shoptimized really started... a little over a year and a half ago at this point. I've been doing this since October of 2023. And prior to that, I was working as a data scientist in a marketing agency. And I knew I kind of wanted to start my own company. I wasn't exactly sure the direction I wanted to go.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Okay.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
And that bracket will not be built by a human. It will be built by an AI. And to make it clear, like, I don't think it's going to happen every year. I don't think it's, you know, something that's going to be repeatable all the time.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
But I think between the changing college basketball landscape with the NIL and the advancements that we're seeing with AI, I think that there is going to be some AI that creates, you know, like 10,000 brackets and one of them will hit. You know, as a little anecdote, like,
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
I, you know, I tried my hand at this, uh, this March and I put, I don't know, maybe like five or 10 hours into, into making a, uh, bracket with an AI and. it wound up in like the 88th percentile of all brackets. It got most of the games, right. Called some huge upsets. And it was a, you know, monumental Houston claps away from being in the, like the 99th percentile of all brackets.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
It got all the elite eight and final four teams. Right. And, you know, had Houston winning it all. So unfortunately dropped the ball on that one, but you know, it, it, it got me thinking like, I was only a handful of games away with this model that I made in a relatively short amount of time.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
And if someone really puts a lot of time into it and comes up with the right algorithm and makes enough brackets with it to account for some of the variability and the volatility we see, I don't think it'll happen every year. But I do think that there is a decent possibility that it gets it right within the next 15 to 20 years.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yeah. No, it's probably going to be sooner than that because we actually have March Madness and my company, The Leading Niche, and, you know, put everybody winning in. The person who won the $500 gift certificate used ChatGPT.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
No way. Yes.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
She used ChatGPT. She used ChatGPT and she won. And everybody else was, you know, they put in their best brains, their best thinking, but she was the one. And I asked the question because I was curious, at least on the corporate team, how many people did it versus did anybody use it? She was like, I did it, I'll admit, and she won.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
That's incredible. I made one AI bracket and one personal picks bracket, and the AI one outperformed the personal picks by a landslide. I also won my group using my AI algorithm. So, you know, it's on the rise. I think it's doable. You know, it's, I don't know that, like I said, you know, I don't think it's going to happen all the time, but I think someone somewhere is going to get it right.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
And I think that's going to be a very exciting moment as a data scientist and a sports fan.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Nathan, I have so enjoyed this conversation. Tell us if someone wants to work with Shop2Mize because they know that you, after hearing this conversation, you'll be able to help them. Tell us, how do we get in contact with you?
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yeah, a couple of ways. First, and probably the easiest is to just message me on LinkedIn. I am checking in pretty often. So feel free to add me there, shoot me a message. You can also contact us directly on our website. We have a contact form at shopthemice.ai and pick on the contact tab and fill in your info and we'll get in touch.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Absolutely. And on LinkedIn, that's Nathan, N-A-T-H-A-N, last name worst, W-E-R-S-T.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
But I've been working with some pretty big retailers, Dick's Sporting Goods, Farfetch. And I'd found that there were some room for improvement in their product marketing. And as I went off and founded Shop Demise and started doing my own thing, I saw that this was kind of a pattern that was repeating across a bunch of different retailers.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yep, that is correct.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Awesome. Any last minute words, anything you want to share? This has been so amazing.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
No, I mean, just thank you for having me. This has been absolutely wonderful. And it's been a blast to get on here and talk about all things AI and Shopify. And what a wonderful opportunity. Thank you for taking the time.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Absolutely. Absolutely. I've enjoyed it. And thank you so much.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Thanks.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
And that pattern was that they were wasting tons and tons of money advertising products that weren't driving any purchases.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Wow. And you know what? I love that because as an entrepreneur myself, people come and they say, oh, I want to start a business. I don't know how. And it's about gaps and pain points. And a lot of great ideas come when you go and work for other companies and you can kind of see where those gaps are and then create your own. That's amazing. So what about the holy smokes moment?
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
What's the jaw-dropping moment when people first experience Shop Demise and realize that it changes everything for them?
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yeah, to be honest, I think it comes even before they really get to experience Shop Demise. The biggest sort of jaw-dropping moment for most of my clients so far has been when we actually show them how much money they're wasting. And so we can go in, we pull their ads data and we say, okay, here's all the money that you spent in the past month or whatever.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Here's all the money that went to that actually drove purchases. And here's what you spent advertising products that didn't drive any purchases. And, you know, with the bigger clients, this can be millions of dollars.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
And so you have this sort of this jaw drop moment where people see, oh, my God, like these these algorithms that we've just been trusting blindly are actually aren't working as well for us as we thought they were.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Wow. Wow. So you're saying that you will show customers, okay, you spent this money and there'll be, you know, I don't know, 40% of their spend to products that never even moved.
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
With Shoptimize, he's helping retailers unlock the full potential of their product ads using AI that knows exactly what to push, when to push, and why to push, thus driving efficiency, revenue, and smarter growth. Want to look at what's actually working at the cutting edge of retail media? You're in the right place. Let's get started.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Exactly. Yeah. And not even, not even products that never even moved products that never drove a purchase on the website. So, so that includes products where like, you know, someone might see an ad for a product, they'll click on it and then they'll click on a different product on the website. They'll see something else in that, like you may also like section and they'll buy that.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
So it's not, it's 40% on products that didn't even drive those sort of purchases. So it's, it's really, it's an even, an even bigger problem than people think initially.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yeah. Can you imagine if you can decrease, and it sounds like y'all are, the number of clicks? I don't have to click two or three times to get to what I want. I can click one time and it's right there.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yeah. It's something that we've been working on in the background. Keep it doing for Q3 2025.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yep, yep, no, I understand that. So let's break it up. It's the brain of Shoptimized. So if I were to actually go up under the hood, what's going on? What's working there?
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yeah, I think it's, you know, on the most simple level, it's about pattern recognition. So if you were to, like, become Shoptimized all of a sudden, you would be able to have the most amazing pattern recognition experience
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
for retail products and the most in-depth knowledge about their how that the patterns that you see impact marketing behavior so we look at hundreds of thousands if not millions of variables you know all the like descriptions the the keywords the metadata of these products and how the the you know time that they're advertised impacts whether or not they drive purchases and so as shoptimized you would be able to see
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
wow like you know blue stuff on sundays at 3 p.m is like a much better at driving purchases but like you know red is you know out the window and so you'd be able to draw these these conclusions and these patterns that you know a human can never make on their own
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Right. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. And just so that I'm clear, your customers are, it doesn't matter what size, whether I'm a solopreneur that's selling a product all the way up to a large or what's that sweet spot. And that's number one. And then number two, you must be selling something physical. Like it has to be something physical. Correct.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Can you just talk a little bit more about that for our listeners?
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yeah, absolutely. We have worked with solopreneurs in the past. Definitely still open to it. I think one of the main things is that we want to really see a lot of data. We're training very complex neural networks. And so in order to really maximize
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
our impact we want to see a bunch of products and a bunch of data points that we can really use to make your ad spend as efficient as possible so there's no real limit on like the company size but we generally do want to see like catalog of products that at least has like you know 100 skus i'd say
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Okay, got it. That's very, very helpful. So the minimum is where you can, because again, like you said, like the model itself needs a lot of data, right? Yeah. So a hundred SKUs, is there a certain amount of time you need to have been in business? Do you have to have sold?
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Like, what if I have a hundred SKUs and I've been in business for a year and I haven't sold as much because I'm not doing as well? Paint to us like the perfect customer.
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yeah. You know, a year is a fine amount of data to have. Obviously, the more the better. You know, the sort of dream clients would be, you know, like the LVMHs, the, you know, the Macy's of the world, the Home Depot's, you know, anywhere where there is a huge amount of products and a huge amount of data is really the best place for us to be.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
And also, you know, to an extent, we do try and work with like slightly more expensive products just because there is a kind of a a lower limit on the cost per click that you see on like a Google or a Meta. So with Google, for example, you know, you usually see clicks in like the one to three dollar range. And really, that's like about as low as you can go.
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
You know, there are exceptions to that, of course. Right. But if you're if you're doing like a national campaign, you know, large scale like that's that's about the limit. And so if you're only selling stuff that's like
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
four or $5, you know, we worked with some, some CBG brands, uh, you know, like food and beverage, uh, it kind of limits how, how much you can actually get out of that, where we see a ton of potential is with products that are, you know, a hundred dollars, a thousand dollars. That makes a huge difference because when you're optimizing those, you, you can see really incredible returns.
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Right. And it's very, very important to be very clear about who your target audience is. And so that's important for our listeners to know from Shop2Mize. And we have a number, we have thousands of listeners and many of them work in marketing departments of these larger companies. They work in project management for larger companies. And so this would be ideal for them.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
So make sure you definitely find your way to Shop2Mize and we'll get to how to do that a little bit later. So awesome. Thank you for that. Now talk to us about a phenomenal result that you got from a customer in terms of numbers or in terms of impact that was so unreal that it even amazed you.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yeah, I think, you know, we've delivered some pretty, pretty great returns for customers along the way.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
And it's going to sound a little silly, but I always kind of knew that that was like within the realm of possibility, you know, like, you know, that like you, you see the room for improvement and you know, like, oh, you know, we've improved return on ad spend by like as much as 32% in some cases. And, you know, you see that and you're like, great. You know, that's pretty cool.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
What really blew my mind was actually like the first iteration of the the neural network that we built for Shoptimized, where we were looking at all this historical data and we were just doing, it was just a test, right? We were just doing a breakdown of, you know, the like training and testing data.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
And when we got to the point where we were working with the testing data, we could predict, I think it was 92.3% accuracy, whether or not a product will be purchased in a given time period. So we had our confusion matrix, our false positives, false negatives, true positives, true negatives. And you watch the... It's really cool. You can see it in your terminal on your screen.
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"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
You can see it go through with the testing and the count of all these things go up and down. And you start to see the accuracy go up and up and up over time. And you go... oh my God, like we're, we're actually doing this, you know? And so you get to the end of that test and it says, you know, 92.3% accuracy, you've predicted whether or not a product is going to get purchased in this time period.
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
And that was just the most mind blowing thing to me. Cause I can't imagine being able to do that in my life at all. Like if you gave me, you know, I like, I couldn't predict like the weather tomorrow, you know, like to predict whether some random product is going to get purchased based on marketing is just absolutely insane to me.
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
That is. And I could definitely hear the data scientist in you. Because I, too, am a data scientist. And I'm in school at George Washington, learning about random forests and neural networks, et cetera. So it's really exciting. We're geeking out over here. So that's amazing. Congratulations on that. Thank you.
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yeah, I appreciate it.
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
That is amazing. So with AI, there's always this topic around ethics. Because you're dealing with powerful, powerful, powerful tools and all this data. What are the ethical lines that you're watching and how do you, you know, make sure you don't cross that boundary and at the same time, keep the human in the loop?
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yeah, it's a great question. And it is one that keeps me up at night for sure. You know, there are times where I think like, oh, this would be such a great idea. And then I think about it more. And I'm like, actually, like, this would be terrible. And, you know, I think for me, you know, we work with totally anonymized data, right? So we...
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
don't have any sort of like, you know, any sort of like personalized info that could be causing potential problems. And so the actual like building of the models and activation of our models, feels pretty ethical to me. Some people who have different opinions on marketing may disagree, but that's personally, I don't make an impact on who our stuff gets shown to.
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
With that being said, there are certain companies that I just won't work with. There are industries or specific companies where if I don't feel good about what that business is doing, I'm not going to help you Improve your marketing and get your message out there and improve your return on ad spend.
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
So for me, it's a very kind of personal line and it has less to do with AI and more about the ethics of the companies that I'm working with.
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Well, hello, everyone. How are you? My name is Dr. Tamara Nall. I'm your host with the Lead with AI podcast. And I am so excited to have Nathan Wurst from Shop Demise AI. Hi, Nathan. How are you?
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yeah. And the impact on humanity. Absolutely. And I think as leaders, we do have to keep that in the forefront. Like the fact that you're so brilliant and you come up with these different ideas, but then you put it through a filter or a gate of, no, I can't do that.
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
It's amazing. And that says a lot about your leadership, as well as you taking a stand about, you know, those customers that you'll take on versus not. Because I tell people not all money is good money.
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
You have to keep that at the forefront. So that's amazing. And we have to make sure that we support Shop Demise just based on that.
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Thank you.
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Appreciate it. Yes. So let's fast forward to 2030. What does a future powered by Shop Demise look like? And how will that impact the everyday person?
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Yeah, I think really, you know, what we're striving for is really to improve the shopping experience for people and to really make that seamless. You know, when we talk about like, you know, people being shown products that they're not purchasing, that's not good for the searcher either.
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
You know, like sometimes, yeah, you're just kind of exploring, but like most of the time when you're searching for something, you're clicking on something, like you're actually kind of interested in it. And so I think for us, it's not just about, you know, improving the future for retailers and improving their return on ad spend. It's also about improving the purchase process for retailers
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
you know, shoppers and for, you know, to make this experience better for them as they find what they're looking for.
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Right. And, you know, I've actually experienced something that just really, really gets on my nerves. That's when I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram and there is a picture of an outfit or something I love. I click on it and it goes absolutely nowhere or it goes to something else that I'm not interested in or I don't like the color or I don't think it's... That is so annoying.
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
And I will have in the beginning, I used to take a little time and do a little search or try to go back and find it. I've even sent out emails or chatted with them. And in some cases, they can't even find it. It's very bizarre to use a picture of something that I like and then you can't get it. So I'm sure you're helping with that, too. And keep up the good work. Thank you. Click on it.
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
I'm doing great. Thanks. How about yourself?
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
That is what I want. I want it to be exactly what I saw and so that I can buy it.
Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
Exactly. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's the same thing when you're when you're searching for stuff, you know, like Google's algorithm, like if you search for for like a black shirt, you know, it could it could show you a black tank top. And, you know, if you're in if it's, you know, December and you're in Texas, that's great. If you're in December and you're in New York, like not so much.