Lead With AI
"40% of Your Ad Budget Goes to Products Nobody Buys": The AI Solution Retailers Can't Ignore
27 May 2025
In this episode of Lead with AI, Dr. Tamara Nall uncovers a shocking truth with Nathan Werst, founder of Shoptimized AI: major retailers waste millions advertising products that never drive purchases. Werst reveals the shocking moment when clients first see their wasted ad spend, sometimes discovering 40% of their budget goes to products that generate zero sales. Using neural networks that can predict with 92.3% accuracy which products will sell in specific timeframes, Shoptimized is transforming retail marketing by analyzing patterns humans could never detect - like why blue items sell better on Sundays at 3pm while red items fail. A former data scientist for DICK's Sporting Goods and Farfetch, Werst challenges listeners to search Google for their own out-of-season products to witness firsthand how much money they're wasting right now. Looking ahead to 2030, Werst envisions not just revolutionizing retailers' ROI but creating truly seamless shopping experiences where customers never waste time clicking ads that don't match what they actually want to buy.
Full Episode
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.
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.
Welcome to Lead with AI. I'm Dr. Tamara Nall. In each episode, we will take you behind the scenes with the visionary leaders shaping the future of AI across public and private sectors. Join us as we explore groundbreaking projects and innovations that are transforming industries and making a real impact on people's lives. Let's dive in.
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? I'm doing great. Thanks. How about yourself? I'm amazing. And thank you so much for being an Illuminarian guest on our podcast today. Thank you for having me.
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.
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.
Got it, got it. So tell us about Shoptimized. 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.
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.
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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