Growing Ecommerce – The Retail Growth Podcast

Starting August 17th, Google is quietly rewriting how Smart Bidding treats campaigns that are limited by budget — and if your account is currently over-delivering on Roas, this affects you directly. In this episode, Mike Ryan and Chris break down Google's upcoming change to budget-limited campaigns, why "over-delivering" Roas is being treated as money left on the table, and the carr...

AI is coming for your checkout — and the infrastructure behind it is called Universal Commerce Protocol.  In this episode, Mike Ryan breaks down exactly what UCP is, why Google and Shopify built it together, who's already on board, and what ecommerce brands actually need to do to prepare. Whether you're being pressured by an AI mandate at work, confused by wildly conflicting advice onlin...

Google just announced the biggest change to search in its history — and not everyone is happy. At Google I/O, the search bar became a search box, signaling a full shift toward conversational, Gemini-powered search. The market is already reacting: DuckDuckGo rocketed from around position 400 to the top 100 in the app stores almost overnight, right around the May 20–21 launch. Mike Ryan and Chris un...

Google's new AI-powered Shopping ads can now decide which of your products wins the click — and it's optimizing for the user, not for your margin, your brand, or your strategy. This Gemini-built format writes its own product descriptions and may re-rank which product gets shown, beyond your bid. Mike Ryan and Chris dig into what that means for retailers who suddenly have less control ove...

The EU is finally using its teeth on Chinese e-commerce — and the auction landscape is already shifting. Mike and Chris break down what falling CPCs in Europe mean for your accounts, why the July 1st customs change could matter more than any fine, and the playbook for grabbing market share before the window closes. Then: a major Google Marketing Live feature almost nobody is talking about. Google&...

Meta has overtaken Google in ad budgets - and for ecommerce advertisers, that changes everything. It means Google is on the offensive. It means the pressure to split your budget between platforms is about to intensify. And it means that if you're not set up correctly on Google's AI surfaces right now, you're already losing ground to competitors who are. In this episode of Growing Ec...

Google just dropped a PMax special — and there's a lot to unpack. In this episode of Growing Ecommerce, Mike Ryan and Chris break down three major updates reshaping how ecommerce advertisers run Performance Max and Shopping campaigns in 2025: 1. Network exclusions for PMax: You can now opt out of Search Partner Network AND Google Display Network directly inside PMax. Years in the making, and...

In this episode of Growing Ecommerce, Mike Ryan and Chris Scharmueller dive into the much-anticipated updates to the OpenAI ads platform and break down Google's staggering Q1 earnings report. While OpenAI has finally transitioned their ad platform from a primitive Excel spreadsheet to a proper User Interface, their highly publicized shift to a CPC model is raising major red flags. We break do...

In this episode of Growing E-commerce , Mike Ryan and Chris Scharmueller dive into the end of an era: Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) are officially dying. While Google's new AI Max for Search currently sits at a tiny 1.5-2% adoption rate, the mandatory migration of all DSA campaigns by September will trigger an instant hockey-stick growth curve. We explain exactly what you need to expect from this...

In this episode of Growing Ecommerce , Mike Ryan and Chris Scharmueller break down the latest shifts in the battle for AI dominance and the future of online shopping. We analyze the quiet death of OpenAI's Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP). With major tech giants—including ACP co-founder Stripe, as well as Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon—joining Google's Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) Tech...

Google just quietly won the agentic commerce war — and most ecommerce retailers haven't even noticed. In this episode of Growing Ecommerce, Mike Ryan and Chris break down the three UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol) updates Google just shipped, why OpenAI's ACP is already falling behind, and the structural advantages that make Google's lead almost impossible to catch. If you run Perf...

In this episode of Growing E-commerce , Mike Ryan and Chris Scharmueller unpack two massive stories highlighting the current realities—and potential delusions—of the tech and retail sectors. First, we discuss the quiet and staggering fall of Allbirds. Once a Silicon Valley staple and D2C darling valued at a massive $4 billion, the sustainable shoe company has reportedly sold for a fraction of that...

Is the “Zero-Click” shopping era finally here, and are European retailers ready for a three-way war between Amazon, Temu, and JD.com’s Joybuy? In this episode of Growing Ecommerce, Mike Ryan and Chris Scharmueller unpack a huge week in e-commerce. First: Meta’s new Stripe partnership for in-app checkout. With OpenAI and Google both struggling to make native checkout work, can Meta finally crack th...

OpenAI is facing a projected $25 billion shortfall, and their attempt to monetize ecommerce is already falling apart. In this episode of Growing Ecommerce , Mike Ryan and Chris Scharmüller ask the billion-dollar question: Is the dream of "agentic commerce" already dead on arrival?  While the media celebrates OpenAI's early $100 million in ad revenue, the math tells a much darker sto...

Ever wonder what the biggest e-commerce brands are discussing behind closed doors? We are opening up the vault. 🤫 In this episode of Growing Ecommerce , Mike Ryan and Chris Scharmueller give you a backstage pass to their recent strategy meetings with some of Europe's largest retailers. We are unpacking the exact playbooks, fears, and tactics dominating the boardrooms of the top 1% right now....

Is the "clash of the titans" coming for your profit margins, and is Google about to take away your website traffic? In this episode of Growing E-commerce , Mike Ryan and Chris Sharma tackle two massive, existential shifts threatening the traditional online retail playbook. First, we dive into the aggressive European expansion of Chinese e-commerce giants. While JD.com (Joybuy) and SHEIN...

Why did OpenAI quietly kill its shopping feature, and what does it mean for the future of Google Ads? 🚨 In this episode of Growing E-commerce , Mike Ryan and Chris Sharma tackle the reality of the "AI takeover" in paid search. Following Chris's exclusive executive Think Tank with 20 leading CMOs in London, we are cutting through the noise to discuss the 2026 playbook. First up: The...

If you want to know how your peers are actually handling the grind, the Google Ads updates, and the "AI takeover," this episode is a must-watch. We recorded a special edition of Growing Ecommerce live from SMX Munich! Host Mike Ryan is joined by Wijnand Meijer (Co-founder & CEO at TrueClicks) and Frederick Vallaeys (CEO at Optmyzr) to dive deep into the freshly released Global State...

In this episode of Growing E-commerce , Mike Ryan and Chris from Smarter Ecommerce (smec) tackle the massive news that DSA's time on Earth is limited. With DSA going the way of the dinosaurs, Google is pushing advertisers toward AI Max for Search. But is it actually a worthy replacement? To find out, Mike breaks down the findings from his brand-new 18-page report, The Ultimate Guide to AI Max...

🚨 Breaking Google Ads News: Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) will be going "the way of the dinosaurs." As confirmed by Google's Ginny Marvin, DSA's time is limited, paving the way for AI Max as the future-proof campaign standard. Is the Google Ads Search Partner Network draining your Performance Max budget? We looked at 1,500+ campaigns and finally have the data to prove it. In this e...

Is ROAS a flawed metric for Google Ads? According to acclaimed ecommerce experts Mike Ryan and Christian Scharmüller, using Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) as your primary "North Star" metric creates a dangerous "Revenue Trap." Because ROAS measures revenue rather than actual margin, it creates an "air gap" that ignores the law of diminishing returns, ultimately hurting the...

In this episode of Growing eCommerce , Mike Ryan and Chris debunk three persistent myths that are still holding retailers back in 2026. While everyone is distracted by the hype of UCP and Agentic Commerce, many accounts are bleeding efficiency due to outdated structures like the "Heroes & Zombies" matrix and one-dimensional margin buckets. We break down why these old-school tactics c...

UCP (Universal Context Protocol) is a new infrastructure layer aiming to standardize “agentic commerce.” It breaks ecommerce into modular capabilities (“Lego bricks”) so AI agents can negotiate tasks like product discovery, checkout, and payments across platforms. This has become an infrastructure war: Google is pushing UCP as an open-source standard versus OpenAI’s ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol)...

In the final episode of 2025, Chris and Mike trade their suits for matching Christmas pajamas to deliver a raw, honest review of the year in digital marketing. 🎄 They break down the biggest surprises of the year, from Google’s unexpected pivot toward transparency to the "Naughty List" players who frustrated the industry. Mike reveals details about his behind-the-scenes meeting with Temu...

In this episode, Mike Ryan and Chris dive into the fundamental issue plaguing advanced performance advertisers: the lack of data integrity between ad platforms and a retailer’s backend systems. Why are sophisticated retailers taking optimization decisions on ad platform data when their final bottom-line evaluation comes from a different source? Mike calls this the "optimization gulf". Th...