By Chris Suchánek

Let’s not sugar-coat it. Most companies? They’re winging it. They’re throwing digital spaghetti at the wall— running ads, posting content and hoping something sticks. But if we’re being honest, something always feels a little off. The message is muddy. The brand vibe is all over the place. They’re spending money, sure, but the results? Inconsistent at best.

Here’s the not-so-fun truth: Marketing without brand strategy is noise. And the world is full of it.

We live in a broken business culture where activity is often mistaken for progress. You hear things like, “Look at our likes!” and “We got 10,000 impressions!” But none of that matters if you can’t explain what your brand stands for. It feels like progress, but it’s not. It’s a treadmill. So let’s hit pause and call out what most people get completely wrong.

Brand strategy isn’t optional. It’s the starting point. It’s not something you slap on after your website goes live. It’s not something you retrofit after the Facebook ads flop. It should come first, always.

Why Do So Many Brands Get This Backward?

It’s the speed trap: Companies race to get seen fast. They want visibility, reach and buzz. “Let’s get the word out!” they say. But here’s the kicker: They skip the step where they figure out what that “word” even is.

So what do we end up with? A pile of brands that look shiny but feel hollow, campaigns that scream but say nothing, and messaging that changes every other week. It all looks impressive until you look beneath the surface.

When your brand isn’t rooted in anything real, every ad, post and pitch feels a little disconnected. The customer notices it too, even if they can’t quite put their finger on why. It’s like starting a conversation that sounds exciting at first but ends up going nowhere. There’s no spark. No soul.

Build A Brand, Not A Billboard

The strongest brands don’t start with marketing. They start with meaning. They ask the real, sometimes uncomfortable questions: Why do we even exist? What do we believe in? What can we offer that no one else can, at least not the way we do?

That’s what brand strategy is all about. And no, it’s not about logos or colour palettes. It’s about your brand’s core. It’s about your worldview—the stuff that drives every decision and shapes how you show up in the world.

If you want your marketing to stick, and to mean something, this is where it begins.

Brand Strategy: Know Who You Are

This is your foundation. Don’t skip it.

• Define your vision, mission and values in a way that influences real decisions.

• Understand what you believe and why it matters to your audience.

• Nail your positioning. This is the space you want to own in your customer’s mind.

A brand isn’t a product or a clever tagline. It’s a gut feeling people get when they think about you. Brand strategy helps shape that feeling so it’s consistent, honest and memorable.

Market Strategy: Know The Game You’re Playing

Once you know who you are, it’s time to figure out where you belong.

• What are you offering, and why should people care?

• How are you pricing, packaging and delivering it?

• Who’s your customer, and how will you reach them clearly and meaningfully?

This is the bridge between your identity and your actions. It keeps you from wandering in circles.

Execution: Show Up With Purpose

Now, finally, you can talk about branding and marketing. Branding is how you present yourself visually, verbally and experientially. Marketing is how you get your message out through campaigns, content, ads and stories. You need both. Marketing gets you noticed, but branding keeps people coming back. One creates interest, while the other builds trust.

Just remember, this is the last phase. If you start here, you’re building on sand.

Stop Chasing Vanity Metrics, And Start Building Real ROI

Metrics can be addictive. They’re flashy, easy to measure and look great in reports. But if they become your only focus, you’re losing the bigger picture.

Click-throughs and impressions don’t build businesses. Decisions do. Purpose does. Real growth starts when you slow down, ask better questions and build something with substance.

So here’s your challenge: Stop launching just to launch. Stop marketing without meaning. Stop throwing messages into the void and hoping they land.

Start with the brand. Build something solid. Say something real. Make your message impossible to ignore. Put brand strategy first, always.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Chris Suchánek

Sourced from Forbes

By Slava Bogdan, Edited by Micah Zimmerman

The classic sales funnel is outdated for Gen Z, as their shopping journey is now non-linear. It involves platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, focusing on viral videos, user-generated content and influencer recommendations rather than traditional ads.

By Slava Bogdan, Edited by Micah Zimmerman

СEO & co-founder of Flowwow, tech-entrepreneur with a 10-year leadership experience in e-commerce business. Building a glocal (global + local) marketplace that brings ultimate joy to your loved ones around the world.

Sourced from Entrepreneur

By Katie Jewett

Consumers today aren’t just consuming content—they’re scrutinizing it. In an era where personalization is expected and values matter more than ever, brands must go beyond simply being informative or entertaining. To truly connect, content must be relevant, trustworthy and reflective of the brand’s role in society. And that means rethinking not only what the content says but also how it’s created, delivered and perceived.

Staying Relevant In The Content Economy

Below are three essential shifts brands must make to stay relevant in today’s content economy.

1. Think beyond product-centric messaging.

Modern consumers expect more than just promotional messaging—they want brands to stand for something meaningful and worthwhile. In an April 2024 Direct Digital Holdings study, 81% of Gen Z consumers said that diversity and multiculturalism significantly influence the brands they support. This highlights the significance of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in influencing purchasing decisions among this generation. Furthermore, a 2019 study by Sprout Social reveals that “70% of consumers say it’s important for brands to take a stand on public issues.” This reflects a growing expectation for brands to engage actively in societal conversations.

That doesn’t mean abandoning performance-driven content. However, it does mean rebalancing content strategies to include storytelling that reflects the audience’s values. Brands that sustain their commitment to meaningful causes—not just through one-off campaigns but with consistent content across channels—build deeper consumer trust and long-term loyalty.

2. Prioritize privacy in distribution.

Even the most resonant message can fall flat if it’s delivered in a way that feels intrusive. As privacy concerns escalate and third-party cookies are phased out, brands must evolve their approach to targeting and reaching their audiences.

Research conducted by the Harris Poll in 2023 shows that 70% of consumers have taken action to protect their online privacy, such as blocking cookies or using incognito browsers. And a 2022 study from Cisco shows that 37% have abandoned brands due to dissatisfaction with their data practices. In response, brands are exploring new privacy-first targeting methods. One example is “predictive audiences,” which use contextual signals, such as time of day, device type or content engagement behaviour, to identify audiences more likely to interact with branded content, all without relying on personal identifiers.

These strategies strike a balance between relevance and respect, allowing brands to maintain performance while honouring consumer preferences.

3. Use AI thoughtfully in content creation.

Generative AI has unlocked new possibilities for content marketers, including rapid idea generation, tone optimization and real-time iteration, to name a few. But with great power comes new scrutiny. Can consumers tell the difference between human- and AI-generated content? And does it matter?

In a 2023 study, most consumers were unable to reliably distinguish AI-written content from human-created articles. In fact, many found AI content to be more personable and enjoyable, possibly due to its simplicity and accessibility. However, human-written content still ranked higher in terms of educational value and attention retention.

The takeaway? AI can be a powerful co-creator, particularly for content that needs to be concise and digestible. But for messaging that requires depth, education or emotional nuance, human writers still lead. Transparency matters too. Brands must communicate how they’re using AI and ensure outputs are accurate, on-brand and ethical.

Actionable Steps For Marketers

To create brand content that connects, performs and lasts, marketers should align strategy and execution with today’s consumer expectations. Here are some practical ways to start:

• Lead with value-driven storytelling. Ensure your content reflects your brand’s stance on social issues and commitment to DEI—not just in mission statements but across campaigns, social posts and creative execution. Audiences can spot performative messaging, so aim for consistency and authenticity.

• Design for privacy-first performance. Move beyond third-party cookies by exploring contextual and predictive targeting methods. Use signals such as page context, device type and user behaviour to personalize content delivery while respecting privacy boundaries.

• Use AI as a co-creator, not a crutch. Let AI help with brainstorming, outlining or tone refinement, but reserve human input for strategic storytelling and emotional nuance. Be transparent about how AI is used in your content process, especially for brand-owned channels.

• Simplify complex content without losing substance. Whether through AI tools or human editing, clarity matters. Break down technical concepts, structure for skimmability and prioritize accessibility, especially when speaking to a diverse or global audience.

The Future Belongs To Thoughtful Brands

Content has never carried more weight—or more responsibility. As consumers become more discerning, brands must move beyond traditional tactics and embrace a holistic content strategy—one that integrates purpose-driven messaging, prioritizes privacy and uses emerging tools like AI to scale with care.

The brands that succeed will be those that create not just content but connection.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Katie Jewett

Sourced from Forbes

By Paul McNally

By Paul McNally

Sourced from readwrite

By John Readman

How we track, measure and attribute the success of marketing activity puts many marketers in a cold sweat—whether we’re talking about top-level marketing mix models dating back to the 1950s or the complex, hyper personalized multichannel attribution models of today.

The shift to digital has, of course, helped. With tools that can track customers throughout their journey, the process looks easier on the surface. But the truth is that the landscape has become even more complex. There’s a skill shortage in attribution, and data privacy poses even more complex challenges. Data privacy laws already make handling consumer data a minefield, and there is little optimism that it will become easier. A 2025 Supermetrics survey of 200 marketers from around the globe revealed that 57% predict more difficulty in marketing attribution in the future.

Why Attribution Is So Important Today

It’s worth emphasizing why attribution is more vital today than ever. Perceived wisdom, guided by the marketing rule of seven, has taught us that customers typically need to interact with a brand at least seven times before they decide to make a purchase. Today, however, the digital advertising landscape means customers interact with your brand much more often. Data compiled earlier this year shows that customers interact with a brand 28.87 times on average before a conversion.

With that many touchpoints, it’s impossible to understand your successes and failures without an effective attribution model. Attribution helps us understand how customers interact at each touchpoint and enables us to determine the effectiveness of each marketing method. With analysis, we can see which aid conversion and then decide how to spend money and resources more effectively in the future.

The Challenges Of Attribution

Historically, access to data has been a stumbling block for many marketers. You may be unable to access data because you’re on a small budget, which prevents you from accessing the right measurement software, or you may have a team that lacks the knowledge to implement what you have. Or there may be a disconnect between sales and marketing—creating data silos that prevent useful data from being used to make smarter marketing decisions.

Access to data is also changing due to user behaviour. Nearly 33% of internet users now use ad blockers, which, along with blocking ads, also block cookies that allow us to collect and analyse user data.

Data quality is holding many marketers back as well. Research by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council and GfK in 2022 found that 62% of global marketers are only moderately confident—or worse—about their data.

How Data Privacy Has Affected Attribution

Since its implementation in 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation has radically changed how European marketers use customer data. There are currently no federal laws in the U.S. that are as comprehensive as the GDPR. However, laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act have started an inevitable shift toward increased data privacy. Legislation like this makes businesses legally obligated to process data securely and limit how they share or use it with other organizations. That means considering things like data processing agreements, which establish your roles and obligations as well as those of any organizations you share data with. It also means implementing robust data governance—ensuring all of your consumer data is clean, reliable and consistent. While essential for consumers, these are all things that take extra time and resources for businesses to implement.

There are also other areas of GDPR legislation that companies risk violating. One of the key tenets of GDPR is that data requests from users should be explicit and specific. Bundling together your requests with one checkbox is not considered compliant data collection. And the challenge of data collection post-GDPR doesn’t just come from the legislation itself; it comes from users, too. According to GWI data from 2024, 34.5% of adult internet users globally now reject cookies at least some of the time.

Attribution In A Privacy-Focused World

The key to accurate attribution is still first-party data. Collecting your own customer data gives you control over compliance and privacy. While there are still grey areas with uncertainty about how GDPR legislation should be interpreted, this will improve as regulators provide more specific guidelines and enforcement increases. Businesses can ensure compliance in the meantime by implementing robust consent mechanisms, providing clear privacy policies and offering easy opt-out options for users.

Once you have that data, the next challenge is using it. Like attribution, data aggregation has always been complex for businesses with smaller marketing budgets. But technology could hold the answer. Data lakes, for example, can make it easier for organizations to store, manage and analyse large, unstructured datasets. They can also ease privacy concerns by anonymizing data for analysis. While this advanced technology still requires time, money and expertise to use effectively today, artificial intelligence is making it more accessible for companies now and in the future.

Machine learning algorithms can also help evaluate converting and nonconverting paths, giving relative value to each and making it easier for marketers to make decisions based on their data. AI can make working with different attribution models easier by combining deterministic data (e.g., logged-in user behaviour) with probabilistic models to create a hybrid approach that better estimates cross-device behaviour. It can spot patterns that may not have been visible to you before, and with the introduction of agentic models, it can apply insights to adjust budgets in real time and even make decisions on your behalf.

So, while data privacy makes attribution more challenging than ever, it’s a welcome challenge for those who value its intentions. Compliant data collection gives users greater control over their data and helps build trust that is sorely lacking in the modern consumer. Combine that with first-party data and new technology, and we can spend marketing budgets more effectively and deliver experiences to consumers that are truly personalized to their behaviour, not just based on assumptions.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By John Readman

Sourced from Forbes

By Audrey Wan

TikTok’s brief shutdown in January pushed users to RedNote and other Chinese social media platforms, exposing them to brands like Florasis and Judydoll.

As the US Supreme Court mulled a legal ban on TikTok in January, the effects on social media platforms were profound. Even before the judges ruled in favour of the ban—prompting the app to temporarily go dark in the US—an estimated 2 million TikTok users jumped ship to Chinese app Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote. For a number of beauty-conscious users, what they discovered was a revelation.

“I realized that RedNote had a lot of beauty secrets the United States wasn’t using,” says Hailey Laine, a TikTok creator in Chicago who joined Xiaohongshu in January and continues to use both apps—RedNote for finding cosmetic inspiration, TikTok for posting about it. In January, Laine shared a video of herself using face powder and bright pink blush to re-create the monochromatic glow popular among Chinese beauty influencers, racking up 300,000 likes and 2.3 million views.

That kind of exposure has been a boon for so-called C-beauty brands such as Judydoll, which started in China in 2017 before venturing into retail markets across Asia in 2021. Judydoll’s total sales grew from $232 million in 2023 to $345 million in 2024, says Stefan Huang, group strategy director at Joy Group Ltd., the parent company. Overseas retail sales grew 400% in 2024, thanks in part to direct-to-consumer online channels such as Shopee and TikTok Shop. The company declined to provide specific figures for overseas sales. Social media, Huang says, “has helped a lot to build our credibility.”

The brand’s $17 highlighter contour palette has become a staple in the hundreds of TikTok videos attempting the “Douyin look,” named after the Chinese version of the video app. The look includes a porcelain complexion, rose-tinted cheeks and lips, and wispy black lashes. “Something that the Western beauty market doesn’t really have is a matte highlight,” says Jenn Ze, a beauty influencer in Toronto who purchased Judydoll’s palette after seeing videos about it reposted from Douyin in her Instagram feed. “This is the key.”

Videos of users gushing over Judydoll’s “curling iron” mascara have also tallied millions of views, helping Judydoll sell more than 8 million units of the $14 mascara worldwide since 2023. In lieu of a bristly plastic wand, the product features a thin, spiral steel tube that fans laud for its ability to precisely separate and lift eyelashes. “Where have you been my entire life?” gushed Nikkie de Jager-Drossaers, a beauty influencer based in the Netherlands with 19 million Instagram followers, in a video last January.

Even before the TikTok ban, C-beauty brands were gaining a greater foothold in non-Chinese markets. Lines formed in September when Florasis, a Chinese cosmetics brand that came out in 2017, opened its first European counter at the LVMH-owned department store Samaritaine Paris Pont-Neuf in Paris. It marked the first time a Chinese cosmetics maker has teamed up with a global luxury retailer, says Gabby Chen, Florasis’ president of global markets.

Overseas consumers have been drawn by the cultural elements of Florasis’ packaging, which features traditional Chinese motifs from nature and mythology. One of its makeup palettes, a $59 pan of nine eyeshadow colours intricately engraved with images of a phoenix, won Allure magazine’s award for best of beauty in 2023 and Marie Claire’s award for best luxury powder eyeshadow this year. And Florasis’ $46 cushion foundation ranked in Vietnam’s top three TikTok Shop beauty bestsellers. “It’s honestly one of the best C-beauty cushions I’ve ever tried,” Daniel Chan, a Singapore-based creator with 104,000 followers on TikTok, said in a video last May. “My skin loves this kind of slippery thin formula.”

Florasis declined to disclose full financial figures, but it said it has grown by double digits every year since 2019. In February the brand made its debut on the luxury e-commerce platform Ounass, which is based in the United Arab Emirates, and says it’s working on other retail partnerships in the Middle East.

Photo Illustration: Ryan Haskins for Bloomberg Businessweek; Photos: Judydoll (5), Florasis (6), Getty (1)

By Audrey Wan

Sourced from Bloomberg

BY Eve Upton-Clark

Younger social media users may care more about follower counts than authenticity, a new survey says. What does it mean for real-life creators?

Feature Image Credit: noonoouri/Instagram

BY Eve Upton-Clark

Eve Upton-Clark is a writer at Fast Company who focuses on internet culture and trends, covering everything from politics to pop culture.. She has been a freelance features writer since 2020 and is a regular contributor to Business Insider, Telegraph, Dazed, and more More

Sourced from FastCompany

By Matt Cayless

E-commerce CTRs drop; smart brands adapt with new SEO strategies

I’ve worked in SEO for over a decade, and I can say with confidence: ecommerce brands have never had it tougher than they do right now when it comes to organic visibility.

Not because SEO is dying, but because the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) is undergoing a major transformation, whether we like it or not.

In 2024, we’ve seen a major shift in how search works. AI Overviews, Shopping Ads, and rich Google SERP features are no longer just experimental additions, they’re dominating the search experience, particularly on mobile.

Recent data from AccuRanker confirms what many in the industry have felt for months: ecommerce click-through rates (CTR) for organic results are nosediving, especially for high-intent transactional keywords.

The good news?

There’s still a path forward, but it requires e-commerce brands to rethink their approach to SEO completely.

In this article, I’ll break down what’s happening to organic traffic, why traditional SEO tactics are losing ground, and four ways ecommerce brands can adapt to stay visible and competitive.

The data: CTRs are down, especially on mobile

AccuRanker’s latest white paper examined how organic listings perform across various devices and user intents. The findings were stark:

1. CTR for transactional keywords is down across the board, with mobile suffering the biggest drops.

2. Even in the absence of paid ads, rich SERP features, such as “Popular Styles,” “Shop the Look,” image carousels, and AI Overviews, dominate the top of the page.

3. On mobile, organic CTRs are up to 50% lower than desktop for the same keywords.

In short, ranking #1 still has huge value, it just doesn’t guarantee the same volume of clicks it once did.

The rise of zero-click search, where users get answers directly within Google’s interface, means that even top-performing organic listings are seeing reduced traffic, not because SEO is ineffective, but because more users are engaging with SERP features before ever scrolling.

Why e-commerce SEO is under pressure

1. AI overviews are reducing the need to click

Google’s AI Overviews, which have now rolled out globally, are designed to answer user queries instantly, often pulling product suggestions from the Google Shopping Graph or summarizing content from multiple sources.

For informational or top-of-funnel searches (e.g., “best hiking boots for wet weather”), this used to be prime SEO real estate. Brands would publish buying guides or product roundups and earn high CTRs.

Now?

AI Overviews often display product suggestions directly in the search result, removing the need to visit a third-party site entirely.

2. Google Shopping is consuming the SERP

Google Shopping Ads and organic Shopping features are everywhere, even when you don’t pay for them.

SERP features like:

• Shop the Look
• Popular Stores
• Popular Styles
• Image Product Carousels

…are now appearing even when no paid Shopping Ads are present. They pull directly from merchant feeds and product schemas, providing Google with a visually rich, shoppable experience and reducing the likelihood that users will need to visit traditional listings.

This means traditional organic category and product pages are often buried below these features, especially on mobile, where screen real estate is limited.

3. SERP features create more competition for attention

Google’s obsession with rich features means your listing isn’t just competing with other brands; you’re competing with Google itself.

Here’s a rough example of what now appears above most organic ecommerce listings:

• Google Shopping Ads
• “Popular Stores” carousel
• AI Overview summary
• “Shop the Look” grid
• “People Also Ask” box
• Image product packs
• Youtube videos

Each one reduces the chance of a user clicking through to your site, even if you’re sitting at position #1.

What can e-commerce brands do about it?

So, how do you fight back when Google keeps pushing your organic listings further down the page?

Here are four core strategies we’re implementing with ecommerce clients right now that are helping them remain visible and competitive in an AI-dominated SERP:

1. Leverage digital PR to boost brand recognition and CTR

With organic visibility declining, brand recognition is more important than ever.

When users see your name in a cluttered SERP, familiarity can be the difference between a scroll and a click. And that’s where Digital PR comes in.

Digital PR isn’t just about backlinks, it’s about building authority and visibility across trusted publications and media outlets. These mentions not only enhance your brand strength but also increase brand recall when users encounter your listing in search results.

Action steps:

– Secure top-tier backlinks and mentions in industry publications.

– Promote branded content on platforms your audience trusts.

– Ensure that when your site does appear in search, users recognize and trust the brand enough to click.

2. Build digital authority outside of Google

This is the era of Digital Authority PR, where it’s not just about where you rank, but where else you show up that influences both human behaviour and algorithmic trust.

Google’s AI Overviews and LLM-powered tools, such as Gemini, Chatgpt, and Perplexity, rely heavily on high-authority, frequently cited web content to generate responses. That includes trusted blogs, media outlets, and other widely referenced sources that are publicly accessible.

Brands that appear in well-cited articles, contribute expert commentary, or are mentioned on platforms with crawlable transcripts, like YouTube videos with descriptions, Reddit threads, or podcast blogs, increase their chances of being referenced by AI tools in the future.

If your brand is absent from these ecosystems, you may not show up in AI-generated responses, even if you rank well in traditional search.

Action steps:

– Get featured on niche podcasts, relevant YouTube channels, and Reddit threads.

– Contribute expert commentary to high-authority blogs and newsletters.

– Create thought leadership content that answers key audience questions, content that LLMs might pull into future AI Overviews.

3. Optimize for SERP features — not just rankings

It’s no longer enough to optimize for keywords. You need to optimize for the features Google is displaying.

That means treating your product feed and structured data with the same care you give your on-page SEO.

Action steps:

– Keep your Google Merchant Centre feed up to date. Product titles, descriptions, availability, pricing, reviews, and images all influence whether you appear in organic Shopping features.

– Implement a comprehensive product schema, including price, availability, reviews, and brand information.

– Use the FAQ schema carefully; it’s less likely to impact AI Overviews now, but still useful for People Also Ask boxes.

– Ensure your site loads quickly, looks clean on mobile devices, and features rich media (e.g., lifestyle product photos).

Optimizing for these SERP features gives you multiple entry points into the search experience, not just the traditional 10 blue links.

4. Shift from lead capture to demand generation

With fewer clicks available, you can’t just wait for users to search and find you; you need to create demand.

This involves building awareness through paid social, influencer marketing, and content campaigns that encourage users to search for your brand directly or convert through other channels.

Action steps:

– Use paid social media to promote new product launches and seasonal offers.

– Partner with creators and influencers to drive awareness.

– Nurture audiences through email and remarketing to bring them back, even if the initial discovery wasn’t from Google.

SEO is no longer the sole driver of e-commerce growth. It’s part of a larger demand generation ecosystem.

The AI search shift is just beginning

Currently, Google dominates the search market, but the rise of AI-powered tools is reshaping the playing field.

While SparkToro data shows that tools like Chatgpt haven’t yet displaced Google for consumer searches, we’re seeing early signs that users are increasingly relying on AI tools for discovery and research, particularly for complex or multi-step decisions.

That means now is the time to future-proof your presence. By showing up in trusted places, publications, podcasts, and social conversations, you increase your brand’s visibility in LLM training data and improve your odds of inclusion in AI-generated content.

The brands that adapt early will build long-term authority that can’t be gamed or reverse-engineered overnight.

Final Thoughts: SEO Isn’t Dead — But the Playbook Is

Yes, e-commerce click-through rates are declining, and yes, organic rankings don’t deliver what they used to.

But this isn’t the end of SEO. It’s a sign that SEO needs to evolve.

The brands winning today are doing more than optimizing their websites. They’re building authority, showing up in high-trust ecosystems, and future-proofing their visibility for an AI-driven future.

SEO in 2025 isn’t just about where you rank. It’s about where you’re recognized.

We’ve featured the best online marketing service.

Feature Image credit: One Photo / Shutterstock

By Matt Cayless

Sourced from techradar.pro

This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro’s Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

By Ankush Das

Twilio integrates conversational intelligence to offer deep behavioural insights.

AI is here to automate and simplify tasks for humans. Its inherent traits even enhance performance, boosting business outcomes. The results surprised many.

In a recent months-long experiment, a pizza brand tested AI-powered virtual agents, developed by Twilio, by allowing them to handle customer orders.

In a conversation with AIM, Christopher Connolly, director of solution engineering at Twilio, a customer engagement and communications platform, shared insights into how AI is not only keeping pace with customer interactions but also occasionally surpassing human agents.

Among the standout findings, AI agents sold more soft drinks than their human counterparts, not due to charm but because of their persistence and shameless upselling strategies.

The Virtual Agent with a Supervisor

Real-world data from Twilio’s new observability tools reveals that virtual agents, when monitored correctly, can improve both upselling and customer satisfaction. The company shared that using AI agents resulted in 25 times faster responses to customers requesting to speak with Sales, 75% of service ticket resolutions without escalation, and a 3.1 times higher conversion rate than before.

Twilio’s new ‘conversation relay’ feature aims to tackle a longstanding blind spot in AI deployments—how virtual agents behave after going live. Unveiled first internally and now shared with the broader developer ecosystem, the system enables companies to observe and analyse AI agents in production in real time.

Connolly told AIM that the tool works across virtual agents, whether built on Twilio or external platforms, and integrates with conversational intelligence to offer deep behavioural insights.

Twilio’s machine learning team has open-sourced six specialised AI agent observability language operators that are purpose-built for everyday use cases that have been requested by the platform’s customers. “These operators allow users to extract signals such as agent interruptions, hallucination events, conversation flow errors, and more,” Connolly said.

To ensure safety and reliability, Twilio uses a multi-model setup, where one large language model keeps another in check.

“We’ve effectively got one LLM checking another,” he highlighted. This internal network can detect hallucinations, ensure tasks are completed, and generate predictive customer satisfaction scores mid-call.

Connolly noted that Governments, banks, and insurers in regulated industries are concerned about AI becoming too autonomous. They worry that AI will offer inappropriate advice or get stuck in repetitive loops when performing assigned tasks. Our solution addresses these concerns.

Unlike traditional call analytics, which mainly converts speech into searchable text, Twilio’s system taps into the potential of LLMs to derive meaning and context from conversations.

From his observations, Connolly said, “The shift that we’re seeing is we’re not just using NLP to turn it into text and do tagging, we’re now able to add the LLM capability into it to be a lot more abstract with our questioning.”

Bring Your Own Language Model

The company’s approach to virtual agents involves a flexible “bring your own language model” (BYOLM) strategy through something called conversation relay. They provide sample integrations for various platforms like Azure, OpenAI, Groq, and Hugging Face, allowing customers to plug in whichever LLM they prefer.

This approach is popular because it handles complex speech-related tasks, like Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Text-to-Speech (TTS) through partners like ElevenLabs and Deepgram, and sentence endpoints, through Twilio, leaving the LLM choice open.

However, they do provide an LLM option directly in some cases. In those scenarios, they currently offer support for OpenAI’s models. The focus remains on simplifying communications infrastructure and connecting disparate technologies rather than developing their own language models.

All of this is governed by clear data usage policies, the company claims. “Customers really value consent, and that is in all of our data, all of our testing. Consent is always required,” Connolly added.

To aid transparency, Twilio publishes AI “nutrition labels” explaining how models operate and where humans are involved in the loop.

The “Shameless” Upseller, AI in the Pizza Business

To see how AI agents perform on the ground, the customer engagement platform partnered with a pizza delivery chain to compare virtual and human agents in a live ordering environment. The experiment ran for several months and revealed some unexpected advantages of automation.

The company observed how many conversations it takes to order a pizza. Connolly explained that the number of turns increased when the virtual agent was introduced. He reasoned this because of the upsell insertions and tasks the virtual agent was asked to perform. Despite the longer interaction, customer satisfaction remained stable, and revenue per order actually rose.

Most notably, one product stood out. “The virtual agent sells more soft drinks than the human agent,” Connolly revealed. “The virtual agent is shameless,” he noted, adding that they don’t mind asking repeatedly, pushing for add-on drinks and snacks.

In contrast, human agents often tended to avoid repeated upsell prompts. “They’ll just want to get through the order, move on to the next order,” he said.

Not just food brands, Twilio also tested its AI-powered conversational relay feature with a financial services provider. For instance, it tested with Cedar for a healthcare client to streamline billing through automated patient communication and secure voice payments. Additionally, ING, a Dutch multinational and financial services company, integrates Twilio’s voice, chat, and video tools with its APIs to enhance contact centre interactions.

Looking ahead, Connolly sees AI voice agents becoming more human-like and responsive. “OpenAI has a real-time API that we’re working with. Gemini has the same. Google’s got the same,” he said.

By Ankush Das

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By Aki Ito

In March, Shopify‘s CEO told his managers he was implementing a new rule: Before asking for more head count, they had to prove that AI couldn’t do the job as well as a human would. A few weeks later, Duolingo‘s CEO announced a similar decree and went even further — saying the company would gradually phase out contractors and replace them with AI. The announcements matched what I’ve been hearing in my own conversations with employers: Because of AI, they are hiring less than before.

When I first started reporting on ChatGPT’s impact on the labor market, I thought it would take many years for AI to meaningfully reshape the job landscape. But in recent months, I’ve found myself wondering if the AI revolution has already arrived. To answer that question, I asked Revelio Labs, an analytics provider that aggregates huge reams of workforce data from across the internet, to see if it could tell which jobs are already being replaced by AI. Not in some hypothetical future, but right now — today.

Zanele Munyikwa, an economist at Revelio Labs, started by looking at the job descriptions in online postings and identifying the listed responsibilities that AI can already perform or augment. She found that over the past three years, the share of AI-doable tasks in online job postings has declined by 19%. After further analysis, she reached a startling conclusion: The vast majority of the drop took place because companies are hiring fewer people in roles that AI can do.

Next, Munyikwa segmented all the occupations into three buckets: those with a lot of AI-doable tasks (high-exposure roles), those with relatively few AI-doable tasks (low-exposure roles), and those in between. Since OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022, she found, there has been a decline in job openings across the board. But the hiring downturn has been steeper for high-exposure roles (31%) than for low-exposure roles (25%). In short, jobs that AI can perform are disappearing from job boards faster than those that AI can’t handle.

Which jobs have the most exposure to AI? Those that handle a lot of tech functions: database administrators, IT specialists, information security, and data engineers. The jobs with the lowest exposure to AI, by contrast, are in-person roles like restaurant managers, foremen, and mechanics.

This isn’t the first analysis to show the early impact of AI on the labor market. In 2023, a group of researchers at Washington University and New York University homed in on a set of professionals who are particularly vulnerable: freelancers in writing-related occupations. After the introduction of ChatGPT, the number of jobs in those fields dropped by 2% on the freelancing platform Upwork — and monthly earnings declined by 5.2%. “In the short term,” the researchers wrote, “generative AI reduces overall demand for knowledge workers of all types.”

At Revelio Labs, Munyikwa is careful about expanding on the implications of her own findings. It’s unclear, she says, if AI in its current iteration is actually capable of doing all the white-collar work that employers think it can. It could be that CEOs at companies like Shopify and Duolingo will wake up one day and discover that hiring less for AI-exposed roles was a bad move. Will it affect the quality of the work or the creativity of employees — and, ultimately, the bottom line? The answer will determine how enduring the AI hiring standstill will prove to be in the years ahead.

Some companies already appear to be doing an about-face on their AI optimism. Last year, the fintech company Klarna boasted that its investment in artificial intelligence had enabled it to put a freeze on human hiring. An AI assistant, it reported, was doing “the equivalent work of 700 full-time agents.” But in recent months, Klarna has changed its tune. It has started hiring human agents again, acknowledging that its AI-driven cost-cutting push led to “lower quality.”

“It’s so critical that you are clear to your customer that there will always be a human,” CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg. “Really investing in the quality of the human support is the way of the future for us.”

Will there be more chastened Siemiatkowskis in the months and years ahead? I’m not betting on it. All across tech, chief executives share an almost religious fervor to have fewer employees around — employees who complain and get demotivated and need breaks in all the ways AI doesn’t. At the same time, the AI tools at our disposal are getting better and better every month, enabling companies to shed employees. As long as that’s the case, I’m not sure white-collar occupations face an optimistic future.

Even Siemiatkowski still says he expects to reduce his workforce by another 500 through attrition in the coming year. And when Klarna’s technology improves enough, he predicts, he’ll be able to downsize at an even faster pace. Asked when that point will come, he replied: “I think it’s very likely within 12 months.”

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images; Ava Horton/BI

By Aki Ito

Aki Ito is a chief correspondent at Business Insider.

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