How AI Agents Are Changing Market Research in 2026

Check out the full episode below! Enjoy The Exchange? Don't forget to tune in live Friday at 12 pm EST on the Greenbook LinkedIn and Youtube Channel!

AI is reshaping how research gets done, how data gets valued, and who owns the intelligence that drives decisions. This episode covers Meta's push into agentic business tools, a $10M bet on social video intelligence, the rise of embedded AI agents in research workflows, and why first-party data ownership is pulling ahead of intermediated access.

Plus: a Harvard study on how knowledge workers are actually using AI agents, and what that means for the industry.

Many thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos. 

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Transcript

Lenny Murphy: Thread. And we're live. As we were just discussing, kind of tech.

Karen Lynch: Tech, man.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, tech issues anyway. So all is good.

Karen Lynch: Happy Friday. Happy Friday. Man, this is a Friday that I need, that's for sure. So I don't know if you need it. You need a Friday.

Lenny Murphy: Yes, there's actually a lot going on. And, I need time to do other things.

Karen Lynch: So time is another, time to do the things.

Lenny Murphy: So it's been a very busy week. So and yeah, do we want to get our plugs out of the way?

Karen Lynch: And yes, that we should do, which is, you know, consuming my week. Like I'm sitting here thinking when Karley said, you know, are you going to, you know, plug Europe? I'm likeEurope. Because I am so deep in our other events. Like, I'm like, Europe.

Lenny Murphy: Europe already.

Karen Lynch: I'm like, I'm talking about IIEX West, man, like, which is where my head is. But yes, of course, Europe. I haven't even gotten there yet. But yes, Europe is coming up in just a few short weeks. And Karley even just said, I'll see you in Europe. And all I'm thinking about is San Francisco. That's what happens. Yeah, that's the cycle.

Lenny Murphy: Right?

Karen Lynch: Like, Europe is programmed. Europe is first. Yes, yeah, yes.

Lenny Murphy: Europe is gonna be Europe.

Karen Lynch: So we're excited. It's um, it's just now, it's just what, like two, two, two to three weeks away or something. We um, we will be there. We're very excited. It's um, it's a smaller team going, but um, for you know, on the Greenbook side of things, it's not everybody from Greenbook that goes as opposed to our North America event, but it'll be great to see the folks that are going. And yeah, and some of our good friends and partners are coming. So we're excited about that. Some wonderful speakers, some great talks. I just talked to somebody yesterday who wanted to run his presentation by me. He's a great strategist. Who really tapped into Gen Z culture and pop culture? And he's just going to give us a kind of a wow plenary session on day two that I'm very excited about. And anyway, there's just some really great, great, cool stuff coming out of it. A little less, I think. I don't want to say less AI focused because that's not really accurate, but I think we've hit that point, Lenny, where AI is just kind of the tool and we're back to just the things again. That shift is happening real time. So I'm excited about that.

Lenny Murphy: That's, yeah, which will make it interesting for IXAI, right?

Karen Lynch: I know, I know. Exactly, exactly, because it's just the way of doing business now. So it'll be neat to talk to people about. They're using it as a tool to do the work that they're doing.

Lenny Murphy: So, right, the transformational impact. Yeah. Well, that's probably a segue. Uh, well, another plug. Grit is about to be released. Um, and the grit form, and we're going to change that up a little bit because usually grit form happens either right before the release of the report. We just couldn't figure out the calendar. So it's actually happening after, which means rather than talking about. The sneak peek aspect, this is going to be much more of a conversation. If you've attended the Grit Forum, we have multiple panels that are kind of organized by topic related to GRIT about implications.

Karen Lynch: So, oh, you know what? That's a

Lenny Murphy: That was a good reminder because I signed up with my phone either. So we got it together today. All right. So that'll be something to check out because this is a very impactful report to the point like adoption and how we're already shifting now into the implications for workflows and business models and impact and all that good stuff.

Karen Lynch: So save the date.

Lenny Murphy: July 8th for the grit form. And then you mentioned West and all of our fall events, right? Yeah. My access will be very tech heavy by its very nature. But I think it has a very different flavor.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. I'm so excited. Yeah, we'll have, yeah, I don't even want to spoil it too much before we do our full marketing updates and releases of speakers and agendas. And agenda for that one, but some great platforms, brands that are platforms, tech brands that are going to be in plenary spots, and just really excited for that one. Some West Coast, you know, West Coast brands that you would almost hope to see, expect to see. So, yeah, it's just going to be a great event.

Lenny Murphy: We didn't include this on the agenda, but I want to give a shout out to this. I know we saw the news yesterday of Carol Suhaney from Qualtrics. And formerly of Toluna, joining Are You, which, so shout out to Carol Sue. And that's the type of stuff I think we're going to see there, right? Are these companies, these emerging companies, young, tech-centric, but making really smart moves of bringing in senior research talent to understand the industry and doing that. And that'll be the place where we'll see that. Congruence, I think, is starting to occur.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah. Which is probably a good segue into, you know, we're starting with some tech stories here because I just kept looking at this first story here, which I have on the brief, which is what Meta is doing. You know, we've been talking about Meta and how they're, how they're kind of, you know, how they're, you know, activating on the idea of doing research within their platform and how they're how they're making their agentic AI workflows kind of become real. So they've now launched their business AI agents. They're called Meta Business Agents. They've been, I guess, working with them in other countries around the world, kind of elsewhere. But now they've rolled out for WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messengers. So, you know, you can ask questions, you can book appointments. You can close sales, you can do things there, but you can also get daily briefings of chats that you might have missed overnight. And they'll also provide you with insights. The company, here's a direct quote from the press release that Karley will share, you know, or the article that Karley will share. The company said it's working to add capabilities like doing market research, highlighting product features, managing users' calendars, connecting tools to extract competitive insights. So here we are.

 Lenny Murphy: You know, the cool thing about that, and this was something I encountered when I moved here to Kentucky. So almost any small business around here, they don't have a website. Yeah. It's a Facebook page. So, and I think maybe for those of us who live in other areas, I just didn't pay attention to that overall. But Meta really is the backbone for the SMB market. To a great extent, certainly from a web presence standpoint. So that's what jumped out to me: like, okay, they are making these tools now available to, you know, Lenny's Pizza, right? Karen's Flower Shop, whatever.

Karen Lynch: Well, and you know, Greenbook, you know, we don't talk a lot about it here in the US because, you know, the US market isn't necessarily on Facebook to interact with Greenbook, but in the APAC region, they interact with us. On Facebook quite a bit, so our marketing team has to be engaged on Facebook for that audience because you know, small businesses in that region are turning to Facebook, which is part of why this was this particular meta-business agent has been active over there because it's a completely different way of interacting with the brand in different regions of the world. So, um anyway, so yeah, note of self, Jazz, if you're paying attention, maybe we need to be checking out what MetaBusiness Agent is doing via our Facebook account and our Messenger account, because I am, I see it happening in my own personal account because I have, I have access to, I don't go into it, but I have access to it. And every now and then I see that somebody has messaged us. I'd be very curious as to what this new agent might be telling us. Because that's what are the insights that we might be getting. It's super interesting to think about. It is.

Lenny Murphy: That's been a blind spot for me. I mean, literally, when I saw that, it was like, well, I've been ignoring Facebook myself for, well, for quite a long time, but the, but what about Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, they are huge. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not just. The businesses. My daughter, Riley, she's on Facebook every day.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: I just don't.

Karen Lynch: I interviewed somebody for the podcast. He'll be on in a couple of weeks. His name, a North American Speaker. His name was Max Lynn Vickers, and he is an insights professional working for a company called Overtime, which is a kind of a sports media streaming platform, heavy for Gen Z. They also have products, but they're really very heavily in the form of short form video of sports. Anybody in Gen Z right now who's listening or the younger audience is like, yes, Karen, we know what they are. But anybody, you know, over a certain age is like, who are they? What do they do? And if you like overtime.tv, it's incredibly cool. What they're doing is really cool. He spoke in North America. I interviewed him on the podcast yesterday. Anyway, everybody in the company is basically a brand ambassador. They all, their Instagram accounts are all overtime. Their first name. Anybody can message them on Instagram. And because all of them have an Instagram account over time. His name is Max, overtime.max or overtime.caming or overtop overtime.lenny. And everybody will write back individually, one-on-one to absolutely, they're completely accessible. To the Gen Z audience. And that is part of what their brand does, because that's what they want. That is part of what they're building their brand on. And, you know, it's like, it's amazing to me how they are building a brand that is, that is on, like, that is on and driven by their social media affinity, their Instagram passion. Amazing.

Lenny Murphy: Creators, influencers. And I think that's probably the segue to the next thing, right?

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Because what I kept thinking is like, and when I read this, like, okay, they are infrastructure. We may not think of them as, you know, the AI. Although I heard an interesting interview with the CEO of NVIDIA. Sorry, I forgot his name. And somebody asked him, who's doing it? The best work with ai and he said meta yeah he's like that they are they they may not have the big model that everybody's paying attention to but the the pragmatic applications of ai to address business issues from an infrastructure standpoint both in the organization across their properties and now rolling out they are infrastructure yeah and now we're in the ipo right boom we've got space x next week infrastructure right The data center, now Anthropic filed for an IPO. OpenAS will be right behind them. Huge, massive, yeah, I mean, SpaceX will be the biggest, I guess, of $1.7 trillion. Anthropic, you know, just shy of a trillion dollars. OpenAI, just a little bit less than that. And that makes them infrastructure. When you are, when they're that big and you're a public company, oh, now. Be a while before there is part of Nasdaq, or those things meaning like the FANG, yeah but not long. They are infrastructure, and that's three years ago. Three years, and these companies are now massively valued embedded into how the world operates.

Karen Lynch: I know. Can I share? This is one thing that you would do that Lenny, why is this? And Karen doesn't like when I do this. But I shared it on LinkedIn this morning. Just a caveat, I'm saying, you know, I'm not practicing what I preach here, but I shared on LinkedIn this morning, there's this AI museum. You probably didn't even see it yet. There's an AI museum already. There's an AI art museum in LA. It opens on June 20th. Art Museum in LA, opening June 20th. It's called Day. Data. Oh gosh, I'm already forgetting the name of it. Data World or something like that. And it is literally a museum. It's been installed in a Frank Gary building that was kind of uninhabited since COVID. And it is completely AI-created art powered by NVIDIA. I mean, like, it's just amazing. The whole thing, like, I hope that somebody in LA is going to go to that. So, by the way, if you are listening and you are in LA, please go and report to me and Lenny because I can't wait to hear about it. Reading this article, I'm just fascinated by it. I don't know exactly how I feel about it because I'm a little bit like art. I don't know how I feel as a writer and as somebody who likes to create art kind of as a passion side product. I don't know how I feel about it, but the possibility of that is just incredible. The power behind it is just incredible. The fact that it exists is mind-blowing. Absolutely.

Lenny Murphy: Let's hitbox on that for a second because I've actually been thinking about this an awful lot.

Karen Lynch: I'm so glad you're with me.

Lenny Murphy: But Michelangelo employed hundreds of artists that took his vision and made it real, right? I had a good buddy who worked for a sculptor in his foundry where he made the core sculpture, this core sculpture, but then they produced 100 of them. This idea of the that in my mind the medium is not necessarily connected to the quality of the output and I I think we're just we're learning that um yeah but I'm not a poet right I'm not a I'm you know I'm not those things but I I do see the possibilities for creative the the tools like it's still your vision you know um i've seen some some short form ai videos like movie stuff that's like this is better than Hollywood puts out. I've watched this, yeah.

Karen Lynch: So it's called Data Land. I just did a quick double check. It's called Data Land. So you can google it. A New York Times article. I think on LinkedIn, I tried to share it as a gift article. I don't know how many people can read it as a gift article. Um, called Data Land. Look it up. Um, it's not opened yet, but like when you look at some of the images that they shared, it's cool. Um, and then you can, there's like there's things that you can interact with it and have your own like personal data create something like there's. Make it interactive, it's like a full sensory experience. You even walk away with a box of chocolate that smells like a rainforest or something. And I'm like, What? Like, I can't even, I don't even know what to how. I don't even, my brain didn't know what to do with any of this this morning as I was drinking coffee, trying to picture all of it. It's amazing, like it's amazing. Um, and again, NVIDIA is behind it, and all of these companies are um the ones to watch, right? Like there's a reason why they come up week after week after week. And the reason why they keep making it into our kind of tech developments portion of the program. Just keep paying attention to this big tech, because even though we are not in a big tech industry, just keep watching them because they are like sending signals to us all of the time about the things we need to pay attention to. Absolutely.

Lenny Murphy: And they are. Yeah, the infrastructure. Yeah. Oh, well, it's a, that's a good segue. It's a good segue. The following is the money. Uh, so this alpha sense. The 350 million, 7.5 billion dollar valuation. Yeah. 600 million annual recurring revenue.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: And this is, this is a data synthesis platform.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: You know, they and researchers that feed into it, what we think of that one of the connection points. They're connecting lots of different data sources for other stuff, right? There's more enterprise, more business intelligence, and you know, other pieces there. But they've made that entirely generic. They've made it easy to make sense of information from disparate sources on their platform.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Their data infrastructure. And they're freaking huge.

Karen Lynch: And you know what? What I liked about this one is that some languages are starting to be consistent. The benefit, the benefit of all of this, right? They're talking about continuous integration of insights. So, right, we're getting that continuous monitoring or continuous intelligence, I think, is insights on demand, all of this continuity, but also the kind of compounding and value they talk about, right? Like, this is the other idea. So, like, yes, it's non-stop on. Continuous, but also exponential value. It's compounding over time. Um, that it just gets better and better as we go on. I think that's also the other kind of benefit to be paying attention to: it might be good right now, but the more we use this stuff, the more value over time we're getting. I think that's important to pay attention to.

Lenny Murphy: 100%. And we've talked about it before, and I'm sure you experienced it too, like even my own use. The more, the more I build my consolidated, you know, uh information, the better and better the tools are at synthesizing that and extracting things that really are valuable. Because it learns.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, because it learns. And if you switch, like for me, I think I've shared, I've been a pretty fairly loyal ChatGPT user, but Gemini is now built in. We have Google Workspace here. And then once you start using those tools more, oh, they're learning too. You know, it's like, oh, they're learning too. And then it becomes really rewarding because it's like, what? I don't have to switch out. You know, and that starts to get really helpful. So, yeah, I keep using them all to see what's getting smarter with me. And good stuff. Good stuff. Infrastructure.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. So this next one, I thought this was really interesting. Do you want to talk about it?

Karen Lynch: Well, yeah, I mean, I have, I have something interesting to say that's not very profound. So why don't you, if you want to go ahead and talk about it, then I'll get less profound.

Lenny Murphy: The shark group, shark, I think we're pronouncing it correctly.

Karen Lynch: The two C's.

Lenny Murphy: Lost six UK dated insight firms pooled resources on their new holding company. And what struck me at this, I do not know the details, but my assumption is that these are all small. One, two million probably, you know, something of that nature. And they're not, they're not candidates for acquisition because of their size. They're strapped on resources. Overall because you just are when you're a small business like that. And basically, I imagine six, six competitors got together and said, we're stronger together than apart. Together, we're a $10 million business. Now you've got some scale. Oh, by the way, now we're going to get more efficient. Oh, you've got an accountant. You got an accountant. We don't need to. And you start saving money so you can put the money to. Things that are necessary. So I thought it was a really cool way for some small businesses to come together without the need for massive capital formation and suddenly flex up.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Yeah. No, it's very interesting. I, and I think the idea of pooled resources is very interesting. I just want to know what the sports consultancy is doing there. That was really, I'm like, all right, everything made sense to me. And I like, and the sports consultancy. Like, I, I, okay. The only thing I kept thinking of is there must have been some, you know, some businesses in there that are, you know, that's their industry and they were benefiting from that, but, or that was the expertise that they needed, or, you because I'm like, that just seemed like a little bit of like a, okay, that's the odd man out in my opinion.

Lenny Murphy: But what's the compounding effect of that, though, right? So is it? I actually had a conversation earlier today with the CEO of a large company, and they were, they, they, they own a Speaker. They own a sports consultancy. They do. And mentioned that they actually, the connectivity between, if you're whatever, a soccer fan, but you tend to drink this beverage or you tend to eat at these restaurants. So maybe it's that compounding effect. Maybe there are some of these non-traditional things. Uh from a data asset or at least an ip standpoint that actually relate you know create some type of uber connectivity uh that compounds yeah yeah very interesting lenny very interesting we'll see what happens we'll see what happens there so but let's talk about plot yeah I mean 10 million it's hardly anything right right 10 million nothing nowadays right mil uh yeah plot uh 10 million is seed funding to scale its agenda's social video intelligence consumer research platform um yeah and so you go back to our institute facebook conversation yeah uh then instagram and tick tock and yeah that's what they're doing they're analyzing video um yeah and engaging with video content as a research feed. A couple years ago, one of the winners of the competition, Riveter, built a really cool business off video analysis of Instagram influencers, particularly in fashion and beauty. So that's, you know, what struck me is, because at first you think, well, anybody can analyze video now. Right? But the purpose-built focus, yeah. And we're still in that world where, okay, we've got these tools. And yeah, theoretically, you could do all types of stuff by closing something together, but they've built something very specific, you know, that's aligned to a specific business issue that is in demand. So that's all for them.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, good job. Good job.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. All right.

Karen Lynch: Let's talk about some product launches and new features and so on and so forth. I think this first one is super interesting. I mean, I know you know, you know more about yougov and we talk about you gov quite a bit, but youGov is launching an AI index and AI category view to track consumer AI habits, perception, brand views. Basically, we're talking about continuous structured intelligence on how consumers perceive, use, and feel about AI tools and brands. This is one of the first ones in a long time that I've been like, hmm, I'd like to track that one. I'd like to follow that study. And I was like, pretty, pretty cool, you gov. Like, pretty cool. Like, yeah, I'd like to, I can't wait to hear about that one.

Lenny Murphy: So, um, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I saw an article from Ipsos in their weekly newsletter that just talked about the differences between countries. Right? And I think, and it's still always surprising to me, maybe you experience this too, think, oh, everybody's doing this. Well, no, no, there's actually, and what the IPSIS article pointed out, and sorry, I guess we're just both though and stuff. I didn't think I was a good candidate for The Exchange. It was just something that caught my eye. But in the US, there's big interest. But then, from a consumer standpoint, it's actually kind of dropped. But in other countries, not necessarily that way. So, that's what YouGov is be tracking these differences of like to understand what about AI adoption in the US versus Japan, yeah, yeah, uh, or the UK, who's doing it, how, what are they using it for, and and you know, uh, very, very useful.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, super cool, super cool, very cool. Speaking of

Lenny Murphy: Cool or speaking of AI, which is either, you know, pure spectrum, their cloud connector to support research workflows through Anthropics AI Assistant. You guys get that? We've been talking about, you know, this is going to now be both data, existing data, as well as, you know, executing new research. Through Claude.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: You don't have to go. And now Claude may be their agent, maybe interacting with Qualtrics or ServerMonkey or whatever, right? But the, but they're going to where the user is.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Yeah. 

Lenny Murphy: Not making the user come to them.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Well, what's interesting is you look, if you look at this in tandem with the next piece, which is Outset. So Outset introduced Outset Agent. For user research workflows. So, for those of you who are trying to get like versed in these agentic workflows, if you read this outset kind of launch for outset agent, they look at it two ways. They say the outset agent works both inside the product and outside of it. And they explain inside is when a researcher opens up and builds a study through conversational AI that understands research methodology, catches quality issues inline, generates the guidance screener, but outside the agent is in Claude or cursor chat GPT, blah, blah, blah. So we're now basically kind of being taught there are really two ways to go about this agentic work, inside and outside. So I thought that was really interesting, kind of in tandem as Pure Spectrum is working in Claude. Right? So that's kind of why they're working with this LLM outside. However, that is one way to go about some of the work that's happening there versus inside. And I think an interesting thing that outset called out and an interesting way for people to start to get their head around it: like, all right, you there are different use cases, and which one are we doing, or are both, either or or both?

Lenny Murphy: That's right. And from a change management standpoint, Tim Lynch, if you're listening.

Karen Lynch: He definitely is because I got a message already.

Lenny Murphy: Okay. I mean, that's perfectly right. People, some people are still used to clicking this icon, I go into this application, and that's fine. So, um, but we're moving towards a world where that is not necessary. I'll always hear, of course, Tim. Yeah, yeah, the um, uh, where that embedded in the workflow. Uh, so yeah. We're definitely seeing that.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Yeah. He wanted to, he had chimed in earlier than in Amsterdam, when he came to Amsterdam with me, there was an AI gallery in one of the museums. So they claimed the first AI gallery, but it wasn't an entire museum.

Lenny Murphy: It was one wall.

Karen Lynch: It was a gallery. Well, it is more than just a wall. It was, it was. You know, there was other art in it also, though, but there was some space. There was some AI space. There was a gallery within the building that also was AI. So there was some cool stuff in there. But this, the one in LA is an entire, the entire space is anyway, Tim. But yes, right. In Amsterdam, anybody who's coming to the EU, there is some AI art in one of the museums. So that is there. And I don't remember which museum it was, but I think he, anyway, he shared it with me via text and I just couldn't read it. So there is some AI art to be had at some of the museums in Amsterdam. But anyway, we digress.

Lenny Murphy: I think we'll see more and more of that. You had to talk about the Pharos IO.

Karen Lynch: Pharos IQ, IQ, launching Atlas IQ.

Lenny Murphy: Sorry, yes.

Karen Lynch: Pharaoh's IQ. The thing about this that struck me: so Pharaoh's IQ launched something called Atlas IQ. And it struck me because they're talking about data as a service product. And it's, you kind of in this AI era, kind of go-to-market teams. And I really dug into this to try to understand the positioning of data as a service in general. Like, all right, so cool. So they launched Atlas IQ. And again, the rabbit hole I went down, Lenny, was data as a service. And I just started to think more philosophically about this launch rather than about that. So, sorry, Ferris IQ, it's less about, it's not about you. And it's more about data as a service in general. And everything that we've been talking about, right? Like, what we're talking about is something different. We're talking about, you know, the infrastructure again. And structure. I just sounded like I was from Long Island because I said infrastructure, but you know what I mean. We're talking about data differently. We're talking about, we're just talking about, I don't know. We're talking about data being you don't need software, right? You're, you're it's not the SaaS era anymore, right? We're talking about the product really being the data, um, and the services really the data and to the data is really what you're offering. Um, and how the data is accessed is really what you're offering. I don't know, it just seems to me to be a little bit more, um, you know, I don't know, a little bit more again, philosophical because there's a difference, there's a, there's a different model in play that we're switching into. It's just, it's, it's less about, um, It's less about big data and less about the information overload that we've had. And now suddenly we're synthesizing all of the data and making the data accessible. And I don't know, data as a service just landed with me when I read this. And I was like, yeah, that's really another, like, it seemed like this piece paired with the other one where, you know, the continuous, continuous insights and the you know, the always-on intelligence, like it all just feels like it's coalescing into what the era is for some reason. And I think that's why when I, when I read this, it all just kind of started to make sense to me as like, yes, this is the era that we're in.

Lenny Murphy: Yep. Yep. I always talk about it, you know, the big data world, right? That the, you know, data is just spokes on a wheel, right? What they could really envision was the technology that was the hub, right? What unlocked.

Karen Lynch: That? Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: That's why AI is the hub. So, this data is a service. You know, it's either it's owned, licensed, you know, rented, whatever that feeds into it. And that data is a service. So, and speaking of which, I, you know, this was one of those things that you see and you think, well, yes, of course, we still need to do this. Right. So it was another kind of blind spot reminder: media radar. Their CTV universe across streaming, live sports, and local markets. And it's like a reminder, yeah, people, we still need to measure media consumption across lots of channels. And that's, and that's a booming and important industry, and there's still work being done, right?

Karen Lynch: Yeah. What's funny? Bonus son is here. He had, you know, had surgery for his ACL. And so I was, I was moving him here after his surgery in Philly last week. And I was getting his phone charger and all that. And he says, oh, there's a charger next to my bed also. And I said, well, what's that for? And he showed me in his pocket and he said, it's for this. And what's that? And he goes, well, it's my new Nielsen tool. And I said, what do you mean by your Nielsen tool?

Lenny Murphy: The PPM, the personal people meter?

Karen Lynch: Yes. And I said, he says, I have to have it on me at all times. And I'm like, I'm sorry, what? And he said, Oh, it measures my median consumption. And No, no, no, I know what it is. I was just blown away that it's still happening, but it's not a device on his television set, it's in his pocket.

Lenny Murphy: Well, yeah, because also it's hearing the signals, it's everything.

Karen Lynch: It's his, I mean, I was just like, Wow, that is still happening. I mean, it's small. But it's in his pocket and it's on him at all times. I was, I was so like, wow, I see. I had no idea that was still happening. And it's now, by the way, now in my house. I don't know what signal is picking up right now, because it's now in my house. So, I mean, I don't know the ins and outs of how it works. If it's just, um, if it's just him and his devices, or if it's in a radio, I have no idea, Lenny, but it's now in my house for a little while. So that's cool. It was cool. I was, it just was one of those things where like, I didn't even, it was like, again, like one of those reminders, like, oh, I guess that still has to happen. Of course, that's how it works.

Lenny Murphy: And he's getting, did you ask him how much he was getting?

Karen Lynch: I didn't ask him how much. I did say, I said, you're getting paid for that, right? And he goes, oh, yeah. So I was like, all right, I should ask him how much, but, um, I don't know the number. My guess is that it's, you know, probably I can find out in real time. No, maybe that's not fair actually.

Lenny Murphy: But I don't know. But my guess is probably like 100 bucks a month. Right. And okay, 100 bucks.

Karen Lynch: So you're getting paid for. Well, we'll do that. We'll. I'll see if he responds back to the text very quickly. Let's see. We have like, what, two more stories to cover. We'll see if he writes back. We do.

Lenny Murphy: But then, I saw something. We may even mention it last week, but I saw a robot company in Germany launched a cleaning company in New York.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: And they're giving away cleaning. That's my understanding. But the cleaners are being paid to do the cleaning, and they're also, but they're mostly kids wearing cameras and they're recording the actions they take, uh, for robot training. It's like that's it, that's a gig, you know, these people are making decent money off of AI training, and that is no different. Is that any different than you know, than in-home ethnography?

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah, so. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: You know, I mean, really, theoretically, you know, a shop along, you know, these are just variations on a thing that we've been doing for a really long time.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Yeah. Do you see what Tim just wrote, by the way? He just said, by the way, lowercase B, Tim, meant lowercase B in Greenbook.

Lenny Murphy: That's right. Greenbook ratings. Niels is going to start listing this 0.0002% of media habits. All right. Let's. Do these last two for an interesting reason.

Karen Lynch: But by the way, by the way, underpaid, average 50 a month.

Lenny Murphy: Oh, wow.

Karen Lynch: Okay. But I mean, it's just Nielsen, it should be closer to 100. Yeah, it should be closer to 100. But yeah, but passive, I guess for passive listening, I guess it's not, you know, but yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Hey, it's a tank of gas, right? The, I mean, assuming the size of the car, but yeah, yeah.

Karen Lynch: All right. Yeah. Yeah. Probably not a tank of guess right now.

Lenny Murphy: It's not a tank guess for me.

Karen Lynch: It is not the no, I don't, I doubt it's a tank of guess for anybody right about now, but yeah. Anyway, okay. I did not read this first story or this, I guess it's a substack post about its first. So you go ahead and talk about this one.

Lenny Murphy: So it's just talking about the publicist live ramp. And they're talking about, you know, well, we own first party data. Well, no, not on a live ramp. They don't. They have access. To data. You know, LiveRamp is inherently an identity resolution solution to connect data. And it was just talking about having access to first-party data versus owning first-party data, owning the audience, owning the loop. Meta, go back to that, right?

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Meta has. First-party data. They arguably may have one of the largest first-party data assets in the world. So, and they get a lot from that. So, that's why they're so valuable. That's why they're advertising, et cetera, et cetera, right? Because they unlock data related to their audience in ways that drive real performance. So no, no shade on Poodle Assistant LiveRamp there, that's an intermediary effect. So you can kind of get some of the same benefits, but still not the same as the asset owned, a direct data asset that is owned. Yeah. And I just thought it was just a really important point that the folks, you know, we talked about it. Oh, it's a big deal. It is a big deal. So data connectivity is a big deal. But data ownership, that's a bigger deal.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Yeah. Cool, cool, good read, good read.

Lenny Murphy: Did you read the Harvard thing?

Karen Lynch: I did, I did, yeah. I mean, to me, this, this was kind of like, it's a nice, it's a nice kind of, mellow piece to end with. It's very affirming. Harvard, the Harvard Business School published a piece examining who's adopting AI agents and what they're using them to do. And it was very much like, you know, about like, yep, it's the personal assistant, you know, like pretty much like they are. The agents that are being adopted are largely being used to help someone out. It's, hey, book my flight. Hey, do some shopping for me. Hey, can you look into this? Hey, can you look into that right now? I think that will change. I think that will shift as they get more sophisticated. I think, you know, certainly we know we're experimenting with the gentle workflows here to do some. Admin, some tools we might give junior junior level employees that, you know, with our, you know, our OpenClaud system here, but OpenClaud, OpenCLAW system here. But I think for the most part, Agentic work is still in the personal assistance space. So, yeah, so it didn't seem terribly surprising to me.

Lenny Murphy: But no, what that meant was from a category standpoint, the number one group. Was a knowledge worker.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: So, right, uh, not not developers, you wouldn't go anywhere if there were developers, but it's actually folks, folks like us, right? Yeah. Um, and rightfully so, because the technology makes accessing and using data and information easy or easier. So, um, yeah. So that's what I just thought was interesting. But if you detail that last point, when we think about the AI work apocalypse, we're not seeing that in the knowledge worker category yet.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: So the highest adoption according to Harvard Business. Excuse me, I'm going to sneeze. But this seems to be, it doesn't seem to be impacting. Us from the importance of the functional role.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: In other pieces, you know, we are seeing that impact. So I just thought that was just an interesting connection there.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, no, I agree. And I think that I think that we've had, you know, company, I'm not, I don't mean to, you know. Minimize, there have been a lot of people that have lost work. And I know I have a lot of empathy for those folks. And I know people are, there's still a lot of people who are worried about losing jobs. But that's mostly kind of at the company level and more about tighter budgets and economic stresses and loss of clients and company corporate budgets. Being shaved, therefore, you know, kind of reduces revenue. Like, it's for different reasons. It's not necessarily losing jobs because of AI, it's losing jobs for other reasons, right? Is what I'm seeing, you know. And so, I think I don't think that we've, I don't think we've seen jobs loss, job loss because AI has replaced. I think that AI has disrupted and therefore. There have been other things that, whether it's money, money has shifted, budgets have changed. You know, there's been other reasons, but I certainly don't think AI has displaced the workers in our industry. Maybe it's made a difference with hiring or entry level. Maybe there's been some changes there. Right. But yeah, it hasn't felt apocalyptic in our industry for sure.

Lenny Murphy: I don't think so either. There's. You know, process efficiency. Do you need five people to do the job, you know, now?

Karen Lynch: Maybe not. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Right. The um, but if people you know, multiple skills, et cetera, be deployed in other ways. I'm still seeing even on the tech side, that was the news weeks ago: oh, the tech, you know, uh, AI apocalypse. The yeah, all those companies are hiring engineers like crazy, yeah. So, um So, yeah, we'll see how it all balances out. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: Anyway, anyway, well, here we are. The end of our time together. And, you know, we're just a little bit closer to the weekend.

Lenny Murphy: A little bit closer to the weekend. Yes. So I hope you have a wonderful weekend. All of our listeners hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Karen Lynch: Let's go, Knicks. I mean, do you say let's go Nicks in the basketball world? It's, you know, I'm up in the New York area. It's. It's pretty much that's what you wish for up here is that the Knicks are going to win. So okay. Got to put that out there into the universe.

Lenny Murphy: Good, go, go, Knicks. Not a sports guy. So all right.

Karen Lynch: No, it's what has to happen. So go for it. That's what we're talking about. That's what we're talking about. So, all right. Anyway, I will talk to you later, but everybody else, we'll see you next week.

Lenny Murphy: Yep. Take care. Talk to you next Friday.

Karen Lynch: Bye. Bye-bye, y'all. Yes, bye.

Links from the episode:

Meta launched business AI agents for WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger 

Claude maker Anthropic confidentially files for IPO after revenue surge puts it near $1 trillion 

AlphaSense Raises $350M at $7.5B Valuation, and Surpasses $600M in Annual Recurring Revenue 

SHARCC Group launched as six UK data and insight firms pooled resources under a new holding company 

Plot raised $10 million in seed funding 

YouGov launched AI Index and AI CategoryView 

PureSpectrum launched a Claude Connector 

Outset introduced Outset Agent for user research workflows 

pharosIQ launched atlasIQ 

MediaRadar expanded CTV Universe 

Publicis–LiveRamp highlights the gap between having first-party data and truly owning the audience, decision loop, and marketing brain in agentic AI 

Harvard Business School examines who is adopting AI agents and what they are using them to do