What Happens When AI Starts Making the Buying Decisions

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 agents are quietly rewriting how people shop, and most brands haven't noticed. Karen Lynch and Lenny Murphy dig into what happens when chatbots become the new path to purchase, why old measurement standards are cracking under the weight of streaming and AI, and what it actually takes to turn data into decisions instead of just dashboards.

Thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos. 

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Transcript

Karen Lynch: Karley.

Lenny Murphy: And we're live. All right. Literally, guys, we're just doing like last minute tech. Like, wait a minute. But we're all good now.

Karen Lynch: Crazy talk. That's crazy talk. I feel like everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong.

Lenny Murphy: It's Friday.

Karen Lynch: So Friday. I recorded a podcast this morning at nine in Fairfield, and then I had to get to my mother's house because she needed to run to the store and I needed to be back up. And I was like, All right, I'm here. I'm back up. But then I was like, But I'm technically not a backup because I have to go live.

Lenny Murphy: So, yeah, I get it. I get it. Well, I just said the uh, the quilt in the background. Well, that is a lovely, very cool quilt.

Karen Lynch: She's very talented. And the thing is, she doesn't want to sell them. Like, she just likes to make them. She's like a prolific quilter who just makes them and hangs them up. They're all over, they're in every room. They're everywhere. She's very talented. I would buy that quilt. Yeah, no, she's very, I know, she's very talented.

Lenny Murphy: Can I buy that quilt?

Karen Lynch: They're beautiful. We all have them on all of ours like everybody has them on beds. She makes them for children and grandchildren. It is not something. That is generationally being passed down as a skill. She's got the whole basement here set up. Like she's the best equipment.

Lenny Murphy: Wow. It's quite a skill. It's very cool. It's a big thing around here. So, and people, they paint their quilt designs on their barns. So that's like the family signal, right? The coat of arms is the family signal.

Karen Lynch: It's not, but it could be. It's very pretty.

Lenny Murphy: It is. I like it.

Karen Lynch: She's super talented. Anyway, yes. Every room that I do these in when I come here, there'd be a different quilt hanging on those like,

Lenny Murphy: Well, good. Now we have something to look forward to.

Karen Lynch: Oh, yes. Crazy talk. Crazy talk. Here we are, friends.

Lenny Murphy: Here we are. Yes. So, yeah, boy, this week. Yeah. Thank you. Actually, I learned a trick. I'm going to share this with you guys. My doctor shared a trick with me. You know, if you, if you hold your pinkies, you touch your thumb to your pinky, hold it out. Now take a deep breath into your nose.

Karen Lynch: Any mindfulness tips from Lenny? Cause you know, this is called box breathing.

Lenny Murphy: So my doctor told me to do this because of some stuff that I have going on, right?

Karen Lynch: We're talking to a woman who meditates and does yoga.

Lenny Murphy: Yes. So the box is breathing. That, okay.

Karen Lynch: Well, anyway, but please, please go. This is fun.

Lenny Murphy: No, it was just, just a cool thing. Like, wait, wait. You touch your pinky and like you breathe differently. Like, I'm breathing in through, you know, like fill my whole, like the end of my belly. And it's very cool.

Karen Lynch: Anyway, so breathing is, breathing is cool.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. It is.

Karen Lynch: I want to do it. I want, I want you to lead. You lead one of Green Book's monthly mixers where you just take this.

Lenny Murphy: Is that it? All right. Yeah, but probably coming from the lady who takes yoga and practices meditation. All right. Well, shall we talk about it? Let's meditate on the state of the industry. There's a clumsy segue.

Karen Lynch: No, it's a great segue. It's a great segue. But first, doing this is also really good for you, by the way. Like, we can talk about tapping some first, pat ourselves on the back because, you know, Grit Forum was this week. If you did not tune into the grit forum, first of all, Lenny did a great overview, fantastic job on the overview. And I was able to participate in two of the sessions with our commentary providers, which I really enjoyed. My first time technically is a Grit Forum participant. So I enjoyed that. And then you did the wrap-up session too. So it's available on demand. And I just, if you don't know how to get there, you can go to our website, check it out. If you really don't know how to even do that, just reach out to us.

Lenny Murphy: Um but yeah but it was good and I think it was an important one and you know we talk about a lot of different um changes in the industry but this was a good one so it was it was there and yesterday did a webinar with our friends uh forsta who are partners in grit and talking about that as well and uh and and we're already you know we're writing the questionnaire for the uh for the new one informed uh quite a bit on The Exchange our weekly like I was talking to nelson yesterday like we have to ask and we don't ask any questions about mcp we have to start asking questions about mcp uh adoption on both the brand side and the supplier side for instance so this really is an integrated system that we have going on here so yeah yeah so yeah anyway time to shout out some events yep Next up is IIEXAI.

Karen Lynch: It's our virtual event in September. Thank you, Karley, so very much. This one, you know, obviously I'm involved in programming. I am so vested in this content. I have talked to some amazing, amazing speakers. This list is only, you know, skimming the surface of some brands that are showing up for us. The ones that are not on here are just as great as the ones that are on here. We have some amazing partners that are bringing case studies to the table. We are absolutely at the phase in AI adoption where we are talking about how we are integrating AI into our workflows, how brands are using AI in their everyday work, what AI mandates are at the corporate level. We are talking about studies. You know, the ARF is coming to talk about their latest study. We have UNESCO talking about the global kind of consequences of all this AI use and global mandates and governance. We're talking about all of these things, not just the ethics of AI, but the kind of integrity of AI. We're talking about just the quality, data quality. And I mean, all of it is being discussed at this event. This is probably our best. Intelligent AI event to date. And I'm really excited about it. I'm really thrilled. I'm just thrilled.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: You know, I think one of them, I was going to say the smartest thing. I don't know if that sounds too arrogant, but it's very cool that we started this event as the whole AI boom started for this very reason. Like we're tracking.

Karen Lynch: We're tracking the movement so we're tracking the adoption every year via this event and this year we're getting more into case studies and uh so uh hats off karen in doing this wow it's so cool it's so cool to see and when you when you look at the content from year one and then you look at what what's coming to the table this year it is outstanding and it's it's anyway it's really really cool I mean yeah, I'm really excited for this one. So, get yourself registered, free to attend. Really, come to this one. It's going to be a phenomenal event.

Lenny Murphy: So, yeah, and technically our largest event, right?

Karen Lynch: Yeah. I know, I know. It's amazing.

Lenny Murphy: We have many thousands of people that are around the world. Around the world, yeah.

Karen Lynch: We have, um, I don't know if they're on here, but um, yeah, UOB is on here, Singapore Bank. That's cool. So, we are, we are, we are, we are from, you know, from literally from, you know, the Asia Pacific region, uh, we are going all the way to the Pacific. In our own country. So, it's just amazing. We have Europe, Europe representation. We're just amazing. Good or bad.

Lenny Murphy: Very cool.

Karen Lynch: Very cool. Putting that up. But let's move on to the next one because a month later is our first gathering for IIEX West. Cannot wait. Again, just amazing, amazing brands, amazing partners. This event, we're going to have the competition again. We're going to have a startup alley in our exhibit hall. We are going to have roundtable discussions that are facilitated not by sponsors, not by partners, but by hand selected, mostly moderators, but individuals that are passionate about topics, some people that are near and dear to our hearts in terms of partnership. Through the years. I just cannot wait for this event. It's really going to be quite special. And of course, our private meeting program, which has been something that differentiates us, which you know, from the get-go is one of your babies. So I just can't wait for this event. It's going to be amazing.

Lenny Murphy: I'm developing some FOMO. Sorry. It's okay. The fun times. Fun times.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. And what I also like about this one, and I really am very preachy and I'm so sorry, but this one is also going to be quite the intersection of UX and MRX because so many of these platforms and new tech coming out of the Silicon Valley are seeing that intersection more and more. Like, yes, of course, we have businesses that are headquartered out west. Like, yes, we have entertainment. And yes, we have. You know, we have, you know, like food and beverage companies. And yes, we have, you know, travel and leisure companies. And yes, we have some clothing brands. And, you know, we have some, you know, just food and beverage in general. But we also do have tech platforms that are out there and the intersection of market research and UX. Are coming together really beautifully at this organization. I mean, at this event, and within these organizations, they are seeing more of that overlap. So, we're talking about that there, which I'm really excited about.

Lenny Murphy: Well, that is a very good segue, actually. I mean, truly into the first funding MA, follow the money, right? Yeah. And Data Brooks, another 3 billion in funding. So 188 billion valuation um and when you think about it this to your point the so we're just seeing more and more the the walls are coming down yeah uh because it's about data synthesizing data data bricks that's what they do yeah their platform uh is to provide data infrastructure and make that accessible across the organization. So that foundational layer of data that, whether it's UX or research or CX or BI or CI or any of our acronyms, often are running off of the same integrated data layer. And then you're choosing the data that applies to the business issue and that's being powered by companies like Databricks. And more and more, we're seeing panel companies that are integrating their data or syndicated data solutions, whatever the case may be, and making those things accessible and hosted via Databricks and et cetera, et cetera. And obviously, the market is speaking because that's right. And that was just so broad. So I wonder if this is going to come up during IIEX AI. Increasingly, I'm thinking AI truly, AI as a technology solution truly has become a commodity. And if we look at the battles between open source and all that stuff, right, I mean, it's all taking shape there. But it's just clear that, yes, it's an amazing tool to do all types of really cool stuff and it's not valueless. By any such imagination. But the, you know, like NVIDIA powers the chips is more valuable than OpenAI from, you know, from that standpoint. 

Databricks, these infrastructure, these vital infrastructure plays that enable all the rest of these things to happen. That's one, one piece, the other. Is what you do with it, the expertise. And that brings to the other side of the story: Domo. I mean, Domo was cool. Have you ever used it ? I've not used it. So Domo was a cloud-based data structure. And an analytics solution, right? You could analyze lots of different types of data. It always struck kind of excellent steroids, which probably, but you could just do a lot with it. Yeah. But that's kind of all it was, right? Yeah. Yeah. At one point, they had that when they went public, 1.5 billion market caps, something of that nature. This week it sold for 400 million. Yeah. Which I think is the side of that equation, right? The utility component doesn't mean utilities are not valuable. They absolutely can be. Yep. But it's not a boat. So visualization data viz isn't enough, right? That's not enough. No proprietary data in there. So not enough to just be a cool tool, right? There's no real work. In there so you know if you think about what we've been talking about where the money is going it's more than just the casings of yes of what we do it's got to be more than a pretty case it's got to be what's inside the pretty case right it I think the infrastructure we've talked about all the time right that the infrastructure orchestration judgment domo would I would classify an orchestration layer is uh and abs absolutely valuable performs a necessary function so one upset yeah but is it as valuable and that was the case here a public company right domo went public the market spoke and said they were not as valuable uh as infrastructure because it was utility and you can only go so far on on inertia uh switching costs so uh so cautionary tail another cautionary tail uh the uh medallion we talked about a few weeks a few months ago right I mean we're seeing now this market reorganization from a money standpoint on where the bets are being made on where value accrues uh versus you know where it's you can be replaced yeah yeah so interesting.

And NDI companies are building cool stuff. You want to talk about TrackSukes? That we really do. And, you know, I, full disclosure, I had a podcast interview with Crispin Beal this morning at IDX. So we, we, you know, kind of geeked out a little bit about this. Also, um, this next story, kind of spoiler alert is really tapped into AI visibility. And we were talking quite a bit about what IX is doing, IDX is doing. Um in the world of AI visibility, and also full disclosure. This is on my radar, big important, yeah. Sorry, it's really important. No, no, no, but it's really important for us at Greenbook, for Greenbook, to get the message across that, like you really need to be talking to us about your directory listings and how we can be aiding you with AI visibility through what we keep in your directory listings. But that aside, TrackSuit has acquired HAL. Helping brands understand their AI mentions. And I dug in a bit because I really wanted to understand this because my first thought was: anyway, all right, TrackSuit has raised over $65 million. Has raised $2 million in pre-seed funding, all within this Blackbird portfolio. TrackSuit is. Survey company, surveys and have dashboards, but HAL is kind of tracking AI chatbot conversations and mentions of brands. So I started to think about it's not just social media listening and social media monitoring. Now we're doing AI listening and AI monitoring. And they're working in tandem for a new kind of brand tracking. And I think that's really interesting for a lot of reasons.

Obviously, on the other side of that is going to be recommendations, right? To the tune of that's the sort of thing IDX is working on, right? Like, okay, let's find out what we know about it and make some recommendations in your comms and how you can improve your websites, etc., etc., etc. But at a very basic level for the insights industry, brand tracking is changing because we need it. Companies, you know, yes, in the insights industry, but also larger companies, need to be not just monitoring what's being said about your brand, but where it's being said and what AI is saying about your brand. And, and, and, and what AI is learning about your brand is not in your control per se. And how it shows up, how your brand shows up via AI. Yeah ai so I just thought this was really interesting on many many levels because pay attention if you're in brand tracking if you're in brand tracking pay attention what this company is doing because you need to be thinking about tracking brand mentions in ai platforms I thought that was like that was a bit of an epiphany for me yeah well let's let's skip to the interested reading digital article um the car linked down at the end because it it gives the broader perspective I think that uh because that I mean that was the the gist of the entire thing this keeps coming up every week right so if we see from a trending standpoint yeah I mean this is this is lots of products being launched uh combining as you said changing brand tracking because there's a whole other channel and variable to be measured.

Burke was partnered with Brand Index, I think, on AI visibility. There's several more that have popped over the past couple of weeks. And this Digiday article I thought really took the broader view on it's not just SEO, it's not referral traffic, publishers, advertisers, et cetera, et cetera. Have to build strategies for agentic traffic. And that is a very different thing to measure. And if we're not measuring it, then you're not getting, just like for media measurement, streaming, podcasts, right? I mean, wherever the channel goes, wherever attention on that level, attention gets where people can be exposed. And then AI is in there as well. So it is, it is a different world.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. And you think, like, oh, well, that's not really my field, but what does all of this mean for insights professionals in general? I mean, you're in service to these brands who are navigating a very different playing field for their orgs and how their brands are perceived in the world, who's talking about their brands. Like, that's where my head was going when I. I started to read about this. I was just thinking about like, man, we thought it was hard to control the brand narrative five years ago. Like, what? Like, the brand narrative, we've just unearthed a completely different brand, you know, outlet for brand narrative. 100%. And well, and recommendations. I mean, it's not just the narrative. That's big enough, right? Yes, I know. But with the AI, it's actually getting into it's not just the narrative, but it's the oh, here I did the research for you. Here's the product. Click here. I mean, it disrupts the path to purchase in a very fundamental way. Um, uh, for the entire brand.

And what does brand mean to an agent? What is their brand loyalty, yeah? Right? It's evaluating on a whole other set of criteria. So there's like we never have to do branding for chips, we need human branding and agentic branding. And the agentic branding is going to be very fundamental about where humans are around. Right. Right. For the agents, it's just features. And all of that work that has been done in the past to like, to put me in a segmentation to kind of appeal to me on an emotional level, agents are taking all that shit out. Like they don't, they don't care if that particular running shoes is aspirational to me. That is not like, I'm not typing into my agent like I want a running shoe that's going to make me feel like X, Y, or Z. Like, none of that emotionality that has been baked.

Into how consumers make purchases none of that is there because that's not how we're searching for things we're not because we've never been we've never articulated those things before that's all been that's all been in here right that's all happened very um sublimate is not the right word that's all happened on this what's the right word for that that's that's all not consciously right unconsciously thank you so like agents aren't taking in those kind of non-conscious thoughts they might though recommendations we may get there so you're building digital twins right so that's that's interesting if we look at synthetic and particularly the digital twin synthetic the it does capture that as long as the input is there right so again that was the role of research if we're communicating that in the role of research or in you know darling has been building a digital twin that does encompass our brand loyalties and emotional drivers, then I think we will get to a place where the agents are incorporating that information so that the recommendations may be more aligned to our individual preferences and profiles. But we're not there yet. Today, it's still. I would have to say. I also want to feel this way about my purchase.

And I may not articulate that in my first search. Right. I recently was looking for, I got this puppy and I was recently looking for, you know, little, a little outdoor pen to put my dog in. And I wanted it to be aesthetically pleasing because I'm putting it in my front yard and I don't want it to look like a plastic ugly thing. I wanted it to look good in my front yard. I also want my dog to be safe there. I don't want my dog to be able to like fling herself to her death and jump over it because she's a feisty little bugger. But I didn't know that I wanted to feel, I didn't know that I wanted to feel secure in my purchase, or I wanted my dog to be safe. I didn't know that when I started searching for it. I just searched for aesthetics, you know.

So how, how, you know what I mean? Like those, those kinds of buyer journeys, right? I mean, the buyer journey wasn't completed asking the agent for help because the agent wasn't, the agent wasn't intelligent enough to take me on that journey. Now, isn't that interesting? Cause that, that gets to. And Tim. Sorry, we are really digressing here. Well, no, I think this is actually really, really important and interesting. It feeds into the other stuff because this is the future state we're putting these pieces together. So, Jay, Jay, Tim brought up this idea of the J-space, AI subconscious.

Karen Lynch: And I've never heard that before, Tim. So now you taught me something, or at least gave me something to research later. But I think about this idea. As things shift, right? We're as cool as things are, we still have so much more to go so much further to go. But that what you just called out around that, your buyer journey made me think of, yeah, there's stuff I don't think about initially until I get that's what's called a journey. It's like, oh, but wait a minute, no, what? This is important, or what about this, or what about that? It's, I don't give any cognitive attention to it. Until, okay, now it's our emotional attention until it's time to deal with the issue. Okay, well, now I got it. I got to do this. And then you go down the rabbit holes. And that is just not an automatic process.

That is a journey. And so the brand, if the agents today are just doing brand mentions based on features, that is going to be insufficient. Yeah. For me to make a fully informed choice like you were when you have to factor in but wait a minute safety and yeah uh and except aesthetically pleasing no what about what about durability yeah you know I I don't want to replace this so now we get into cost you know uh value for money type of thing you know so these decisions just are not simple um okay what is uh Anthropic says that research identifies the JSpace as a privileged internal workspace in clawed models where reasoning and concept associations occur silently before any text is verbalized. Okay, well, there's a glimpse into the decision-making process then, Claude. I don't know. I don't know how far I want to go down that rabbit hole, but yeah. But don't we do the same thing? Isn't there a privileged internal workspace where those things come together that happens magically? We don't even think about it until we're in the process. Yeah. And I mean, I think the point, the, the, the point before we get kind of back to our brief and come off this little journey that we've been on is how will brands be able to stay in the conversation that agents might take over.

And that's really where I go with this: just, you know, they have lost a little bit of control right now, and they just have to be paying attention to all of this because brand marketers and people that are still thinking about how they've traditionally influenced buying decisions are the game has changed, period. The game has changed. Period. It's becoming very different, or actively changing and has changed for some. Do we want to circle back to this? Because there's two more things on the agenda that are actually related to it, or do we want to just bring it up now? Yeah, no, no, yeah, no, let's go. Let's do it. To talk about why pulse? Well, no, I was thinking that the pitch book and SMR actually have relevance to this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's go way down there.

Lenny Murphy: Karley. Sorry, audience. This uh pitchbook released a report that I thought was really interesting. Machine economy rising? Yeah it's about all of this, right? But even more, uh the you know agent agent communication, the economic uh impact of that supply and demand pricing, the so it got into looking at that as a fundamental economic driver. Yeah but it is directly tied to what we're talking about now from a consumer standpoint, right. Obviously, there's the B2B component of that. And we can, business infrastructure, and that's one aspect. But why is that? Why, why is it business infrastructure? It's not efficient. Business is in the business to sell stuff. Everything has to be in the interest of helping it to do that more efficiently and effectively to make profit. So this is. And what we're talking about today is the, it is the tip of the spear. It is the base level that feeds into these reports that are really interesting.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, it's all connected. It's all connected. It's all connected. Yeah. No, for sure. That's a, that's a, that's a good read. What was the other one that you wanted to talk about? Which one? The SMR AI Alliance. The uh so trying to build guidance for the the research industry for uh um yeah it's interesting god bless them good luck I know well you know I this is to me this is this is this is what their organization should be doing so you know they they had launched a task force um kind of when Generative Eye came out, they launched a task force. I know because I had, you know, kind of raised my hand to join the task force.

The task force was, um, it was, it was, to me, it was not necessarily a very solidly functioning task force. It was, you know, not anyway, it wasn't necessarily something that I think was very operable. Um, that was early. Nobody knew what the hell was going on right I think that's that was largely it it wasn't necessarily um and I just didn't it just didn't have its it just didn't have it didn't have its sea legs if you will so I'm really glad that there's uh something else that's going on here because you know they really need to be leading the charge about um you know how how our profession is going to be responsible with the standards with the governance that we talked about quite a bit in the um in the grit forum um you know, around this. Certainly, we need to, we, we, the industry need to, you know, get our professional priorities in order about how we're, how we're proceeding. So, um, right.

That's how we're using data, et cetera, et cetera. I want to be expressly clear. I agree with you. This is what the SMART Insight Association, et cetera, should be doing. I respect them for doing it. It needs to be done. I also. Boy, a tough job. Yeah. Because things are changing so rapidly. So the, so hats off to them for trying to put some form around all of this while recognizing that it may change next week. Yeah. But didn't we, didn't we read in the grit findings and semantically, I hope I get this right, but when we were talking about trust and confidence internally, organizations that do have systems in place are more successful in this agreed right in this um in this work that they're doing um certainly people are more confident in it so you know hard work that it is um they will they will be more successful I think once they wrangle it and they will help others be more successful because it will help others wrangle it so yeah well let's good luck Yeah. Well, since we're kind of going back, let's talk about the Nielsen thing because it's the other side of this. And then we'll just proclaim.

Yeah, yeah, we're good. We're winging it today, guys. Because of the Nielsen thing, what I thought was really interesting. Remember, last week they said that they were abandoning, not seeking MRC accreditation, which is kind of like what SMR is doing, right? Accreditation is the next step to this. And for Nielsen to say, meh, nope. And this week we saw they altered seven TV currency metrics ahead of all ad buys. So that's why they didn't want to do MRC accreditation because the accreditation takes time. Yeah. And Nielsen said, nope, we're changing the metrics. Because I expect new technology, et cetera, et cetera. They're probably incorporating streaming. I'm sure there's some AI recommendations. Who knows? They didn't divulge exactly what that was.

Yeah. But that's the tension here from a commercial standpoint. Yeah. That confidence, you know, that's why the MRC existed to say it's the seal of approval. Yes, this is good. This is good. You know, advertisers, you can trust this data. Ooh, good. I don't need to worry about that. But then you have a player who comes in and says, Yeah, but you know, but wait, there's new ways to do this and trust us because we're experts. And so there's always that tension, I think. But you know, in this context, I kind of read this and I was like, you know what? I'm really okay with And I started to think about even what you were saying, like how we iterate on the grit report or the grit research, you know. I mean, sometimes things do change and our measures do change. And what we, you know, you at Green Book, we have these monthly analytics calls, and sometimes we take a step back and we're like, what? That same metric that we were tracking, that metric doesn't really apply anymore. Yeah. Sometimes you have to take a step back and say, why are we reporting on this? Because this one is not really relevant anymore.

Or it doesn't make sense for us to report on this. It's not helpful. It's not guiding us anymore. We're not doing anything with the information. Like, it's not usable. It's not useful. So, I think I'm okay with the step back to say, does it serve us well? And what are we doing with this? I don't know. I think I'm okay with it. I am too. And I remember the example I always go back to is in 2020, COVID. There's the awareness around late April, like, well, normative benchmarks. Yeah. They throw that shit out, right? The world changes. Yeah. Right. Fundamentally, there's so many things that change the world. So either our measures or what we're prioritizing or, or that it just shifts, and we have to be adaptive to that. So, yeah, I'm right there with you. Go, you know, go Nelson. Go, Nelson. Right. And to be clear, I don't know about you, but I have to do this because I still conflate Nielsen and NIQ company. Yeah. And we're always talking about NIQ. This is not NIQ. This is Nielsen.

This is the media rating business, not the retail measurement business. So, because they're still one thing in my head, even though they are not the same, they're separate companies. So, um, anyway, all right, all right, new product launches, product launches, why pulse, my pulse, Dan Coates, and teams. Let's just go. Well, technically, yeah, you mentioned MCPs, right? So, go, let's go. Yeah, yeah, another MCP. And now, this, but the Y pulse, you know, so Y pulse, I always did. Really is a youth panel. They did syndicated studies and subscription services. So panels, not, but the fundamental piece is they had a lot of, you know, a lot of college students in their panel. They've switched over the years and evolved. So now putting their data directly into Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini Copilot, and Slack. For 21 billion verified youth data points with source and sample size traceability. So they're going for that data infrastructure. Well, they're a feed into the infrastructure, right? They're a vital piece of that data and making it accessible to where people live instead of, so totally hats off to Dan and the team. I think that's exactly the right thing to do. We should be seeing more and more companies like YPulse doing that. We've been seeing it with the platforms, right? Good to see more now with the data side of things.

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Agreed. Agreed. Yep. Speaker? I've never heard of Speaker. You hadn't heard of that? This is like, I think that's what you're keeping. I mean, you've heard a lot. You worked in data a lot more than I did. So you had more exposure to a lot of data properties. But the speaker introduced AI capabilities. You know, I'm like, okay, tell me a little bit more. So I didn't know much about them. But, you know, what did you know about them first? With some social media analytics capability. Is how I saw it at a high level. The software, but I thought it was interesting that they're using agents to move more towards inside activation. Yeah, so workflows too. Is yep building the workflow the connective tissue, so and the so. Is there a world where pulse feeds into sprinklers are connected to sprinklers via mcp, for example. I don't think that's a reasonable example, particularly, but that's where we're seeing these two differences. There's the data, there's the workflow, there's the infrastructure, and we're seeing this play out in real time. Um uh and the next one, same thing, yeah, yeah. So first I've first five, also not heard of, by the way. I had not heard of them either.

So, it's interesting. So, first I've launched Eddie. By the way, what I liked. One of the things I liked about this is I'm Eddie, male. I love that they went with the male because so many of these are like Ava. And right, right. How many times have we heard Ava? You know, and I'm like, and they go with the female, they go with the female name, which I understand all the reasons semantically why they go with female names, but whatever. But I like Eddie. Cool. It's so much more satisfying if you're frustrated to say a male name. Yeah. Eddie. Damn it. Get it right, Eddie.

Have you ever watched 24? Did you watch the show 24? Like, I did not. I heard it was great, but I never watched it. 24 was one of the best shows on television. If you would ask me, like, I'm a major Jack Bauer fan, major Kiefer Sutherland was like a genius. But anyway, I loved the show 24. And there was like all of the time, Chloe was like his right hand. And if he did not say, damn it, Chloe, like in every episode. So when you just said that, all I went to was like Kiefer Sutherland saying, damn it, Chloe. Anyway, Okay, let's go on.

Karen Lynch: Okay, so yeah, so is the Agentic AI engine for enterprise CX. So, you know, I'm like, I'm like, cool. We don't talk about this often, but, you know, good to see that it's happening elsewhere. It seems to me. I'm like baby qualtrics you know baby qualtrics different on a different level but similar to what they're doing um building it into their workflows as well did you have another read on that or is that pretty much where you were too that's yeah I I think they explicitly called out uh taking the data uh into revenue driving decisions and activation workflows so not just being you know it's uh a Qualtrics meets Salesforce meets Zeta Global, right? Kind of thing, right? You've got the combination of the data driving decision making and what we've been playing with this concept, you know, of the decision intelligence stack. And I've been playing with this idea of decision as a service. Is that the next iteration of the industry, right? That we're selling decisions. You're seeing these platforms come together where they're kind of enabling that. So focusing on not just the information, but the decision that drives business performance. I think long-term, this type of thing, and both Speaker and First Hive are examples of this, of shifting the workflow to the decision, not just the process. This has big implications for the industry longer term.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. So, you know, we just did. We just went through everything and we did it in 40 minutes after our big digression. I really, that's exactly. I thought the same thing. I'm like, how did we get through everything that we want to talk about and have a sideboard conversation? I guess we're getting better at this. That means we could have had a sidebar talking about the Odyssey. Did you go see the Odyssey? I had no chance to go do anything like that. Although, I'd love the source material. I would love to see it. Christian Dole doesn't make a bad movie, at all. Gosh, I'm so obsessed. I probably have to go back pretty soon. I'm pretty sure. Is that good? Yeah, so I'm so obsessed. And then I um. I have already digested a Madeline Miller book called Circe, which is, you know, one of the characters in the book, which I had never read, but it was on my reading stack.

So I'm like, well, I guess I'm, I guess I'm doing Greek mythology this month. So I'm like, there you go. Apparently, where I'm at. And I had read one of her other books. So I'm, it's my current obsession. So we can geek out together. Come on. I would like to. Well, I think, so then the, the, the viewing order should be Troy, even though it was Christopher Nolan, right? But that's you know, that's the buildup to the Odyssey. Uh, if it weren't for Troy, Odysseus wouldn't have been there, so he could have gone through all of his stuff. But the uh, how was the the have to ask it lean away from the more fantastical elements, like Cersei and turning the sailors and the pigs and the animals, or the Cyclops. Present. Yeah. So really well done. All of it was really well done. Just these eyes. Good stuff. Good stuff. So, yeah. I mean, it digressed. Here's the deal. Why am I doing this? I should have waited.

Karen Lynch: I'm doing this live. This is well, I have this in our movie reviews. I've seen Spider-Man next weekend. So we'll Oh my gosh, I'll see that too. Cause now I'm like such a fan of his. Oh my gosh, he was so good. Anyway, I'm sorry, friends. I can talk about it. I can talk. I'll tell you what. Lenny and I will talk about this on the post-show. We can talk about this anytime. We will not consume much more of your time, but so, so good. So, so good. Go see the Odyssey next weekend. Spider-Man. Okay. So fun. And Lenny and I will keep our reviews to ourselves for the next time. But until then, until then, have a great weekend ahead. Yeah. Bye, everybody.

Links from the episode:

Funds and UK Public Sector Hire for Databricks 

Domo Agrees to Sell Substantially All Assets to Progress Software for $400M 

Tracksuit acquires Hall to help brands understand AI mentions 

Digiday: AI Visibility Is No Longer About Referral Traffic  

PitchBook: The Machine Economy Is Becoming the Market of Limitless Cognition 

Esomar Launches AI Alliance to Set Industry-Wide AI Standards 

Nielsen Alters Seven TV Currency Metrics Ahead of Fall Ad Buys 

YPulse Launches MCP Connecting Agents to 21B Youth Datapoints 

Sprinklr Introduces AI Capabilities to Move from Insights to Real-Time Action 

FirstHive Launches Eddie, an Agentic AI Engine for Enterprise CX