January 9th-January 15th // Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes
In This Edition!
Google's is plotting its way into commerce
Apple picking Gemini
Top Headlines🔥
Google positions itself as gatekeeper to AI commerce🔒
Source: Adweek
January 11th, 2026
Summary: Google made its AI retail pitch at the National Retail Federation's (NRF) annual conference this week. The big launch was Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard Google co-developed with Walmart, Shopify, Target, and other retailers to help AI agents work with each other throughout the shopper journey. The first use case is a new checkout feature that lets shoppers buy products directly inside Gemini. Walmart and Sam's Club shoppers can now purchase products directly in Gemini, with loyalty members able to link their accounts so Gemini understands their purchase history and preferences. Google also launched Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience (CX) with prebuilt and customizable agents for shopping, food ordering, and other tasks, which are already being used by Gap, Papa Johns, Kroger and other brands. For example, The Home Depot is using Gemini to power its Magic Apron agent to help customers plan projects and navigate store aisles.
Opinion: Google is pulling off a masterclass in strategic positioning. While everyone obsesses about whether ChatGPT or Gemini will "win" AI shopping for consumers, Google is working on the pipes underneath.
UCP is all about data access. By getting Walmart, Target, and 20+ other retailers to route transactions through UCP, Google gains visibility into actual purchase behavior. Not just web search intent, but actual transactions with prices, products, and buyer identities. Today, Amazon owns this data, because Amazon owns the consumer-facing storefront. This enables Amazon to run the largest commerce media business in the world. In the AI era, perhaps Google will own this data, as the consumer-facing ‘storefront’ shifts to AI, and it will enable Google to steal commerce media market share from Amazon.
Google’s getting all these retailers to hold hands together, thinking they're building a united front against Amazon. They're actually just handing Google the keys to the AI commerce kingdom.
Smart play by Google. Questionable long-term strategy by the retailers. And for marketers? Get ready to give even more money to Google.
Apple, Google strike Gemini deal for revamped Siri in major win for Alphabet
Source: Reuters
January 12th, 2026
Summary: Apple will use Google's Gemini models to power the revamped Siri voice assistant, launching later this year. Which means … OpenAI is a big loser. The AI partnership builds on Apple and Google's longtime agreement in which Google has paid Apple tens of billions annually to be the default search option across Apple devices. Investors were happy to hear the news, briefly pushing Alphabet past $4T in market cap. Alphabet's stock climbed 65% last year on growing confidence in Google's AI strategy, and now the company's AI seems to be everywhere.
Opinion: This is a really bad sign for OpenAI. And a really good sign for Google. Apple literally picked its biggest rival over the independent AI company. That’s how much of a lead Google has in the AI race.
The data-sharing terms are unclear, but if Google gains access to Siri query patterns, it could create a data advantage for improving its advertising products. Even without data access, providing the intelligence layer for billions of Apple devices strengthens Google's position as the default AI for the masses.
New Products & Features 🚀
What It Does: Google also launched Direct Offers, an ad product that lets advertisers present exclusive promotions, such as a 20% off discount, directly in AI Mode when shoppers express buying intent. And its new AI Business Agent can answer customer questions in a retailer's voice during critical decision-making moments. Lowe’s, Michael’s, Poshmark and other brands are already using Business Agent and will soon be able to train it on their own data and enable direct purchases.
Quick Take: More signs that Google is converting AI search into a complete sales channel where discovery and deal-making happen, inside and outside its ecosystem. Direct Offers will be an interested test run for ads in AI.
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What It Does: Salesforce rebuilt Slackbot from a basic reminder tool into an AI work companion that can mine Slack conversations to answer questions, draft marketing briefs, organize tasks, and automate workflows. The upgraded Slackbot could help marketing teams better manage campaign planning, analytics, and creative while eliminating the need to hunt through message threads or switch between apps.
Quick Take: Salesforce is embedding intelligence where marketing teams already collaborate rather than forcing them into new AI tools. Could Slackbot turn Slack into a marketing command center?
What It Does: The CDP’s Marketing Super Agent is a multi-agent AI system that handles the full marketing lifecycle from strategy to execution in one workspace. It can automatically build multi-step workflows by interpreting marketer intent, selecting specialized task agents, and executing campaigns sequentially with shared memory.
Quick Take: Marketing Super Agent has a live memory layer that keeps context across all specialist agents, which could be key to alleviate some of the chaos that can happen when marketers juggle multiple AI tools.
AI Use Case of The Week💡
The Setup: Colgate-Palmolive wanted to build a repeatable model for on-brand content creation that maintained the “3 Vs” of content: volume, variety, and velocity.
The AI Solution: Colgate-Palmolive launched a gen-AI pilot for its Hill's Pet Nutrition brand to test whether AI could create video ads that delivered on the 3 Vs faster and more efficiently. A cross-functional team used Google’s Veo gen-AI tool to produce two video ads.
The Results: The pilot delivered efficiency gains while maintaining quality:
• The two consumer-ready video ads were produced 4X to 6X faster than traditional production
• The ads had lower costs per concept, although specific figures were not disclosed
• The ads delivered the same or better consideration lift compared to traditional creative
Why This Matters: Big CPG brands that struggle to match the content velocity of digitally native DTC competitors now have a path to compete without sacrificing quality. When video production time drops from weeks to days, brands can respond to cultural moments and test ideas while they're still relevant rather than planning campaigns months in advance.
Your Action: Stop treating AI-generated video as a cheaper substitute for traditional production. Instead, use the speed advantage to run creative stress tests that tell you what actually works before committing big budgets.
Here's the playbook:
Week 1-2: Generate 15-20 video variations testing different hooks, product demonstrations, CTAs, and messaging angles. Keep production tight. These are learning assets, not final creative.
Week 3: Run a bracket-style tournament with $500-1,000 per variant across Meta and YouTube. Track hook rate (first 3 seconds), hold rate (to completion), and conversion lift. Kill losers daily.
Week 4: Take your top 3 performers and invest in production polish.
Instead of betting $50K on two concepts your team "thinks" will work, you've validated audience response with real data for under $20K total. The speed advantage is about eliminating creative risk through rapid empirical testing before you scale.
Other Notable Headlines📌
Nvidia hires its first CMO from Google Cloud - Alison Wagonfeld, who spent nearly a decade building Google Cloud from a startup into a $60B business, will become Nvidia's first-ever chief marketing officer in February.
How retailers are building their AI shopping assistants - Albertsons says AI-powered features lead consumers to buy more frequently and spend more, while Ralph Lauren's "Ask Ralph" drives conversion and lifetime value through branded storytelling.
Should you have an AI media budget? A decision framework for advertisers - AI advertising analyst Debra Aho Williamson recommends advertisers pull 1-3% from search or experimental budgets to test AI media.
Lenovo appoints LinkedIn vet as global AI marketing lead - Santi Pochat, LinkedIn's former VP of brand marketing, will assume Lenovo's newly created role of VP of Global AI innovation and Brand Strategy. He'll lead AI-informed and generated campaigns across 180 markets.
Lego's education arm launches 'We Trust in Kids' campaign to promote AI teaching kits🔒- The Danish toymaker has created computer science and AI teaching kits for kindergarteners through eighth graders. The campaign publicizes the lack of AI policies and education at most US schools.
The era of AI 'personal' intelligence - Google's Personal Intelligence tool for US Gemini subscribers connects to their Google apps to deliver personalized answers, like recommending tires based on past family road trips. The move comes six months after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined a vision for “personal superintelligence” that understands people's goals and helps achieve them.
Matthew McConaughey trademarks himself to fight AI misuse🔒- McConaughey secured eight trademarks from the US Patent and Trademark Office, including video and audio clips of his famous lines to prevent unauthorized AI duplication.
That’s It For This Week 👋
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