Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
Speaker 2: tim Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 3: Right, we do want to talk a little bit more
Speaker 3: about artificial intelligence and how it could influence the retail
Speaker 3: sector in the coming year. Our next guest says, AI
Speaker 3: driven traffic to retail sites this holiday season surged by
Speaker 3: five hundred and twenty percent over last year. So what
Speaker 3: does it mean. Let's ask Kimberly Shanks. She is CEO
Speaker 3: of nov It's a firm that uses AI to help
Speaker 3: connect brands with retail customers.
Speaker 2: Kim, great to have you here with Vonnie and myself.
Speaker 3: Tell us a little bit more about your company and
Speaker 3: what exactly the role of AI to connect customers.
Speaker 2: What actually happens? Is it chatbots? Is it something more?
Speaker 4: Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, So, Novie's technology.
Speaker 5: We're actually helping retailers and brands increase their sales by
Speaker 5: ensuring their products are found and trusted and then ultimately
Speaker 5: recommended by AI models.
Speaker 4: So thank chat GBT, Gemini and Claude and so we
Speaker 4: do this.
Speaker 5: We work with you know, leading retailers including Macy's Sephora,
Speaker 5: target Alta thousands of CpG brands and they rely on
Speaker 5: us to optimize their product data for AI driven discovery
Speaker 5: by consumers.
Speaker 3: So when you say that, it's basically a consumer who
Speaker 3: does something and their data is processed and recorded and
Speaker 3: they're saying, oh, you bought that pair of pants, maybe
Speaker 3: you would like this pair of pants.
Speaker 5: Is that?
Speaker 2: Is it as simple as something like that or is
Speaker 2: it more sophisticated.
Speaker 5: It's a little bit different in terms of consumers now
Speaker 5: flocking to chat, shipt or Gemini and asking questions to
Speaker 5: actually do their shopping. So they're outsourcing a lot of
Speaker 5: their research, discount hunting, you know, personalized gift curation to
Speaker 5: the AI agent who's then gooing and finding products and
Speaker 5: recommending it to them based on just questions and prompts.
Speaker 1: So who are your competitors and how do you stand
Speaker 1: out from them?
Speaker 4: It's interesting.
Speaker 5: So there's a couple of different up and coming competitors
Speaker 5: in the tech space who are helping brands and retailers
Speaker 5: stand out in AI shopping. But we also have a
Speaker 5: lot of the older, more traditional data companies because we
Speaker 5: are a data company and we feed data with through
Speaker 5: our partnerships with our retailer partners. So think about Syndigo
Speaker 5: or Salsify or even Nilsen IQ some of those older
Speaker 5: data partnership players.
Speaker 1: And how then do you get the edge over them.
Speaker 5: Yes, So a lot of what we're doing in these partnerships,
Speaker 5: and we'll be able to announce some of them really soon,
Speaker 5: is feeding trustworthy personalized information to the models themselves, which
Speaker 5: is what we have seen at NOV to increase your
Speaker 5: potential as a brand to show up in AI shopping.
Speaker 5: So we found that you know, products that have verified
Speaker 5: trust signals are a selected two hundred and fifty nine
Speaker 5: percent more often than random chance to think like certifications, reviews, badges,
Speaker 5: third party testing. And we're feeding this directly to the
Speaker 5: retailers and the models so that they help the brands
Speaker 5: show up in AI recommendations to consumers.
Speaker 3: So one of the things I always think about, Kim
Speaker 3: is like, how much of what is spent on AI
Speaker 3: to kind of attract consumers retailers or folks to retailers. So,
Speaker 3: in other words, that AI driven traffic to retail sites,
Speaker 3: how much of it is productive that results in actually
Speaker 3: a consumer buying something?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's actually a very interesting question. So we're seeing
Speaker 5: the traffic start to increase. There's actually we saw from
Speaker 5: Adobe Analytics, like we just said, five hundred and twenty
Speaker 5: percent over last year from AI.
Speaker 4: But what we're not sure about yet is conversion.
Speaker 5: And this is just because CHATCHABT, Gemini, none of them
Speaker 5: are publishing the conversion results, but we at NOV What
Speaker 5: we did see is that chatgbt's shopping research answers sent
Speaker 5: consumers directly to the brand's website eighty six percent of
Speaker 5: the time, which means that the remainder of traffic, you know,
Speaker 5: only about fourteen percent was sent to the large retailers
Speaker 5: like Walmart or Target. And so what brands are starting
Speaker 5: to see is more and more direct consumer traffic to
Speaker 5: their website, which is driving conversion in sales for them.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 3: Okay, So would you say, based on the data that
Speaker 3: you see, because you see so much data that the consumer's.
Speaker 2: Doing well, that retail's doing.
Speaker 3: Well, like how much you can obviously break it down,
Speaker 3: probably a lot, So give us a little bit of
Speaker 3: insight as we get ready to wrap up this holiday
Speaker 3: shopping season.
Speaker 5: Well, so what we're actually seeing is, you know, consumers
Speaker 5: are using AI as their category manager. So think of
Speaker 5: it as we all used to trust the big box
Speaker 5: retailers for their ability to manage each shopping category, do
Speaker 5: the curation for us, and that's why you walked into
Speaker 5: a target, right. They scoured the earth for the best,
Speaker 5: most compelling products and we trusted them.
Speaker 2: To do that.
Speaker 5: But now, and what we say saw play out this
Speaker 5: holiday season, the consumer has shifted their trust to AI
Speaker 5: to do the research and curation for them. So we're
Speaker 5: seeing strong numbers and users using chat to bet and shopping,
Speaker 5: but it's just not quite played out yet and we'll
Speaker 5: see that in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 4: Is where that conversion is going to happen.
Speaker 5: If it's going to happen direct on the brand websites
Speaker 5: are still in retail.
Speaker 1: Kimbridy, just a word on yourselves. How difficult is it
Speaker 1: to raise money? What are the key words that investors
Speaker 1: are looking for these days? And you know the key ideas.
Speaker 5: Yes, AI is definitely the hot topic. If you are
Speaker 5: not involved in AI, doing something future with your company
Speaker 5: that's progressing AI.
Speaker 4: So for example, we're an agentic commerce.
Speaker 5: That is what is hot for investors these days, and
Speaker 5: that's what is raising money and getting the majority of
Speaker 5: the capital in Soli Valley.
Speaker 1: Well, the very best of luck. It sounds like a
Speaker 1: fantastic endeavor, and I know you have a lot of experience,
Speaker 1: so I think if anybody can continue to do it,
Speaker 1: you certainly can. That is Kimberly Shank, CEO of nov