Employing AI to transform your business was one of five themes at Shoptalk 2024 Las Vegas. Retailers, brands and industry experts shared their perspectives, strategies and predictions in multiple keynotes and sessions throughout the 3½-day event. In her keynote, “Creating the Next Growth Wave with AI-Powered Commerce,” Maria Renz, Global Head of Commerce at Google made it clear the company is fully invested in AI. She offered the audience a broad overview of the multiple new AI-powered tools Google has released, including Resume Your Journey, Circle to Search and Shop with Google AI — all of which are designed to enable a higher level of interaction between brands and consumers.
Here, we provide the inside scoop on how Google is leveraging AI and why the company feels confident the experiences it is delivering will inspire consumers to shop and support increased conversions.
“Our strategy can be summed up in one word: Essential. We want to be essential to merchants and to consumers,” Maria Renz, Global Head of Commerce at Google boldly announced to a room packed full of retailers and brand leaders at Shoptalk 2024 Las Vegas.
Think about Google as an ecosystem. We have six consumer-facing services that have more than 2 billion users each. It's mind-boggling scale — each one of those services has an opportunity to connect with consumers and build merchant business across a user journey — and it’s in this way that we're going to be essential to consumers. We're going to meet them where they're at with delightful interactions and we're going to be essential to merchants. We're going to help them connect with consumers and build their business.
GLOBAL HEAD OF COMMERCE, GOOGLE
While the innovations in eCommerce over the last 20 years have, for the most part, been focused on selection, price and convenience, Maria believes that is changing. Google’s newest tools are dedicated to discovery, designed to enable “shopping in the moment” by making it easy for consumers to find and purchase whatever they see, in their daily lives and online. Google Lens enables product discovery and is a perfect example of this. According to Maria, more than 12 million photos a month are dropped into Google Lens, which instantly returns multiple shoppable products that match the image to the consumer.
People are out there in the world taking pictures and discovering new items. Somebody next to you on the subway has a great pair of sneakers on. You sneak a photo, you discover and buy that item and spend the rest of your commute thinking about the new outfits you’re going to wear those sneakers with. Your commuting buddy is now an influencer without even knowing it. It's truly spectacular.
GLOBAL HEAD OF COMMERCE, GOOGLE
Maria pointed to Circle to Search as another example of an innovation that supports shopping inspiration. Launched on Premium Android devices at the beginning of 2024, it allows you to circle any product in any app with your finger and, instantly, Google Search finds it and delivers similar items back to your device, allowing you to discover and buy without leaving the app. “It really changes the game. It makes the world shoppable.”
There’s also Shop with Google AI. This tool allows you to enter a search term and, instead of delivering shopping options, it will deliver AI images based on your description along with real viable items that match the images AI has created. Maria provided a personal story as an example: She wanted to wear a stylish green suit to a dinner on the first night of Shoptalk (it was St. Patrick’s Day, after all). She couldn’t find one she liked so she turned to Google and hit “generate AI images.” The suit she described, along with a Max Mara lookalike popped up. “It went from being in my imagination to being in my closet. That to me is game-changing.”
In addition to making it easy for consumers to discover what they see in the world around them, on the screen in front of them or even in their minds, Google also offers inspiration when you have no idea what to buy. She explained that last year Google did a survey around holiday shopping and found that 53% of people have high anxiety when it comes to holiday shopping, specifically around finding the perfect gift. In time for the holidays, Google launched an AI gifting experience in search. Now, if you enter “gift ideas for someone who loves running,” you'll immediately see suggestions across multiple categories such as Under $15, Get it Fast, Nearby, On Sale and Small Business. Maria firmly believes that this capability is helping give gift givers more confidence.
Maria also touched on Virtual Try-on, which Google launched in June 2023. She said her team photographed 80 different models because they wanted to present a full range of options including height, weight, body type, skin tone, etc. so that consumers can find a model that looks like them. Merchants have to opt-in to use it — H&M, Anthropologie, Loft and Everlane are a few early adopters. When a consumer sees a “Try on” badge on a item that turns up in a search, all they have to do is click, choose the model and instantly see how that piece of apparel will fit down to the way the fabric drapes and unfolds.
Consumers love that interaction, and as we all know, personalization drives business. We see more clicks in this environment and we’re hoping it translates into more conversions and less returns down the line.
GLOBAL HEAD OF COMMERCE, GOOGLE
Google isn’t just focusing on AI inventions that connect consumers to products and brands more quickly and easily, they’re also invested in supporting the needs of businesses. Maria pointed to Performance Max, Google’s AI ad tool as an example. Instead of having to spend hours figuring out where to place your advertising across Google’s range of channels, it uses AI to optimize bids and placements to drive conversions based on your goals.
The merchants that start shopping campaigns on PMax see a 60% increase in their total Google traffic in the first 30 days. That to me is amazing. That to me helps you propel your business forward.
GLOBAL HEAD OF COMMERCE, GOOGLE
Google has also launched a product called Product Studio for Merchants. A free AI tool, it enables retailers to generate merchandising images in seconds for use on their eCommerce websites as well as for Google ads. “Say you are a business based in Brooklyn, New York and you really want to emphasize that aspect of your brand, you can generate images of all your products with street scenes of Brooklyn in the background for free,” explained Maria, mentioning that both tools are receiving “tremendous feedback from merchants.”
One of the features Maria is most excited about is Resume Your Journey, which Google hopes will tackle the challenge of abandoned shopping carts — which they see as benefiting both the customer and the retailer. “We're going to meet that consumer on Chrome who has an abandoned shopping cart and invite them to resume their journey, showing the merchant, the item, and even pull in any relevant promotional information.”
Maria said that building these AI power tools has given her a clear picture of its potential. “It can really change shopping in three key ways, The first is enabling more connection between brands and consumers. The second is building assistive experiences so that businesses can make better decisions. And lastly, AI is all about supercharging and personalizing experiences for your consumers at scale.”
In 2023, commercetools was named Google Cloud Industry Solution Partner of the Year Award for the third consecutive year. To learn more about how commercetools and Google work together to enable retailers to deliver commerce experiences that drive results, read One plus one equals ten! The power of Google Cloud and commercetools for modern digital commerce.
Anita J. Temple is the Corporate Journalist at commercetools. She was a fashion editor at Women’s Wear Daily (WWD) and W Magazine before launching a career as a freelance writer and creative producer. She has written content and worked on a wide range of marketing projects for companies including Dreamworks, Walmart, Coca-Cola, Verizon, and Adidas.