Is the “Zero-Click” shopping era finally here, and are European retailers ready for a three-way war between Amazon, Temu, and JD.com’s Joybuy?

In this episode of Growing Ecommerce, Mike Ryan and Chris Scharmueller unpack a huge week in e-commerce. First: Meta’s new Stripe partnership for in-app checkout. With OpenAI and Google both struggling to make native checkout work, can Meta finally crack the “zero-click” model and keep shoppers fully inside its platform?

Then comes the real clash of the titans. JD.com has launched Joybuy in Europe, going straight after Amazon and Temu. We share exclusive Google Ads data showing how aggressively Joybuy is already outranking incumbents. But unlike Temu, Joybuy isn’t just burning cash for growth. It’s building a sustainable base and investing in local logistics, making it a serious hybrid threat.

Finally, Mike shares updated market penetration numbers for Amazon and Temu across Europe. The picture is clear: Amazon dominates wealthy Western European markets, while Temu has seized the Central and Eastern European markets Amazon largely ignored.

📊 Key Takeaways & SEO Insights:

• Meta’s In-App Checkout: Meta is working with Stripe on native checkout via ACP instead of Google’s UCP. If it works, platforms gain even more leverage by keeping both shoppers and customer data in-house.
• The Joybuy Threat: JD’s Joybuy is taking a more disciplined, Amazon-like route into Europe. It’s setting efficient growth baselines while aggressively outranking established retailers in Google Ads.
• The Amazon/Temu Divide: Comparing Monthly Active Users to total internet users reveals a sharp split. Amazon leads in high-GDP Western Europe, while Temu dominates much of Central and Eastern Europe, including striking penetration in Poland.
• The Chinese “Involution”: Intense competition in China is pushing giants like JD, Alibaba, and PDD (Temu) to seek growth in Europe—raising the pressure on local retailers..

Resources & Links:

• Access all our webinars, reports, and playbooks in our Knowledge Hub: https://smarter-ecommerce.com/en/knowledge-hub/
• How is your industry stacking up in the market? Find out with smec’s Google Ads Benchmarks: https://smarter-ecommerce.com/en/smec-market-observer/

About Smarter Ecommerce (smec):

Smarter Ecommerce (smec) empowers e-commerce brands with AI-driven PPC automation that optimizes for profit and business outcomes while maintaining strategic control.

The platform activates first-party data - profit margins, customer lifetime value, and key business metrics - to automate campaign optimization toward goals like profitability and efficient growth, while detailed campaign insights provide full transparency and enable PPC teams to focus on strategic oversight rather than manual execution.

As a Google Premier Partner and three-time Microsoft Retail Partner of the Year, smec manages over €500 million in ad spend and drives €5B+ in annual e-commerce revenue for 350+ global retail clients including THG, Snipes, REWE, and Intersport.

Make sure to follow smec - Smarter Ecommerce for more performance marketing insights:

smec - Smarter Ecommerce: https://www.smarter-ecommerce.com
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/smarter-ecommerce-gmbh
Newsletter: https://smarter-ecommerce.com/en/newsletter/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smarterecommerce/

OpenAI is facing a projected $25 billion shortfall, and their attempt to monetize ecommerce is already falling apart.
In this episode of Growing Ecommerce, Mike Ryan and Chris Scharmüller ask the billion-dollar question: Is the dream of "agentic commerce" already dead on arrival?
While the media celebrates OpenAI's early $100 million in ad revenue, the math tells a much darker story. Their projected 2026 burn rate sits between $14 and $25 billion. To survive, they need a massive, highly profitable ad network—but their recent retail experiments are failing the test.
We break down why ChatGPT quietly killed off its new "Shopping Research" feature (hint: consumers won't wait minutes for an AI to fetch product recommendations). We also reveal the shocking data from Walmart’s early checkout test within ChatGPT, where in-app conversions were three times lower than standard website traffic.
If ChatGPT wants to steal budget from Google Ads and Meta, they have to prove they can actually drive profitable sales. Right now, the data suggests users simply aren't ready to let an AI agent do their shopping.

Key Takeaways & SEO Insights:

• The Revenue Reality: Generating $100M in two months is impressive, but with Capital Expenditures (CapEx) skyrocketing to compete with Google and Microsoft, OpenAI's projected losses are staggering. Advertising is their most obvious path to close that gap.
• Speed vs. Quality in E-commerce: OpenAI shut down its specialized post-trained shopping model because generating deep product analyses took too long. In retail, friction kills adoption.
• The Conversion Crisis: Early tests with major retailers like Walmart showed that instant checkouts within ChatGPT converted at a rate 3x lower than traditional website traffic. If they can't drive efficiency, advertisers won't shift their budgets.
• The Scraping Band-Aid: OpenAI's reliance on scraping Google Shopping data for product recommendations shows they are still heavily dependent on their biggest competitor to power their agentic commerce dreams.

Resources & Links:

• Access all our webinars, reports, and playbooks in our Knowledge Hub: https://smarter-ecommerce.com/en/knowledge-hub/
• How is your industry stacking up in the market? Find out with smec’s Google Ads Benchmarks:
  https://smarter-ecommerce.com/en/smec-market-observer/

About Smarter Ecommerce (smec):

Smarter Ecommerce (smec) empowers e-commerce brands with AI-driven PPC automation that optimizes for profit and business outcomes while maintaining strategic control.

The platform activates first-party data - profit margins, customer lifetime value, and key business metrics - to automate campaign optimization toward goals like profitability and efficient growth, while detailed campaign insights provide full transparency and enable PPC teams to focus on strategic oversight rather than manual execution.

As a Google Premier Partner and three-time Microsoft Retail Partner of the Year, smec manages over €500 million in ad spend and drives €5B+ in annual e-commerce revenue for 350+ global retail clients including THG, Snipes, REWE, and Intersport.

Make sure to follow smec - Smarter Ecommerce for more performance marketing insights:

smec - Smarter Ecommerce: https://www.smarter-ecommerce.com
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/smarter-ecommerce-gmbh
Newsletter: https://smarter-ecommerce.com/en/newsletter/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smarterecommerce/

Ever wonder what the biggest e-commerce brands are discussing behind closed doors? We are opening up the vault. 🤫

In this episode of Growing Ecommerce, Mike Ryan and Chris Scharmueller give you a backstage pass to their recent strategy meetings with some of Europe's largest retailers. We are unpacking the exact playbooks, fears, and tactics dominating the boardrooms of the top 1% right now.

Forget the basic tutorials—this is what the mega-brands are actually testing. First, we tackle Google's controversial new push for "Demand Led Growth" (DLG). Are the top retailers really giving Google unlimited budgets, or is there a smarter way to use Target ROAS to capture demand spikes.

We also break down the reality of the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and why Europe's smartest marketing teams are obsessing over conversational feed attributes to win the AI search war. Finally, we reveal what CMOs are secretly telling their CFOs: With Chinese giants like Temu driving up costs, cheap incremental growth is dead. Discover why Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) is the new survival tool for 2026.

🔗 Resources & Links:

• Access all our webinars, reports, and playbooks in our Knowledge Hub: https://smarter-ecommerce.com/en/knowledge-hub/
• How is your industry stacking up in the market? Find out with smec’s Google Ads Benchmarks:
  https://smarter-ecommerce.com/en/smec-market-observer/

About Smarter Ecommerce (smec):

Smarter Ecommerce (smec) empowers e-commerce brands with AI-driven PPC automation that optimizes for profit and business outcomes while maintaining strategic control.

The platform activates first-party data - profit margins, customer lifetime value, and key business metrics - to automate campaign optimization toward goals like profitability and efficient growth, while detailed campaign insights provide full transparency and enable PPC teams to focus on strategic oversight rather than manual execution.

As a Google Premier Partner and three-time Microsoft Retail Partner of the Year, smec manages over €500 million in ad spend and drives €5B+ in annual e-commerce revenue for 350+ global retail clients including THG, Snipes, REWE, and Intersport.

Make sure to follow smec - Smarter Ecommerce for more performance marketing insights:

smec - Smarter Ecommerce: https://www.smarter-ecommerce.com
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/smarter-ecommerce-gmbh
Newsletter: https://smarter-ecommerce.com/en/newsletter/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smarterecommerce/