Trends: May Those 4 Be with You!

Episode I: The Shopify Search

The Q2 2025 buzz centres on Shopify's major AI push, hinting at deep collaborations (potentially OpenAI) to embed shopping directly into LLMs like ChatGPT. CEO Harley Finkelstein sees a new sales channel akin to social commerce where Shopify helps merchants navigate complexity. Yet, this AI embrace is a double-edged sword: While offering vast opportunity, it risks future competition if AI platforms develop their own end-to-end commerce, potentially sidelining Shopify. Consumers could soon find, research, and purchase products all within a single AI application.

👉See how Shopify joined AI side

The Privacy Strikes Back & Customer’s Returns in One

Shopify is revolutionizing performance modeling by integrating real-time product return metrics directly into its customer acquisition and payback strategies. CEO Harley Finkelstein highlights this gives Shopify "incredible visibility" to optimise for profitability and market share, moving beyond typical ad metrics by factoring in the full product lifecycle, including costly returns.

👉 Returns and privacy full story

Gartner Fantastic…3

• AI's Expanding Dominion: Generative AI spearheads marketing innovation, automating content and humanizing customer interactions via tools like conversational AI. Future developments in influence, emotion, and visual AI promise even deeper transformations in promotion, CX, and product design.

• Navigating The Privacy Maze: Privacy hurdles and regulatory ambiguity persist, slowing innovation in customer data ethics and identity resolution. Despite rising costs and CMO budget cuts, reliance on first-party data is firm, making trust cultivation for opt-ins paramount.

• The Ascent of Superapps: User demand for seamless mobile-first experiences propels superapps—unified gateways for social, eCommerce, and advertising—up the Hype Cycle. Popular internationally, they offer U.S. marketers a key opportunity to streamline fragmented digital journeys.

👉 Read more in New Release of The Gartner Hype Cycle Story

Scott Brinker’s Treasure Map tells again the story of a crowded Martech room…but conclusions are new and refreshing.

Scott Brinker's 2025 Martech Landscape reveals a staggering 15,384 tools, with AI pervasive and a 'hypertail' of custom software booming. Martech is fragmenting, and the key shift, as Brinker points out, is that Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) are no longer the sole data center. Instead, they're being pulled 'upwards' into cloud data warehouses (the new foundational data layer) and 'downwards' into Customer Engagement Platforms (CEPs) and Marketing Automation Platforms (MAPs) – where data directly fuels real-time action.

This means the tools driving engagement are now where customer data lives and works. Platforms like SALESmanago, built as CEPs, embody this shift to a single layer connecting insight, automation, and action. For navigating this loud, complex space and understanding true ROI from MarTech based on business stage and customer journey—while avoiding feature bloat—the SALESmanago Buyer’s Guide offers a no-nonsense framework.

👉 Your next Martech move, a smart one it shall be!

📘 Trade some data for guide