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Growing Ecommerce

The online retail growth podcast with Mike Ryan & Chris Scharmüller

Feed your growth mindset

digital-momentum-the-retail-growth-podcast-with-mike-ryan - illustration In 2025, we welcomed PPC whizz Chris Scharmueller to the Growing Ecommerce family – doubling our firepower and freshening our take. Now, Mike Ryan and Chris dig into the real pain points and opportunities facing online retailers today.

They’re joined by industry leaders in ecommerce, digital marketing, and data science to share fresh trends, practical tactics, and cautionary tales. Ready to see what’s really working (and what’s overhyped)? Tune in to solve tomorrow’s challenges with insights you can put into action today.

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New episodes

35 min

PMax vs. Standard Shopping? – 3 Google Ads Myths Busted

PMax vs. Standard Shopping? – 3 Google Ads Myths BustedIn this episode of Growing eCommerce, Mike Ryan and Chris debunk three persistent myths that are still holding retailers back in 2026. While everyone is distracted by the hype of UCP and Agentic Commerce, many accounts are bleeding efficiency due to outdated structures like the "Heroes & Zombies" matrix and one-dimensional margin buckets. We break…

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31 min

Google’s UCP Explained:
Will "Agentic Commerce" Replace Search in 2026?

Google’s UCP Explained: Will "Agentic Commerce" Replace Search in 2026?UCP (Universal Context Protocol) is a new infrastructure layer aiming to standardize “agentic commerce.” It breaks ecommerce into modular capabilities (“Lego bricks”) so AI agents can negotiate tasks like product discovery, checkout, and payments across platforms. This has become an infrastructure war: Google is pushing UCP as an…

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37 min

Ecommerce Trends 2026:
Google AI, Temu & CPC Forecast

Ecommerce Trends 2026: Google AI, Temu & CPC ForecastIn the final episode of 2025, Chris and Mike trade their suits for matching Christmas pajamas to deliver a raw, honest review of the year in digital marketing. 🎄 They break down the biggest surprises of the year, from Google’s unexpected pivot toward transparency to the "Naughty List" players who frustrated the industry. Mike reveals details about…

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40 min

Are Your Google Ads Lying to You? - Marginal ROAS Explained

Are Your Google Ads Lying to You? - Marginal ROAS ExplainedIn this episode, Mike Ryan and Chris dive into the fundamental issue plaguing advanced performance advertisers: the lack of data integrity between ad platforms and a retailer’s backend systems. Why are sophisticated retailers taking optimization decisions on ad platform data when their final bottom-line evaluation comes from a different source?…

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44 min

Black Friday Bloodbath:
ROAS Down 12%, Gross Margins Down 9% | Post-Mortem Data

Black Friday Bloodbath: ROAS Down 12%, Gross Margins Down 9% | Post-Mortem DataIn this post-mortem episode, hosts Mike Ryan and Chris dive deep into the data behind the last peak season to reveal the true cost of Black Friday. They confirm what many performance marketers feared: the event is a "promotional bloodbath where margins are lost". The numbers are shocking: Google Ads spend was up over 31%…

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32 min

Google is bidding on the WRONG products:
The ‘Clicked vs. Bought’ dilemma explained

Google is bidding on the WRONG products: The ‘Clicked vs. Bought’ dilemma explainedIn this episode, Mike Ryan and Christian Scharmueller dismantle a massive technical flaw in Performance Max: the "Clicked vs. Bought" discrepancy. In a keywordless world, product targeting is your main lever. But Mike reveals that Google places its bids based on the product a user clicks, while being completely blind…

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37 min

Google AI Max is A TRAP?! New Data on ROAS, Demand Gen & DSA Sunset

Google AI Max is A TRAP?! New Data on ROAS, Demand Gen & DSA SunsetIs Google's new AI Max for Search the future, or is it a hidden trap? In this episode of Growing E-commerce, Mike Ryan and Chris dive into brand-new, independent test data on AI Max for Search and discuss the strategic role of Demand Gen and the future of Dynamic Search Ads (DSA). The analysis of over 250 e-commerce campaigns reveals…

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28 min

Google's $155 Billion Backlog:
The Real Cost of Advertising

Google's $155 Billion Backlog: The Real Cost of AdvertisingQ3 earnings are in, and the consolidation is real. Hosts Mike Ryan and Chris dive into the gravity-defying numbers, confirming that Google's core ad revenue is up a strong 12.6% year-over-year (YoY), and their massive Cloud backlog sits at $155 billion USD.  Chris states that Google is not the "bee-headed chicken" but remains the dominant "American…

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