The hot topics at Shoptalk Europe 2026
At Shoptalk Europe 2026, you couldn't walk three feet without someone mentioning AI and product discovery. So, we did what any sensible Marketing team would do: pointed a camera at the smartest people in the room and asked them to explain what they’re seeing
There were some big headlines... and not everybody agreed. Agents are in. Social selling is out... or is it? UGC is the new trust currency.
We filmed the best bits. Here's what the floor couldn't stop talking about.
Jess Crawford
GTM Lead, Ocula
The talk of the event is the impact that agentic commerce is going to have on product discovery.
Alessandra Bosco
Director of Brand Ecommerce, 11teamsports
We could even define AI as a new channel.
Thomas McKenna
CEO & Co-Founder, Ocula
Discoverability is going through the biggest change since the dawn of internet retailing.
Colin Lewis
Retail Media Works
For everyday grocery items, I don't think AI is really going to affect product discovery — those habits are already ingrained.
Egi Žaberl
CIO, akids
Grab the first AI you see and figure out how to make it match your business — then go with the flow.
Alex Baker
Founder & Principal, Nordic Retail Hub
The more digitalized we become, the more we long for that human connection.
Colin Lewis
Retail Media Works
User-generated content is at the very heart of the change in discovery.
Colin Lewis
Retail Media Works
UGC creators and influencers are actually helping break that divide.
Alex Baker
Founder & Principal, Nordic Retail Hub
If it's a completely cold relationship, the discovery journey starts in an LLM.
Jess Crawford
Go-To-Market Lead, Ocula
There's a huge opportunity for retailers and brands to collaborate ever more closely.
Thomas McKenna
CEO & Co-Founder, Ocula
Most retailers don't do it today, but it's going to be the difference between being relevant for that latest prompt on Gemini and not.
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AI & Product Discovery
Colin Lewis, Retail Media Works
For everyday grocery items, I don't think AI is really going to affect product discovery — those habits are already ingrained.
— Colin Lewis, Retail Media Works
Hi, my name is Colin Lewis, and I'm from Retail Media Works. I work with brands and retailers on their retail media strategy.
AI product discovery is now part and parcel of how we think about the world in Ecommerce. But there are a couple of nuances here — it's not the same across every category. If I'm looking at something I'm very passionate about — maybe a hobby where I might want to spend my own hard-earned money, and maybe a large amount of it — I want to find out as much about it as possible. I'm going to use AI for discovery, particularly in search. The same goes for higher-ticket items. So let's say it's something simple like an electric toothbrush — they're not cheap, they're 300 or 400 euros. Am I going to use AI to search out the best possible one? Of course I am.
However, for everyday items — the everyday things we buy in the grocery store — I don't think AI is really going to affect product discovery, because we already have habits ingrained in terms of the shopper missions we want to do. So the two will go hand in hand.
Alessandra Bosco, Director of Brand Ecommerce at 11teamsports
We could even define AI as a new channel.
— Alessandra Bosco
My name is Alessandra Bosco, and I'm Director of Brand E-commerce at 11teamsports.
People are transitioning into a new way of buying an dlooking for products. The new generation is faster and less interested in social selling. It's more about, "I want this — I'm very sure. I just need to understand how to get it, and where to get it fastest and cheapest." And that's why AI is taking up so much space in the purchasing world.
I'd say we could even define AI as a new channel, in a way. I envision trust growing in the future, and us moving into this agentic era.
Jessica Crawford, Head of GTM at Ocula
The talk of the event is the impact that agentic commerce is going to have on
product discovery.
— Jess Crawford, Go-To-Market at Ocula
My name's Jess Crawford, and I lead Go-To-Market for Ocula.
The talk of the event, I would say, is the impact that agentic commerce is going to have on product discovery. And I guess that's falling broadly into two buckets, right?
The first is customers increasingly leveraging answer engines as part of their product discovery journey.
And then, perhaps further into the future, how shoppers might build and leverage their own agents to shop autonomously for them on platforms.
Thomas McKenna, CEO and Co-Founder at Ocula
Discoverability is going through the biggest change since the dawn of internet retailing.
— Thomas McKenna
Discoverability is going through the biggest change since the dawn of internet retailing. Not the end-to-end transaction — that's not happening quite as fast as we maybe thought. But ultimately, as customers, for a lot of purchases now we're starting our journey on an app, and what the apps come back with is influencing what we go on to buy.
Most retailers don't do it today, but it's going to be the difference between being relevant for that latest prompt on Gemini and not. Today that's a really narrow set of attributes — narrow so it was easy to do manually. Create a much broader taxonomy, and then enrich it through image analysis and web research. And then, secondly and probably most crucially, build the semantic layer from all the information out there about the products you sell: there'll be forum posts, customer reviews, expert reviews — pull that in and use it to inform things like the product descriptions you write and what you post to Google Shopping.
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Alex Baker, Founder and Principal at Nordic Retail Hub
If it's a completely cold relationship, the discovery journey starts in an LLM.
— Alex Baker, Founder & Principal, Nordic Retail Hub
I'm Alex Baker, founder and principal of Nordic Retail Hub.
The more campaigns we're bombarded with as consumers, the less of an impact they have. For brands that activate all year round — making themselves more visible, more emotional, more touchable for the consumer — it's going to make the product discovery journey a bit easier.
If it's a completely cold relationship, it'll start in an LLM. But if I have some kind of emotional connection — maybe I've seen something somewhere, or spoken to someone — then obviously the product discovery journey will look different.
Egi Žaberl, CIO at akids
If you're a bigger company, go for a custom LLM.
— Egi Žaberl
Hi, I'm Egi Žaberl.
At akids, we do retail and wholesale — everything for babies and kids. We have a lot of SKUs, around 120,000, and each year we change around 20,000 of them.
I think businesses should grab the first AI they see and check what they can do with it — how to incorporate it into their business, so the AI matches their business, their thinking, their vision of what they want to do. Then go with the flow.
A lot of it depends on the business itself — the size of the business, and of course the money. If you want a custom LLM, it's pricey. So for smaller companies, I think the only way is to go with general LLMs; for bigger companies, go for custom LLMs.
UGC & Product Discovery
Alex Baker, Founder & Principal at Nordic Retail Hub
The more digitalized we become, the more we long for that human connection.
— Alex Baker, Founder & Principal, Nordic Retail Hub
I'm Alex Baker, founder and principal of Nordic Retail Hub.
UGC is actually something very close to heart. I was working with UGC in brick-and-mortar stores more than 10 years ago, so I know the power of a consumer wanting to hear from another consumer rather than from the business itself. And I think now, more than ever — going back to the AI era we live in — the more digitalized we become, the more we long for that human connection.
So UGC plays a very important role in understanding: is this brand really trusted? Is this brand really offering value? Do I trust this brand?
Colin Lewis, Retail Media Works
User-generated content is at the very heart of the change in discovery.
— Colin Lewis, Retail Media Works
Hi, my name is Colin Lewis, and I'm from Retail Media Works. I work with brands and retailers on their retail media strategy.
There's a big change that's occurred in the last few years, and it's really around the fact that people are spending a lot more time on this particular piece of equipment — our mobile phone. The phone is the portal into the universe. And one of the big things people do on their phones is look at social media — be it TikTok, Pinterest, or Facebook. People are using their thumb to find out about new products and discover new things.
UGC, or user-generated content, is essentially at the core — at the heart — of this change in discovery. That's where people are. We're living in a fragmented world where everybody's using their mobile phone, and everyone gets a different kind of interface, a different kind of engagement with the phone as a result.
Dealing with people who are seen as more authentic — who speak to me, who speak to their type of audience — is a much better way to deliver the broad reach that sits at the core of all their media: reaching as many people as possible.
Brand & Product Discovery
Jessica Crawford, Head of GTM at Ocula
There's a huge opportunity for retailers and brands to collaborate ever more closely.
— Jess Crawford, Go-To-Market at Ocula
My name's Jess Crawford, and I lead Go-To-Market for Ocula.
I think there's a huge opportunity for retailers and brands to collaborate ever more closely — both in terms of the strength of the data they're sending from manufacturer into retailer, but also that synergy between incredible brand content and how we drive share of voice and share of mind, coupled with the operational efficiencies and logistics that need to sit underneath.
Colin Lewis, Retail Media Works
UGC creators and influencers are actually helping break that divide.
— Colin Lewis, Retail Media Works
Colin Lewis is a Marketer from Retail Media Works. He works with brands and retailers on their retail media strategy.
A lot of brands out there see brand campaigns as pushing a message out to the audience, and they see discovery as something where you actually go out and find the customers yourself. I think UGC creators and influencers are actually helping break that divide.
But currently the big problem is that brands feel they have to deliver messages out to audiences, rather than focusing on the fact that audiences could discover them. So I still think there's a big divide there — and I don't see that divide changing any time soon.
