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E-commerce is facing a fundamental challenge: consumer attention spans are shrinking, competition is intensifying, and expectations for personalized experiences are at an all-time high.
At Monetate, AI is at the center of solving this. Speaking at eTail, George Kanuck, Chief Revenue Officer at Monetate, explained how AI-driven personalization, real-time decision-making, and advanced search capabilities are redefining the customer journey.
The goal? Make every site visit hyper-relevant, reduce friction, and ensure customers see exactly what they need—before they even realize it themselves.
The Attention Economy & Why Personalization Must Happen in Real Time
Retailers today aren’t just competing on price or selection—they’re competing for attention.
The problem? High bounce rates.
"The challenge we're solving for so many brands is incredibly high bounce rates," Kanuck explains. "A customer lands on a page, realizes it's not what they expected, and leaves. That moment is our opportunity to make the experience relevant."
✅ AI-powered real-time personalization ensures that what a customer sees aligns with their actual needs.
✅ Influencer-driven purchases? AI ensures the right price points appear first—so someone inspired by a $10K dress is instead shown a $300 version they’ll actually buy.
✅ AI understands the context of how a visitor arrived—ensuring relevance from the first interaction.
"We take that first instant and make it relevant, so customers stay engaged."
For retailers competing in an era of micro-moments, this level of instant personalization isn’t a luxury—it’s a necessity.
AI-Driven Search: Large Language Models & Intent Matching
Search is broken.
Traditional search relies on keywords, but today’s shoppers expect intent-driven results—not just a list of products that match a phrase.
✅ Monetate’s AI-powered search uses large language models (LLMs) to understand intent, context, and nuance.
✅ Instead of ‘best gifts for kids,’ AI understands:
🎁 “I’m looking for a present for a six-year-old boy who loves Legos.”
Result? A curated, personalized selection—instantly.
"Rather than clicking buttons, you can just tell the system what you need," Kanuck says. "That’s where AI search is headed—towards real conversations with the technology."
Monetate’s real-time AI search is not only faster—it’s also more accurate.
"We provide very modern, large language model-powered AI search," Kanuck explains. "We make sure that when a shopper searches for something, they don’t just get results—they get exactly what they need."
For brands struggling with abandoned searches and frustrated customers, this shift from keyword-driven to AI-powered intent matching is game-changing.
Real-Time AI & Monetate’s Competitive Edge
In a landscape where speed is everything, Monetate’s real-time AI infrastructure is a major differentiator.
"There are only a handful of us out there who can do this level of real-time decision-making," Kanuck notes. "And we do it at speeds that outperform competitors in independent third-party analyses."
✅ Real-time adjustments power dynamic pricing, tailored content, and predictive product recommendations.
✅ Monetate’s infrastructure is built for speed, optimizing customer journeys on the fly.
✅ Competitive benchmarking shows Monetate outpacing rivals in response times.
Speed isn’t just an advantage—it’s what keeps shoppers engaged and conversions high.
"We’ve optimized our platform for speed, because in today’s market, milliseconds matter."
Customer-Driven Innovation: Monetate’s Best Practice-Sharing Model
Monetate isn’t just building AI in a vacuum—it’s constantly evolving based on direct feedback from brands and facilitating best practice-sharing.
"We spend a lot of time interfacing directly with executives and hands-on users," Kanuck shares. "We make sure we’re relevant to their biggest challenges."
✅ Customer insights drive new AI features, ensuring Monetate stays ahead of market needs.
✅ Monetate actively cultivates best practices between customers—even among competitors who don’t directly communicate with one another.
✅ Personalization isn’t static—brands need AI that learns and adapts.
"We try and really cultivate best practices we’re sharing between our customers," Kanuck explains. "Sometimes we have two customers that might be incredibly competitive, and they won’t talk to each other, but more often than not, they will."
This collaborative approach ensures that AI doesn’t just automate—it actually improves decision-making and business outcomes.
Economic Trends & the Changing Luxury Market
The broader economic landscape is reshaping e-commerce in unexpected ways.
🚨 Luxury shoppers are shifting their spending habits.
"Luxury brands are still strong, but even they’ve seen buyers shift down a category," Kanuck explains. "Instead of $1,000 shoes, they’re looking at $300 shoes."
AI helps brands predict these shifts and adjust strategies accordingly.
✅ Pricing strategies adapt to changing buyer behaviors.
✅ Personalized promotions target high-intent customers based on new spending patterns.
✅ AI ensures brands aren’t just reacting—they’re proactively adjusting to market shifts.
"AI lets retailers meet their customers where they are—especially as spending habits evolve."
In an economic environment where consumer loyalty is fragile, and price sensitivity is rising, AI-driven adaptability is a must.
AI-Powered Data Accessibility: Monetate’s New Open-Data Approach
Monetate is not just using AI internally—it’s making its insights available to brands.
"We collect a ton of data in our platform, and it was in the past more so used internally to make the product work better," Kanuck says.
🚀 Now, Monetate allows brands to pull AI-driven insights directly into their own systems.
✅ Monetate exposed its data via a Snowflake query interface, making it easy for brands to integrate insights into other platforms.
✅ This lets companies run deeper analytics and optimize their own AI strategies using Monetate’s intelligence.
✅ Brands gain full control over their AI-driven decision-making.
"We exposed a lot of those [data sets], and we put a, basically a Snowflake query interface into it to allow you to pull the data out and put it in other systems."
For brands that want more AI control without being locked into a single vendor, this is a major shift.
Monetate’s AI-powered personalization, search, and decision-making are rewriting the rules of e-commerce.
✅ Real-time AI keeps shoppers engaged from the first click.
✅ LLM-powered search ensures customers find exactly what they need—instantly.
✅ AI adapts to economic shifts, allowing brands to stay ahead of changing consumer behavior.
✅ Monetate’s open-data approach gives brands control over AI-driven insights.
"This isn’t just about AI for AI’s sake," Kanuck says. "It’s about making sure every digital experience is as intuitive, relevant, and fast as possible."
This is an AI-generated podcast based on our eTail interview with George Kanuck—not a direct recording.
📍The Big Question: Are Brands Measuring What Matters?
Across sessions and side conversations, one theme keeps coming up: marketers lack the tools to measure full-funnel impact
As channels fragment and platforms guard their data, brands need better ways to understand what’s working—whether that’s attribution, predictive modelling, or AI-driven measurement.
🚀 We’ll be digging deeper into this all week, so stay tuned.
💡 Want to chat about it? Let’s meet at eTail.
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