Navigating eCommerce in the Cookieless Landscape | Zohar Hod

Matt Edmundson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the eCommerce Podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. This is a show designed explicitly to help you deliver eCommerce wow. Oh yes, we're going to get into some great stuff today in today's show. I'm really looking forward to this one. We are chatting with Zohar Hod all the way from New York, and his company One Creation about ethics and cookies, which if you ask me, sounds like a beautiful name for a podcast or a coffee shop.

Don't know but we're going to get into all of that today, but before we do, let me just say quick shout out to anybody that's new to us. This week listening to the podcast, a very warm welcome to you. we get to chat about all things e-commerce. So I hope you enjoy it. I hope you get some value out of it.

And if you [00:01:00] do, why not hit that subscribe link or do what thousands of others have done. Head over to the website, eCommercepodcast.net, putting your name and email address, and we'll email you every week when a new episode is released. That's all we do. Just when the episodes go out, we don't spam you. We don't send you all kinds of nonsense.

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Either way, it's great that you're here. Now this show is sponsored by the wonderful eCommerce Cohort. which is our monthly membership group. I'm in there every month. We are always doing expert workshops. We have guests from previous shows just deep dive into some of the stuff that they were talking about even more.

And they do these great value workshops that we can get involved with. I use them [00:02:00] with my company all the time. We just sit around actually, just once a month, we watch the video and we spend hours chatting about it, which is just great. It's made a big difference to my own eCommerce businesses. So do check out Cohort at eCommerceCohort.

com, it's eCommerceCohort. com, it'd be great to see you in there. Now, shall we talk? About our fantabulous guest, I think we should, Zohar, the brain behind One Creation Corporation is the go to guru for building trust through privacy centric tech delights. Oh yes. With his 25 year saga spanning finance and tech, including a game-changing stint at Digital Asset.

He's part strategist, part innovator and all wizard. Oh, yes. As a speaker, he mixes finance, tech and privacy into a cocktail of insights, making the complex world of fin-tech and retail marketing as [00:03:00] understandable as your morning coffee. Zohar, welcome to the show, man. Great to have you. How are you doing?

Zohar Hod: Thank you for having me. Very nice to meet you, Matt.

Matt Edmundson: No, it's great that you're here. All the way from new We were, saying, weren't we before? before we hit the record button. That New York is so cool. You have to say it twice. All the way from New York. New York,

Zohar Hod: Absolutely. Love New York.

Matt Edmundson: yeah. Are you, you sound like you're from New York. Actually, I can hear the New York accent.

Have you always lived there?

Zohar Hod: Yes, most of my life, approximately, I was originally born in Israel, but approximately 35 years of my life I've lived in New York area. So yeah,

Matt Edmundson: Do you like it there? You must do. If you spent 35

Zohar Hod: I do. It's the center of the world. It feels like a great energy, to be here. So I definitely recommend anyone that, has not been. to make the trip.

Matt Edmundson: yeah, I love it. I took my kids there a few years ago, and my two boys. We were doing a big road trip in America, and we went to New York for a few, [00:04:00] a few days. Had the biggest times, just doing all the touristy things. Just love the city, love it. It's great. It's got a great energy, great vibe about it.

You must have seen some interesting stuff, though, on the streets of New York over the time. I tell you what, one year literally, I bumped into Pamela Anderson in New York. I literally bumped into her.

Zohar Hod: Really.

Matt Edmundson: yeah, It was just fascinating, just, what happens in New York? You just bump into famous people all the time, it

Zohar Hod: I once seen Sigourney Weaver, ordering coffee in front of me and that, that was my highlight of, New York celebrities. But yeah, New York, has its ups and downs, and sometimes it's more or less dodgy. I think it's in the up, of the dodginess right now, but it's still, a very good place and, a wonderful place where you can, Enjoy a lot of culture and a lot of different, restaurants, for sure.

Matt Edmundson: Oh yeah, great pastrami and great bagels, is my, overarching memory. So yeah, fantastic. So tell me a bit [00:05:00] about you and tell me a little bit about the company and what you guys do.

Zohar Hod: Yeah, I'm a serial entrepreneur. This is my, fifth startup involvement.

Matt Edmundson: Oh, wow.

Zohar Hod: I wasn't always, the founder, but maybe usually in the early team and, mostly in the financial technology. space, I would consider myself a data geek and interested in insights and,

Matt Edmundson: Yeah.

Zohar Hod: and customer analytics, but the story of one creation really started as a personal story of mine.

My son was diagnosed with type one diabetes and, right at the hospital, we, I had to sign up some documents that most people sign. when they check in their children, and, a few days later, we started getting bombarded by medical device companies that are related to his condition, and that really ticked me off, and I wanted to do something about it, that's the motivation around, One Creation, the ability to create one, preference, [00:06:00] center for who I am, not just for, What I want to do with the brand, but, trying to create much more personalized experiences for your brands and doing that in an ethical way, because until now, and we talked about cookies in the beginning of your conversation, cookies were the main mechanism to actually try to track what Matt is doing around the internet and try to infer according to that data how to personalize, Matt's experience.

So when the email goes out from your, group, it needs to say, hi, Matt, and be more personalized to yourself. And therefore bar none, you will interact much more with a personalized ad than you would with one that's not personalized. So take yourself a few years, into our. into now.

And what you've seen is both Apple and Google now blocking cookies from being collected from their browsers. [00:07:00] And that means, this is just 1 percent of Google's Chrome users, meant 300 million people were not, or created signal loss for them. They were not creating any signals behind as they're, traveling around the internet.

Now, that's a good thing, okay? Why is it a good thing? Because of my sons experience rather than, take my consent in kind of a creepy way and then allow my data to be sold to third party, members and vendors that I've never heard of before in my life, there should be a better mechanism to try and personalize my experience.

And there comes the trust. the need to do that in, a very trusted mechanism and one that has potentially the exchange of value. But also the security to know that if the brand is telling you, Hey, I'm going to use your data, Matt, for this particular reason, for this particular time, that they're actually going to be able to show you that they're standing behind what they're saying.

So [00:08:00] changing a little bit of the business model, which today relies on very kind of creepy tracking devices that are behind the scenes, that are becoming more expensive and less efficient because of those technological, changes that I spoke about before. That's really what we're trying to solve. And what we are is an engine, a preference engine, a digital preference engine that sits in between your customer data platform, where you're analyzing all of that 360 picture of your customer, and wherever your customer is met, meaning in the email, the website, the mobile application, text, whatever the customer experience is, to make sure that next time instead of acceptal cookies, rejectal cookies.

Maybe there's a different experience that progressively builds, progressively builds a profile of who Matt is, and therefore constantly and automatically takes that, those insights and improves your personalization as you become more and more of a [00:09:00] loyal customer of the brand. That's what we're trying to sell to brands and corporations as not only a very impactful type of way to do business, But the right way, the better way, the cheaper way to try and get personal with your customers.

Matt Edmundson: it's, interesting listening to you talk. I have kids of my own, not as, as young as yours. I'm a, I'm slightly older on in life, Zohar, but, It's interesting listening to you talk because how would I feel if I went to the hospital, I signed some forms because I'm, and I'm not going to read the fine print because my son's in hospital, right?

And even if I could read it, would I understand it? Because these things are deliberately

Zohar Hod: are you going to do about it?

Matt Edmundson: yeah, I'm not gonna sign it. then you don't get that. It doesn't, you it's problematic, isn't it? And so, I get that I can see why that's a triggering event because I think I'd be the [00:10:00] same.

I'd be like, hang on a minute. This is ridiculous. They're tracking an 11 year old son like this and bombarding me with stuff already. And so what started out as something that was actually quite helpful, you could create personalized experience. Marketers have yet again gone and screwed up royally because that's what we do.

So on one hand, I, yeah. I sit here and I listen to you go, and I think about my personal privacy and I'm like, yes, actually, I, am getting more and more concerned with how my information is used. that doesn't change my web browsing behavior. I just tend to click accept all cookies or reject all cookies.

And it doesn't really seem to do any difference if I'm honest with you. But then the marketer side of me is actually that information is actually quite helpful to have, just to create these personalized experience. So there is this tension here, isn't there, between the two things and you.

And you're somehow trying to walk the line between the two. Is, am I understanding that right?

Zohar Hod: Correct. let's talk about you [00:11:00] pressing the, accept or reject all cookies. first of all, it's becoming really meaningless because let's separate between first party cookies, which are session cookies, which basically are meant to understand who you are and what you're doing on our site versus cookies that are third party cookies, which are basically just tracking and trying to target exactly who you are.

And those are much more creepier than the first ones.

Just from a percentages perspective, if you ask people three years ago, the amount of knowledge they had about what's being done with their data was very minimal, close to 3%. Yet at the same time, 60 to 70 percent of them were pressing the accept all cookies, because otherwise you cannot actually continue forward in the process.

Today things have changed. Especially because of GDPR and other types of digital markets regulations that have just, passed. and customers, first of all, are more aware of what you're doing with their data. And some of them, just for the convenience, might press yes. And that's about 40 [00:12:00] percent of the individuals.

Yet. If you look at the other side of it, there's approximately 60 percent that are either saying no or saying I'd like to just use functional cookies. And by the way, that practice of trying to get you to click on more clicks in order to say no just for functional is becoming illegal in the UK, for example, under the digital regulations.

So there's still a large amount. Of customers that at the point of acceptance, you're really playing a Russian roulette and you're missing an opportunity to be able to personalize their experience in a much more sincere manner and actually reward them as well. There's gonna be an exchange of value. Oh, Matt, I see that you're interested in this product, please just confirm that this is what you prefer, this type of color, for example, and, we'll give you a relative discount to this, and it has to be proportional.

And that type of a [00:13:00] relationship will lead to deeper, longer term relationships that are based on trust, and hence the need to, to earn that trust.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, it's interesting. it's interesting. When we were talking about this in the, introduction, we called this the ethics, ethics and cookies. and There is, it's an interesting ethical debate, isn't it? In terms of how much data is stored. Now we, I'm going back a few years. Cambridge Analytica was probably one of the big, breaking stories of the time.

And then Apple coming along after that and going, yeah, we're just not going to let Facebook do what Facebook has been doing anymore. And that causing Facebook to take out a full page ad, I think they took out in the New York Times or something, didn't they? that didn't do them any good, just waste a few quid, as we like to say.

But the, it's interesting how it started with, [00:14:00] or maybe it didn't start with, in my head it started with Cambridge Analytica. And that's that big mass, expose, but it took a company like Apple to go, yeah, we're not going to do this anymore. rather than the little guy going, I, want choice and I'm intrigued by that.

do you know what I mean? I'm intrigued that

Zohar Hod: Yeah.

Matt Edmundson: was somebody like Apple that

Zohar Hod: Let me, add some, some clarity to that. as of iOS 17, which is the latest, iOS for Apple, Safari is not collecting at all, cookies, and there's, as you said, they created a massive wall of privacy. that's admirable on one hand. The other hand is the question is what's next and Is that really the only reason?

Meaning if you're Apple and you're interested in creating a walled garden, where you're going to be the one in between the customers and the [00:15:00] brands, that are interested in their data, how easy it is to now use this infrastructure to go back to you and say, Hey, this vendor wants to pay you a little bit for getting a little bit more information about you.

60 percent of all American users are Apple users. That means that there's a huge signal loss related to what you're able to collect from customers that are just, don't track me. Don't track me. And that's happening all the time. Who's going to be the beneficiary, the benefactor of that? I would tend to think that in the long term, Apple is going to be the

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Yeah.

Zohar Hod: by doing what I just said.

And the same for Google that realized they can actually control a lot more into them, they're playing a much more careful balance because, it's how much ad money and how much, those cookies are generating for them. I think that our other mechanisms and the, ethics curve, curve, the regulatory curve and the technological curve are all moving towards an [00:16:00] opt in model rather than an opt out model that is currently there.

Companies and brands need to wake up and do something about it, working the cookie list. Actually, McKinsey just released a report that said cookieless environment beyond 2024, you're actually going to pay 20 percent more for your marketing expenses in order to try to personalize your customer's experience because you're buying a lot more cookies that are maybe more expensive, less effective.

You're spending a lot more money on data inference and analytics. And you're not getting what you need, which is the customer to actually interact with you. That's where we believe that we have a very big, effect from an impact perspective for brands that actually use this mechanism to say, we are going to lead the way in changing the way customers data is being treated.

You mentioned sometimes how much data, but for how long as well, are you keeping it? Since I'm a baby? what's the data degradation related to that? Is there no need to [00:17:00] continuously have a relationship with me that's not based on mistrust? That's really what we're hoping that brands are realizing, that they need to fill up their first party data.

Zero party data is first party data that was volunteered to you. Just to explain, okay? if you want to fill up your, personal information, your first party data, What mechanisms are you going to be able to do that? We believe, that what we offer in terms of our technology is the right and ethical way of going forward.

Matt Edmundson: So how did you, I'm curious here, we're using words like right and ethical. I'm curious how you were, how you arrived at that, stand. What was your thought process to get to a point where you felt Now actually this I feel is right and is ethical because it's, a moving target. It's a, it's, we're talking about it in black and white terms.

So I'm curious to know what your thought process there is, both you and the company in terms of [00:18:00] going, we think this is good, we think this is bad, and so this is what we're going to

Zohar Hod: That's a great question. That's a great question. And I wish I could illustrate it also, in the way that our system works, but we've done a lot of research about what is trust and how to earn trust, and it boils down to three components, what we call the three C's.

Matt Edmundson: Okay.

Zohar Hod: control, clarity, and comfort.

And this is research that's been done with large companies like Visa and others, so it's not a small amount of, research. And also we've seen it from ourinitial customers. Customers need to be able, and let me give you an example. I've been asked to share my Nest information with my local energy utility, and I will get 85 in return for that.

What's missing in that is trust, and let's go back to those three C's. I don't know for how long and, meaning, can I control and opt out? I decided that every [00:19:00] time I pass next to my Nest, you know about me, it's creepy. Don't, like that. Can I, at any time, decide to opt out? That's the control factor.

I'll feel more trustworthy of that transaction. Second is clarity, of course. Why do you need my Nest information? For what purposes? What are you going to use it? And who are you going to share it with? Because it's mostly maybe to see my spikes in usage, but is that really what it is? And you're going to put your company's reputation behind that.

That's the clarity. Pillar of Trust, meaning the second C. And then the third one is comfort, which is the notion of time. If you told me that you took my Nest information just for a period of a week because you wanted to test my spikes in my usage, go ahead, but show me and prove to me that at the end of the week, my data is not gonna be, is gonna cease to exist. And yes, One Creation created a technical capability to self destruct data remotely.

Matt Edmundson: Oh, okay.

Zohar Hod: And that means that after a certain amount of time, [00:20:00] In this case, hey, I'm going to use your Nest information for seven days, or I'm going to use this promotion information for only the month of Ramadan or the month of Christmas and whatever that is, in order to create a trust feeling that at the end of it, you'll get a message.

Hey, remember you gave us this data is no longer going to be within 24 hours is going to disappear. However, the brand wants to reengage with you and maybe offer you another reward for another set of, for another set of questions or preferences or anything that you might. We believe that those three C's build trust, we've also seen it in the results of our campaigns, when you go to the second question, which creates usually 99 percent of the people don't like the second interaction, with us it's over 43 percent of people reacted more, and reacted twice, and reacted three times, and so forth.

So it builds trust over time, and it's a better mechanism, and those are the components that I can say what I mean, when I say, Trust. [00:21:00] Use your customer data with those three principles and you will benefit.

Matt Edmundson: This is really interesting. The control, the clarity, the comfort. I like the three. It's good alliteration, Zohar. Very good alliteration. I like that. we always remember alliterations, usually. so I'm looking for ways to, I get, I'm looking for ways to give the control back to the customer. And control mixed with clarity makes a lot of sense to me, the clearer you are, the better.

how does this work for, let's say, I see how this would work for somebody like Nest, which is a, just for those of you who don't know, it's a bit like Ring, it's a home automation thing, isn't it? It controls your heating, there's cameras. We've got the smoke detectors in the ceiling that detect when I'm moving around the house and all that sort of stuff.

And as far as I'm aware, Nest is Google, is that right? Nest is owned by [00:22:00] Google? yeah. Yeah. And so I get how companies like Google, like Nest, they can go above and beyond, and start thinking about control, clarity and comfort. And they've got teams of people, I'm sure, to think about it. What happens if I'm, I don't know, a small business, small mom and pop online store?

how does that work for someone like me when I'm, I don't have the team that Google's got?

Zohar Hod: point. So let's start and say that, I'll give you another more retail type of, example of how this could be used. But imagine that you're either checking out at Boots or at, Sainsbury's, wherever you're

Matt Edmundson: I love the fact Boots and Sainsbury's, Zohar. That's just, that's brilliant. That's brilliant. And for those of you listening, sorry, those of you listening outside of the UK, to the podcast, Boots is a pharmacy chain and Sainsbury's is a supermarket chain. but, the fact that you know this is extraordinary, but sorry, I interrupted you.

Zohar Hod: completely fine. I travel a [00:23:00] lot to London, so I

Matt Edmundson: It

Zohar Hod: it

Matt Edmundson: yeah.

Zohar Hod: my second home. When you go there and imagine that at the point of sale, there's a little bit of an interaction that says, Hey Matt! I see that you're buying a number seven, it's a beauty product, okay. this product is going to be free. Just answer this question and then within a week this, data will cease to exist.

Is it for your wife, for yourself? maybe a second one. What's a skin complexion? You've just completed a lot of personalized information. There was a exchange of value, and there was a time limit to the, data that was used. At the end of the seven days or the seven weeks, whatever it was, you'll get a message back to your Boots or your, app that will say, Hey, remember, Matt, that we gave us this data?

It's about to cease to exist, but we've partnered with Kimberly Clark. We'd like to know, are you expecting as well, right? It starts creating a much more equivalents, even feel relationship [00:24:00] between them, reght?

Matt Edmundson: Yeah.

and

Zohar Hod: it doesn't at different points of either your onboarding customers, trying to learn more about them. And if they sign, don't market to me, that's it, you lost them.

Rather than doing that more progressively, trying to get them to more progressively add traits and preferences to their partnership. And then the ones that are already your, loyal customers, trying to dig deeper because I purchased like for, the example of the boots, I might be purchasing my wife's reward card and that's why it's asking me the question.

So that's a, an example of how this could be used, for instance, in a retail, opportunity. So I don't know if it answered your original

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, it's an interesting, isn't it? How you're

Zohar Hod: can it be done, can it be done by a small business? Of course. If you have a small online business that you're trying to personalize, you can create and embed the One Creation, interface, which then will, without cookies, [00:25:00] collect preferences throughout your life, so even if you have a small B2C, direct to consumer, environment.

If you have control over a digital venue where you're seeing your customers, whether it's a website, your mobile application, a point of sale, then yeah, you could use this very easily. it's literally easy to install and to, take off with it.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. No, I like it. I love how you build interest with clients. I'm reminded of the time when, GDPR came in and up until that point. I would say most of the, I'm just thinking through how we did it and also how a lot of the other companies were doing it. You had two options with email.

I'm either subscribed or unsubscribed. Then GDPR came in and actually unsubscribing was quite complicated with a lot of companies. The good companies actually made it straightforward and easy. They understood the value of a clean list, I think, and a motivated list. And what I then noticed after that sort of legislation came in was.[00:26:00]

I think people got wise to this and thought, actually it doesn't have to be one or the other, you don't have to be either on or off. You might, we might have six different types of emails that we send out, and actually what you don't want is that one over there, but you might want the other three. Four or five.

And so you wanna stay connected to those. And so giving customers then the option of what they subscribe to, became actually, I think, quite a powerful tool in the hands of marketers because this is what you want. You want customers to tell you exactly what it is they want and what you are talking about here.

With this deep dive in personalisation is exactly the same thing, but doing it in a more open and transparent way, rather than the sort of sly cookies in the background, right?

Zohar Hod: You got it, Matt. That's exactly it. It's about collecting deeper preferences, more detailed preferences of what Matt would want from that relationship. With the brand that he trusts. And isn't it amazing if you can actually take those [00:27:00] preferences with you and walk away and go to another brand and then not have to ask them, have them ask you again.

This is the notion of what they call open data, and we can support that. Meaning we create. a wallet of preferences for Matt. That wallet can easily be taken away from one brand and moved to another brand without them needing how beneficial it is to the second brand receiving all of your preferences before you're even, onboarded, right?

So that's really where we see the future. You mentioned progression. That's exactly it, what we're talking about. You mentioned what was before GDPR to what is GDPR. To what now is going to be called the Digital Markets Act, right? And all of those are passing in one direction, the customer. And the customer will have a lot more controls from a regulatory perspective, because the other mechanisms of, any other mechanism to try and collect behind your scenes, It's creepy by nature[00:28:00]

and therefore not a good investment in my opinion.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, I think that sort of, that creepy behind the scenes thing is a bit that everybody's fearful of, isn't it? It's the Cambridge Analytica, it's the having all this data and not quite understanding why, or the necessity of it. and I think we, everyone's been spooked by the amount of data.

Certainly the Amazon and Facebook and organizations carry it around about you. what's interesting then is, how you're balancing that where the marketeer is also concerned. Because it's the, data is useful for the customer, but it's also useful for the marketeer, isn't it? To the brands to be able to, create that wealth of experience.

if I'm sat there, Zohar thinking about my own company then, so I've got the three C's. I'm [00:29:00] like, I'm thinking about our policy, our privacy policy at the moment, it just currently reads on the screen. You go to it. Are you in or out, accept all or reject all, what are some of the steps that I should practically do, irrespective of whether I use, one creation platform or not, but what are some of the steps practically that I should do as an eCommerce business to make the process better for my customers and ultimately create a better experience and more profits for me?

Zohar Hod: it all starts from where you are on your customer experience from a personalization perspective. How much of your, marketing is driven by data? That's the number one question that you need to first ask yourself. If you are already on the path of getting to have data driven marketing, meaning more, precision, more targeted type of marketing, then you are on the way to create some sort of a persona for each one of your customers.

So there are [00:30:00] steps to that, right? You first need to want to do that, then be able to You collect the data in one place and start creating a persona for my customer, and then afterwards enhancing it with tools like what we've offered, there will be the cookie list mechanism. And that's the second question you need to ask yourself.

Are you ready for the fact that cookies are not going to be the mechanism for you to track your customer?

Matt Edmundson: Yeah.

Zohar Hod: The answer is yes. I want a cookie list solution. I am on my path to personalize my customer's experience and try to create a persona built for each one of my customers. I think then, One Creation's tool is a great mechanism to do that in an ethical, Long lasting, way that would feed your personalization engine.

And just think about if you're trying to deploy the one word that everybody likes to talk about, AI. If you're trying to deploy any AI as it relates to personalization, then the, let's say the black box of it, Makes the relationship even [00:31:00] less trustworthy. And that requires these type of solutions that we're talking about to be a lot more transparent about what went in there, who's gonna, what's gonna be done with my data, and for how long is that data gonna be kept.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. That's a really powerful point, actually. my, my eldest son, he's 22. And I'm saying that pausing, just calculating in my head if actually what I've just said is correct. And I think it is. I think he's 23 this year. there comes a point where you just stop counting, Zohar. And I feel like I've reached out with him, but he's doing theoretical physics.

And, and involved in that is a lot of AI work, a lot of machine learning, a lot of maths, a lot of data analysis, and just figuring things out. The more data that they have, the more accurate the model is in a lot of ways, and spooky things that then can be done. It's if you come onto the website at this sort of time of the day [00:32:00] and you go to these three pages, then we can just by looking at this.

Copious amounts of data figure some really interesting things out about you. And then I'm going to show different products on the website accordingly. So that brings back then to the conversation about ethics, a whole new paradigm, doesn't it? Because you're right. There's sort of the black box of AI, and machine learning and just copious amounts of data.

Zohar Hod: Exactly. What are you learning about me in the back end is never the right thing. So that's why transparency or the clarity part of the three C's is really important. And also time. Don't keep my data forever. Don't share it with other AI algorithms, right? I need to know about that, and I need to trust you, and therefore you need to be transparent, and you need to reward me for this experience.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. I'm with you. And then in a lot of ways, It's, it's a bit like I suppose time is one of those things people like, I don't [00:33:00] like to give up data. It's if someone's on your email list and they've not purchased from you for 12 months, then they probably don't need to be on your email list, right?

It's one of those where, and if you take them off. You tend to get much better deliverability and, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm assuming that the web's going to go more like this. And actually the, if you just talk to the people that actually want to be there and forget about the people that don't, you're going to have much less clutter under the C word and much less confusion.

And actually you can

Zohar Hod: quality data. Better quality data over a long, over a longer period of time. I totally agree with you. and, if you even include, Web3, and that discussion about what is the next Internet, it's the Internet to me. And from a technology perspective, in the Internet of Me, you will be your own wallet for everything, and every time you come to a brand, you will do some sort of a handshake, which will exchange a little bit of the data, will exchange a little bit of the transaction, or cash money, or tokens for it, and then will, [00:34:00] cease to exist after a certain period of time.

That's how it's going to work in the Web 3, and what we've done is we've brought that model over to today's world.

Matt Edmundson: Do you think that will only exist if governments legislate for it? Because I can't see. Brand owners and marketeers voluntarily doing that would be my,

Zohar Hod: it depends. if the, I think that, government regulation is definitely a good catalyst towards it.

as you saw, the cookie deprecation by, Google and, and, Apple is another.

Motivation towards that meaning what are the other ways of tracking me without tracking me?

so there's both a technical, there's a regulatory catalyst and I would like to think that brands that, maybe disagree with your assessment are thinking the impactful.[00:35:00]

Effects of what a business model like this will mean, meaning how much is my ESG score? How much is it the right thing to do, and how much am I gonna get more bees with honey rather than with vinegar? I believe that the first, type of brands that actually, take on this type of, solution.

And we are already working with UK brands like Barclays, for

that decide that. taking on this type of an approach in the environment that the UK is in order to decide whether to offer you another product or be more personalized, we are the right way and the right ethical way to do that.

So it's definitely some education and, but I believe that people would want to do the right thing, not just what's compliant and what's technically possible, of course.

Matt Edmundson: Fascinating stuff, absolutely fascinating stuff, and I'm really intrigued by the cookie less [00:36:00] future. and what that means, and I'm thinking as you're talking, Zohar, I'm, like, what does that mean for things like the Facebook Pixel, which was a really big marketing tool for the long time, and we all know the answer really, and, what does that mean for attribution, and how we do things like that?

There's, a whole bunch of questions in which sort of come out of that, which I think is going to be absolutely fascinating to see how it all, pans out, over the next few years. I love this idea of being an early adopter, actually, and, because I'm thinking of companies like Amazon, and you think, Amazon must collect gigabytes of data.

They, know when I'm on the site, they know what products I look at, they keep a record of the products that I look at, how long I was looking at them, how far down the page that I scroll. the copious amounts of data. is, is [00:37:00] that ethical? Is that right?

Zohar Hod: No, so let me explain what a large retailer, like Amazon, what's, right about what you said is that they have copious amounts of data about you. That's called first party data, transactional data, right? What's also interesting to know is 80 percent of all searches on Amazon start with a no name brand, meaning white pants men.

Matt Edmundson: yeah,

Zohar Hod: Okay, and therefore, in order to differentiate who you are as a brand, talking about hundreds of thousands, if not millions of brands on the Amazon case, who you are as a brand is a big issue. And here comes the notion of retail media networks, where it's basically, Amazon offers a retail media network and says, advertise on me, and therefore the chances that it will be white, men, black, Ralph Lauren, is going to be a much more, a higher chance.

so imagine the tools or the message that I gave you about what one creation does as a mechanism for this retail media network to offer [00:38:00] the brands an ability to run campaigns that are targeted for the individuals, but on the retail media network property. On, if somebody's looking for something, the One Creation will come and say, Ralph Ryan, we'll give you 50 percent off.

If you just answer these two questions, why you're looking, is it for you? Are you going on a trip to Africa? Okay? That's the tool that One Creation can be offered by Amazon to the millions of brands that they work with to do Targeted, precision, cookie less campaigning on the Amazon side. Amazon doesn't need cookies.

Amazon has first party data. And therefore, sometimes they want to sell it to you, and they'll sell it to any brand, and sometimes they won't. The question is, how do you, as the brand, differentiate yourself on Amazon and the One Creation Tool, at least if it's given by Amazon, could be used for targeted campaigns on the Amazon Retail Media Network or on Sainsbury's Retail [00:39:00] Media Network. Alright, so here's a tool for all the brands. Instead of offering buy one get one free, why don't you run targeted campaigns to see if Matt is really one buying diapers and what's the reason behind it. And then create much more perfect rewards for Matt. Then for anyone else that wasn't interesting in this particular.

Matt Edmundson: yeah. It's clever stuff. It's clever stuff, isn't it? And it's, you've obviously put a lot of thought behind, it's your company, so you're obviously going to put a lot of thought behind it, but it's. It's intriguing, and, actually another C word, compelling, Zohar. I'm listening to you and I think actually what you're saying is quite compelling.

if people want to know more about One Creation, if people want to reach out to you and connect with you, what's the best way to do that?

Zohar Hod: the best way is go to one creation.com or one creation.com. that's our website. There's all the resources there, and a way to get a hold of us or to see a demo. If you're any type of corporation, you [00:40:00] don't have to be sainsbury. If you're any type of corporation that wants to have an impact and try to get personal with your customers in a very innovative, forward-looking way, give us a call.

Matt Edmundson: Fantastic. We will of course link to that in the show notes as well. we'll link to the website onecreation. com. So Zohar, listen, super appreciate you coming on, man. You have got the old grey matter. Thinking, which is important, I feel, and it's been a fascinating conversation. Is there anything else, any final things that you wanna say before we close out the show?

Zohar Hod: Privacy is a human right. And, we really, that's one of our mottos, at One Creation. We believe there's a better way, to getting better information. So I hope, your listeners are, as excited about this vision as I am.

Matt Edmundson: fantastic. And I'm sure that many will be. And I'm sure that there'll be many marketers going. No, not yet. I need some time to think about it.

Zohar Hod: Exactly. Exactly.

Matt Edmundson: Brilliant. listen, thanks for coming on the [00:41:00] show, man. Genuinely, really appreciate. It was absolutely phenomenal to meet you. And thank you seriously for the conversation. It was, it was spots on.

Zohar Hod: Thank you. Thanks for having me, Matt. Really appreciate it.

Matt Edmundson: That was great. Great. What a fantastic conversation. Huge thanks again to Zohar for joining me today. Also, a big shout out to today's show sponsor, the eCommerce Cohort. Why not check them out at eCommerceCohort. com. Come join us in that monthly group. Be great to see you in there. Also, be sure to follow eCommerce Podcasts wherever you get your podcasts from because we've got yet more great scintillating and captivating conversations lined up and I don't want you to miss it.

Any of them. And in case no one has told you yet today, let me be the first. You are awesome. Yes, you are. Created awesome. It's just a burden you have to bear. Zohar has to bear it. I've got to bear it. You've got to bear it as well. Now the eCommerce podcast is produced by Podjunction. You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite [00:42:00] podcast app.

The team that makes this show possible is. The beautiful and wonderful Sadaf Beynon and Tanya Hutsuliak. Our theme music was written by Josh Edmundson, and as I mentioned, if you'd like to read the transcript or show notes, head over to the website eCommerce podcast.net, where coincidentally you can sign up to the newsletter that I talked about at the stock.

Go ahead, do it. You'll be pleased. That's it from me. That's it from Zohar. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world. I'll see you next time. Bye [00:43:00] for.