IntelliJAMS EP 039: The secret ecom war

Описание: n this episode, Adam and Alex explore a growing tension in the e-commerce ecosystem: the battle between owning eyeballs (attention) and owning products & checkout. They unpack how platforms like Meta, TikTok, Shopify, Amazon, and emerging AI agents are all converging toward the same goal—controlling both demand and transactions.

The conversation contrasts passive demand generation (social feeds, influencers, leisure browsing) with active demand (search, Amazon, LLMs), arguing that passive attention is more scalable and defensible. They examine why social platforms struggle with checkout, why Shopify struggles with attention, and how Amazon sits at the intersection of both.

The discussion closes with a forward-looking take: over the next five years, these distinctions will collapse as every major platform races to own attention, product discovery, and checkout in one unified experience.

Timestamps:

00:00 – Intro: An Uncomfortable Truth About E-Commerce
00:11 – The Hidden War Between Eyeballs and Products
00:47 – Why Most E-Commerce Budgets Are Split Between Ads and Inventory
02:04 – Owning Checkout vs Owning Demand
03:33 – Which Is More Powerful: Attention or Transactions?
04:00 – Why Social Platforms Are Harder to Disrupt
05:45 – Why Instagram and TikTok Shops Haven’t Won (Yet)
07:00 – Meta’s Unfair Advantage: Promoting Its Own Products
08:33 – Amazon: The Intersection of Eyeballs and Checkout
10:00 – Why Marketplaces Fail at Telling Brand Stories
10:45 – How AI and Chat Agents Change Product Discovery
12:00 – Passive vs Active Shopping Explained
14:00 – Influencers as the Perfect E-Commerce Model
16:30 – Why Amazon Is Expanding Into Media
17:25 – The Future: Everything Collapses Into One Platform
18:19 – Final Thoughts and Takeaways