"It's an in-house, ready-to-go agency. Which is free for all merchants."
"It's an in-house, ready-to-go agency. Which is free for all merchants."
That's how Sachin Malhotra, Shopify's Director of Product for Merchant Marketing, describes Campaign Autopilot, the new AI marketing tool Shopify just announced as part of Editions. It sets up your ad accounts, syncs your catalog, and runs Meta Advantage+ checkout campaigns inside the guardrails you set. You teach it your boundaries, it does the heavy lifting, and you keep oversight the whole way.
Sachin walks Kurt through how the "ask me first" controls work, why the tool optimizes across Meta, Microsoft Ads, ChatGPT, and Snap instead of fixating on one channel, and how it stacks with Shop Campaigns and its pay-only-when-you-get-an-order billing. If online advertising has ever felt like yelling into the void, start here.
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The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.
Kurt Elster • 00:00.001
This episode is brought to you in part by Swym. Here's the thing about wishlist apps. Most of them just sit there. A customer saves a product, and then nothing happens. Swym actually activates that data. When someone wish lists a product, you could trigger price drop or back-in-stock alerts and feed that intent directly into Klaviyo or your CRM. You're not guessing what people want because they've told you. Plus, customers can share wish lists for gifts, and your team can view them to offer personalized service online or in-store. And unlike card abandonment, wishlist data is permission-based. These are people raising their hands saying, hey, I want this. Just not right now. Swym's been around for over a decade. It powers 45,000 stores and installs in about five minutes You can try it for free today at getswim. com slash Kurt. That's G-E-T-S-W-Y-M. com slash Kurt. What if I told you there was an an easier way to advertise your Shopify store? What if it was on autopilot? In fact, Shopify just announced a feature called Campaign Autopilot. along with additional shop campaigns features, new to shop fi, as part of their additions announcements. And we're gonna hear about it. We're gonna learn about it direct from the individual who is largely responsible for bringing this to us, who knows it. Sachin Malotra, director of product uh of merchant marketing, is that right?
Sachin Malhotra • 01:41.360
That's correct.
Kurt Elster • 01:42.240
Excellent. Okay. Hey, get into it. Before we go deep, you know, I I want to know up front, campaign autopilot, what is it?
Sachin Malhotra • 01:51.740
Campaign Autopilot is our omni-channel solution to help merchants, big or small, with all aspects of marketing. It's an in-house ready-to-go agency, which is free. And we are going to be offering solutions that that uh that encompass right from the point of messaging to shop campaigns and the ability to go on to third-party partners like meta that we have just we have launched with And other partners that are coming in the next few weeks and months, including Microsoft Ads, Snap, and ChatGBT. So we're very excited with this list. And with this Merchants can come into a single Shopify platform, establish their uh their guardrails, what kind of um you know guardrails they need in terms of what kind of target CPA they need what kind of T ROS they need, um, you know, where they want to be advertising, where they want to be able to sell, which which channels make sense for them, and then we do the hard work for them.
Kurt Elster • 03:05.280
I alright, I love this idea because Meta has such a learning curve to it, or ads do, right? Advertising online has a huge learning curve. And depending on which platform, especially one like meta, extremely fiddly. Lots of you know lots of things to mess with, places to go. And so it is intimidating. Like I personally would not want to have to relearn it and get back into it today. So having in an an autopilot assistant, this sounds like AI, right? It doing some of the heavy lifting for me. And then plus the integration, I imagine, solves a lot of my problems. with uh getting going. I'm interested, when we say autopilot, how automatic is this? Like how much effort is required to get started?
Sachin Malhotra • 03:48.220
Yeah, so let's start off with, you know, um, we we start at the very onset of the experience, right? Right from account setup. So if you have a regul if you already have an account with Meta, great. All that you have to do is to link up your Shopify store with that account. We help you through that process. It's seen, you know. We try to make it as simple as possible so that, you know, with a few clicks you can get there. If you don't have an account on Meta, we will also help you with that process. You know, you you will still have to do, you know, provide your ID, provide your credit card, which I cannot provide. We use your metadata that you have, uh, you know, all the data that you have entered on the Shopify side Leverage that to set up your account on Meta. So that's the first part. Then we help you with your campaign, your catalog syncs. Then we set up the campaign. And so we pre-fill the guardrails that you have put on the Shopify side. We use your information that you have provided to us, like, you know, your stock avails. So we know how much stock you have, how much you don't have, when you're running out of stock. We use that to tailor how we set up your campaigns on meta. And that way, you can sort of um edit it. You could forget it, but you know, we fully expect that in the early parts you will want to have some oversight. So you have options of saying, hey, ask me for permission. And we give, you know, we allow that. We want that. So we want the merchants to teach us what our guard, what our boundaries are. Right, what boundaries we can work without consulting with you, without taking your um your decision making into account, and when we can go on our own. And so within those confines, then we start to work So yes, it is a lot of it is integration and AI both in play.
Kurt Elster • 05:40.160
So if I want it all right, so uh with uh an automation workflow like this, an AI workflow like this, typically we would advocate for a human in the loop process, meaning Yeah, an AI is doing the bulk of the work, but a person checks it and goes, okay, you know, at certain checkpoint says yes, okay to proceed. It sounds like I could do that here.
Sachin Malhotra • 05:57.500
We actually want you to do that. Because we uh because we want to be sure that what we are doing makes sense for you as the merchant. Because each merchant store, each merchant is different. And we are very aware of that.
Kurt Elster • 06:11.220
I like that. I could also go full auto, but y uh t go a little deeper. Tell me about the difference between those two. And you know, maybe you have a preference.
Sachin Malhotra • 06:18.639
So m our preference would be that, you know, I'll tell you my preference would be that, you know, you teach us. You teach us our boundaries before we before you let us go. Because I want to be I want you to be comfortable with the autopilot Right. So I don't want you to give me all the control and then like, oh my God, what did you guys do? Right. Uh so I would rather have you teach me through it, you know, maybe the first few weeks. Right. So that we go through the learning together. I understand, you know, where you might be going too much, uh, you know, stopping too much or pausing or redirecting, because that will also not be helpful. Because if that is the kind of um hand holding that you require, then maybe campaign autopilot is not for you, right? Because You know, and we respect that, right? You know, if the merchant wants to uh change the price or how much they want to bid or how much budgets they want to put in on their campaigns on a weekly basis or a daily basis, then it might not give enough room for Meta to do that's job, right? And so it might be best for you to not be on campaign autopilot. And No disrespect to us, we you know, we are okay with that part because you're not yet there. Um But we would really like that, you know, once we get past this learning That you start to trust us and saying, okay, I'm giving you a budget. Now let's see how you make it work. And you know, periodically we'll come back and adjust again. But you, the merchant, always gets the transparency. So on our dashboards, we always show all the things that we are doing. So I call it more of explainability versus transparency. Like I want to be able to explain my actions to you. And if I can explain it, then I should be good.
Kurt Elster • 08:11.760
It's tell me about the interface here. Like it where do I find it in my Shopify admin? And then within that, it it sounds like a like a sidekick style, you know, like I'm talking to a chatbot.
Sachin Malhotra • 08:22.880
Sidekick is the orchestrator layer. It it feeds campaign autopilot. It's one of the ways that you can adjust campaign autopilot. So you can adjust campaign autopilot through the UI, through a sidekick, and you can adjust the settings. In the campaign, it's under admin. So when you go there, when I talk about transparency, there is a UI layer to it where you can see all the things that we are doing on your behalf. Have we set up your campaign? Is the campaign running? Have you received impressions? Have you received um, you know, conversions? Well how much spend have you made have you done to date, etc. So we give you all of that information right there. When we have multi-channels, we will also tell you about how many other channels we are running it on, not just meta, what you know, where where how things are going, um, where are we seeing traction, where we are not seeing traction, and then When we are wanting to change budget allocation, and if you are in OSC, that means that if you have to ask the merchant for permission, we will give you a recommendation and saying we are thinking of moving budgets from here to here. Are you good with that? Right? Or I want you to I don't think channel A is performing well. I'm gonna disconnect. Are you good with that? I'm gonna pause the campaign. Are you good with that? So we we tr we interact with the merchants. We want to make sure that that interaction is always the on.
Kurt Elster • 09:55.100
I want to know okay, it sounds like it could do a lot and Yeah, in our example here, we've been very meta-specific, but it does other channels. But but before we move on, you know, for being meta-specific in our campaign autopilot. Yeah, can you talk me through the the kind of campaigns or ads I can run? There are multiple formats available to us.
Sachin Malhotra • 10:16.440
So um great point, Kurt. And I um the key thing is that we are looking to give our merchants performance. So what we are very fixated on is performance marketing. So our our key goal, conversion goal that we are working with is checkout purchases. That's what our merchants want.
Kurt Elster • 10:36.839
Yeah, I agree with that approach. That's what we want.
Sachin Malhotra • 10:40.040
Exactly. So with that in mind, what we picked for Meta, for example, was Advantage Plus. So we picked one campaign type, which is Advantage Plus, with the conversion goal being centered around uh checkouts. Okay. And we've tried to, you know, we've narrowed down the field, but that is in line with what our merchants are expecting. So if you're expecting to do brand awareness campaigns, then campaign autopilot may not be for you because we are not doing brand awareness, right? Um because because our conversion goals are more towards checkout. Whereas for brand awareness, it would be more up funnel. It would be, you know, views or product browsing or something else like that. But we are fixated on the the extreme uh checkout only.
Kurt Elster • 11:29.160
Okay. How do we handle creative? Right? This sounds like a very AI-driven tool. Creative is where it could generate a lot, but it's not necessarily a creative in the same way a human is. What do we do there?
Sachin Malhotra • 11:42.279
So today where we are where we have started where we are at this point in time is very we are leveraging your catalog. Okay. Right. So catalog is our means of creative. We are not playing with that at this time. You know, meta on their side or any of the channels on their site, they can all they will tweak. You know, if you're using Advantage Plus, they will uh you know, they have they retain the they have the ability to tweak your creatives within certain like four aspect ratios and stuff like that for it to fit different surfaces. And so those are the types of abilities that we are enabling at this time. We'll come back at a future date to think about how what else we can do.
Kurt Elster • 12:23.560
You know, I I've been around long enough with with Shopify, you know, new features and launches to know that in twelve months this will likely do much more than it does now.
Sachin Malhotra • 12:33.339
That's a goal.
Kurt Elster • 12:34.540
Yeah. So we focused on meta, but this is really a a multi-channel approach here. Remind me, what are the other channels that campaign autopilot can run for me?
Sachin Malhotra • 12:43.819
Yeah, so it's both. So first we need to think when we it's multi-mark it's marketing, right? So the campaign autopilot is all about marketing. So when we think about marketing, there is paid and there is unpaid marketing channels. So unpaid is messaging. So we have we also got enabled we have also enabled messaging as a part of it because more often than not, you know, they all have to work together, right? Your paid and unpaid have to work in tandem. And so we've got the unpaid channel, which we have started off with messaging today. We've got other things that we are contemplating. Um I'll hold uh my answers on that because you're still working through which one comes next and how do we roll it out. On the paid side, we have gone with Sharp Campaigns. And then is the ability to run your own ads on these third-party channels. We've started off with Meta. as our first partner. But then we've got three other partners that are coming in um shortly, starting with um Microsoft Ads.
Kurt Elster • 13:48.639
Okay.
Sachin Malhotra • 13:49.279
Um And then after that, you know, we've got two other partners which are Chat GPT. So that will be very interesting for a lot of our merchants, as well as the second one that we have is Snap. So those are our partners that we can talk about publicly. There are other partners that we are also talking to, and we'll announce Ratley.
Kurt Elster • 14:12.320
What's neat about this is I imagine you know like I plug in my channels and it can address each of these channels individually, but it can also look at it holistically. Exactly.
Sachin Malhotra • 14:22.560
Can't it? Yes, that is the whole point. So it does omni-channel optimization. So most tools out there, they're they're only fixated on one channel at a time. So there are we looked at a competition, other comp other people that have put out tools. You're very specific to a channel. This tool is looking across Channels. So if one per one channel is not performing, we'll start to look at other opportunities that exist on other channels. And so it's the concept of exploit and explore. So we want to maximize what you can get from the channel that you are accustomed to, or where merchants similar to you have experienced success. And then there are other channels where you might not have explored. And with your consent, with the merchant's consent, we will try to see if there is opportunities over there which are untapped markets for you. Untapped user base for you. And so we want to expand your user base, you know, your and not just with the ones that you know are of.
Kurt Elster • 15:28.720
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Sachin Malhotra • 16:31.420
We hope that you will, you know, that we will earn the trust of the merchant that we can make those budget allocations um, you know, more on the fly versus, you know, this pre-allocation. Yes, we'll start off with a pre-allocation, which depends upon. you know, historical data, you know, overall Shopify data. But we we want to we want the performance to drive it, right? This is what we're trying to get away from is like don't don't have presets Let the system, let the let the tool, let the product help you get to the right points.
Kurt Elster • 17:07.140
Hmm. So it sounds like it's you know when I start with it, is if it knows what my store is and what I'm selling, it has an idea. And it could start with, you know, based on lar our larger data set of Shopify as a platform. It can then make have a a better than average starting point potentially or a more informed starting point. And then it's going to optimize over time I want to work through an example of an optimization. Like you you've mentioned a few, but um if it's always on, it's always uh potentially like testing and tuning in the background.
Sachin Malhotra • 17:47.000
Yeah, so it's always so I can start off by saying is like if you're not getting enough sessions, impressions. Right? So that means that you know you're product is not even being if your product is not being viewed, there's little chance that you know you're getting purchases.
Kurt Elster • 18:01.440
So we need eyeballs.
Sachin Malhotra • 18:02.799
We need eyeballs first, right? So is it because you're not getting the eyeballs because you're not you're not in you don't have the right budget, right? So you're not in the right in front of the right users. Right. And so there might be a budget problem to start off with. Right. Or the the guardrails that you have set up are too restrictive. Right? Like, you know, you're expecting to from a purchase point of view, you want to you want to buy something at $10 target CPA. Right? Well, the average for that particular segment or that particular vertical is $20. So we will help you understand that yes. You want purchases, but not at 10 at this point in time. Your competitors have driven the marketplace up that it's more like $20. If you want to be on this channel, it's it's gonna cost you a little bit more.
Kurt Elster • 18:55.140
So there's there's an educational component here, it sounds like where it's like, hey, you know, we we get the you know the unit economics you want. Here's the unit economics you have. Yes. Now how do we adapt?
Sachin Malhotra • 19:07.919
Because your desire is twenty 10, but it's actually you know selling for 20. Um and so, but then we will then we'll come back to you and also say, is there another channel where maybe you can buy it for 10? And so that's the exploration, right? Maybe you've not explored channel B, which where it might be available for a different price point. And so that's one level of optimization that we can do. Um, does that help?
Kurt Elster • 19:39.179
No, absolutely so I think the thing that's going like for sure even if someone is curious about this, like I want to try this. It is it's scary to put it on, you know, hey, here's my budget, spend it on autopilot. You know, that's always a little scary, but you've mentioned guardrails. It is very clear that there are, you know Processes in place here to prevent runaway ad spend. Talk to me about the guardrails.
Sachin Malhotra • 20:04.139
So um merchants give have the ability to provide guardrails. So we provide, you know, like you know, I don't want to be in this market. I do not want to be, you know, selling, you know, say you're in Canada and you want to be only selling in the French provinces, right? Because your product is geared towards more towards that. It was that demographic. or that geography, you can say I only want to be only advertising in French, right? So that's a Godrail that that merchants have. Or, you know, like there's a T-Roast uh you know, you want to sell for a certain return of ad spend ratio or target CPA. So those are the ones that we provide. Now, we also work we we work within the confines of what the platforms provide. So that's the key thing, right? So if Meta does not provide us a guardrail to or something, then we cannot promise that on our side. So we live within the confines of the platforms that we are working with. Now, having said that, during the early parts of the campaign, you know, as you know, on Meta, you know, they all all merchants go through a learning period. Or ad our merchants will also go through their learning period when you come in through campaign autopilot. We will we're going to be very explicit with the merchants about what to expect during the learning period and what not to expect. Like you might not get your return of ad spend during that learning period because The platforms are still learning about your store. And as they're learning through your s about your store, they don't know what the right baselines are. So they're establishing those baselines. And so we are very upfront with our merchants telling them we are in learning period. So you will see some erratic behavior.
Kurt Elster • 21:56.080
How long is a typical learning phase? Like what what controls it?
Sachin Malhotra • 22:00.060
So most most platforms have X number of cli X number of conversion events over a period of time. So in case of Meta. It's something like 50 conversion events in a week, right? Um we got to be respectful of that, right? Because that's what they need in order to establish what the baseline is for the store. And so until you get past that, it's very it's it can be challenging to you know get to that price points that you're looking at. But post that we we have a better shot at it. And we so we inform our merchants. We educate our merchants about where we are in that process so that they are well aware of what they're getting and what they're not getting in the first, you know, through that phase. As we move past that phase, Then we sort of saying is okay now you've got a baseline. Now you're getting this. Now what can you do? Are you looking for expansion? Are you looking for cost control? And then if you those are the two dials that you have. Which one do you want to leverage? And we fully expect some merchants might come back and saying we are more interested in just expansion at the same price point. Or We don't want to pay so much. We want to pay less per conversion event. And we'll just help the merchant understand what the you know what that will do. to their campaign and potentially their orders.
Kurt Elster • 23:31.220
Your current role, director of product, uh marketing for merchants? Yeah. It was? Yeah, merchant marketing. Merchant Marketing. When you think about that role and you know what you do and the problems you solve, did this solve you know a a pain or problem that has been you know driving you crazy?
Sachin Malhotra • 23:48.980
It is because a lot of our merchants cannot get going on these platforms. And so they might have a great product, but marketing is a very key part of that whole journey. Right. And to learn marketing, learn digital marketing across on multiple platforms is very challenging. I've done much, I've done marketing. 18 years. You know, very familiar with a couple of platforms. But I'm learning about other platforms which even, you know But sometimes, you know, I scratch my head about how similar, but how different they are, right? They're similar in concept, but they're different. And for a merchant that is just get going, that is just getting going, they are building their business. They're building their product. They've got so many other problems that learning this seems like something that we could help with. And our goal at Shopify is to help merchants, you know, expand, grow their businesses. And I certainly believe that this is this will help them.
Kurt Elster • 25:01.900
Certainly this tool lowers the barrier to entry, right? Everything for the last you know 10 plus years that Shopify has done has democratized entrepreneurship, e-commerce, you know, for for anybody, you know, who has who's got the the access and the time to do it. And over time, it just that has continued. It gets easier, it gets better, new tools solve new problems. It continue to lower that barrier to entry. That's excellent. that the advertising piece, you know, marketing online, camp, campaign autopilot really does a lot to get you unstuck in that initial learning phase of like, okay, where do I need to be? What channels are going to work? What products are going to resonate. Yeah, when you're just starting from zero and it sometimes it feels like yelling into the void. You're like, what, you know, does anyone even know? Does anyone even see me here? And having you know anything, something to help you along. Hugely beneficial. If I it very much it sounds like you know the way we're talking about this geared towards someone new. If I am an existing If I've got an existing established store, it is already selling. I'm using some, you know, but not all of these channels. Is this still worthwhile for me?
Sachin Malhotra • 26:13.840
Absolutely. Because, you know, even Even if you've gotten going on one platform, you know, there are other platforms that you've not leveraged, maybe not leveraged, and that's why I call about exploring. This will help you explore. So there is nothing in our in our product which says that you have to shut down your existing campaigns. You can go with your existing campaigns. So they can live side by side with this, right? So if you have an existing meta campaign, We we strongly advocate you to keep them. Right? Over a period of time, you may decide to choose one or the other, but we are not asking you to shut down your existing campaigns. Go with keep them going.
Kurt Elster • 26:54.320
So not mutual exclusive. I keep it going. Where I'd really like it's like, all right, I've got my like I the ch if I'm established and running, the chances are I'm already I've got my meta campaigns going. But you know, all these other channels you mentioned. It would be fairly unusual that someone's doing all of them. Exactly.
Sachin Malhotra • 27:10.400
Unless you have a large, you're a large, even large merchants, you know, for them to when they even if they have agencies or in-house marketing teams. You'll be surprised that not all of not most of them do not advertise across all channels, right? Because they are also picking and choosing. And this just helps everybody from that perspective. They they have a shot at expanding their user base.
Kurt Elster • 27:40.620
Remind me what my channels are again outside of meta.
Sachin Malhotra • 27:43.400
Um for this wave, we've got um Microsoft advertising and we've got Chat GPT and we've got Snap.
Kurt Elster • 27:53.400
Microsoft advertising. What does that encompass?
Sachin Malhotra • 27:57.080
Bing ads, um you know, Outlook, all the Microsoft surfaces, Xbox, so all of them are those surface areas that uh that we that our merchants will get.
Kurt Elster • 28:09.320
So getting i quite a bit of surface area here through that. All right.
Sachin Malhotra • 28:15.320
And then you and then snap and jad GPD.
Kurt Elster • 28:18.260
You know the other we've got campaign autopilot, but there's also changes to shop campaigns.
Sachin Malhotra • 28:23.620
Yes, we're expanding the footprint over there too.
Kurt Elster • 28:26.500
First, you know, help me understand what's the difference. Campaign autopilot, shop campaigns. Both have campaign in the name.
Sachin Malhotra • 28:33.820
I know.
Kurt Elster • 28:35.660
Where where's the difference?
Sachin Malhotra • 28:38.300
Yeah. So with campaign autopilot, the the merchants, the brands get to advertise in their own name. So they are establishing their own brand. You know, when their ad shows up on Meta, it will have their own brand associated with it. So it'll call it'll be called Kurt LLC and not Shopify. When you sh when you are a part of shop campaigns, it the ad shows up under the brand Shopify. or shop, right? So that's the key distinction. One is is an amalgamation of all the products, similar products. And so and one is just unique to you.
Kurt Elster • 29:20.480
So in one, yeah, if I'm established people know know the brand name, they recognize it, I can with campaign autopilot, it is going to connect to my account advertise under my name. Yes. KurtzWidgets dot com and that's not a site. Kurtz Widgets. Or if I'm shop campaigns And you know, we have large merchants doing this. It doesn't bother them at all. It advertises as under shop. And then they see like, okay, here's, you know, here are these products. My products then appear under this shop app.
Sachin Malhotra • 29:49.800
You land on the right the right subside, but you you are under the umbrella of shop.
Kurt Elster • 29:57.160
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Sachin Malhotra • 31:15.800
Exactly. So I that's why for merchants, I think it's great to be on both sides, right? Is um you get the benefit of shop, the brand name. And when you want to start to establish your own presence, then campaign autopilot will also help you with that. So if I was you know, consulting, I would say, you know, think about both. If you can be on both sides, it'll be better.
Kurt Elster • 31:40.000
But if I'm starting out and I just have to pick one. Oh you gotta you have to pick the favorite child. Where um this is a Sophie's choice situation.
Sachin Malhotra • 31:46.880
I know, I know. So I if you were just starting off and you were just brand brand new, I would say that there's an there's uh if you recall, we also talked about messaging Right. So I would start off with messaging and you know, shop campaigns. That might be a good choice because you're just starting off. Nobody know people are not aware of you. And that might be some might be a good starting up point. But as you start getting, you know, tens of orders a month, a week, then you know maybe it's time to start to branch out and start to explore this other side. Because I am as you can see, I continue to talk about exploration because that's the key part. You gotta know your you you gotta expand, continue to expand your user base. And that's where I would start to go with campaign autopathic.
Kurt Elster • 32:35.000
I'd like it I like the flexibility of these systems. You know, you really a platform like Shopify, yeah, I have a lot of empathy for trying to develop for something like that where you have such a wide variety of users. It's very hard to build or something that addresses all of this. And yet, you know, here by giving, we have you know multiple products. with overlapping the outcomes, you know, and a lot of different knobs and dials to turn to adjust them, gives you a lot of flexibility in the approach you take. So very much we have like, you know, various levels of of beginner uh on up to enterprise. Hmm. Okay. Man, out of having built all this, you've got quite a few new products here. What are you most proud of?
Sachin Malhotra • 33:20.160
Bringing this all together, I think it's h it's ver it's pretty, you know, it's been pretty challenging, but very um very rewarding. Because to see, you know, if the you know as these start to roll out, how much impact it can have on the merchants, the early merchants, how you can get them going, the established merchants, how you can help them. And everybody in between, right? It it's um as you s rightly called out, you know, it's a rich sub-feature tool sets that are available. And I I would say there is, you know, with these kind of features, it just uh enables the merchants to try out different things. without becoming experts in all these areas. I think that's the key part. You know, there's a time dimension, which, you know, there's a money, there's a dollar ROI aspect to it, but there's also a time dimension. And I believe with with these capabilities, both of them are mean, you know, um, we're we are trying to help on both these aspects.
Kurt Elster • 34:28.920
I'm excited to try it. What's my availability here? What plans? What timeline?
Sachin Malhotra • 34:34.440
So to today we are in EA mode. Yeah, as of yesterday we opened it up early access. That means you got to sign up for it. Um We would like to be in GA in the next couple of months.
Kurt Elster • 34:49.599
But yes.
Sachin Malhotra • 34:52.120
But certainly by uh before Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Okay. So we want to get make it available to everybody by that point.
Kurt Elster • 35:01.100
Yeah, we really we very much focused on campaign autopilot. Switching gears to shop campaign. The one distinction I want to point out, the billing model is different. You know, there's a an advantage to shop campaign versus campaign autopilot.
Sachin Malhotra • 35:14.900
What is it? Exactly. Um so down with shop campaigns, this is why for early merchants, that might be a great answer because it's based on orders. You know, it's uh the billing is based on, you know, you get an order, then you decide how much you wanted to pay, and that's what you get. Right. Um with campaign autopilot, it is, you know, as you know, it's Venue on Meta, even though we we are leveraging Advantage Plus, we are having the conversion goal of checkout, but That's what they are gearing towards, but you will see that there will be some traffic that will not be performant. So on on the camp on shop campaigns, that's what the merchants get is the advantage of Being very well protected, which is very novel, you know, having been around the ad world for so long. This is the oh I don't know of too many I don't know of any other product as such. Which which is so helpful for merchants as shop campaigns.
Kurt Elster • 36:16.680
Where you pay it is unique.
Sachin Malhotra • 36:19.320
Yeah. Where you pay only when you get an order. Wow.
Kurt Elster • 36:23.520
Yeah, we have several stores running it successfully now. And it really it works as as advertised. And it I think the you know, my favorite part about it. It's just very easy to set up. Like it is it is low effort where I'm like, you know, hey, maybe just try it because it's going to take us all about 10 minutes to think through this. Um And then, you know, they do and often have uh good results in it. But of course, all marketing is an investment, and like all investments, you know, results may vary and carries risks, of course. What um Hmm. I want to pick your brain, because you are quite quite an experienced man with uh online marketing. Five years. Five years in the future. What's the mix here between robots running things and humans?
Sachin Malhotra • 37:07.220
Oh, I Yeah, that's a tough one. I'll leave that to Toby to respond to you. But in but I see uh I see, you know, in our ads world, I think the aspect of humans will be in the pl in play, you know, because there is always, you know, like ads, AI will help, but we will continue to have. I certainly believe that. you know, humans will be forever in the loop because, you know, we will tell them what, you know, what actually works with my brand. may not work, you know, you m you the results are the not the only thing that matter. People are, you know, as brands grow They w very protective of what the brand is, what the brand, you know, what the product is, how they want to show up in front of users. It's very important, you know. Uh and so I certainly believe that humans will continue to play a part, but AI is really helping. But things that we are doing just now with campaign autopilot a few years back, mm-mm. Very difficult. But now we can make that happen.
Kurt Elster • 38:16.480
This is the the stuff I'm excited about. I view AI as AI will replace tools. I have, you know You have whatever software tool you're using and probably know a stack of them. And that's where AI excels like you hyper-specific implementations of what is essentially a custom software loops for people. And when you put that into business. And then you make it more accessible to entrepreneurs. I'm starting to see store owners build some really clever and incredible things that two years ago, two years ago, they just could not have done. It's an exciting time to be working in this space. Where if somebody wants to get going with this, where do they start? So for I it's in early access, I gotta sign up. Should I believe is my first one.
Sachin Malhotra • 39:04.620
You gotta sign up and as you sign up, we every week we're going to be actually every day we're going to be opening it up to more and more users. So everybody that's signed up, we're just going ahead and releasing them.
Kurt Elster • 39:17.640
And that's campaign autopilot specifically.
Sachin Malhotra • 39:20.200
Yes.
Kurt Elster • 39:20.600
Yeah.
Sachin Malhotra • 39:21.000
But shop campaigns is open today.
Kurt Elster • 39:22.600
Yeah, shop campaigns that's available now.
Sachin Malhotra • 39:24.840
Right now. It's general availability right now. With uh campaign autopilot, it's time if you like, if you want in, go ahead and sign up for it.
Kurt Elster • 39:35.020
Where do I go sign up?
Sachin Malhotra • 39:36.700
In admin, um there is a there's a growth tab. Underneath that you will see that it's front and center. You press that button, it says notify me when it's available for me, and we will notify you.
Kurt Elster • 39:51.720
Beautiful. Cool. Very cool. I I'm looking forward to see where this goes. Like I have no doubt that given, you know, enough time and effort, this will work. Like I I haven't played with it. I have not tested it, but I see the possibility. I think this is totally plausible that this works.
Sachin Malhotra • 40:10.660
I am very con I'm very You have more experience than I do. I I w I would say that we really, really are putting in every all the effort and we're very confident that this will really Help merchants a lot in their marketing journey and uh we'll establish them to leverage these platforms.
Kurt Elster • 40:31.840
Thank you so much. This has been great. I'm looking forward to what what comes next.
Sachin Malhotra • 40:36.880
Thank you, Kurt, for your having me. Thank you so much.
Kurt Elster • 40:40.940
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