MarketingDojo#108: 🤖 AI agent. 💳 Your card. 🛒 Your list.
Visa & Mastercard just enabled AI agent-led shopping, APAC's performance addiction, Gen Z love influencers over Hollywood.
🕵️♀️ In an investigation, assumptions kill.
That's Jack Reacher. And Reacher doesn't miss.
Lee Child didn't write Jack Reacher to win philosophy prizes. But here I am quoting him, mid-binge of Season 3 on Amazon Prime. Because I've accepted a keynote invite on "Search Everywhere Optimisation" (big words, big expectations).
The talk's not till October. Which means I have time.
Time to not assume.
Time to listen, poke, and rethink what a good keynote even looks like.
If you're up for chatting about how you actually search and find stuff online, check the PS. Section; I'd love to learn from you.
Now, here's what's on the menu today:
💳 AI credit cards for AI agents paid for by humans
🎬 Gen Zs prefer social media over movies
🚨 Asia Pacific has a performance problem
And more.
Grab a coffee/tea/beer- whatever fuels your scroll & let's dive in.
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If you're already in - you are a rockstar! 🙌
💳 Your AI just got a credit card.
And a memory. And spending rules.
For years, we've heard how AI agents will do our shopping—book flights, reorder skincare, restock snacks. But there was always one problem:
You don’t just hand over your credit card to a bot.
Last week, Visa took a big step toward solving that.
They launched Visa Intelligent Commerce—a platform that lets AI agents not just recommend but securely transact. They're partnering with OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, and more.
Here’s what makes it tick:
Visa will issue tokenised payment credentials, so your actual card details stay protected.
AI agents get access to years of transaction data (with consent), learning your shopping patterns across time, categories, and context.
You can set rules and limits—choose preferred merchants, block certain ones, and set budget caps.
So your AI agent might soon know that you love Korean sunscreen from Olive Young, only buy during sales, and never want anything shipped from Wish.com.
And just 24 hours later, Mastercard dropped its own answer: Agent Pay, launched in partnership with Microsoft, IBM, Braintree, and Checkout.com.
Honestly, it’s a smart move.
If AI agents will be the new browser meets buyer meets checkout—then Visa and Mastercard want to be the pipes powering it all.
Because trust is the real product here.
And if Visa’s CEO is right, we’re not waiting years for this shift:
“You’re going to see this (AI agents) in months. You’re going to see this in the next couple of quarters.”
🧓📺👶📱 Gen Z is streaming. Boomers are watching. And podcasts? They fade with age.
Deloitte's 2025 digital media trends report just dropped—and it's a goldmine.
Consumers now spend 6 hours a day on entertainment. But what they do in those hours depends on their birth year.
Gen Z leads the screen time race — clocking in at 6.9 hours.
But they prefer influencers over movie stars.
→ Total for Social + UGC: 2.4 hours
→ Total for TV (streaming + cable): 2.2 hours
If your audience is Gen Z, your brand's TikTok strategy might matter more than your OTT spend.
Now look at Boomers and Matures.
TV, both live and streamed, takes centre stage.
For Boomers, it's 3.5 hours a day.
For Matures, a whopping 3.2 hours.
So, if you're targeting older consumers, for example selling retirement plans or blood pressure monitors, streaming is very much alive.
One more thing: the slow death of podcasts and gaming with age.
Gen Z listens to 0.4 hours of podcasts. Matures? Just 0.2.
Video games follow the same trend from 1.1 hours for Gen Z, down to 0.2 for Matures.
That's a steep decline.
It's a good reminder: what looks hot on your media plan might be age-dependent.
Asia’s Performance Obsession Might Be Hurting Its Brands.
At a recent CMO breakfast hosted by ANA, Spikes Asia, and Bloomberg, the team at WARC introduced the PACE Principle, their latest study on marketing effectiveness across Asia.
One chart said it all:
49% of APAC marketers plan to increase performance spend. That’s nearly double the global average.
While much of the world is trying to swing the pendulum back toward long-term brand building, Asia is doubling down on short-term returns.
It’s not hard to see why: Performance delivers fast results. ROI is clear. The next quarter is always around the corner
But WARC warns this path leads to what they call the advertising doom loop:
➡️ Initial growth plateaus
➡️ Marketers chase flawed short-term metrics
➡️ Brands spiral into tactical survival mode
So here’s the real question:
Are we driving growth or just harvesting what’s left?
And are we measuring what works…
Or just what’s easy to measure?
Short Stuff
Pinterest finally introduced an “AI modified” label to combat AI slop on its platform (Too little, too late?).
Walmart abruptly decided to stop offering its white-labeled adtech platform to other retailers (Focusing on internal innovation & cost management).
Meta launched a standalone app for its AI assistant (Bringing the social angle to AI chatbots).
That’s a wrap on this week. Thank you for your time and attention. If you made it this far and enjoyed what you read, remember to leave a like. I appreciate your support.
I will see you in your inbox next Wednesday.
Regards,
P.S. I’m prepping a keynote & I’d love your help.
The talk is titled Search Everywhere Optimization. It’s about how search is evolving beyond Google and into apps, platforms, and even real life.
But instead of quoting the usual reports, I’m building this from the ground up.
Which means: real stories from real people.
Here’s where you come in:
I’m doing a few short 1:1 conversations to understand how people actually search across four types of decisions:
Everyday stuff: like ordering food or checking Grab promos
Occasional planning: like booking a holiday
Big-ticket buys, like a house or car
Family-impacting choices: like picking a school or buying life insurance
If you're open to a 45-minute chat, just hit reply and drop your contact:
→ WhatsApp / Email / LinkedIn
→ Let me know which 1–2 scenarios you relate to most
In return:
I’ll share the keynote and insights deck with you before the event. And if we cross paths in person, the coffee’s on me.
