Good evening.
As I mentioned last week, I'm taking time off this week. My brother and nephews are in from New Zealand and staying with us, and it felt like the right week to unplug for the first time before the second half of the year gets going. Thanks for bearing with me.
So this week's edition is a best-of-The-Aisle roundup rather than original reporting. If your seven-day free trial happens to land this week, reply to this email and I'll extend it another week.
Also: I have three tickets to the Jay-Z show at Yankee Stadium this Friday night, July 10, and I'm giving them away to one lucky subscriber of The Aisle.
To enter, reply to this email with “JAY-Z” by tomorrow, Thursday, July 9, at 3 pm ET. I'll pick a winner at random and transfer the tickets directly. Free and paid subscribers are both eligible.
While upgrading from free to paid won't improve your odds, it will help fund The Aisle's deep reporting on the nexus of AI and commerce. It’ll also give you full access to all the work and future events I produce. If you've been meaning to go paid, now's a good time. It takes about 60 seconds to upgrade here, and most tiers come with a free trial.
Below are seven of my favorite Aisle pieces so far, most of which are paid-only beyond the intro.
On to the good stuff…
This first piece was the Q&A that launched The Aisle, and I think that many of the conversation points, insights and predictions hold up well eight months later.
I have a soft spot for no-BS conversations and revelations, and that’s what I delivered in the pieces below after attending two of the biggest industry events. These were also two of the pieces that converted the most free subscribers into paid ones.
One of the goals of The Aisle has been to cut through the hype at the intersection of AI and commerce. I believe this next piece, which dissected the burgeoning AEO/GEO space, does just that.
In recent years, many online media companies have turned to affiliate revenue from e-commerce sales to diversify. The following Q&A examines what happens when AI threatens one of the biggest players in the industry.
Finally, it’s easy to get AI leaders to discuss the reason they are pursuing initiatives in online commerce; it’s not as easy to get them to open up on why they are reversing course. But execs from OpenAI and Perplexity did that exclusively with The Aisle over the past few months.
Again, free subscribers can upgrade easily to paid here to read everything The Aisle produces. See you all next week.
