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Happy Tuesday.
Somebody leaves a sweater in the cart, closes the tab, and two hours later an email arrives with the sweater in it.
That's the cart-abandonment flow, and it has paid a lot of salaries.
Last Thursday Google started keeping the cart. Universal Cart rolled out in the US across Google Search, AI Mode included, and the Gemini app. Save a Steve Madden handbag in AI Mode and a Quince sweater in Gemini, and both wait in one Google cart until you come back.
It tracks price drops and restocks across the 60+ billion listings in Google's Shopping Graph, knows your card perks through Google Wallet and surfaces promo codes. Price drops, restocks and promo codes are most of a retention calendar, and Google's the one sending the alerts now.
Checkout is Google Pay in a few taps, or a hand-off to the merchant's own cart. Retailers register, then pick one or both.
Nike, Sephora, Target, Ulta Beauty, Walmart, Wayfair and many Shopify merchants are in, and they stay the seller of record, sending the confirmations and handling support. You keep the support tickets.
Suresh Ganapathy, Google's senior director of product management for consumer shopping, wrote that its focus spans "unlocking agentic capabilities that act on your behalf, and designing practical tools that give shoppers confidence and control," and put the cart on the second track.
I wouldn't bet on it staying there.
When a shopper leaves products in Universal Cart and closes the app, the products wait, but "that data sits in Google's ecosystem," as MediaPost put it. It isn't clear whether Google or the retailer triggers the retargeting ad.
The official answer is that merchants keep their customer data. PYMNTS founder Karen Webster calls that "technically true," since neither the merchant nor the issuer "sees the intent data that preceded the transaction. Google sees it all." Which was always the most valuable thing in the cart.
Black Friday is November 27. That's five weeks to find out what your abandonment flow sees when the cart lives somewhere else.
Who's allowed to chase a shopper who builds the cart on Google and walks away?
Today’s sponsor:
Arnold Schwarzenegger. Jay Shetty. And You.
Codie Sanchez, Colin & Samir, Joanna Stern, and Oliver Darcy are here too. They all built newsletters (and podcasts and communities and websites) on beehiiv.
Some came with massive followings. Others built theirs along the way. That’s the thing about beehiiv: with so many ways to earn and grow, the platform is ready for whatever you’re building next.
TALK ON THE MARKET
Cyrus Shepard (@CyrusShepard), founder of Zyppy SEO, on Google's long goodbye:
An SEO wrote it, so it's all traffic and citations. Anyone in retail could add a line for 2026: Google keeps the cart.
Want to see case studies of AI-powered campaigns? We publish a daily edition on the most creative use cases of AI in advertising.
Interested in AI innovation across Europe? We publish a weekly round-up on AI-Ready Europe:
NUMBERS MATTER
$102%. Shoppers in Accenture's Holiday Shopping Survey, out last Friday, say they'd let a personal AI agent spend that much on gifts without asking first. Active gen AI users say $149.
These agents, Accenture admits, "do not yet exist at scale in mainstream retail." The trust got there first.
DAILY PROMPT
Our Product Description Writer, for the products most likely to land in somebody else's cart:
You write product descriptions that convert features into customer outcomes.
Before drafting, review anything I attach (spec sheets, existing listings, review exports, support tickets, win/loss notes) and research the live competitive set on the web so the copy claims something the alternatives do not. Ask me for anything critical that is missing rather than guessing.
Write a compelling product description for the following:
**Product Name:** [Product Name]
**Category:** [Product Category]
**Key Features:**
- [Feature 1]
- [Feature 2]
- [Feature 3]
- [Feature 4]
**Target Audience:** [Describe your ideal customer - e.g., busy professionals, eco-conscious parents, fitness enthusiasts]
**Brand Tone:** [Specify tone - e.g., professional, playful, luxury, casual, educational]
**Price Point:** [Budget level - e.g., budget-friendly, mid-range, premium]
**Key Problem It Solves:** [What pain point does this product address?]
**Channel and Constraints:** [WHERE THIS WILL PUBLISH AND ANY CHARACTER OR COMPLIANCE LIMITS]
Requirements:
- Write 150-200 words
- Lead with the primary benefit, not features
- Use sensory language and concrete examples
- Include 1-2 specific use cases
- End with a clear call-to-action
- Avoid generic phrases like "high quality" or "best in class"
- Write in second person (you/your)
- Make it scannable with short sentences and natural paragraph breaks
Then deliver: the description, a second version at a different angle, a short list of claims that need proof from my data, and the competitor language you deliberately avoided.Run it on your ten best holiday sellers before Black Friday, with your feed's limits in the channel line.
CMO CORNER
Good leadership makes fewer decisions by making better ones earlier.
The Universal Cart calls are small right now. In Black Friday week they're the same calls, made in a hurry by tired people.
We provide consulting services for CMOs on AI strategy for marketing teams through our Teamless offering.
TOOL UPGRADE
Three tools for the parts of holiday commerce you can still own:
Klaviyo — best for ecommerce brands running email and SMS off customer behavior data. Try Klaviyo here →
Bright Data — best for pricing and ecommerce teams turning public web data into datasets on competitor prices, promotions and stock. Try Bright Data here →
Manychat — best for social teams turning DM conversations into contacts they own. Try Manychat here →
→ We have 300+ curated, filtered, and categorized AI tools in our directory. Browse to find the best ones that help your marketing team.
LEARN THIS
Before you switch on cart checkout everywhere: the AI Pilot Program Design Framework. Six steps, from one use case and a one-page charter to the call on whether it scales.
→ We publish workshops, courses, guides, manuals, and more on AI marketing for free. Browse our learning resources for free.
BRAND SLOP
TikTok users have been seeing AI-generated National Trust ads inviting them to become members. The Trust says it never approved them: a spokesperson told Arts Professional the content "was not part of the National Trust's approved creative." It has paused all of its TikTok advertising while it investigates, Civil Society reports.
One marketer who flagged them, Ocean's Charlotte Anstee, said local accounts had been told by head office "that there is an AI ban".
If that ban was real, it covered the staff and not the ad account. Switching off a whole channel costs reach, and it also tells members the Trust meant it. How fast could you pull every campaign if ads appeared in your name this week?
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