The Real Signal Behind This Week's Biggest Insights Industry Deals

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A $2 billion ad verification deal, a trillion dollars in retail spending up for grabs by AI agents, and a synthetic population standing in for 8.3 billion real people. In episode 143 of The Exchange, Karen Lynch and Lenny Murphy look at what's actually reshaping the insights industry right now, and what's just noise.

Thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos. 

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Transcript

Murphy: And here we are. Happy Thursday. Happy Friday, Eve.

Karen Lynch: Happy Friday from Thursday. Pre-recording because at this point, I'm not quite at the beach, but I'm very close to the beach.

Lenny Murphy: Understood. We don't want to get in the way of that.

Karen Lynch: I know, I know. I was saying to somebody about an hour ago that it is very on-brand for me to be heading on vacation to the beach. So anyway, that is where I will be. And I apologize for not being with you live, but I'm happy to be here the day prior. And you have a fun guest lined up this week.

Lenny Murphy: So you won't miss me at all. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's go say. Well, we'll leave it as a surprise, but definitely a fan favorite guest host. So, but we'll definitely miss you. So, do we want to dive in? There's a good bit. The train keeps on rolling.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, it really does. It really does. But you know what? What I love about this week's episode is that it's just every time we do this, I feel like it's just so clear. I have such clarity as to where we are in the industry. And I feel like, I feel like we know exactly where we are. And I just can't wait to talk about it. And then we can, at the end, we can recap where because I feel like it's clear as day. I have no, I just have no qualms about where we are as an industry. Where, anyway, but let's talk about it after we recap for everybody because I think we can, I think we can. Give everybody a whole lot of confidence about where we are as an industry? So, yeah, let's go. Let's go. Let's talk about Nielsen, shall we?

Lenny Murphy: We will. And to be clear, this is Nielsen, not an IQ, right?

Karen Lynch: Right, right. Right.

Lenny Murphy: I still get confused once in a while.

Karen Lynch: Yes, this is the official, this is the, or the, mothership.

Lenny Murphy: This is the original.

Karen Lynch: Yes, the original. Yes, the OG.

Lenny Murphy: Yes. Yes. And this actually, this news came out last Friday, but we had already set up everything. You're like, we'll push this into this week. But the buying double verified for 2.15 billion. All cash deals. That's good too.

Karen Lynch: But what was your take? I thought. Oh, there we go.

Lenny Murphy: I see what you're doing there, Nielsen.

Karen Lynch: What did you think? Core infrastructure. If you know, it's like, you know, a company is owning the verification letter, layer, letter, layer. And, you know, we're getting to this, like, it's, it's. We're just getting it's all this is again part of what I was saying. Like, we are at this point where we're talking, we're always talking about infrastructure these days, we're always talking about trust and transparency. Um, and I just feel like these are just common themes week after week after week. So, this has um audience measurement combined with ad verification.

Lenny Murphy: So, yep, that that was the trust. Trust provenance transparency um owning owning that that supply chain yeah really um the i've seen some comments like you know this is the fox watching the henhouse kind of thing but it's important that they did say that double verify was going to remain independent yeah um so we'll see how that works but still the connectivity yeah uh to understand the media landscape, you from advertising and media into the measurement and verification made perfect sense.

Karen Lynch: So, and I feel like we just, there's a line in here in this, you when Karley shares the links, Nielsen has spent the better part of the last five years fighting to maintain its position as the industry's main. Currency, fending off challenges. Weren't we just talking about this? We're just talking about their relevancy. And I'm like, all right, well, you know, they are fighting. They're fighting for their relevancy. And we have talked about, you know, about what they have. And so they're working it. And here's a play to work it.

Lenny Murphy: So, okay. Yep. Yep. It, you know, got to call out. You Nielsen and NIQ, which used to be just, just Nielsen. I both, there's a reason why they are both the leaders in their categories now, since they're two different categories. They're making very smart moves. We talked more about NIQ a few weeks ago. Now we're talking more about Nielsen.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Well, it also says the last line in here, and I just scrolled out to the very bottom here: investors are clearly fans of the proposed deal. Um, DVs, so double verifies stock price was up more than 13% in after-hours trading. So, investors like what they see here. Yep, they like the trust, they like the verification level, they like you know, they like this idea of it becoming core infrastructure, and this is not news. I shouldn't say this is not newsworthy. This is newsworthy, but this is not surprising news. This is what everybody seems to like right now because these are keywords. Yep. 100%. 100%.

Lenny Murphy: And the next on the funding and MA, open brand acquiring comparamedia. Comparamedia. Comparamedia. Sorry for Mintel. Folks hadn't heard that. Sub-brand, but consolidating market intelligence. Yeah. So, rather than building it, buying it.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. So I thought that that made sense. And for Mintel too, my take was they're doubling down on what, you staying on what they do around, you know, shopper and retail and have this piece of smaller financial services go where it could thrive as well. And both are about.

Karen Lynch: Building you know uh syndicated data assets that can be repurposed yeah yeah I know I you know I I um this one I'm a little bit it it a little bit less um anyway I like seeing what the money is you know and here I'm like all right well you know so they acquired it for like how much like if mintel's getting rid of it like like, tell me, what, tell me, tell me how much was it worth to them, and how much did Mintel get for it? I kind of wanted a little information, but I'm not going to get that, so I can't always get what I want.

Lenny Murphy: Apparently, no, they don't always divulge. That's fine, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which usually my take on that is that's a it's a creative financing kind of deal, yeah, um, is uh is my guess, um, yeah, but

Karen Lynch: Because sometimes when you don't divulge that either creates scarcity or it creates uh or excitement or it yeah you know can lower the market so don't say which one this is but yeah yeah all right so yeah curious curious so but yeah but let's see what let's see to me this makes me wonder what mintel's playing at like okay what do you got what you know what are they making room for what are they what are they, specializing or what are they focusing on? Like, what do we learn about Mintel in the next couple of weeks?

Lenny Murphy: I think that's a yes, I would agree.

Karen Lynch: So let's pay attention. We'll be watching. So, Mintel, we're watching you. We are. We are. We're paying attention now.

Lenny Murphy: They've been doing some cool stuff too, right? They bought a while ago, but they bought Black Swan and they're looking more into prediction and trend tracking.

Karen Lynch: And, you know, yeah. Yeah, they're good stuff.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, uh, speaking of retail, um, yeah, well, at least I guess this was e-commerce, but Malachite raised 10 million.

Karen Lynch: I like 10 million, I like numbers.

Lenny Murphy: That's right, behavior intelligence. This was interesting because it was uh Spotify personalization engineers, yeah. So people have been on that side, yeah. And oh, wait. We should build something to track shopper behavior from a personalization standpoint.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: So that was interesting. And it's all about understanding behavior, not just attitudes, but behaviors.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely, absolutely interesting. Um, and uh, you know, one of those things where it wasn't an immediate click but I'm like, okay, let's see what you do there. I'm, you know, I'm curious, call me intrigued.

Lenny Murphy: So, um, shopping behavior is important, especially e-commerce is just, just speak NIQ, right? It's more, you know, what happens in store. Yeah, another piece of that. So, yeah, we'll speak.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, well, well, no, before we get there, there's a McKinsey quote projects that by 2030, agents could orchestrate up to $1 trillion of U.S. Retail dollars, $1 trillion of U.S. Retail. And counterintuitively, that makes understanding real shopper behavior even more valuable. Yeah. So, if agents are orchestrating up to 1 trillion of one trillion dollars of the U.S. Retail, then we have to understand real shopper behavior even more because we got to capture that. It's interesting, it's an interesting thing to get your head around.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, yep, yep, and especially tie the personalization, right? Yeah, the uh of the flywheel of the connectivity, yeah.

Karen Lynch: So, hats on understanding what are the agents shopping for, and what are they not shopping for? That's right. What's what, what are you not entrusting to an agent? What is absolutely left that you wouldn't let an agent buy for you? Wouldn't you love to just explore that?

Lenny Murphy: That's a really good point. If we follow the kind of thinking that we've talked about before, even from a research standpoint, what's going to be automation or synthetic, whatever is real tactical, not particularly consequential decisions. The strategic decisions, that's where the value really accrues, especially for the insights organizations. I expect it's very similar. So, yeah, the agent ordered toilet paper, but the agent didn't buy my car.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. You know, yeah. You know, I'm like, can an agent buy my car? Maybe. I'm just not very attached to my car. I know it's a big ticket. But I'm the kind of person that's like, Tim, just go buy the car. You know, like, I could probably trust him with the car. What wouldn't I have an agent buy for me? I'd have to really think through that. Like, what would I, what is, would I be adamant? Clothes? I'd probably be adamant about clothes, maybe just to fit me right. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Vacation destination. Vacation destination, I probably would weigh in on. Yeah? I've even clothes show up at my house that I haven't really picked out because at one point, I'm, you I'm an early adopter, one point, I had I experimented with like those like things that those subscription boxes that like showed up at my house, and I'd oh, what's in the box? And it was full of surprises. So, yeah, you know, I'm pretty easy there. Anyway, anyway, we digress.

Lenny Murphy: Let's move on. All right. Another story that popped up last Friday, but we'd already there was Wayne Leving. Who is coming in as the incoming CEO of YouGov. Yeah. Very interesting. The, full, full disclosure, I'm doing some work with YouGov, so have some insight into this. But overall, my take was one, Wayne is the CEO of the Americas Kantar.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: So, you know, a nice guy. But a strong operator background.

Karen Lynch: He understands space.

Lenny Murphy: He's done tremendous work in managing big scale businesses. Stefan, the founder and current interim CEO, stepped back into that role. He's a founder and creator. So he likes building stuff. So the synthesis of those two uh while the company is going through like all companies kind of you know re recreating itself to some extent um take advantage of new opportunities um the uh that's interesting um uh the market liked it so they're a public company so uh it'll be interesting to see how that where that transformation goes Yeah.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. And it's a six-month runway for that transition, too, right? So he assumes the role in February. So here we are. It's August now, it's being announced, and he's got till February. So I think that's also really interesting, like six months to transition.

Lenny Murphy: So, yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, my he'll start beginning a little more active engagement around November. Yeah. You know, then the handover there. So. Yeah. I should also point out that for a public company, when you have an interim CEO, there's always some investors who are always a little, wait a minute, what's going on? Yeah. There's nothing to be said for.

Karen Lynch: Here's the plan. Yeah. Well, yeah. And I think, you know, we talked about this, I think, when we shared what Crispin was joining IDX. Whenever, whenever there's a CEO change. That means that is a big signal. That means something, that means direction, something's changing directionally, also. Like, that's just not a, that's not a, that's not a light decision. That means that, that a new, that a new strategic thinker is at the helm. Um, and you know, yeah, all right. So maybe there's, maybe there's a transition period where they're watching and learning and and um that there's a grace period there, but we know that we'll be expecting things to change because that's just what's going to happen because a new leader brings that fresh thinking. So, be a little watch next year.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, cool. Yep.

Karen Lynch: Yep.

Lenny Murphy: You want to talk about that? NIQ?

Karen Lynch: Since we talk about Nielsen, now we're talking about NIQ. About NIQ all the time. I feel like, like by now we should have our NIQ cups, right? The NIQ sign.

Lenny Murphy: Well, this, I thought, normally we don't talk about this type but it's because of how much we've talked about NIQ rollout. So NIQ, their strong second quarter 2026 results.

Karen Lynch: Oh my gosh, what are the odds that both of our stuff rings in one episode?

Lenny Murphy: Uh, yeah, I guess we're both because we're kind of off, not used are off schedule.

Karen Lynch: People know not to bother us on Fridays, but they don't know not to bother us on Thursday evenings.

Lenny Murphy: Interesting, something like that, something like that.

Karen Lynch: Um, but yeah, I think the results are showing that um large consumer intelligence platforms are growing, which uh will feed into our next story too. But um, I think this one shows. Correct me if I'm wrong, revenue is up, margins are expanding. You know, yeah, like all good signals that companies are leaning into AI-enabled analytics. Like, you know, things are looking pretty good according to this data. You know, I'm like a pretty positive sign here in this report about what I view as. Health for consumer intelligence platforms. Doesn't surprise me because we've talked a lot about how there's a shift towards intelligence platforms.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. And they've been very much on trend and building what that looks like, Right. And we've used that as an example often. So this was validation that wasn't just, you know, it wasn't hype. The market has responded. Clients, right? Not just the investors, but clients have apparently responded pretty damn well to their new positioning as a decision intelligence platform. Um, and yeah, and their synthesis, why they put things together, the MCP integrations, yada, yada, yada. And listen to the past two months, right? They were just rolling this stuff out like that. Yeah. Have made a difference, yeah, yeah, which is great for them. So, and you and they're not the only ones that are doing well, apparently, yeah, yeah, apparently, according to the insights association, um, right, that's who that's who this report is: the 2026 state of U.S. Insights and analytics. Yeah, I think this is from Insights Association, it shows that things are doing. Things are going pretty well. That we've reached 89.3 billion. I guess this is going back to 2025, growing at 7.8% in the US. So, the market is not shrinking or did not shrink. I guess this is still retrospective on some level because it is not. It is not a 100% real-time measure right but if you think back to 2025 that was when we were in you know peak disruption and we're still doing okay um I think it's interesting yeah but we got it so yes go ahead the there's a market definition issue yeah yeah so right and they divide up multiple segments and the traditional research segment.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, that's not where this growth is coming from

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: So we need to own that, right?

Karen Lynch: Very fair. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: I mean, they include companies like Salesforce and Adobe and in the calculation, and at least specific elements of those businesses.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: And fine, I won't. Well, we could debate it, but I'm not going to. So, yep, yep, yep.

Karen Lynch: So, I read it because that's in the digital data analytics part of it, to be clear, right? And when we talk about the industry, refer to insights and analytics, and that's what we say. So, if you are living in the insights side of it, don't. Don't be misled by what we're saying.

Lenny Murphy: I think the demand for data to drive intelligence continues to grow. Yeah. Where that it comes from and who's selling it continues to be somewhat in flux. So, um, but growing. So, that's good. Um, so yeah, it's uh that's good stuff. We should mention that it's inside association with SMR, outsell, and Michigan State. So, Michael Brereton.

Karen Lynch: Um, this is the old, the old Han Michael report, yeah.

Lenny Murphy: So that then became the gold report, and then yeah, yeah, so uh, but useful, all right. We got some more interesting stuff here. New product launches. Did you get a chance to dive into this one?

Karen Lynch: I opened this one and I was like, whoa, that's a lot of people on this research report. I was like, this is an in-depth report on AI and I did not read it. So, we have a large report, friends, with authors, so a lot of people are involved in it. So, you summarize. The summary: I read the synthesis of it, but I didn't dig into the report. So, summarize it for everyone and we'll talk about it.

Lenny Murphy: But, yeah. So, Harvard MIT built digital personas of 8.3 billion people.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: So, basically, trying to get to Earth-scale population. But, but when you, so that's impressive. I'm saying nothing. Yeah. Um, from that, that I mean, the amount of compute to build that must have been monumental.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Um, but garbage in, garbage out.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: So the data that went into building that. When tested against and tried to calibrate and validity against real world data.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: It was crap.

Karen Lynch: So I think the important takeaway here from what I gathered is the validation gap there is. It's just that's the hard part. That's what those researchers are finding is this is hard to validate. So that's right. Huge study, huge or huge, huge. Um, what do you call it? You know, huge, uh, huge number of records hard to validate.

Lenny Murphy: Yes, and I think that's the same for building synthetic, we've talked about forever, my takeaway was the um garbage in, garbage out, right? Provenance, quality, all those things still count. Um, the uh this was scraped data I think they used uh it was something from you know gemini to to create these personas um uh but it had no real relevance to real world um uh behavior so yeah but does that mean we can't get there no no I mean they they the engineering feat of creating personas for 8.3 billion people was accomplished.

Karen Lynch: So it just wasn't necessarily data to feed it.

Lenny Murphy: So we'll see. It was interesting.

Karen Lynch: On that, that on that note. Yes, this is ours. Yeah. Look, if you want to learn more and dig into this, this is where we're going to plug IIEX AI. The talks that are coming up at IIEX AI are synthetic. Related are going to address some of the questions, concerns. I have the agenda pulled up over here, and you know, like there's a talk after the first day I Read out, iterative synthetic research. So, you know, literally addressing this thing: like, what do you do? You know, what do when you've when you have this kind of a validation gap? Like, what next? Okay, so, like, what do you do after? What do you do after you do this? So, really tangible, tactical solutions coming out of this. Um, and there's more, you know, on here. There's a few sessions about synthetic samples, um, but they're very much geared towards how to make them, how to make them. Them actionable what are appropriate use cases for them not at all speculative but really really tangible and tactical for the the attendees so highly encourage pay attention come obviously, we're exploring it academic in academia. And actually, one of the presenters in that one that I just mentioned is from Boston University. So we have academics who are digging into this topic at that particular event. So IIEX AI, be there, learn from both academics and brandside researchers. I actually can't wait. It's going to be fantastic.

Lenny Murphy: So we'll be this our virtual event. Yep, free to attend. Like free virtual events. So we have compiled amazing content on this topic on the emerging and evolving role of AI. So this is this is a place to be, guys.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely. Now, our friends are listening.

Karen Lynch: Our friends listened.

Lenny Murphy: Our friends at Listen Lab.

Karen Lynch: The uh which was about last week because of the rumor still not confirmed rumor oh yeah still not confirmed rumor but but in the meantime because you we hadn't had something to talk about about them in in seven days yeah because they're competing with NIQ yeah yeah um yeah so they also launched a new product uh yeah called Pulse, a conversational brand tracker.

Lenny Murphy: Now, this is so interesting because it is their product, their brand tracker. A thousand customers, brand sentiment answers from thousand customers. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. And we have talked about this as a coming, I'm pretty sure, like a coming soon, like this whole idea of like always on kind of like the idea of always on brand tracking, the ability to tap into always on qualitative input, but now they've just also, you know, productized it and now it's called pulse and you can literally track your brand. So, you know, I think, I think it's, it's, I think it's pretty cool. It's a direct challenge to traditional trackers.

Lenny Murphy: Because they're not just they're not just tracking what changed but why it changed um which makes perfect sense as a line extension so yep yep agreed I think we'll what's next are I taking their methodology their core technology and applying that to other kind of standardized business issues and creating modules um the uh no no inside information but are going to do an ad text ad test next yeah So, great way to scale, and also their approach, which we always call out because they did this right, is selling outside the insights organization as well and via MCP. So, you know, having this available as a standardized module, modularized brand tracker for the brand team, yeah, you know. Yeah, it makes sense.

Karen Lynch: And speaking of listening, oh, German.

Lenny Murphy: Yep, German.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Where are you going to learn about them? Where are you learning about them, Lenny? Powell? No. Right in San Francisco on the pier. They are a title sponsor for IIEX West. They, you know, as the title sponsor, are literally our second session of the entire event. They also have a demo. So, I mean, I imagine they'll not only be just demoing their platform, they might be demoing Pulse. I'm not sure which, you know, what they'll be demoing for their demo spot, but I imagine for their title-sponsored spot, they'll be bringing one of the brands that they work with. They are, yeah, so you'll learn all about everything that they're doing there since they're in the San Francisco area. I imagine. Many people on their team will be there. You know, I'm actually really looking forward to seeing everybody. We had talked about this with them at SMR last year, like a year ago. We talked to them about this in September. And when we said, by the way, you know, we haven't even launched it yet, but we're coming to San Francisco. And they like, oh, okay, we will be there and probably be your title sponsor. So, like, this, this, this arrangement with them, we cooked up over in Prague. So, um, I'm just really excited to see them again. And anyway, so yeah, so you have to come to this event. I will tell you, this is going to be a source of pride for me, but there are. Lots of speaking spots on this agenda. It's not as big of an event as North America, but right now we are holding steady at the organic speaking spots, not the sponsored speaking spots, but we are at 85% of them are brands. So an incredible amount of brands on stage. Like they are showing up, Lenny, like, I've not seen before. They are, the brands are coming out. It's brilliant. It's brilliant. They are, they're excited that we're coming to that area and they're excited for the just to just to be a part of the buzz, which just feels like, kind of just peak innovation vibe, you like bringing the competition there and being. On the West Coast, just all feels, you having roundtable discussions and having a startup alley over on the exhibit floor, just all of it feels like it's buzzing already brands want to be there. So I'm jazzed. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: We haven't done this in a long time. We have not launched a new event that is built to challenge all the things that make IEX special.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: But put together in a whole new way, yeah. Um, and a whole new experience. This is not just a, all of our events have a different vibe, yeah. So, but this has a different structure, too, yeah, yeah.

Karen Lynch: So, yeah, it's really cool, and you know, I'm very excited. I feel really grateful. Um, the roundtables are all being facilitated by people personally invited. They're not sponsored roundtables. I called in a lot of friends, friends, colleagues. I don't know them all personally. I shouldn't say that, but professional moderators are stepping up. And hey, can you moderate a conversation? Because I don't want them to be opportunities to sell. I really want them to be the dialogues that people we had had conversations with. You two years ago and said, hey, what do we want in a West Coast event? And to talk. We want to have that exchange. To literally have The Exchange that you had kind of envisioned together at IIEX, the Insights Innovation Exchange. We want that exchange and let's go there. So we really wanted those roundtables to be that kind of conversation. And I was like, it's very much. What we want to set up there. So moderated conversations for those roundtables where everybody is an equal participant. We're just getting back to kind of the soul of IIEX  and it's cool.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, I love that. Love that. Very cool. All right. The one new product launch. I've been waiting to see this. I don't know if you've been. So Humanate digital twins off their communities.

Karen Lynch: I've been waiting for that specific thing.

Lenny Murphy: Nobody had announced it that way. Yeah. Yeah, because it's a no-brainer. The community is the perfect venue or channel, I guess, to build digital twins of that population, the ongoing engagement, the depth of insights that are there. And nobody had done it yet. So how's it off to you for doing that?

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Yeah. Guess where you can learn a little bit more about that? Harley. IIEX AI.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah.

Karen Lynch: I didn't even come, did you? So, yeah, no, they are. Um, they actually were, they had submitted to our call for speakers. Uh, they're coming with one brand partner, um, Alliance Pharmaceuticals. So, um, when I saw this in their call for speakers, I was like, you know, oh, okay, I like what you're talking about, and um, that was before. You know, they knew it was coming, right? So anyway, so I was like, consider me intrigued. And yeah, so I'm really glad that it's launched and it's perfect timing. And yeah, we're going to be able to learn more about this at AI as well.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. All right. Let's get through these AI agents and infrastructure. There's so much in this category, just the big. Tech stuff that we left on the cutting room floor. So much. So, so much. We could have had three shows just talking about this. But the MCPs, MCPs.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, MCPs, MCPs. This one I didn't really get to dig too much into. Enterprise AI agents drawing on research records for research discovery, life science search, funding intelligence. Digital science. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. Two different MCPs basically give access to their data. And that's. Again, if you own a data asset and you monetize that, MCP is a great way to do that. It's a different, different model. But so two. I thought that was interesting. The upwork with an MCP. Now, this was really like, hmm, I wouldn't have thought about that particular application. Yeah. So, yeah. So you need to get somebody to do a gig. You could do it right from Notion or Microsoft Office or Claude, ChatGPT, whatever.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Well, and it. Do you remember Gig, was it Gig Worker? What was the oh gosh, you a step removed from Carrier, where are you? Gig worker? I think what it was, was this idea that you could, in the qualitative space, like it, like there was to be like, someone to go to Walmart and do some shopping for me. And like, it's like 10 bucks. Let's do a mystery shop kind of thing. And like, it didn't really take off. But imagine if you're like, you're sitting there in Notion and you have your agent just go out and get someone to go do your mystery shop. Like, that's what this made me think about. I'm like, oh my gosh, like mystery shopping via Upwork, and you're just sitting in Notion and I need a few people to a gig for me. Right. Or when we tried Slavio, right?

Lenny Murphy: The points have an on-demand expert for the pieces of the workflow that you need somebody whereas a moderator or a translator, whatever, on demand. I think that's exactly the same. Yes, I need somebody to go perform a function. Now, here's the thing, though. There are gig networks starting to develop for agents.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Where the agent literally needs a real world task done and hires somebody to go perform that real world task.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: And I suspect that we'll see that starting to scale.

Karen Lynch: Well, and what about, you I'm sorry, this is now probably shouldn't talk about this out loud. Never mind. I'm just keeping my thoughts to myself here because this is, this is, Oh, all right. Okay. Okay. Cause I'm not, I'm an advisor for this business. So, um, but if I were, um, you know, you think about BuzzBack Studio and you think about like the moderators that are in that network. And, you, I'm just sitting here and I'm working on my notion. And I'm like, hey, I need a moderator and upwork. I mean, my notion goes into BuzzBack Studio and hires the moderator for me. And that moderator goes out there and does that. I'm just sitting here on my desk, you know, and I'm not even going into BuzzBack Studio to hire the moderator. But my agent here at my desk has done that work for me. That's the connectivity of agentic workflows like this, like this one. You know, you don't have to go to it, it doesn't have to be foreign to our industry, is my point of using Govex Studio as an example. This is not, about upwork. It doesn't have upwork. It doesn't have to be outside of our industry. It can be within our industry.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. The reason we built Savio originally was uh um discuss you know, just discuss needed digital qual platforms, they didn't want to have a bunch of moderators, you know. Uh, and uh, Unilever was a big client for them, and Unilever had a certificate. Remember, they had a certification program. If you're going to be able to do anything for Unilever, you have to do it their way, yeah. And they were building a network and they asked us to help. Can you build? And that's what took the whole. Well, yeah, shoot, we'll switch this whole gig platform just for the research industry.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: A lot of reasons why that didn't fly. Although I don't know about you, but God, so often nowadays, I just see new things happening. It's like, I thought about that 10 freaking years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Karen Lynch: Uh, well, the business, the business that I'm now, that I'm now creating in my head, by the way, you're welcome to whoever's listening saying I'll build that for you, Karen. Um, is the agent that likes what, or is the business right now that's okay, like I'm going to connect to Buzzback Studio for the moderator. I'm gonna connect to D Scout. You know, I'm gonna connect to, I'm gonna connect to Recollective, like connect to all of the platforms that a qualitative researcher, and heck, I'll connect to listen for when we want to do like early, early qualitative testing before the qualitative work that we're doing in Recollective. Like just build that agent to like, so that, you know, that the end user can just be like, go do all of these qualitative platforms that are in our comfort level already. Right. And all I have to do is like, yes, send them out and go do these things and then come back.

Lenny Murphy: Did you see? So we didn't include it here, but I'll mention that Grok launched Grokbot, a different version of Agent because it was logging, it logs into whatever software you use and runs the software. And then comes when it needs a decision to say, should I do this or not? But so that was different. So it's not even the agentic integration. It's literally you give it your credentials and it does what you, you know, what you would normally do.

Karen Lynch: So to your point, right, this new product that I just, that I want to see happen. Somebody builds it. I'll get on your advisory team and we'll make it happen.

Lenny Murphy: Or just get Tim to look at Copilot this week on vacation while you're on vacation.

Karen Lynch: I can tell you that is not going to happen. But we'll talk to Lovable. He and I will sit down with Lovable, which we have been known to do.

Lenny Murphy: All right. Let's build it. All right. All right. On that, you know, the Gartner AI optimized infrastructure spending will double in 2026. Duh. Yeah, yeah, although it was there's the inference spending is overtaking training spending, yeah, yeah. So, um, the 55 cents of every AI cloud dollar now goes to running models in production, not building them. Yeah, yeah, so uh, yeah, so we're we're in it now, yeah, we're in it, all right. We are uh.

Karen Lynch: This is turning into a long show, but we have some good reading.

Lenny Murphy: It is. Yeah. You want to run through some of these?

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I feel like I might do the order a little differently than you have them because I think we should start with the meta story because it's a similar story because we're talking about agents here. So meta, meta, hey, meta. Meta has been introduced. Glimmer, which is an agentic model. You know, open. Open. Open, yes, from Meta Superintelligence Labs. So, you know, we're always a little scared of that, but you know, all right, it is what it is. So it's, what's it doing? It's like always on local agent workflows. It's running on a Mac or a PC, doing some.

Lenny Murphy: Doing some things local coding in different different use cases across the the org um I don't know uh anyway it's it's uh you know well I think the cool thing about that well there's lots of cool things about it but what stood out is that this idea of these frontier models they're all at parity, basically. Yeah. But these new ones now can run on the edge of local compute power. And that's the new shift, right? That it's the compression, but the but all the power of the model on your own machine. So not necessarily up. In the cloud and the giga clusters and all that good stuff. So, uh, yeah, same fears. Nobody should claim victory yet. Meta, meta seem to kind of wait. Uh, and now they're coming out with some cool shit.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. So, yeah. Yep. Yeah. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. So, yep. So these two are interesting because now, this is kind of back to. Back to back to buying. So that's why I figured let's talk about the agentic stuff and then we just switch to you know buying, which leaves us in a slightly lighter place. So I went shopping. I like this piece about Reddit, Reddit, and shopper research. So, you know, we talk a lot about AI recommendations and, you know, what, you know, and agents are shopping for you or not this is you know people verifying um ai recommendations turning to reddit to to see you know if if they're gonna if they're gonna buy what ai might be recommending that they buy um anyway people are still looking for human it's like trust but verify right so they're they're looking for human input on reddit before they trust what AI is suggesting that they buy, which I think is very interesting. And I believe that behavior to be true. I can see, I can relate. I don't know that I necessarily go to Reddit. I have gone to Reddit. But I think we've talked about the Amazon reviews, which are like, you can look at the, on Amazon, for example, you can look at the AI summary, but I still go in and read the reviews, right? I'm like, all right, I see that AI summary, but I'm still going in and reading the reviews, right?

Lenny Murphy: So, um, real world experience, Hey, AI says this product is great. What do you think? You know, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Karen Lynch: So, anyway, so yeah, so pretty cool story. Good to see that, you know, like we're still there. Like, AI is changing how we shop, sure, but people are. People are still going in and validating. So I think one of the reasons why this is important for us to talk about, it's not just that it's interesting, but the shopper journey is different than it was a year ago. And if you are somebody who has, is charged with shopper journey work, you should update your work because guaranteed your shopper journey has changed from where it was a year ago.

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely. The whole Pat's purchase.

Karen Lynch: Yes, absolutely. It's just different.

Lenny Murphy: I thought this last one was just kind of fun. I agree. Friendly rivalry can be a campaign's magic spell. New research. Yeah. Everybody likes rivalry.

Karen Lynch: I know. And you know, one of my favorite articles on our site is still a Coke versus Pepsi article. Like, boy, do people love rivalries. I just know, I think it's, I think it's interesting.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, yeah, so this was just, and I think the point is it's around authenticity, so the uh the spontaneity, those things, then it's engaging to see people kind of poke at each other a little bit. Um, it can get icky if it gets too far but friendly, yeah where's the beef remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those are great commercials. Why were they iconic? Because they were just a friendly rivalry. You know, yeah, parts are parts.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. All those. Yeah. As long as it feels human, it feels, I think they say, like, not AI, like, like, let's not, let's not over AI this sort of thing. Let's make it seem friendly and human. Um, but the last line here is like, remember, like, the things that actually work: stories, character, conflict, humor, like, it still holds true, you know. So, um, yeah, no, I liked this as well. Um, we have, you the Mets, which are, you know, I have that, I have that relationship with. They have a five boroughs race, and um, there are costumes of the five boroughs and the Bronx, where the Yankees live, the costume for the Bronx, they never win. And sometimes they look like they're going to win, and then somebody trips them or they fall or whatever. And it's hilarious every single time because they just won't ever, the Mets, they will never win. All of the other boroughs will win, but the Bronx will never win. And it just never loses. It is just, I mean, it is nevertheless humorous. It is a never-ending rivalry, that is, it always delivers. And I'm sorry, no matter what, it's always fun. So it is a rivalry that delivers every time. So that is my favorite one.

Lenny Murphy: And it's a, and obviously, it's made an impression on you.

Karen Lynch: Oh my gosh.

Lenny Murphy: It's been effective marketing.

Karen Lynch: So funny. It just, yeah, it cracks so it's literally all of the things. It's a story, it's characters, it's conflict, it's humor. It's a great example.

Lenny Murphy: All right. Shall we let you get back? Oh my gosh. So it's all right.

Karen Lynch: So 48 minutes. What are we thinking here? We're like, it won't take us that long. It's a pre-record.

Lenny Murphy: It's a Thursday afternoon. I think here's the trade-off, guys. When we do this, it does, for me at least, like a little more lack of days, a little more relaxed. Yeah. Because at the end of the day, I'm not trying. Well, I actually do have another meeting here in just a minute.

Karen Lynch: But anyway. Yeah. That's crazy.

Lenny Murphy: Have everybody have a great, wonderful day. Weekend and week. We'll see you next Friday surprise guest host while Karen is on the beach.

Karen Lynch: On the beach. See y'all in two weeks.

Lenny Murphy: All right. Enjoy. Bye. Everybody.

Karen Lynch: Bye.

Links from the episode:

Nielsen Acquires DoubleVerify for $2.15 Billion 

OpenBrand Acquires Comperemedia From Mintel 

Malachyte Raises $10 Million for eCommerce Behavior Intelligence 

YouGov Names Kantar Executive Wayne Levings as Next CEO 

NIQ Announces Strong Second Quarter 2026 Results 

US Insights Industry Reaches $89.3 Billion 

Harvard and MIT Researchers Build MatrAIx, an 8.3 Billion-Record Persona Simulation 

Listen Labs Launches Pulse, a Conversational Brand Tracker 

Human8 Builds Digital Twins 

Digital Science Ships Two New MCP Servers 

Upwork Launches Its Own MCP Server 

Gartner: AI-Optimized Infrastructure Spending Set to Nearly Double in 2026 

Meta Releases Muse Glimmer, a 30B Open Model Built for Agents 

Half of US Shoppers Verify AI Recommendations on Reddit 

In the AI Era, a Bit of Friendly Rivalry Can Be a Campaign's Magic Spell