OMR25: State of the German Internet

0:03 Now for the next 45 minutes no English, everything in German. Yes, sorry, we're going to speak German for the next 45 minutes, right? So, as always, we looked with the whole team at what has happened in the last 12 months since the last festival was here, and this is what happened. Well, we traditionally always look at these Gfairmen, they're not even called that anymore at Gafa, right? Besides, the relevant companies are no longer there. These days, professionals are more likely to look at the Magnificent 7. That's the professional look, so to speak, with Nvidia still involved, Microsoft involved, and Tesla involved. This is the way in which one tries to quickly understand how things work through the stock market listing . If you look at it, you see

0:50 respect. The markets, or rather the value of these seven companies, has increased over the last 12 months, despite tariffs and all the madness that you can overlook. The value of these seven companies has increased at least in the last 12 months and if you look at the absolute numbers, then they are still gigantic sums in percentage terms, not that much, but in absolute terms really impressive. What was it like in other parts of the world? For example, in China, we always look there. These listed Chinese companies, at least you, Alibaba 10 cents, how did they do? They also

1:36 made a significant percentage increase. The level is of course much, much smaller. Why? Well, this whole AI topic Deepsek, all of this has led to the Chinese government turning significantly more to technology and digitalization and has perhaps regained some of the trust of shareholders, at least Chinese companies that are listed on the stock exchange have performed quite well. Last year we talked about non-listed Chinese companies like Temu or Shi, who I think had a rather difficult year, as they actually wanted to go public. I don't think that will happen . I think I heard from Pip that he doesn't really believe in it anymore either . So not a good year for all these junk swarms from China. But what is perhaps worth mentioning again in China,

2:24 and what I would like to briefly explain here, is what is actually happening there and what is not happening on the stock exchanges, but what is becoming increasingly bigger and this ecosystem of the future, electricity, China is simply incredibly far ahead in this area. You can see this here when you look at the big electric car manufacturers, EV companies, six of the biggest now belong to China or somehow came from China . If you look at the big one now between Tesla and BYD, you can see that in the last few months BYD has overtaken Tesla in terms of sales for the first time , so the largest electric car manufacturer in the world in terms of sales, at least, comes from China and there are many others too. So

3:10 they already have or will have that part of this electric ecosystem. And then you see other areas of e-technology, let's say , wind turbines, huge market shares in China, batteries, huge market shares in China, solar modules, huge market shares in China. So really, whatever the future is right now or what the future is very likely to be, they are very, very good at it and are making very, very good progress and that is not reflected at all in the stock markets . How was it in Germany? Well, our publicly traded digital companies are quite small in terms of total value. We didn't have such a bad year, but the absolute numbers are of course not particularly large. Yes, the 50

3:56 billion, that's Zalando and Ventim already has 20 and then another 30 billion for a few other smaller companies. That's not a lot, but it 's honestly the view we've been taking for years, and it's probably not entirely correct because we're underestimating ourselves . We have a company in Germany that can really keep up with the big players and that shows that it is possible and has had an incredible run in the last 12 months and even since then. Look here. Among the largest software companies in the world, there is one non-American company besides Americans, and that one comes from Waldorf. Our colleagues from SAP are here too. What they're doing here, even in terms of value creation on the market for the company, is really, really crazy. It's a really great story and

4:43 of course we're happy that they're here, but let's all keep ourselves a little bit in the game and show how it's done . And then you say, okay, we're not just going to do the end-customer-oriented gigs, but we're also going to include a B2B company like SAP. Suddenly there's almost a Magnificent Germany, where you can see that we're almost on par with China, thanks to the entire SAP performance in recent years, right? This is Noah from Without Stocks It's Hard, he pointed it out to me again, you have to tell me that. Um, that's a really crazy story. Oh well. What else is there to say about developments in the business sector in Germany over the last 12 months? I

5:28 always try to spread optimism here at OMR. We're all trying to do that. We're somehow positive, and there's reason to be. If you look at it, Germany is n't traditionally a country where the stock market would be super relevant, right? As I mentioned in Or, the strongest companies in Germany are medium-sized companies that are not often listed on the stock exchange and they are making amazing progress and I think that is not often reported . If you look at the headlines that German companies have produced in the USA in recent months, I find it quite interesting when you look at it all in total. All of a sudden a German company is building all the data centers for meters, or Aldi is really cleaning up in the USA, so the fastest growing retailer in the food retail industry is Aldi, or Bosch is buying a

6:14 heat pump company for roughly the same price as Snapchat is worth right now. So Boss just bought a kind of heat pump Snapchat for 8 billion. So just to show the conditions. It's not talked about at all, but I think it's interesting. Um, and then you see who else is there, right? So Haribo is doing this here, our colleagues from Viemann in Hamburg are doing this, and our Sixkol colleagues Konst and Alexa from Munich are doing this. It's crazy what they're doing in the USA. So I have to say, it is totally possible. Something is happening there. It is often not seen that way. And what is also not seen in this way, and I wanted to share it here again, is what is happening in the digital area from Europe

7:00 , not just from Germany , but at least from Europe . Digital companies. There are a number of digital global market leaders from Europe that might be worth taking a quick look at. We have the most successful neobank in the world from England. We have Spotify, of course, but we also have probably the most relevant payment service provider in the world, Eden from Holland. Ingo, the CEO of Eden, is speaking this afternoon on the Redstage. Also a worthwhile lecture, right? Just a CEO from here at Red Stage this afternoon, they're keeping Europe in the race somewhere too. Um, then there are the guys who build the machines for all the chips, for all the

7:46 AI ​​madness from Holland and there are a whole bunch of other digital world market leaders from Europe. Unfortunately there aren't that many, but there are a few and it just goes to show that it's possible. And what also shows that it is possible is the Unicorn Machine. We came up with the Unicorn Machine based on a statistic we found . The source is Deal Room, so they have serious numbers and they show the following. In the US, if you put a brown horse into the unicorn machine and then put money into it, you'll often end up with a unicorn . And in Europe it's the same amount of money and the same

8:33 probability of a unicorn coming out of the end. So that is also possible. The numbers are exactly like that. The problem is that in the USA, many more brown horses are being introduced into the Unicom machine . Yes, it just happens much more often. Much more is being attempted and much more is being done. And that is actually what is holding Europe back even more, perhaps from my point of view, at least from our point of view, as if there were no money , we wouldn't know how to do it or that it couldn't be done here or something like that. None of this is true. It's simple, there is too little effort made to observe. And like every year, our winners and losers. It was a bit of the macro part, the stock market part, and now come

9:19 some more anecdotal examples of companies or people or things that have won and that have lost in the last few months. Start with the losers. Who lost? From our point of view, celebrity testimonials. What does this mean? Well, the really big super celebrities who promote something. This is what really caught my attention. Look, you know the colleague, right? Snoop. So, that was so crazy, I saw it a lot back then, Snoop Dog's reference to a

10:08 fireplace company Solo St and he basically told the story that he was going to stop smoking weed, which of course isn't true, but smoke and fireplaces, he wanted to push these Solost fireplaces , but it didn't work at all. After the entry, the value of the company completely collapsed. Madness actually. Now you come and do something for yourself and then it all goes completely to hell. And then we looked, okay, what are other big names doing? He here, I think, even took part in a porcelain manufacturer called Wiste Allegre. Also listed on the stock exchange, small market cap, but listed on the stock exchange. And what happened? You're probably thinking, okay, Ronaldo is pushing a company like this, a small market, you should see a huge spike straight away , but the truth is, nothing's

10:54 wrong. Um, that didn't help either. Can you say, okay, is this the right brand fit for footballers and porcelain? I was like, okay, but it just doesn't seem to be helping right now. And look at Messi here too, he advertised for MGO Global. These are a license holding for various textiles and backpacks and are also listed on stock exchanges . Thankfully, we can now take a look back to see how it went. Then he did it to you and then dropped to 85% . It's crazy. So the people with the greatest reach in the world come along and promote something and then the companies almost go bankrupt. So it's not such a good time for celebrity testimonials. So, another loser.

11:41 Truly amazing. Jobs in Search. There are many people here who probably grew up with search . I feel the same way. When I first started working for myself, I did some searches with Tobias, sort of optimizing things a bit. Pip comes along, half the generation comes along, lots of SEO SEO people, including our guests, but apparently fewer search engine people are needed at the moment, or at least they don't appear on LinkedIn . We looked from 2022 to 24 to see which job titles have really lost ground. There are actually 90% fewer search engine optimizers on LinkedIn, at least I assume that the situation is the same in the real world than before. There are significantly fewer search specialists than before. So

12:27 these job titles are extremely small, I found it interesting. I wanted to share this here. It remains to be seen whether this will continue in the future. Roland will soon tell us a little bit about where the AI ​​world and marketing are headed from our perspective, and then things could change again, but at least that's how it is at the moment . Another loser, alcohol. Something really big. Alcohol is really not a good trend. In the past, it was so cross-generational; we all drank. I remember for myself, when I was 18, football club, trip to Mallorca, full throttle. Um, and it has changed. People drink significantly less. Young people also drink significantly less. And if you look at that, of course as a bit of proof, what does the stock market say? All the spirits companies are

13:12 also going through incredibly difficult times at the moment. In this respect, I am grateful for everyone who is here, who comes from this area . It's not your fault. The trend is not straightforward, but that's how it is. Who are the winners? A little easier to tell. Who has had a really good run in the last few months? The biggest winner for me is stable coins. Honestly, I suspect you feel a bit like me, or perhaps you're asking yourself this question. You've heard the word before , but you don't really know what it means , right? Stable coins, yeah, something with crypto and all that, but well, let me tell you quickly. Stable coins, what do they do? They ensure that a digital currency is

13:58 tied one-to-one to the dollar. This means you can trade it and always get something back for your Tether . Tether is the market leader, the largest stable coin in the world. You know, if you have it, you have the advantage of being able to transfer it digitally anywhere very quickly , much cheaper than real money, but one day you can always exchange it for dollars at a fixed rate. That's what stable coins do, and after Bitcoin, they're actually the second truly solid, functioning real-world application in the entire crypto world. There's not much that works. Stable coins work and really solve problems. The best thing about it, at least from the point of view of our colleagues at TE, is that a company that does this is allowed to use the dollars that all of us or all of the

14:43 users give them, and it is also used very heavily by people somewhere in developing countries outside of Europe. That's why it's not so transparent here, perhaps, but it's being used massively and then dollars are being given there and they can invest these dollars and then earn interest on all the money they have there. And they don't have to share this interest with the people who gave them the money. It's not part of the deal. This means that they are allowed to collect the interest for themselves . And now, because it has been so widely adopted, billions of dollars in interest are being collected. Terror achieved a result last year, a profit of 13 billion. Totally crazy, you don't realize. For

15:29 comparison, this is roughly the same result as Nestley, Deutsche Telekom or Mastercard. A company that we, even here in the digital bubble, probably have n't all heard of yet. I felt the same way until a few months ago. Okay, so stable coins, who else won? New food brands, that's the way it is if you go through the world with your eyes open, then you actually already know that if you go to Edeka Rewe or any of the shelves or aisles there are now new brands Coro or ESN or MO or whatever they're called, an incredible amount. So a food brand should be mine, right? Everyone thought that the valuable German companies or the technology companies would win the race and there was some kind of entrepreneurial hype. The truth is, the entrepreneurial hype and value is created

16:16 in the food sector. Look here. So these food brands ESN Quality Group are now definitely worth a billion. Our colleagues at Sunday Naturals Nutrition Supplements are probably worth over a billion by now, and there are numerous other companies that are also making a lot of money. You can see this here on the right side of the chart. So there's a lot going on. Food is the thing, new food brands have been a huge thing in recent years. Who else won? Advertising salesperson. Why did ad salespeople win in our view? Well, first of all, a lot of companies that have never advertised before are now suddenly advertising. Retail media, the entire area of ​​media

17:02 sales is being developed by companies for whom this has not played a role for years or decades and who do not even have this problem, who do not even know whether airlines or hotel groups or banks are involved, how do I sell advertising now? They don't even know the advertisers, they don't know how it works, they do n't even know the system. They just need people who come from the old marketing world and can explain it to them. And this profile is now available all over the world and has gained a lot of popularity. The best example, my favorite example, is Mark Greta. I think he's around here somewhere. He started out down to earth in Montabauer near Uim and learned the trade there, so he sold it. There are probably some here who learned it the same way as Mark. And then it all started when we

17:49 started introducing ads on Amazon, explaining how it works and always on a global level, right? Then at Uber and today he is at PayPal. So the man travels around the world, is probably paid very well and explains to companies how advertising sales work. And he is not the only one. There are quite a few people, one of whom is sitting up front in the bar, had his birthday yesterday. GZ Trillers is exactly the example of people who have understood that, okay, this is how sales work, and suddenly you need them everywhere, and they explain to non-media companies how media works. Well, I thought it was a pretty funny trend. Who else won? Grandfluencer. What does this mean? Not necessarily him here, but he has also made a

18:34 very noticeable comeback, but for us he is not the typical grandfluencer. That's a bit like that. He is also not necessarily the typical Grandfluencer or the Golden Bachelor. It is also astonishing how TV is now specialising in older target groups . But the interesting thing is that these older target groups can now also be reached in digital environments. I've always been somewhat aware of this, but not to such a broad extent. Look here. Um, I think JD was on stage with us yesterday , a fashion influencer over 70. The same playbook as all fashion influencers: unboxing, sneakers, all that [ __ ], only over 70 and so it goes across the board. Yes, Pamela Rif is also available for those

19:20 over 70. Yes, the Elevator Boys are also available for those over 70. Yes, everything is there for the older generation, so to speak. I found that new. Food influencers up and down for over 70. So, it really all arrived. So, those were a few explanations about the macro, the environment as a whole, and now we want to try to earn back your entry fee in a completely operational way and explain marketing to you in very concrete terms, giving you a few pointers on how we currently see the marketing world. We do a bit of both digital and ecosystem and marketing and that is traditionally done by my colleague Roland. Let's go. Yeah

20:12 . Yes, as Philip already said , I'm here to tell you a little bit about the current marketing trends and developments . But as in previous years, I would like to start by taking stock. Where do we even stand? And then I thought, let's take a step back this year and see how people actually find the Internet. What do they think about this? And because language is always a good indicator , I thought, let's see how people talk about the Internet . And that's when I came across this story . In 2023, the word of the year in the USA was shitification. The time once translated it very nicely as “Verschlimscheißerung”.

20:58 This refers to the development that digital platforms are actually pretty cool at the beginning, but then the user experience does n't really get any better over time, I would say . The 2023 Word of the Year in Great Britain was this Word of the Year 2024: Brainrod Brainworm. That's how people feel these days when they've doom scrolled for hours in the evening , doom scrolled another word, and then put it behind their phone and realize, I do n't know if that was really a worthwhile investment of time . And I think we may not have reached the end of the road yet, because my bet for the word of the year 2025 is this. AI slop, the AI ​​man, inferior

21:48 content, because we are currently experiencing the next escalation level, that the AI ​​robot, that is mercilessly vomiting up the Internet. We all see this in our feeds. We know the videos and sometimes get enormous numbers of views if the clicker works. We've seen it all before . Keyword Brainrod and that is not the only development taking place there, but is perhaps even more dramatic . that such an AI trust breach is taking place. That's what I would call it.

22:34 So people no longer know whether they can really trust what they see on the internet. Almost three out of four people say: "Ah, I do n't really believe that anymore." And now you might just as quickly read that away as statistics. But when you think about it, it's crazy. That's the place where you do your marketing, where you want to get your message across, and people no longer trust that. And that's not the only development; people are already starting to withdraw from the internet. The people who previously set the digital trends are now withdrawing from the Internet, at least temporarily. There's this phenomenon here, the offline club. It already exists in every European capital. People meet there to crochet, play board games

23:21 , play games, or do crafts, the kind of things people did 30 years ago , before the internet existed. And the crazy thing is, they even pay $12 for someone to lock their phone away for two hours so they can feel right again. Crazy, that's where we are now. This is how people perceive the Internet. We have to, you have to, deal with this. How do we deal with this? I think the only consequence can be, even if this may come as a bit of a surprise coming from me now and on this stage , I think we have to go offline, just pull the plug

24:12 . What do we do now? What are we doing now in this real world? I think the trend for the next 12 months has to be IRL marketing in real life marketing. And in the next 5 minutes, I want to introduce you to two strategies on how you can do IRL marketing . I called the first one Community Piggy Backing. Why Community? In marketing you want one to one, that's nice and so on, but ideally you want to reach a few more people and I think it makes sense to build on existing communities and see where you can connect with them and which topic

24:59 people in the real world are rallying around, giving a little preview like this is a huge topic, it's been around for decades, of course, but somehow it's grown exponentially in the last two years. Not only are all the marathons experiencing record registration numbers and selling out in record time. There is also an exciting cultural phenomenon, namely run clubs. Run clubs are kind of like the hip new sports clubs, and people don't just go there to run; it 's also a bit of a dating app replacement for them. They go there to meet new people. They flatter, throw Tinde, Hinch and Co, as they are all called. They throw all the apps off their phones. Keyword:

25:44 digital fatigue. But they install another app for that, namely Strava. If you don't know Strava, it's a sports tracking app where you can document your own progress and, of course, compare it with other people . And it's been extremely successful. They have enormous user growth; 150 million users now perhaps do n't have everything on their radar yet, and all these run clubs are also organized through Straber. There are now a million clubs on Scha and if you look at what it looks like, for example Lulu Lemon, you think, ah, that seems somehow familiar. Looks like a social network. There are comments, there are likes, there is real engagement. Something is already happening. Lulu Lemon, you see

26:31 , this is where marketing relevance comes into play again. Lulu Lemon has 300,000 members with his run club on Strauber and you can see here again that IRL marketing then shines back into the digital world. But because it's based on the real world and people know that there are real people behind it, it works really well and it's not just Starber where it spills over into the digital world, but also on other platforms. Here on Instagram, if you search the community hashtag Lulu Lulu Lemon Running, you can see that a lot is happening. And Lul Lemon is not the only brand that is involved in this area; there are several others that are already generating really impressive numbers, and these are real people, as I said. I'm just always trying to

27:21 figure out any concerns you might have. Some of you are probably saying that this is an interesting phenomenon, but I do n't sell running shoes, I don't sell running clothes, and so on. It's not relevant to me. I think you can get into this area even if you don't sell running accessories. I have brought you an example here. Another Cottonlab is a startup from Düsseldorf. They sell graphic tees, retro shirts, hoodies, caps, and so on. And they have a T-shirt, the Sunday Running Club. The designer was obviously on the cutting edge and brought it out early on, and the funny thing is, they had this motif before they had their own club, and then of course they said, okay, now we have this shirt, let's start our own club. And then they started out with 10 or 15 people

28:07 , pushed it a bit on social media, and look at what it looks like now. They regularly transport several hundred people to the city centre of Düsseldorf. This is madness. So, it 's a real happening. They run there themselves, invest in their community, they get shirts, drinks, they then go and party afterwards and you can see that people are filming it, including the people who are maybe standing next to them and are then amazed at what is happening. If you think about what that means in terms of organic reach , that obviously goes into Instagram Stories. is sent via WhatsApp . These are channels that are not easy to get into as a brand . This works really well for them as an awareness vehicle and

28:53 ultimately they actually generate sales growth. They were able to increase their sales almost tenfold last year with community piggy backing. Craziness. And you don't have to be a clothing brand to use it. I think this can work really well for any brand that wants to reach a young, urban audience . Here in Hamburg there is the example of Heimatgut and Startup, which produces snacks. They have sweet and salty popcorn. Then they launched the Sweet and Salty Runcub and you can see that people are flocking to it too . If you now say, yes, okay, I probably really would have to run along every weekend , it's a bit too strenuous for me, I don't feel like it, I don't have the resources for it, whatever. Is there a smaller size available? Of

29:40 course, you can also cooperate with the existing runcubs, because, as in every scene, there are the cool kids who are the multipliers, and that's exactly who you want to address. You can work with them . And here I'll show you the Slogg Run Club from New York. If you scroll through their Instagram feed , you'll see that every third or fourth post is about a marketing collaboration. And it's not just running clothes, there 's also a brewery, cosmetics manufacturers, sunglasses, and so on. So for anyone who wants to reach out to this group of animals, this can obviously work well. And since I have a very practical hand to lend here, just go to Chava and see what's going on in my city if I 'm a local company. Or even if you say that running

30:25 might not be so relevant for my target group. another sport is more interesting. As I said, there are a million clubs on Straubbar for other sports too. You can also see what else is going on there. For example, there's a lot of cycling there . So, you should take a look around. So, there may also be companies whose target group isn't so sporty. uh, there are supposed to be people like that. Um, there are x other topics that people rally around in the real world out there . Two years ago we told you about the renaissance of book clubs. They 're into fashion marketing right now, the hottest [ __ ]. They cooperate with books or even build their own.

31:12 Chess, a huge cultural phenomenon. There are some hip new chess clubs in Berlin and LA. Even here in the area where our colleague Snoop Dog, whom we just saw, there's now a club culture of its own, so to speak, and startups that work with them . So I think community piggy backing is a really smart strategy to reach real people . But I have brought you a second strategy for IRL marketing and I called it Product Staging . What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is staging a product, giving it a stage, and it is the world in which we move day in and day out . The tech world has been leading the way in this area for decades now; it's really good at celebrating its own products

32:00 . Maybe some of you still remember these pioneers here. [Music] This is how the guys at Microsoft celebrated Windows 95 30 years ago . Maybe you ca n't imagine it like that anymore today . Maybe we can do things a little differently today. Fortunately, there are a few recent examples. I recently watched a livestream from Space X. They were showing off their new rocket, and just look at how they staged it. [Music]

33:06 [Applause] tricked. It wasn't SpaceX at all, but Vorwerk. Here is our German medium-sized company from Wuppertal. That's how they presented their new Thermomix and it worked for them . I had my Forage on TikTok full of Thermomix content for a weekend. Awesome number of views and okay, admittedly, I'm part of the community. we Thermomix at home, but I think that because they staged it so exaggeratedly, they basically made the product into something physical, it also spilled over beyond this community . There was a comedy writer from the Heute Show who made fun of it on X and Instagram

33:52 . German Apple Keynote. Ha-Ha. Then there was the metacommunication on LinkedIn. This too gained a lot of attention and of course the whole production was a godsend for the press. So they triggered a huge wave of attention with product staging. But the tech industry is n't the only one that knows how to stage products. There are others who have been doing this for decades, maybe even for over 100 years . Fashion watching has been around for ages. And next I will show you an example of another German medium-sized company that presents its product in the form of a fashion show . And I'm curious to see if you

34:39 're as surprised as I was when I saw this. Look here . [Music] [Applause] [Music] Yes, so Brabus, this German car tuner, is putting on a fashion show for its cars, including an appearance by the impresario at the end, who is a bit like Karl Lagerfeld. Wow, how did it work? What did that achieve? The CEO was recently on the OMR podcast and what did he say? We had

35:26 an event last week at Signature, one billion impressions, one billion impressions. Seems to have gone pretty well, I'd say . So, now we had a food processor for 1600 € and cars for half a million, I think. Can you also stage all the world’s products with product staging? Maybe even a product that only costs 1.79. Look here. But guys, I think we've done it. I think we have finally reached the pinnacle of cheese perfection because we didn't put in the taco. We don't put it on the taco. The cheese is the taco. That's

36:13 right. Taco madeir cheeseo [music] crispaco. Yes, crazy. So Tacobell, a fast food chain, showcases its products in such a keynote. Once a year they tell people what tacos they'll be serving in their restaurants the following year . Stream it live and the community will celebrate. And here again the numbers show that it works. Enormous reach generates sales growth contrary to the industry trend with product staging. Crazy. Maybe not

36:59 everyone has someone who wants to get up on stage and celebrate their own product, but there are other places besides the stage where you can present products, for example at the point of sale and next I'll show you an example from a British company called Jellycat. They make cuddly toys, although you can't really call them cuddly toys, you'll see. Cuddly toys, I would say, plush toys, and they regularly do pop-up stores in high-end department stores and I will show you what their product staging looked like at the point of sale in the Rockefeller Center in New York . [Music]

37:47 This is a late capitalist fever dream. So, they sell these cozy pancakes in a stylized diner in the department store and then act as if they are being prepared and then nicely packaged and then sell the set with a pin for a mere 50 US dollars and not only that, it also generates enormous attention this video alone, hold on tight, over 100 million views. Craziness. It's not surprising that they keep replicating this recipe. Here, for example, in the Galerie Lafayette in Paris you can find the cozy strawberry tart. Here too the video has 60 million views and in

38:32 London the Kuschel Fish and Chips also has 20 million views. Product staging at the point of sale is amazing and they've been really successful with 40% sales growth to 200 million pounds in sales of cuddly items last year. Craziness. To summarize for you, the two central strategies in IRL marketing, community piggy backing and product staging, are, I believe, clever strategies for the next 12 months. Well, thank you. Thanks. I'm not there yet. Thank you. Thanks. So, I've now talked at length about the real world and

39:19 how to do marketing there, but there's an elephant in the room, not just marketing without AI. There's no getting around AI anymore, and I think you're expecting an update from us on that part of last year, simply because the topic has become much more urgent. I do n't know, probably many have already noticed, but for those who haven't , the largest traffic platform in the web world is undergoing massive changes because of AI. Google, if I type into Google right now, why has my Google traffic dropped? Then I get this as a result. A long text then says something about an algorithm update or perhaps a manual penalty. But

40:05 the actual reason why your Google traffic is probably declining is listed relatively small up there. Overview with AI in English AI Overview. What is happening there? You get a chat GPT answer in the Google search results without even asking. The content from several websites is summarized and served to you ready to eat . Previously, the list was from the left, so you had to click through it yourself. Everything is now served ready to the user. This is currently happening primarily in the informal sector. So, if you want to know something, if you want to look something up, in all the transactional searches, as the SEOs call them, i.e. where you have a specific product interest, maybe even enter a product name into Google,

40:52 Google then uses the existing, the traditional user interface. Sure, then you can display ads, but if you want to earn money, you have to be a bit more cautious. But it must also be said that the whole thing was just a test last year and has now been rolled out worldwide. You think a little bit, okay, that's obviously not the future of search and if that is the future, you have to say, yes, it's a little dramatic because it obviously has an impact on traffic. I have brought some statistics here . The click rate drops significantly. In the organic area it was previously at 4% of these AI overviews 0.6% - 84% is insane. Just imagine, if before four out of 100 people

41:39 clicked through to your website and shop, now it's not even one. And this also has an impact on the P area . Here again, a significant decline. Crazy. There is no other way to say it. What you're seeing right now is a marketing bloodbath . And it is also so dramatic because Google is still the measure of all things on the web. I once tried to hire an educated guest to find out how many users they have per week and I came up with between 4 and 5 billion users per week . Based on the data we have, I made an estimate. Why is Google doing this now? They actually want to sell clicks, that's their business model. Why are they rebuilding it now

42:25 ? I have a guess, you probably all have the same guess. There are also other companies that are currently receiving a lot of attention and a lot of visibility. Open AI with Chat GPT and they are still significantly smaller than Google, but you have to say, according to their own statements, they have recently generated enormous growth, doubling their user numbers in the last two months alone and you can see that Google is still in a different league, but the gap has narrowed a bit . And if you're now thinking, okay, something's going wrong at Google , maybe a new channel will come along that I can use to generate traffic, then I have to dampen that hope a bit, at least for now , because there are statistics for that too

43:10 . The average website currently receives only 0.17% traffic from all AI chatbots, not just ChatGPT . Crazy, that's something that can really be neglected in the homeopathic field. And now, at the very latest, when you take this development at Google and chatg together, you might have to ask yourself whether we are moving towards a post-traffic world and whether we are perhaps watching the brand die in the same attack , because if there is no more traffic, then it really is irrelevant. I still have a bit of hope because I've recently had more and more posts like this one in my LinkedIn feed, where people

43:55 report that I somehow gained ten leads via Chat GPT last month, or even 5% of new customer inquiries here, the craziest tally, is a form generator and they gained 12,000 signups via AI chats in one week . So, obviously something is happening. This channel is suitable for generating new demand, even if the traffic may not always arrive directly. And you can also see that Open Air wants to get into this area, because what happened? Just last week they introduced a new feature. It hasn't been rolled out everywhere yet, but will probably arrive in Germany in the next few weeks. If you're wondering what the best espresso machine is, you'll get a nice product overview as an answer here. There is then the

44:41 price-performance seal, the machine with the best design and not only that, there is also a price overview and you can click directly through to the respective shops and providers. Whether people will really make a big deal out of this remains to be seen, but you can see that something is happening. I don't know yet whether traffic will really increase again, but it turns out that you have to at least be visible in that area . And that's why I now want to show you, as Roland GPT, in the next few minutes how to stay visible in this AI world. And the first thing you need to know in this context is that all major AI chatbots have introduced a search function in the last year. This

45:26 is new. Now when you make a request to Ch BT, this text flashes more and more frequently when an online search is running. Last year I told you that in order to become visible on Chat GPD , you had to become part of the training data. That's incredibly difficult. This happens, this model is only trained once if you are not visible there. It was a shame, but now you can influence your visibility on Chat GPT every day. Curiously, this means that you have to think back to things that were last discussed in marketing 20 years ago. You have to go back to the basics of the SEO world. Also because where does Chat GPT get this data from?

46:12 You get that, so for your search answers you basically get Bing of all things from Microsoft. But that's what it says on the website. That’s why this is the first tip I want to give you at this point. If you want to influence your visibility on Chat TPD , take a look at how visible you are on Bing and try to positively influence it with the common SEO levers . But that may not always be the case, because what many people do n't realize is that Open Hype is also building its own search index. Nick Turley, who will speak here later , said this on the sidelines of a court case against Google in the USA and many people did n't even notice. So, something is obviously happening and probably because of this search index they have also

46:59 introduced their own new bot, a new crawler, namely the Open AI Searchbot. It didn't exist before either . And here again the basics. Just like you did with the Google Bot back then , you can now use your robots text file to tell this new Open AI Bot where to look. Of course, he shouldn't look at the checkout and login, but he should definitely see your blog, where you do content marketing, your products . But you also have to check whether what exactly he sees where you are looking. This is Otto's website as it looks to the OT Otto average user, to you, to me . For the AI chat it looks like this. Why? These

47:46 crawlers, all these AI crawlers ca n't do JavaScript and I know this is getting a bit nerdy and techy. I hope you don't switch off because this is important. JavaScript is incredibly widespread on the web. Almost every website uses this, for example, to optimize loading speed, things are reloaded, but anything loaded with JavaScript cannot be seen by this crawler . Here, for example, it's the pictures and you might want to use them to appear in this new shopping feature. Even more extreme, but not immediately noticeable, so we've highlighted it. The product reviews are no longer clickable and are no longer really visible. And that's crazy, because if I have 84 people who say it 's a good TV, then I want this crawler to be able to see it. So these are the things you need to

48:33 make sure that the crawlers can actually see the information that you want to show. These are the essential technical homework tasks that you absolutely must do. Before you start optimizing, you have to do something else. You have to adapt your toolbox and a marketer is so very toffin. And here in this area, too, there are now new providers who want to build the Sistrix AI world. I've simply put a few providers on a slide for you. Could, I can see, you're taking photos. Very good. You can take a photo of it or go to our colleagues at OMR Reviews, who have just introduced this new category, AI Optimization. There you have

49:19 an overview of what is available and, above all, reviews and testimonials. But I'll show you what such a tool looks like behind the colossi. For fun, we tracked how OMR’s visibility is developing. For a week you get a visibility curve like this. But what was even more exciting for me was this small box here in the bottom right, relatively inconspicuous Sources. There you can see which websites are talking about OM . And in that moment I really had an aha moment, because the representation of the brand in the answers of the AI Childbots is fed from these sources. That's clear, because you have to think about how AI works, these models. They have a

50:05 body of data, they look at it, and then they reproduce it. They reproduce patterns and probabilities. And the more often it is said that OMR is an important event, the higher the probability is that it will be in the answer and that is why you have to generate these people in a targeted manner. You have to go in there. And to make your work a little easier, I did some old-school research again . I did that. I simply asked Chat GPT 100 times for product recommendations in a wide variety of categories. from chef's knives to travel backpacks to sunscreen. Well, I was busy for two days doing it manually . Afterwards, I entered this into a table and

50:51 looked at which links were returned to me and which ones were actually relevant for this product recommendation . And that's why we're bringing you a small world premiere: the ranking of the most relevant websites for product recommendations by Chat GPT. I found the result surprising. The FZ Kaufkompass is number 1. I assume some of you do n't even know it. This is a test bite from the FAZ. Apparently they actually test products themselves. Marketing is clearly done through affiliate marketing. Apparently Chat GPT trusts this source very heavily. And if I were in your position, if you have a B2C physical product, I would

51:38 call them tomorrow or maybe even just send my product there, hope that it gets tested and does well in the tests and that this also influences your visibility on Chat GPD . What else can you say? Last year I talked about the importance of Reddit in the AI ​​world . You can see it again in first place, but also YouTube in second place. Reddit and YouTube are both UGC platforms. Anyone can upload something there . This is where the barrier to entry is lowest. So, if you want to become visible, this is perhaps the easiest way to get involved. Otherwise, there are many traditional media outlets where you have to try to get in with digital PR. It's also a bit clear, because the AI itself can't test a product

52:24 . They rely on people to do this for them. These can either be users who write about it to someone else or journalists or experts who then write about it and publish about it. That's just a quick takeaway. Just to summarize, how do you become or remain visible in the AI ​​world? You have to transfer the basics of SEOT into the AI ​​world . You have to adapt your toolbox and, most importantly, you have to generate these mensions . I think that's the key takeaway from this part of the keynote that I need to burn into your mind . Mensions are the new links. So, take a deep breath. Now I have tried to outline for you the two major paths in marketing at the moment . Marketing without AI,

53:09 marketing with AI. How can this work? The boss always puts a bit of pressure on me, so I basically have to justify my entrance fee. That's why I thought I'd share one more thing that's quite tangible, just an observation I made recently. Recently, I've had a lot of videos like this one on my For page on TikTok. You see a newborn and a young father who is kind of worried, oh is the child still breathing? Keep it totally quiet and at some point you can hear it breathing and the guy is of course relieved and happy. And then I went into the comments and I was amazed because every single comment, the first 20 or 30 comments under this video, were

53:55 about the Baby Olet Soal. It's a sock that you put on your child and it tracks their vital functions. It costs almost €300. And then I thought, wow, that's a, well, psychologically that's a really crazy sign, because you see a problem in the video and then 20 people tell you that that's exactly the solution to your problem. You might think it was just a coincidence, but I kept seeing similar videos in the weeks and months that followed . Here, for example, is a dog that somehow slobbers all over the place after drinking, and then in the comments there's something about the Slobber Stopper Bowl. It's kind of a product for dog owners to prevent this from happening. Craziness . Another

54:40 example. Here you can see someone working out while trying to lose weight. I know how difficult it is. The sauna jacket is recommended in the comments . This is a jacket that makes you sweat faster and lose weight faster when you exercise. Crazy. So, a really crazy psychological effect. I wanted to show you that one last time. Problem in the video, the solution from the community in the comments. Then you not only have social proof, but ideally you will also generate enormous numbers of views with the videos. I believe that this can work very well from a psychological and marketing perspective . Now I ask you, if you want to have more updates like this in the future , and don't want to wait for the next keynote, I publish

55:26 one every week, I send out a newsletter every week . Um, ideally it comes on Fridays , sometimes on Mondays, but actually always on Fridays. I always summarize a little bit what happened. provides regular updates. I would be really happy if you subscribe and read it regularly. Finally, I would like to express my sincere thanks to our team, because Philip and I are really standing on the shoulders of a huge, fantastic team, starting with the project management and coaching team and our fantastic daily editorial team, the Ows, guys and girls. Special thanks to Nicki Lange, who introduced me to the topic of run clubs and made them accessible to me as someone new to the scene

56:12 . We have a huge team that makes these slides so amazing, so cool . Um, thank you very much from me to the team. I'm done so far. I hope you were able to take something away with you. I learned a little something and yes, now I wish you lots of fun with the rest of the festival. Thank you very much. [Applause] [Music] Thanks. [Applause]