Was FIFA covering Levi's Stadium sign the worst brand visibility decision you've ever seen?

Pretty darn close, yes.

You know, the reality is it made absolutely no sense.

You know, I was... baffled showing up.

And it wasn't just Levi's and the stadium names.

It was an entire sabotage of the entire internal experience of being at a stadium.

Heinz ketchup bottles were covered.

I loved it

And it was like a fuzzy pink, like a plush doll.

And I think that's the challenge, right? Like I think the challenge for big marketplaces is they try to be it for everything.

And the reality is that I think eBay is phenomenal at certain things, right? I don't think that they're phenomenal being a car dealer, but they certainly sell a lot of really cool, unique, collectible cars.

And so being the right it matters more so than ever before in being present in AI responses.

And that's where I would put my time and energy.

And I would start with the traditional categories that made eBay what it is, collectibles being the most notable one.

How are you getting collectibles to be recognized? Yeah.

Well, I mean, I'm trying to get collectibles to be more recognized in AI search, right? So when people go in, which they're already doing in droves, they're going in and researching collectible items, whether it be cards, coins, what have you.

All right, in five years, which word survives? SEO, GEO, or AEO?

That's a tough one, Ben.

I'm going to say all three.

I know you said one, but if there is only one, if I can only choose one, I'm going to say SEO because search is search and people are going to continue to search.

We searched phone books.

We searched, you know, search engines.

Now we're going to search LLMs.

But what's the difference between GEO and

Yeah.

I mean, the skills are evolving.

There's no question about that.

And I think that's one of the taxing parts of this transformation is that we're all having to learn new skills, right? And we're having to adapt our skill set to be able to leverage this technology effectively.

in a more complete and capable way.

And I think that that's a good thing, right? It's a healthy thing because it forces us as humans to continue to learn.

And I mean...

Talk us through what you were trying to do in that writing.

Yeah

... a little later, but the other component that is quickly become, uh, I, I like to call it mystery meat, but, like, it is just, it is a, a black hole of what is it, is what we traditionally would do in the organic space, which is rank tracking.

So understanding our position in this somewhat confined ecosystem of rankings.

That is, like, gone, because there are no more rankings.

There are responses.

We've gone from a rankings world to a response world, and in a response world, we have to rethink the way we measure what it is and where we show up.

We're now choosing where to place billboards on a highway or a busy intersection versus choosing how to place bets in a search ranking position.

Mm-hmm.