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The Australia Post eCommerce Report 2026 landed this week. $82.6 billion spent online in 2025, up nearly 14% YoY, 9.8 million households, new participation record. The headline looks great. The footnotes are more interesting. Average basket size is $96, down $10 over five years. More transactions, smaller spend per visit. Volume up, margin pressure up. I was worried that Marketplaces (ie. Amazon, Shein & Temu) would make up the growth but thankfully I was wrong. Department stores were the standout at nearly 20% growth. The report is free and requires zero personal information to download. No excuses.

Congrats to Kmart for taking #1 at Power Retail's All Star Bash, pipping last year's holder Big W. Shoutout to KidsOclock (Rising Star), Carma (AI Innovation), and to Yaye for winning the inaugural Top First Nations Small Business Award. Good category. The full Top 100 is available for download. I had a look. I got to Myer at #2 and then… well, I'll leave it there.

Google's Personal Intelligence expanded to free-tier users this week across AI Mode in Search, the Gemini app, and Gemini in Chrome. US only for now. Here's what it does: shoppers opt in to connect Gmail and Google Photos, and Google's AI uses that data to personalise AI search results. Past purchases, booking confirmations, and brand preferences determine the results a searcher will get. A shopper searching for sneakers doesn't get generic results anymore. They get results filtered through context that you will never have access to.

It’s another major shift in search (assuming Google remains dominant). There's a layer shaping your customer's purchase intent that you can't see, can't rank against, and can't replicate. Google is building a personalisation moat using very, very personal data. It’s going to reward those brands who stay in the inbox… and quite literally, can show receipts.

Manus (the AI agent, now part of Meta) has launched dedicated connectors for Meta Ads Manager and Instagram Creator Marketplace. The Ads Manager connector lets you query your campaign data in plain English, get performance analysis, spot anomalies, and build reports with first-party access. The Creator Marketplace connector is worth paying attention to: it plugs you into 2 million creators with authenticated audience data, so you can search by niche, demographics, and past brand partnerships, then draft outreach, build campaign briefs, and go, all from a single prompt sequence. Australia is one of 18 markets covered.

I don't mind the idea of keeping Meta's tools connected like this in one place for Meta data. I'm just not sure I fully trust Meta insights coming from a Meta AI agent.

On CAPI: if Meta has been pestering you about your setup, it's not just you. Netflix just announced its own server-side attribution integration for ads, suggesting CAPI is becoming a non-negotiable across all digital media. We're all on the CAPI wagon now.

ATC guest, SmartrMail founder and Bluethumb Art Gallery owner, George Hartley published his Email Marketing Bible this week. 59,000 words, 16 chapters, 908 sources. Free. But the smart move wasn't the content. It was the format. He didn't release it just as a PDF. He released it as a Claude Code skill, meaning you install it once, and Claude can reference the entire guide whenever you ask it about email strategy, flows, deliverability, or copy.

Now we’re talking. You're not giving people something to read. You're giving them something to use. We don't want your research; we want your skills.

If you thought the LinkedIn algorithm had gone to the dogs, you're wrong. Even the dogs don't like it there. LinkedIn published the engineering breakdown of its rebuilt feed this week, and the short version is: social graph out, interest graph in. It's no longer about who you know. It's about what you talk about. The new system uses LLMs and reads your last 1,000+ interactions as a sequence, tracking where your interests are heading, not just where they've been. Reach is narrowing by design. Engagement bait is being actively downranked. Nerding out and niching out is cool again.

If you want to talk about your LinkedIn influence at the Christmas table this year, go deep on what you actually know. Real trading observations, specific customer behaviour, operational decisions with commercial context. Not "five things a first-class upgrade taught me about resilience." Better update those LinkedIn prompts, too. It's not just about replacing the em dashes anymore.

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We have an ecommece industry obsession with checkout conversion, abandoned cart flows and payment options. Which makes sense… except that by the time someone hits add to cart, the decision is probably already made.

The brands generating real word of mouth aren't the ones with the slickest checkout. They're the ones that made the journey to checkout feel like something. Something personal. Something memorable. Something worth telling a friend about. Because when people recommend a brand, they almost never say “the checkout was smooth”. They say “you won't believe the experience I just had”.

Examples from this Playbook

🦷 Maheer's product takes weeks and requires a physical fitting. Most retailers call that friction. He calls it storytelling. Every consultation builds anticipation. The reveal is the marketing.

⏳ Michael Tutek introduced a deliberate delay in his recommendation tool. Conversions went up. Customers need to feel effort has been made before they'll trust the outcome.

🔐 Simon Beard hid Culture Kings drops behind secret pin codes. Some did 10x standard launch sales. The purchase became a win, not a transaction.

👗 Pete Ceredig-Evans flipped the payment model entirely. Products arrive before you're charged. Add a personal stylist and it stops being a transaction altogether.

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