OVERVIEW OF THE BIGGEST B2B ECOMMERCE STORIES OF 2025:
In this year-end episode, Brian and Andy examine the three seismic shifts that defined 2025.
First, they dissect the tariff turbulence that created widespread panic in early 2025, exploring why dire economic predictions never materialized and what the surprisingly resilient GDP growth means for manufacturers and distributors.
Second, they tackle the employment crisis facing white-collar workers, where AI has created a “no hire, no fire” environment that’s particularly devastating for recent college graduates while skilled trades workers remain in high demand.
Finally, they analyze the death of traditional SEO and the rise of answer engine optimization, as search volume faces a projected 25% decline with buyers turning to AI-powered tools instead of clicking through to websites.
TRANSCRIPT:
Good morning everyone this is The Master B2B Friday 15. My name is Brian Beck. Welcome to another session of Friday 15. And in fact, the last one of 2025. Andy, did you see this? Nike Nike eliminates their CTO and COO. So, chief commercial officer, chief technology officer. Nike made a bold move and the implications go far beyond a shuffle at the top. The company cut two cornerstone CC suite roles and installed a new operating model signaling a deeper strategic reset. No more CCO, no more CTO. What the heck, Andy? What do you think?
Well, the interesting part about this, this is a B2C story. Well, Nike does a lot of B2B as well. Not to be underestimated, but I think this is perhaps an omen in a way. >> It’s a sign of things to come because Nike basically declared that technology is no longer a separate thing. It’s now embedded in lots of different parts of the organization. Now, it’s easy to do that when you’re not a technology company, per se, and that’s what they’ve kind of admitted. They’re a consumer packaged goods company that sells clothing and shoes, etc., But couple years ago they were talking about how they were a technology company and this might be a bit of an admission that they use technology but they aren’t a technology company and this might be interesting for other B2B companies to take a look at especially in the age of AI. We’ve often said AI as with digital needs to be distributed across the organization. I think Nike actually decided to do that. We’ll see if it works for them. There’s another a whole bunch of stories behind this. But that’s what I find fascinating about this story is that they’ve decided to decentralize the technology function.
Well, the other interesting thing about Nike is they have they have set the precedent for B2B and really for even for BtoC. I mean the amount of sort of direct e-commerce taking control of these channels really embracing um you know not you know really leaning on the fact that they make a great product and as a manufacturer and and and understanding they don’t you know the channel is just a channel to the end customer and they want to be the best they can be in every channel including their own direct e-commerce you know this this is something that a lot of manufacturers in B2B haven’t even you know we have these conversations we’re issuing some thought leadership on this early in the year we’re talking about direct e-commerce for manufacturers and should they do it or not and you know this is still a debate well Nike sets the precedent and is this another area where they’re setting a precedent and you know we’ll find out as we get into into the new year.
There is one other side story here which might be turned to be even more interesting in the end is that not only did Nike do this but they got rid of this chief commercial officer and now the the Nike.com so the digital and the sales team both report to you ready for this the CFO. Now, that might have been one of those musical chairs thing and the last person sitting was the CFO and they this person got that stuff, But it could also point to that now they’re applying higher level of scrutiny on the ROI front to this stuff especially digital because I think there’s a sense that a lot of companies overspend on digital which again what’s overspending but it feels like they brought the CFO in to say okay now I want to see a payback.
Interesting. So we’re looking into the future folks just watch Nike. I love it. No it’s great. It’s it’s really interesting and I I I love watching B2C companies particularly on the manufacturing side and what they’re doing. Because again lots of precedent there for where B2B is going in in many ways. So all right we got to get to our topic today which is the biggest stories of 2025. What are they Andy? Is it all about AI? Well we’ll reveal it in just a moment everybody. So this is our opinion of course we have we didn’t submit this to the greater panel for debate. This is just Hanny and I think so. but anyway, it’s it’s going to be gonna be some fun here. Some fun topics. So, the first question is first topic tariffs. Tariffs were huge beginning of this year and they still are. But I mean, remember Andy back in the first quarter of the year towards the end of that first quarter, beginning of second, how much turmoil was created? The world is going to fall apart and implode. The economy will never recover. We’re immediately going to go into a recession. Well, what’s interesting is this Wall Street Journal article, I think, says it well. You know, did people just get it wrong? Their title was why everyone got the tariffs wrong. And what they said some some interesting quotes from this article, I’ll read them for those of you who can’t who are listening. The numbers show that the US economy has held up throughout the year. The odds of a recession in the coming year, meaning 2026, have fallen below 2020 or 25%. By the way, this article was this week, December. tariffs have t haven’t tanked the economy. In fact, GDP in the second quarter reached its strongest quarterly growth in nearly two years a seasonally and inflation adjusted annual rate of 3.8% and the third quarter is tracking closely behind at 3.5. So, the economy didn’t tank the way everyone thought it would. And there’s lots of other statistics in here now, but there’s also we know that there’s still a lot of uncertainty amongst our community of B2B e-commerce and you know manufacturer distributor executives. You know, Andy, what’s your take on this? Did did everyone get the tariffs wrong?
I think there’s a longer story here. The time horizon is too short. We saw it early this year on our roundtables. People were saying things like one week, I’m scared to death. we had to shut everything. We had to shoot every had to stop everything. Shut everything down. We’re not selling it to certain countries right now. Terribly disruptive. Then two weeks later, mostly because the administration changed his mind or lowered the tariffs, whatever, we’d see different people at a different round table and they’d say, “Oh, yeah, we were worried about that two weeks ago. We don’t care about it now.” So, I don’t know that there was really a definitive policy.
That’s one argument. The other argument is that there’s a lag time here and that this is going to have an impac early next year. Now, there’s stuff you can do to juice the economy, but it’s very clear that people predicted gloom and doom about the tariffs destroying the economy. Whatever you think about whatever that didn’t happen actually. So the economy has continued to grow. It could also be that the economy is just hyperefficient. I mean it bakes these things in. It knows what to expect.
Algorithms and AI are constantly adjusting things, moving it around. So it’s softening the impact. That’s another argument.
Well, it was interesting. I was sitting with a one of one of our members of our community earlier this week and we’re talk we were reviewing some of their Amazon performance over the prior um year this 2025. It was fascinating Andy. We looked at their ordering curves and like when when people were this is a big big company right how much and they do a lot of volume with Amazon huge boost in volume in in in the late quarter 1 quarter two and then it like Amazon bought all this product from them and then it stopped and then they stopped buying for a while why because Amazon was stocking up they they I we think they were seeing all this tariff uncertainty they’re just going to buy all this product so they that’s exactly what happened there’s real implications for for manufacturers in particular for this kind of thing they brought the demand forward. So, they pre-bought a bunch of stuff knowing this and then maybe efficiency took over and they found a way to get rid of it or maybe there’s inventory that’s built up. Who knows? But again, that’s what I mean by people are looking for incentives and they do what makes sense to them.
Well, I think so. So, the clear thing here though is this was and will continue to be one of the top stories of our time. Um, you know, 20 in 2025. We’ll see if it makes the top stories next year. Next story is all about is all about jobs, Andy. Jobs in B2B. We are in a no hire, no fire scenario here. This is, you know, AI layoffs. Wall Street Journal also did an article on this this week. Um and so we, you know, pulled some some thoughts from this, but we’ve seen it throughout the year. America, here’s some statistics they quoted. The Wall Street Journal, Americans with bachelor’s degrees or higher put the probability of losing their jobs in the next year at 15%. Up from 11% 3 years ago. Workers now think losing a job is more likely with those with less educa than those with less education do. That’s a striking difference from where we were. So in other words, then we’re talking about white, you know, white collar professional roles here. People are afraid of losing their jobs. They don’t want to leave, but then when they do, you know, it’s sort of a no hire, no fire. Then you’ve got this whole this whole college educated worker segment and they said they have an average 47% of finding a job in the next three years which is down from 60%. So you have the unemployment rate also higher amongst new college graduates. What do you make of all this Andy?
Well I’d say there’s another piece of information here to watch out for which is I’m looking at what’s happening to recent college graduates. There’s a bit of noise in this system because I still say a lot of what’s driving this is the are the AI models and if the AI model knows what you know then you’re a lot less valuable than if it doesn’t know what you know and so people who are in senior level positions they have a lot of institutional knowledge they have wisdom that the model is still trying to absorb. So in a way they’re protected for right now but sadly people younger people um they don’t have anything to train the model on. They don’t know anything yet. They’re going to the job market to learn these things. So the on the job learning part is being disrupted by AI. And there’s evidence of this. Historically, the percentage of people who age 22 to 27 who have college degrees who are unemployed I’m sorry, were employed. They have a 5% higher rate of employment if you have a college degree in the age of 20 to 27 versus somebody who only has a high school degree. That has historically been the case for decades. Well, that number is close to 2%. Meaning, that there’s a little bit of people with high school degrees, their employment prospects are looking better >> and the people with college degrees, their employment prospects are looking worse to close that gap to 2%.
We see this they’re, you know, we see this in B2B. They’re constantly trying to find electricians and plumbers. They’re looking for people to do this, hence the bump for high school graduates.
But the college graduates, again, I think they’re getting upended by AI and various other things. And so they they can’t get a job. And yet the people with high school degrees trying to do more kind of bluecollar work, companies can’t find those people.
It’s amazing. Yeah. the trades. Um, you know, I was talking this week with some colleagues about actually it was same same group I mentioned earlier about, you know, where should our kids what careers should our kids go into? And there there’s actually, you know, less um apparently less sort of interest and value in a college degree for the reasons you’re describing. My 14-year-old, you know, if he wants to be a plumber, that’d be great, right? Because I mean, that’s career that’s not that’s not replacing the risk of that being replaced by AI is lower. No question. So, we’re going to keep an eye on this, guys. And I think we’ve seen this at our executive ranks, too, where people are, you know, they’re they’re always interested in new opportunities, but, you know, there there’s a real, you know, kind of in the back of my mind fear of of trying to find a new job in this in this situation, particularly with AI. But anyway, we’ll see how it evolves. This is going to be an ongoing story. Our next one is all about search and AI. Check this out, Andy. this emerged rapidly this year and a major overarching theme for all of our B2B community members here. Traditional search volume meaning SEO and sort of you know the traditional way of of generating search to websites could drop by 25% next year as buyers turn to AI powered tools. We talked about this a lot this year which is search engine optimization the traditional ranking of your products in a search engine staying relevant to the customer who’s doing a search that has changed dramatically. Now we have answer engine optimization which is you know really all about optimize yourself for LLMs because what happens in an LLM is the AI answers the question for you. There’s no click the answer is upfront. So this causes confusion. How the heck do I stay relevant? How do I optimize and measure success without clicks? And in this this new model that is different than what I’ve done for the last 15 or 20 years to stay relevant, drive traffic, drive awareness. So themes have emerged like semantic relevance, expertise, authoritiveness, trustworthiness, insight of content, focusing on topics, not just keywords, structured content, visibility. So, you know, how do you how do you rank in these LLMs? Well, now you need to be mentioned in the AI outputs, not just appear in the top search results. So, this was another top story, Andy. SEO is a dead being replaced by answer engine optimization. What do you what do you think?
Well, we talked about this a couple weeks ago. Really good discussion then. I think it has become maybe the biggest issue at the top of the funnel, at the beginning of the customer journey. I did see something interesting this morning though. It was a LinkedIn post where somebody was talking about chatgpt is now making it possible for people to buy in the window. And they actually took a couple of examples, put them into developer tools to kind of trace where what was happening. And what they discovered was that chat GPT was essentially doing a Google search and then it was coming back and it was essentially going for more credible sites. And I think the case the example they gave was like buying shoes. It was like it went to Runner’s World site and told you the question was what are the top five shoes for me to buy? And at the end of the day the source is basically Runner’s World and so prioritized third-party sites as opposed to the vendor sites themselves. But the conclusion was essentially it’s doing a Google search. So it’s not really using AI per se. It’s just a glorified version of it’s a natural language version essentially.
It’s a front end on in front of Google. Here’s what’s interesting. We talked about this recently. Google making a comeback, right? So, Open AI was, you know, has been taking share in in the search market with, you know, just enormous amounts of traffic and usage. And you know, as we as we heard from Nostradamus himself on our predictions webcast, Justin Raldi, he said Google finally has a an actual competitor in OpenAI. But look at this statistic we’re showing here on the screen for those of you who can see it. You know, Google is taking back share now from OpenAI, right? What’s happening, Andy?
Well, we talked about this one, too. This is a manifestation of the very issue. People want zero quick search. They want answers. I mean, you and I have joked about this. I I don’t want to do a Google search anymore and be given a bunch of organic search results to scroll down and click on other screens and never click on the sponsor results. I just want the answer. And so, if I just get the answer, then how does Google make money? And that’s the big question. Now, Google has the capability. They they definitely have the technology now 3.0, Gemini 3.0. They have it all in front of them. Their question is the problem for them is can they make the business model work? because their entire model was based on sponsored results. So, they’re going have to embed it in the results. But then you have zero cook results with embedded sponsors. How does that work exactly?
I don’t know. We’re going to find that’s going to be our big story next year is the introduction of paid paid ads in in LLMs and open AI. But we’re going to continue to hear stories hear news about this. Andy, this week just Amazon said, “Hey, we’re we’re thinking about investing $10 billion in in Open AI.” Look how Yahoo Finance put it. Amazon set to waste 10 billion dollar on Open AI. you know, a firm clearly swamped by competition, they say. Um so, you know, look, I think this kind of points to the points to the uncertainty in all this. and sort of you know maybe some sentiment moving to more back towards you know kind of Google being a winner but I think there’s still so much uncertainty in all this right well and I think Amazon actually is trying to bet on every horse in the race now because they also have an $8 billion investment in perplexity which is a direct competitor to open AAI and chatt that’s quad right so Amazon’s thinking well you know if we bet on everybody we’re going to win so that’s I think where they’re going but it is sort of I think the the subtext here is it is a statement that perhaps open AAI and CHPT has lost some altitude here and that Amazon doesn’t want to bet everything on them now but wants to hedge their bets >> that that’s a story that part of it big story
Yeah Stephen Javor thanks for your comment he said Google and Meta have a business revenue model to evolve from but not so sure about open AI and Stephen’s at Schneider Electric by the way folks you know, great member of our community. He also said this, we’re finding that over over 80% of our citations are coming from sources outside of our domain. So, they’re getting a lot of traffic, you know, outside of their own domain, obviously coming in. So, this is really important to you know, to these to these companies that are um you know, that are contending with this change in how people are searching. and so there’s a you know there’s a real a real you know kind of not confusion but just sort of a I guess sort of an apprehension and where do you put your efforts and resources when you as you get into this. So well the story as we always joke is not over. It’s just begun. This is like the first or second inning of the game.
Exactly. Exactly. This is and we got a comment here from Ricky Alderson by the way on our earlier point. Thank you Ricky for this. She says, “Fear the unknown. Tariffs changing from morning to noon and it will impact long lognitude longnitudely. I can’t even say that word.” But you know there’s I mean these these these stories are just so they resonate across and and you know we picked three here because we think these are some of the three most important but there’s so much more that happened this year and you know we encourage you guys to take a look back at our our podcast throughout the year here and check it out. But we’ve got to wrap up our our last podcast of the year.
