Today, Localogy uploaded Episode One of This Week in Local, a new weekly podcast that features “lively conversations about the local digital ecosystem.” The podcast is co-hosted by myself and fellow Localogy Senior Analyst Mike Boland. In our inaugural episode, we dig into Visual Search & Buy Now, Pay Later.

Episode One: “Visual Search & Buy Now, Pay Later”

The Future of Visual Search

Mike brought his obsession with Visual Search to the podcast for our first episode. He kicked it off with a quick primer on Google Lens and what it means to the local ecosystem. Hint. Wearables are dead until they develop some fashion sense. 

Mike talks about Google Lens in the broader context of the trend toward teh future of visual search. Pinterest, Snap, and other social channels are in this game as well. 

“They all use the smartphone camera to identify things,” Mike says in the episode. “But the holy grail is to get this to more monetizable search and shopping.”

What’s Driving Buy Now, Pay Later?

Then I riffed for a while on Buy Now, Pay Later. This is a branch of the fintech and payments ecosystem that is wildly popular with young consumers and increasingly unpopular with regulators and financial thought leaders. 

Hint. Endorphins propel BNPL. 

“This is a very controversial method of payment,” I say on the pod. “The reason it is controversial, I believe, is because it has helped a lot of GenZ consumers buy very nice things and take possession of them immediately before paying for them in full.” And accumulate debt in the process.

Instead, BNPL consumers typically pay the goods off in a fixed number of installments. Aftepay founder Nick Molnar has called this the “debit economy”.  I think it has a lot more to do with the “immediate gratification economy”.

One small correction regarding Molnar. On the pod, I say that the native Australian is from Melbourne. Seems that in fact, Molnar is from Sydney. 

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All of us involved in this podcast are excited to get it off the ground. This will be a work in progress for a while. But we will never be successful without your help. Please subscribe to This Week in Local wherever you get your podcasts (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc.). And please give us a rating and review. We are always open to your direct feedback as well.

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You can also access the podcast on Localogy’s YouTube channel.