Separating Real Signals from the Noise

Sep 16, 2026

Shaia Erlbaum, co-founder and CEO of Merciv, builds AI-powered consumer intelligence tools for brands. He explores why shrinking research teams need better systems, how online behavior reveals more than surveys, and why verification matters as data becomes commoditized. The conversation also examines agentic research workflows and how GLP-1s are reshaping culture, retail, beauty, grocery, and wellness.

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INSIGHT

Why Insights Teams Matter More While They Shrink

Shrinking in-house insights teams now face greater executive dependence as brands outsource foresight and turn to AI tools.
The emerging opportunity is continuous research that combines proprietary knowledge, external signals, and real-time consumer behavior.

ANECDOTE

Turning Weeks Of Research Into Quick Answers

Merciv helps teams answer questions that once required weeks by connecting research, syndicated data, social content, and internal knowledge.
Customers use it for business reviews, segmentation, category analysis, and correlations between historical research and current behavior.

ANECDOTE

Competitor Reviews Revealed The Missing Zipper

A leggings brand found competitors gaining market share because their products included a popular zipper pocket.
Mining competitor reviews exposed the overlooked feature, leading the brand to launch a new variant with a zipper.

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The in-house research team has hollowed out, and the LLMs picking up the slack are only delivering their best guesses. Merciv, the agentic brain behind Future Commerce’s Signal Reports, has set out to deliver auditable, defensible, and unified reporting solutions — and it’s redefining what brands are capable of achieving in-house in the process.

Phillip and Alicia welcome Merciv co-founder and CEO Shaia Erlbaum to the show to talk about how brands can read signals in real time, and verify their relevancy. Shaia argues that data itself is commoditizing, but verification is not. The most honest consumer signal lives too deep for surveys to reach, which is why our Signal Reports are looking deeper than stated behaviors and are telling completely new kinds of retail and culture stories.

The Toothpaste Doesn't Lie

Key takeaways:

Insights teams keep shrinking while the C-suite depends on them more than ever.
Surveys capture posturing. Forums, reviews, and comment sections capture behavior.
Data is commoditizing. Proprietary brand knowledge is the durable moat.
The first Signal Report, a collaboration between Future Commerce and Merciv, maps where GLP-1s removed cultural friction – and where friction migrated to.
"Almost everyone answering a survey question about how many times they brush their teeth in a day will say twice. But if you actually look at those sales figures, they simply don't sell enough toothpaste." — Shaia Erlbaum
"These models aren't built to tell you, 'Hey, I don't know.'" — Shaia Erlbaum
"There's a world where data's already becoming a commodity… a lot of the real advantage is less rooted in which model's more intelligent, but more so in to what degree can we actually verify the information we're coming across." — Shaia Erlbaum
"The office of the CMO is becoming more of an individual contributor role." — Phillip Jackson

In-Show Mentions:

Merciv: merciv.com
"Frictionless Wellness: GLP-1s and What Comes After the Age of Autonomy" – the first Future Commerce Signal Report, powered by Merciv.
LORE, our newest book on who really writes your brand's story. Get it in the Future Commerce shop.

Associated Links:

Read the first Signal Report, Frictionless Wellness: GLP-1s and What Comes After the Age of Autonomy
Insiders 204: The Ozempic Effect: How GLP-1s Rewrote the Gospel of Self-Love
Episode 435: Predictions 2026: Prepare for the Age of Autonomy
Episode 367: AI Agents Are Here. "Brands" Might Be In Danger.
Episode 447: The Agent Has Left the Building
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