How to Structure Product Data for AI Search and Marketplaces | Mark Howell, Rithum, w/ Chloe Thomas

Mark Howell is the Director Retailers EMEA at Rithum, where they help the world’s leading brands and retailers list, market, fulfill, and optimise products across every major commerce channel – from catalog to consumer. Rithum’s single connected network now has over 40,000 brands, suppliers and retailers including Walmart, Marks & Spencer, Samsung, and many more. Before his decade at Rithum Mark spent 10 years at Tesco supporting all drop ship and marketplace sellers to list and launch on Tesco.com. In this episode, Chloe and Mark unpack the hidden engine behind modern eCommerce growth: product data. They explore how brands can get products to market faster, manage listings across multiple marketplaces, and prepare their data for the next wave of AI-powered shopping and search. Watch and learn: 🤖 How AI search decides which products shoppers see first ⚡ The product-launch shortcut that gets listings live faster 🛒 How brands manage product data across multiple marketplaces 🔍 The hidden product-data mistakes that increase returns 🌍 What changes when you start selling internationally 🧠 Why the smartest ecommerce teams use AI with a human review process Key timestamps to dive straight in: 05:53 Describing products with evidence 08:06 Managing different retail platforms 12:19 Brands asserting eCommerce guidelines 15:21 Negotiating retail brand guidelines 17:20 Handling Marketplace Customer Expectations 22:33 AI implementation challenges and oversight 23:22 Legal challenges in agentic commerce 29:34 Storing and sharing business data 32:04 Listen to Mark’s Top Tips! 36:17 Episode sponsored by Rithum. Connect with Rithum to find out how they can help you and your business. https://www.rithum.com/ Like what you're hearing? Then please do subscribe to the eCommerce MasterPlan Podcast, find us: 🦒 On Spotify: https://ecmp.info/spotify   🍏 On Apple: https://ecmp.info/apple   ▶️ On YouTube: https://ecmp.info/youtube   🕸️ OR just head to our website for all the info, and hit play here https://ecommercemasterplan.com/rithu...