Christian Scharmüller

Christian Scharmüller

Managing Director & CCO Smarter Ecommerce
Christian Scharmüller

With over 15 years of experience in digital advertising, Chris has worked closely with some of the world's largest e-commerce brands, including Hugo Boss, Decathlon, The Hut Group, and JD Sports. As CCO & Managing Director of Smarter Ecommerce (smec), he maintains daily contact with leadership teams at top-tier online retailers, giving him an unfiltered view of the real challenges they face: scaling profitably across borders, navigating platform changes, and maintaining growth in increasingly competitive markets. His direct line to innovation teams at Google and Microsoft, combined with hands-on experience solving internationalization and profitability challenges, makes him a trusted advisor for brands ready to break through their next growth ceiling.

Leading Forward Through Rapid Change and Disruption

3:20 PM CLIENT CASE STUDY: Cutting through AI noise: Winning Paid Search in the Agentic Commerce Era

AI search news is filled with hype: "ChatGPT will kill Google", "Autonomous shopping agents are everywhere", "Automation has eliminated control". None of it reflects reality. If you're making AI search decisions based on headlines, not evidence — that's expensive. This session is the corrective.

OpenAI aims to become a $100B ad business, yet still relies on Google Shopping data to power its own carousels and has pivoted away from agentic checkout. Meanwhile, Google continues to dominate transactional traffic. Its "Power Pack" (Performance Max, Demand Gen, AI Max) is already serving ads inside new commerce surfaces like AI Mode and AIO. Not in beta. Live. Driving results today. The gap between leaders who see this clearly and those chasing headlines is widening.

Join this session and leave with an actionable framework:

  • Understanding shy Google holds its grip on transactional intent — and how your Merchant feed is the backdoor to winning ChatGPT's Shopping carousels
  • Utilizing Google's hidden control tools to train algorithms with your margins, inventory, and fulfillment costs
  • Building the winning stack for profitable paid search: unified data, reconfigured teams, enabling tech

Straight answers on what's real, what's distraction, and where to invest now.


Check out the incredible speaker line-up to see who will be joining Christian.

Download The Latest Agenda