Linger and Dwell: Mike Ryan is the Calibration the E-commerce Industry Needs.
Struggle Bus Episode 5 review
Timing is a virtue - Step back in time Mike Ryan
The Post Nobody Remembered.Two years ago, somebody at Smarter Ecommerce published a post about Google Marketing Live and the arrival of conversational campaign creation. The post asked a sequence of questions that, in retrospect, read like a compass bearing for where this industry was heading. Who is this for? How do we think about this technology? Who can versus who should? And then, buried near the end, a single line that has only grown more relevant since:
I hope we’ll all linger and dwell at this point in the technology.
Mike Ryan wrote it. He doesn’t remember writing it.
That’s not a failure of memory. Mike publishes so much, the blog, the podcast, the LinkedIn analysis, the Twitter dispatches, the webinars with people like Google’s own Ginny Marvin, that individual pieces disappear into the flow of a continuous, long-running argument he’s been having with the industry for years. The ideas compound. The specific posts fade.
But that line, linger and dwell, is the key to understanding Mike Ryan. In an industry that has built its entire identity around tempo and momentum and the race to the next model, he is the person gently suggesting we pull over and look at the map. Not because he’s scared of the destination. Because he’s not sure anyone has checked whether we’re on the right road.
Who Is Mike Ryan?
Originally from Boston and based in Austria, Mike Ryan is Head of Ecommerce Insights at Smarter Ecommerce (smec), with over a decade of experience in the retail and PPC landscape. He hosts the Growing Ecommerce podcast, has spoken at SMX, OMR, and DMEXCO, and was ranked among the most influential PPC experts in the world by PPCsurvey.com, number seven for 2024. He co-hosted a webinar with Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison, which is the rough equivalent of getting a sitdown with the Pope to talk theology, except the theology is Performance Max and the Pope answers questions on Twitter.
He moved to Austria for love. He stayed, apparently, for the detachment.
Mike is the kind of person who makes you feel immediately that you’re talking to someone who has already thought about the thing you’re raising, not because he’s dismissive, but because his brain is genuinely a few steps ahead and he’s being patient with the rest of us. He describes himself as a lifelong learner, which is usually a cringeworthy phrase but sounds earned when Mike says it. He calls himself an introvert and an intuitive. He’s also genuinely funny, in the dry, economical way of someone who doesn’t need to try hard, the kind of wit that lands quietly and then you’re still thinking about it ten minutes later. It is not very American. I have been dreaming of sitting talking best comedies with him quite a few times. In a safe way Mike, in a safe way.
He also had a behind-the-scenes meeting with Temu, about which he has said very little in public. Which tells you a lot about Mike Ryan.
His Trajectory and path is less walked
Mike’s entry into smec was through content marketing for PPC software. He spent weeks onboarding with client teams to learn how they manage accounts and what their clients were actually dealing with. That immersion, choosing to understand the work before writing about it, is the foundation of everything that followed. He wasn’t parachuted in as a commentator. He learned the craft from the inside. I think of his commentary the same way I do when I listen to the famed Al Michaels - equally comfortable on ice or over home base. Michaels broadcast career started one place and moved another, like Mike - he too is a master of his craft.
