Research Notebook
How technology is changing commerce, and what operators need to understand before the shift becomes obvious.
Shopify AI Connectors: How to Manage Your Store From ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and More
Shopify documents official connectors for seven AI assistants: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Meta Muse, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. What each can do in your store, where they differ, what Shopify blocks for all of them, and how access and permissions work. These are merchant-side connectors, not Shopify Agentic Storefronts.
Google Merchant Center UCP Analytics: How AI Checkout Reporting Works
Google's UCP Analytics dashboard in Merchant Center reports Buy clicks, purchases, purchase rate, order value, cancellations and cart transfers for UCP checkout in AI Mode and Gemini. Its funnel starts at the Buy button. It measures the transaction half of agentic commerce and almost nothing about the products the AI considered before that click.
AI Shopping Assistants Are Becoming a Standard Retail Media Placement
Criteo now lists a retailer's AI shopping assistant as one of its Sponsored Products page types, live at Albertsons since June. The assistant translates the conversation into keywords and filters, and the existing auction, bids and reports do the rest. The keyword did not disappear in conversational commerce. It moved behind the conversation.
The RealReal Ask TRR: Why AI Search Works Differently for One-of-One Inventory
The RealReal opened Ask TRR, its AI shopping agent built with Gemini Enterprise, to all 45 million members. Its catalog is the interesting part: nearly every item is one of a kind and inventory turns over daily. Conversational search is worth most when inventory changes constantly and shoppers know their intent better than the terminology, and The RealReal's own case for it is about markdowns, not just conversion.
Personal Agent Protocol: How AI Agents Get Permission to Act for Customers
Sierra and Meta announced Personal Agent Protocol on October 6, an open standard in development for how personal AI agents work with businesses on a customer's behalf. The v0.1 specification is not published yet. The idea that matters for retailers is two separate grants in one session: the customer decides what the agent may do, and the business decides what it will accept.
Amazon Review Requests Ads: How Amazon's New Paid Review Invitations Work
Amazon Review Requests is a new Amazon Ads campaign type that shows review invitations to customers who recently bought your product. Here is who qualifies, how it differs from the free Request a Review button and Amazon Vine, what Amazon has and has not said about billing and launch timing, and how to measure cost per incremental review.
Google Now Explains Your Brand to People Who Already Know It
In late September, AI Overviews spread across branded Google searches, from 5 of 98 bare brand names on July 1 to 63 of 100 on September 30 in Ahrefs' panel. Branded search did not overtake non-branded; it caught up. The open question is whether the answer sits above the brand's own result, and what it says when it does.
The Hardest Part of Agentic Commerce May Be Knowing What the Shopper Wants
Agentic commerce has two representation problems. Whether the agent understands the product is the one the industry has worked on. Anthropic's controlled book market found the other one, whether the agent understands the person, accounted for 85% of the gap from the best possible outcome, and that a full model upgrade moved human outcomes by 0.01.
Amazon Just Put Channel Mix Inside the Algorithm
In March I wrote that budget allocation, target ROAS, channel mix and product prioritization should stay with a human. Amazon's September 29 Full-Funnel Campaigns documentation puts two of those four inside the optimizer, and the DVA+ capability table shows Amazon now selling delegation level as a product choice.
Shopify Just Gave the Storefront a Second Front Door for AI Agents
Shopify extended WebMCP into checkout on September 28, so a browser agent can read and update an eligible checkout and submit the order after the buyer confirms it. The tools use the same state as the checkout UI, which makes this one commerce session with two interfaces rather than a separate storefront for machines.
AI Can Find the Small Retailer. It Still Recommends the Big One.
Vaer AI analyzed roughly 460,000 AI shopping answers for Lightspeed. Large and small retailers hold about the same share of citations, and large chains win the lead recommendation about two and a half times as often. Retrieval and selection are different achievements.
AI Did Not Kill the Messy Middle. It Moved It Into the Machine.
DoorDash reports that nearly half of restaurant orders placed through its assistant go to local spots the customer had not tried before. The visible consideration set shrinks while the searched set grows, which relocates discovery rather than compressing it away.