Research Notebook
How technology is changing commerce, and what operators need to understand before the shift becomes obvious.
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.
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.
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.
Retail Media Is Starting to Lose Its Separate Buying Interface
Teads and Koddi made participating onsite retail inventory buyable through OpenRTB in an omnichannel platform. The specification standardizes access while leaving ranking, feeds, data and measurement untouched, which is where differentiation now has to live.
The Commerce Media Moat Is Splitting Into Basket Data and Spend Data
Citi Commerce Media targets advertising with card transaction data and measures outcomes inside the payment relationship. Retailers see the item and the basket. Payment networks see the merchant and the amount. Breadth costs detail.
McDonald's Is Building a Media Network Without a Marketplace
McDonald's disclosed a media network pilot across 450 company-operated restaurants and an aspiration to build it into a billion-dollar business. It has identity, purchase data, frequency and screens. What it has not shown is closed-loop measurement.
Retail Media Is Becoming Infrastructure, Not a Network Every Retailer Builds
Gopuff runs its own storefront, fulfillment and ad sales business, and it still put Instacart Carrot Ads underneath its advertising. Retail media is separating into a layer retailers own and a layer they rent.
The Ad Click Is Becoming a Conversation
OpenAI is testing Sponsored Agents, a labeled conversation a shopper can enter after an ad, and opened ChatGPT Ads to Shopify merchants. The paid layer is growing a post-click stage.
AI Shopping Is Growing a Third Commercial Layer
Snipp brought brand rebates, offers and loyalty programs into ChatGPT and Claude. The launch makes a third commercial layer visible alongside organic recommendations and paid ads, but for now it reaches only shoppers who install the tool.
Amazon Can Now Sell ChatGPT Ads. The Data Did Not Come With It.
Amazon Ads announced a ChatGPT advertising partnership with OpenAI, now in pilot with select US advertisers. The announcement confirms a buying route into ChatGPT inventory. It says nothing about Amazon commerce signals, catalog data, measurement, or attribution on that surface, and OpenAI's own documentation says its ads system controls all delivery decisions.
AI Search May Be an Interface, Not a New Channel
Google confirmed a small experiment letting exact and phrase match Search campaigns serve text ads in AI Mode. The change itself is narrow. What it exposes is that the boundary advertisers organize around was adjusted quietly, on a surface Google has not publicly documented.
ChatGPT Ads Hit a $1 Billion Run Rate in 200 Days. The Audience Came First.
OpenAI says ChatGPT Ads reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate in under 200 days. A run rate is an extrapolation, not collected revenue. The more useful question is how any ad business scales that fast, and the answer sits in a sentence about something else: more than a billion weekly active users were already there.