Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news:

Chart of the week 📈:

Marketplace Pulse dives into: ‘E-Commerce Is Taking Share From Stores Again’

(…or shall we say Amazon is taking share?)

Autopilot’s Weekly Search Pulse 🔎

On Linkedin I started publishing a daily search pulse on core category & brand trends, this weeks content featured. Full coverage on Linkedin & X.

Insights from This Week on Search Pulse (Wk 34)

• Mon · halloween decorations — top-80 in August, category wide open

• Tue · collagen — term +61, Vital Proteins takes the growth

• Wed · command strips — rank flat, Command widens lead to 23%

• Thu · north face backpack — term cools, The North Face consolidates to 28%

• Fri · q tips — Q-tips 32% to 41%, biggest staple gain

Trend insights:

AI News of the Week:

57% (!!!) of respondents to this Tinuiti survey ahead of the holiday season 2026 expect to use AI tools across the shopping journey.

Autopilot offers a path for brands to prepare and make their product data & trust signals easily accessible for the various AI search platforms. Learn more here.

Movers & Shakers 🙌

• Levanta Raises $22M Series B Led by Volition Capital to Expand Creator Affiliate Platform [Netinfluencer]

• How Boka is winning Amazon with a beauty marketing playbook [Glossy]

Podcast 🎙️

Spotify | Apple Podcast | Podchaser | Podbeam

Strategy ♟

• Amazon Becomes Vital Sales Outlet For Independent Merchants [The Information]

• AMZN Stock Climbs As Amazon Reportedly Plans Automation Initiative To Use AI And Robotics For Delivery Station [Yahoo Finance]

• Brands Briefing: To grow sales on Amazon, brands are turning to TikTok Shop [Modern Retail]

• YouTube Shopping Creators can now tag Amazon products [Youtube]

• Walmart’s AI Bet Is Working: Sparky Users Spend 40% More as CEO Says AI Will Reshape ‘Nearly Every Part of Our Business’ [Yahoo Fiannce]

• Target’s new beauty selection has almost no Black-owned brands [Modern Retail]

Events 🎤

Two webinars this week - with a fantastic group of speakers, join us:

#1 The Algorithm Knows your Customer Better Than You Do - Now What
Wed 9/2 👉 Sign up

#2 How to Optimize your Amazon Listing for the AI Era
Thu 9/3: 9am PST | 12pm EST | 6pm CET 👉 Sign Up

• Brandtech Connect @ IFA, Berlin, Sep 5

• Amazon Accelerate, Seattle, Sep 22-24 [early bird sales end Aug 29!]

• Amazon unBoxed, San Francisco, Sep 28-30

• Social Commerce Summit, Los Angeles, Oct 14-16

Make this week count 🙌

Christian

Share 📦 The Order

Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news:

Chart of the week 📈:

Flexport President Sanne Manders this week posted: Refunds are happening

Autopilot’s Weekly Search Pulse 🔎

On Linkedin I started publishing a daily search pulse on core category & brand trends, this weeks content featured. Full coverage on Linkedin & X.

Insights from This Week on Search Pulse (Wk 33)

• Mon · soda — term surged +838, Coca-Cola took #1

• Tue · ninja creami — Ninja extended lead, 35%→58%

• Wed · clorox wipes — Clorox widened lead, 26%→31%

• Thu · teeth whitening strips — Crest pulled away, +10 points

• Fri · nail polish — OPI passed Sally Hansen for #1

Emerging trends:

AI News of the Week:

Retailgentic reports insights on

And, quoting Salesforce to expect 20% of holiday traffic from AI agents.

The AI channel is opening quickly right now, and the competitive rules are being written (and re-written) week-after-week with brands catching up on Agentic Engine Optimization, and frontier models changing how their models work (my post from this week dug into Reddit and Youtube taking a hit with ChatGPT 5.6).

The time to optimize for Q4 is now: The lowest hanging fruit are optimizations tied to the brand’s own domain. 👉 Learn more about how Agentsites facilitate this.

Movers & Shakers 🙌

• Performance Agency Chief Media Acquires 2 Firms to Beef up Amazon and TikTok Expertise [Ad Week]

Strategy ♟

• Amazon Prime Air drone delivery is expanding to nearly 500 US cities and towns this year [Amazon]

• Amazon’s AI shelf—what brands must do to compete for visibility [Ad Age]

• TikTok Shop Helps Sellers Make Millions On Other Platforms Like Amazon [Forbes]

• Walmart gets close to $3 billion in tariff refunds [Modern Retail]

• The new AI playbook: The rules brands are setting around customer-facing content [Modern Retail]

• Six months of ChatGPT ads [Juozas Kaziukėnas]

• ChatGPT to get ads in first EU countries [Euractiv]

• ChatGPT 5.6 reshuffled domains, with Youtube & Reddit taking a hit [Linkedin]

Events 🎤

• Brandtech Connect @ IFA, Berlin, Sep 5

• Amazon Accelerate, Seattle, Sep 22-24 [early bird sales end Aug 29!]

• Amazon unBoxed, San Francisco, Sep 28-30

• Social Commerce Summit, Los Angeles, Oct 14-16

Make this week count 🙌

Christian

Share 📦 The Order

Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news:

Chart of the week 📈:

In ‘AI and organic search are doing different jobs: What Shopify’s data shows’ Shopify digs into the Third Shelf.

Autopilot’s Weekly Search Pulse 🔎

On Linkedin I started publishing a daily search pulse on core category & brand trends, this weeks content featured. Full coverage on Linkedin & X.

Insights from This Week on Search Pulse (Wk 31)

• Mon · pens — Sharpie nearly doubles share, takes #1

• Tue · calculator — term rockets +370, Texas Instruments holds #1

• Wed · post it notes — Post-it widens lead, 12% to 17%

• Thu · spiral notebook — term surges +312, Five Star holds #1

• Fri · fall decor — season turns, +429, category wide open

The fall seasons starts early:

Movers & Shakers 🙌

• Nexxus Capital Acquires Assets of another Top Amazon Aggregator [PR Newswire]

• Titan Acquires Profasee, Expanding Its AI Workforce for Amazon Brands [Titan]

Strategy ♟

• Alexa for Shopping Deep Dive: Doug Herrington & Rajiv Mehta: Episode 6: Meet Your AI shopping assistant: Alexa for Shopping [Youtube]

• An industrywide power crunch is changing how Amazon runs its e-commerce empire [Business Insider]

• Amazon’s New User Agreement Seeks to Curb Class-Action Suits [Bloomberg]

• Walmart finally lets advertisers exclude certain search terms [Modern Retail]

• Back-to-school sales tax holidays continue in August, September [ABC News]

• eBay Q2 results [ebay IR]

  • Revenue of $3.1 billion, up 15% on an as-reported basis and up 14% on an FX-Neutral basis

  • Gross Merchandise Volume (”GMV”) of $22.4 billion, up 15% on an as-reported basis and up 14% on an FX-Neutral basis

• The wellness M&A hot streak shows no signs of slowing down [Modern Retail]

Events 🎤

• Salt Lake City eCom Summit, SLC, Aug 20

• Brandtech Connect @ IFA, Berlin, Sep 5

• Amazon Accelerate, Seattle, Sep 22-24

• Amazon unBoxed, San Francisco, Sep 28-30

• Social Commerce Summit, Los Angeles, Oct 14-16

Make this week count 🙌

Christian

Share 📦 The Order

Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news:

Chart of the week 📈:

Q4 is 7 weeks away, here’s a spotlight on the brands that owned the 2025 holiday season:

As we are passionate about search & discovery, here’s the discovery view on the upcoming holiday seasons: the first Christmas where the AI search Third Shelf reaches scale. More details on how to act now here.

Autopilot’s Weekly Search Pulse 🔎

On Linkedin I started publishing a daily search pulse on core category & brand trends, this weeks content featured. Full coverage on Linkedin & X.

Insights from This Week on Search Pulse (Wk 30)

• Mon · highlighters — BiC doubles share, takes #1

• Tue · electric toothbrush — Oral-B 2.4×'s, takes #1

• Wed · microwave — Chefman passes BLACK+DECKER for #1

• Thu · twin mattress — Zinus doubles, #3 → #1

• Fri · colored pencils — Crayola owns both top slots

Here’s this week’s top 10 trend summary for 2025 vs 2026:

AI News of the week:

Amazon had stopped Perplexities AI shopping agent in court from shopping on behalf on its user on the marketplace.

The court this week overturned the stop which opens the door for wider agent-shopping adoption on the marketplace.

The criteria in which a Computer Fraud and Abuse Act claim will hold are clarified as:

1. Intentionally accessed a computer

2. Without authorization or in excess of authorized access

3. Thereby obtaining information

4. From a protected computer

5. Causing at least $5,000 in aggregate loss in a one-year period

[More details by Cooley in ‘Ninth Circuit Rules on AI Agent ‘Access’ to Third-Party Websites Under CFAA’]

Shopify Q2:

Shopify released it’s Q2 financials this week.

The highlights:

• Revenue $3.58B, up 34%. GMV $115.6B. Free cash flow margin 18%.

• AI traffic to storefronts tripled. AI-search orders tripled. Those buyers convert 2x.

• Catalog-fed AI searches convert 2x better than scraped page data. Structured data wins.

• 75% of AI-attributed orders came from outside the top 100 categories.

• Loan losses hit $141M, up 76%. Margins slipping as merchant solutions outgrow subscriptions.

Amazon’s title & item highlight changes taking broader effect:

Amazon’s title updates to short titles & item highlights are set to take broader effect this Monday, August 10th. More details here.

Movers & Shakers 🙌

• Gorilla Commerce built a 9-figure business on Amazon. Now, it’s launching in Walmart stores [Modern Retail]

Strategy ♟

• Amazon loses US court ban on Perplexity’s AI shopping tools [Reuters]

• Under Amazon, Whole Foods Is Shedding ‘Whole Paycheck’ Reputation [Bloomberg]

• Shopify says AI search is driving more traffic and sales, not replacing Google [Techcrunch]

• UPS CFO on the lessons learned from scaling back Amazon—and why the strategy is paying off [Fortune]

• Retail’s new operating model centers on leaner teams, smarter data and physical community [Glossy]

• Brands Briefing: Why apparel IPOs are creeping back up [Modern Retail]

• Reddit announcement: expanding a new shopping feature that turns product mentions inside threads into full blown product pages [Linkedin]

• OpenAI drives visibility of fake brand in experiment: “I launched a fake deodorant brand to see if AI would notice. “ [Deana on X]

Events 🎤

• Salt Lake City eCom Summit, SLC, Aug 20

• Brandtech Connect @ IFA, Berlin, Sep 5

• Amazon Accelerate, Seattle, Sep 22-24

• Amazon unBoxed, San Francisco, Sep 28-30

• Social Commerce Summit, Los Angeles, Oct 14-16

Make this week count 🙌

Christian

Share 📦 The Order

Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news:

Chart of the week 📈:

Amazon released booming Q2 numbers this week:

• Net sales increased 20% year-over-year

• Operating income was $27.5 billion, up 43% year-over-year

• AWS net sales increased 37%—its fastest growth in 18 quarters—to a $169 billion annualized revenue run rate

• Alexa drives Average Order …

Read more

Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news:

Chart of the week 📈:

Marketplace Pulse in ‘Amazon Business Reaches $60 Billion’ highlights how the business scaled to $60B within 10 years.

Largest Alexa for Shopping Study Published 📚

This week our large scale study on Alexa’s Third Shelf rolled out. You can access it for free here: https://www…

Read more

If you want your own search term mapped — every product the AI recommends for it, with exact ranks and ad status — we’re doing that free for brands on LinkedIn right now. Comment your term on the launch…

Read more

Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news:

Chart of the week 📈:

This week Autopilotbrands.com Alexa study across 70,000 ASINs got featured in Marketplace Pulse: Amazon’s AI Doesn’t Read the Rankings

For a deep dive on this study, check out our upcoming webinar below.

Read more

Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news:

Chart of the week 📈:

In ‘China Won Amazon’s Top 10,000, America Kept Its Top 100’ Marketplace Pulse captures the increasing share of China-based sellers on Amazon. The US GMV share of the Top 100 Amazon sellers amounts to 93.2%, while for sellers 5,000-1,000 its 51.8% US vs 45.1% China vs 3.1% R…

Read more

Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news:

Chart of the week 📈:

Nike’s eCommerce problem: Digital sales continue their decline [Digital Commerce 360]

Autopilot’s Weekly Search Pulse 🔎

On Linkedin I started publishing a daily search pulse on core category & brand trends, this weeks content featured. Full coverage on Linkedin & X.

Insights …

Read more

Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news:

Chart of the week 📈: Prime Day Insights

Adobe published Prime Day 2026 spending insights

Read more

Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news:

Chart of the week 📈

In ‘TikTok Shop Sells Personal Transformation’ Marketplace Pulse digs into TikTok product categories:

Autopilot’s Weekly Search Pulse 🔎

On Linkedin I started publishing a daily search pulse on core category & brand trends, this weeks content featured. Full coverage on Linkedin &

Read more

Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news:

Chart of the week 📈

Marketplace Pulse dug into the revenue concentration on TikTok shop in ‘On TikTok Shop, 1% of Sellers Drive 60% of GMV’

Autopilot’s Weekly Search Pulse 🔎

On Linkedin I started publishing a daily search pulse on core category & brand trends, this weeks content featured. Full cove…

Read more

Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news:

Chart of the week 📈

In ‘Walmart Marketplace Growth Reaches Fastest Pace in Years’ Marketplace Pulse covers Walmarts 50% YoY Q1 growth of its third party marketplace:

Autopilot’s Weekly Search Pulse 🔎

On Linkedin I started publishing a daily search pulse on core category & brand trends, this weeks c…

Read more

Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news:

Chart of the Week:

Jason Goldberg’s recent post highlights TikTok’s acceleration:

Movers & Shakers 🤖

• Here’s to an aggregator success story 🎉: Church & Dwight Announces Miss Mouth’s Messy Eater® Brand Acquisition [Business Wire]

• Global-e to Enhance Logistics Offering with Acquisition of Passport, a …

Read more

Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news:

Chart of the Week:

U.S. e-commerce posted a 9.8% Q1, but roughly half was price, not volume, and much of the rest was financed by a 33%+ jump in BNPL borrowing at Affirm and Klarna. Marketplace Pulse breaks down why the "10% quarter" was weaker than it looked.

🆕 Introducing a new part of The Order…

Read more

Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news:

Chart of the Week:

US, India & Japan lead top Amazon marketplaces by monthly web visits. Marketplace Pulse’s ‘Amazon’s Least Competitive Marketplace Is Now Everywhere’ has the details:

AI News 🤖

Amazon beefed up Alexa this week by moving its Rufus beta into Alexa for shopping: ‘Meet Alexa for Shopp…

Read more

Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news:

Chart of the Week:

Marketplace Pulse dig into the evolution of AI search ads this week: “Rufus, ChatGPT, and the Agentic Ad Convergence”:

AI News 🤖

OpenAI launched their self-serve ads manager and cost-per-click bidding. More details in ‘New ways to buy ChatGPT ads’:

Read more

Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news:

Chart of the Week #1:

Amazon’s results this week showed a shrinking 3P share, both versus vendor and also as part of its growing overall business. 3P Seller Services are up 14% YoY.

Marketplace Pulse digs in further in ‘Amazon Is Regaining 1P Unit Share’:

Read more

Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news:

Chart of the Week:

Marketplace Pulse shared ‘How Marketplace Sellers Are Using AI’ this week: Great to see listing optimization being the biggest area of highest measurable positive impact. Autopilot computes organic listing impact now bottom up for each keyword and ASIN. You can give it a try here

Read more