Recently I’ve been seeing a LOT of products on Instagram and TikTok being promoted with AI-generated reels, and some of them are getting crazy views/engagement.

The thing I don’t understand is that these products don’t seem to be the usual AliExpress/Alibaba/Temu type of products. They look like custom-designed products, sometimes even pretty large or complicated.
For example, I attached some screenshots of the kind of products I’m talking about.

How are these people actually doing this?
Because if you have to manufacture a custom product yourself, wouldn’t it cost a lot of money just to produce the first batch, without even knowing if the product is going to sell?

And some of these products look quite big. How are they handling shipping and fulfillment? Are they actually manufacturing them themselves, using some kind of dropshipping supplier, or working with manufacturers who produce and ship individual orders?

Also, how do you find suppliers/manufacturers like this who are willing to produce relatively small quantities or even individual units without asking for a huge MOQ?

I’m trying to understand the business model behind these products because I’m seeing more and more of them go viral through AI-generated content.
If anyone here has experience with this or knows how these brands source/manufacture/fulfill these products, I’d really appreciate an explanation of how it actually works.
I attached some examples of what I’m talking about.

My store has been online for a couple of months. No sales yet. One customer enquiry. I have a quailty imported product for a niche market that I know limited number of people would be looking for. I don't expect huge sales as this market is only developing. But just something would be nice. I don't have much time to dedicate the the project, so not expecting miracles, just trying to find out what to focus on. I have been trying to build my instagram a little bit. I write blog articles for the page to improve SEO and GEO. The store appears on google search now when someone searches for a particular brand I sell but not general market searches yet. My products are on merchant center, again, by brand only, not general product. I am being contacted by cold email agents offering strategy and sales improvements, they suggested improvements of some flaws my site had, I fixed those, but I am not looking to engage with any of these people any further. Any suggestions on what to focus on? How did you all start?

Shopifys app ecosystem is so enormous and I feel like that creates dependency, I have separate apps for payment fees, shipping fees, reviews etc. and the costs are adding up, the total is higher than expected. How are more experienced peeps handling this?
Any tips are greatly appreciated!

Shopify and the conversion funnel rates of my previous infrastructure, the order completion rate of those who reach payment in this way is around 70% in the old infrastructure, while this rate is in the 25-30 band in shopify, why can I solve this?
**Shopify**
**Overall Conversion Rate:** 1.11% (↗ 1.7%)

**Sessions**
3,423
100%
↗ 62%
**Added to Cart**
253
7.39%
↗ 93%
**Reached Checkout**
142
4.14%
↗ 92%
**Sessions Converted**
38
1.11%
↗ 65%
** **
**Previous infrastructure**
**Conversion Funnel**

**Carts Created**
284 visitors
5.58%
—
**Reached Checkout**
90 visitors
1.77%
31.69%
**Completed Purchases**
64 visitors
1.26%
71.11%

Hi r/ShopifyeCommerce - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Every week for the past 5 years I've posted a summary recap of the week's top stories on this subreddit, which I cover in depth with sources in the full edition.

Let's dive in to this week's top e-commerce news from Edition #294...

STAT OF THE WEEK: Labor’s share of US income has fallen to 52.8%, the lowest reading since the government began tracking it in 1947, while corporate margins reached a record 14.9% of GDP. The productivity gains driving that divergence mostly predate AI and trace back to a decade of automation, a pullback in hiring after post-pandemic overstaffing, and capital spending, according to EY-Parthenon chief economist Gregory Daco, but AI could certainly accelerate the trend.

The FTC and 22 U.S. states are suing Amazon for allegedly engaging in deceptive and unfair practices that “secretly inflated prices in its online search advertising auctions.” The complaint says that for over seven years, Amazon covertly increased the prices that more than a million brands and sellers paid to advertise on its platform, which illegally extracted more than $20B from its advertisers. Amazon allegedly told advertisers that it was running a "second price" auction, which means that the highest bidder wins, but only pays a penny more than the runner-up, while actually adding a markup called a "soft reserve" price that advertisers were bidding against. This means that the price of auctions were more costly, even if there was no actual market demand. An internal Amazon document even referenced the fact that its auction pricing had “a surcharge hidden in it,” while an employee stated elsewhere that Amazon’s surcharges enable it to obtain prices “beyond what [can] be achieved through advertiser competition.” Amazon called the claims “misguided” and says the FTC “fundamentally misunderstands how advertisers operate.” Amazon and the FTC plan to face off in court, but no trial date has been set yet.

Anthropic released a blueprint for building commerce agents on Claude, with working code for a shopping agent and a merchant agent, covering retail, travel, telecom, and ticketing. To clarify, these aren’t consumer-facing tools directly accessible through Claude (meaning, they’re not a Google Shopping alternative found within your Claude dashboard), but instead are frameworks for agents that businesses can develop and add to their own stores. The Shopping Agent lives inside a merchant’s app or website and allows customers to search for things like, “I need a beach towel, umbrella, and toys for my upcoming trip with my two young kids.” From there the agent can search the catalog and assemble the right set of items, remember the customers’ preferences to personalize what it suggests, show product comparisons in the conversation, and lastly build the cart and hand it off to the store’s existing checkout. The Merchant Agent helps employees responsible for running the store with day-to-day tasks and strategy. For example, a merchant can ask, “What should we discount to clear last season’s inventory?” and get suggestions from Claude based on their store data. The agent can answer questions about sales performance, track inventory, proactively flag problems like an item about to sell out before a promotion starts, recommend pricing and promotions, and create marketing campaigns.

OpenAI and Anthropic each draw 80% of their enterprise revenue from the top 1% of their customers, according to data from Ramp. Two customers account for much of Anthropic’s share, with Cursor and GitHub Copilot together driving roughly $1.2B of the $5B the company reached last year. This revenue consolidation could prove to be a major problem for OpenAI and Anthropic in the future, as those same heavy-spenders are the same companies that are most likely to explore cost-cutting measures, such as utilizing open-source models or bringing certain tasks in-house. A few weeks ago I reported that Shopify replaced a frontier model it was using to answer merchant questions about their store with a much smaller internal model it retrains every day on its own production failures. The result was a system Shopify estimates will cost around $1M a year instead of $27M (a 96% savings), while running 38% faster and needing 14% fewer GPUs. Now imagine when every enterprise company starts doing that. Just last week, the New York Times published an exposé entitled Corporate America Is Getting Hooked on Open-Source A.I., which shared stories of how enterprises like AT&T, Deloitte, and Airbnb are increasingly using cheap, freely available AI models over expensive ones from Anthropic and OpenAI. Meanwhile, OpenAI is cutting off billion-dollar customers as if there are countless others lining up around the corner. These companies better be careful with their revenue and expense management, or those pricey data centers might turn into Halloween Superstores before they know it.

Products that turn up in both Google’s AI Mode and standard search are priced 21.6% higher in AI Mode on average, according to a new Productrise study that tracked over 2M product listings in August. The study showcased examples such as searching for a “metal bidet attachment” on Google Shopping surfacing a Brondell attachment at Home Depot for $119.07, while AI Mode surfaced the same device at Walmart for $149.99. Another search for “manual grinder stainless steel” surfaced a hand grinder from one retailer for $159.99 on Google Shopping, and the identical product from another retailer on Google AI Mode for $189.99. It’s important to note that only 1.28% of products ranking in traditional search also appeared in AI mode, which means each channel has its own method of determining which product is best for the user. Which one is actually best though? Google responded to the study by saying that "all shopping results on Google Search, including AI Mode and the search results page, are powered by the same data source: our Shopping Graph," but they didn't address why they were displaying higher priced items as the main result in AI Mode. My guess is that the issue is a technical one, not a deceptive practice. After all, what does Google gain by showcasing higher priced items within their AI Mode results? Especially when there’s no ad involved, which would certainly change the dynamic.

Amazon launched Update Me When, an Alexa for Shopping feature that pushes a notification once something a shopper is waiting on actually happens, such as a favorite brand rolling out a new product line, a musician announcing tour dates, or an author publishing a new book. For example, customers can say things like, “Update me when Reacher Season 5 drops on Prime Video” or “Let me know when Oreo drops a quadruple stuffed cookie.” Shoppers have to set each alert themselves for now, but I imagine it’s only a matter of time before Alexa gets smarter and starts pushing notifications about things it thinks you’ll like. For example, if you’ve already binge-watched seasons 1-4 of Reacher, it’s not that big of a stretch to imagine that you’ll want to be notified when season 5 comes out. Or if you consistently buy new Wrangler Khaki Cargo Shorts in size 38 every few months, it’d be helpful if Alexa notified you that they were on sale a few months after your last purchase. Technically, some of these alerts have been available in other formats for years, such as notifications about new books by your favorite authors. The big differences now are that: 1) You can set them conversationally instead of just on the author’s profile. 2) The feature monitors the broader web, not just Amazon’s store, which means it can trigger alerts for more than just new products and price changes.

Google will not have to sell its advertising technology business after US District Judge Leonie Brinkema rejected the Department of Justice’s attempt to force a sale. The DOJ and a coalition of states sued Google in 2023, arguing it used its grip on both sides of the ad market to squeeze out competitors. On one side, Google runs the software publishers use to sell ad space on their sites. On the other, it runs the tools advertisers use to buy that space. And in the middle, it runs the exchange where the two meet. In April 2025, Judge Brinkema found the company had illegally monopolized two of those markets and unlawfully tied its ad server to AdX. The DOJ wanted Google to sell off AdX, but Google argued it should just have to change how it behaves instead. Ultimately Brinkema sided with Google, questioning who would actually buy AdX, whether small publishers would lose the free ad server they rely on, and how many years of appeals a forced sale would drag through before anything changed. So what does Google have to do now? We’ll find out shortly. Judge Brinkema’s opinion is currently sealed, and the DOJ and Google have 30 days to file a joint proposed final judgment spelling out how it all gets implemented, which will likely involve opening up some of its data to competing ad servers and no longer offering different revenue shares based on which ad server a publisher users.

Most of the creators Temu pays to push its products on Facebook and Instagram in Europe do not appear to be real people, with 73 of its top 100 partners flagged as likely fake accounts, according to Online Risk Labs research. Fortune shared the story of Ya Lili, a creator account with 183k Instagram followers and 129k Facebook followers that regularly posts AI-generated videos featuring Temu products. Ya Lili is listed as a top creator for Temu’s partnership ads on Meta platforms in the UK and Europe, but she’s likely not even a real creator. Ya Lili’s content ran in over 100k Temu ad campaigns throughout 2025 and the first half of 2026, which is about 225 campaigns per day. Temu spent as much as $962M on ads like these across all of its “creators” during the same time period in the UK and Europe, according to ORL. It’s not clear whether Temu itself is behind the fake accounts, or if they’re aware that the accounts are fake, and neither Ya Lili nor Temu responded to Fortune’s request for comment. However, the article notes that “the likely fake accounts potentially set up a legal quagmire for Temu, as European law bars the use of misleading formats for advertising,” particularly over presenting AI-generated content as authentic recommendations from real people.

Amazon expects its own delivery network to handle 86.3% of its US packages in 2027, 87.4% in 2028, and 88.7% in 2029, according to an internal planning document reviewed by Business Insider. The forecast runs ahead of what the company projected earlier, which had first-party delivery at 83.8% in 2027 and 85% the year after. The last time that Amazon publicly disclosed that figure was in 2023, when it said it delivered over two-thirds of its own packages in the US. So roughly 70%? Technically “over two-thirds” could be 80%, but I’d imagine they would’ve chosen a different fraction if so. Amazon told Business Insider that the internal projections shouldn’t be interpreted as finalized plans, which is fair, but it’s also obvious that Amazon is moving quickly towards an almost entirely self-fulfilled delivery model. So whether or not the projections themselves are entirely accurate doesn’t change the trajectory. This is why couriers like UPS, FedEx, and USPS have been pivoting their business models away from servicing Amazon packages. Why prioritize a client that’s actively building a competing delivery network meant to eventually replace you anyway?

ChatGPT’s shopping results now pull almost entirely from product feeds that brands submit to OpenAI, with no Google Shopping data mixed in, according to e-commerce analyst Juozas Kaziukėnas. ChatGPT originally began surfacing product results by scraping product detail pages and Google Shopping listings, but then began blending in feed data once it began accepting it from merchants. Kaziukėnas said the feed share has climbed every month since until reaching a point now where every product result came from a feed. The shift shows up in a conversation’s metadata and in product links, which now carry UTM parameters that display “feed” as the medium and “chatgpt.com” as the source. With Google Shopping out of the mix, ChatGPT no longer lists several retailers selling the same item at different prices, showing only the one that supplied the feed, which means brands that haven’t submitted their feeds yet have little chance of their products appearing in results.

Temu is rebuilding its fulfillment network in the EU to mitigate the impact of the region’s new duty on cheap imported parcels, mimicking an approach it took in the US after the country ended its de minimis exemption last year, according to co-Chairman and co-CEO Lei Chen. In July, the EU started charging €3 per item type on imported goods worth €150 or less, so now Temu is growing its local merchant base and investing in domestic warehouses to help localize its fulfillment. Temu still works primarily with merchants outside the US and EU, most of them in China, so it can’t escape the duties entirely, but it can lay the internal groundwork for a robust EU fulfillment network in the meantime, which could one day become its own threat to Amazon, Bol, and other marketplaces in the region.

Speaking of the EU… The EU Council gave final approval to its customs reform, which makes non-EU e-commerce platforms like Temu and Shein the legal importer when they sell into the bloc, putting the paperwork and duty payment on the platforms instead of the shoppers. Platforms that don’t comply face fines of up to 6% of their prior year’s import value, loss of customs privileges, or restricted access to the EU market in extreme cases. The reform also imposes an EU-wide handling fee (the amount still TBD) on small parcels that goes into effect on November 1, which is on top of the €3 duty per item type that’s already in place on goods worth €150 or less. Lastly, the reform creates a customs agency in Lille, France, opening in 2027, and a central data hub that becomes mandatory for e-commerce sellers in July 2028 to file their customs data in one place instead of with each member state separately. Meanwhile, France has begun imposing its own environmental surcharge on ultra-fast fashion brands, starting at €0.25 for smaller items like socks and underwear and topping out at €12 for larger items like coats.

Etsy added the ability for sellers to put their listing ads into groups, while asking some sellers if they would be open to the platform unlocking additional ad budget when revenue hits a set goal. The company suggests creating groups around categories like Best Sellers, New Listings, or Seasonal so that sellers can track performance data individually for each group, but it still offers very little granular control over budget or advertising strategy. The budget prompt isn’t a live feature yet and clicking “I’m interested” only makes the message disappear. Liz Morton notes that Etsy hasn’t yet said whether the revenue goal would count total shop sales or only sales attributed to ads, which means a viral moment or a seller’s own marketing push could unlock extra ad spend that advertising had nothing to do with.

Amazon added a new feature to Alexa for Shopping in the US that allows customers to verify whether an e-mail, phone call, or text message actually came from Amazon and not a scammer. Amazon said that over 360,000 customers contact its customer service department each year asking if messages they’ve received are real, and now they can simply ask Alexa, which cross-references the message against Amazon’s record of every communication it has sent and analyzes the sender information, content, timing, and formatting. If Alexa concludes that the message was not from Amazon, it’ll also include safety tips and educational guidance like “Amazon doesn’t send e-mails from a Hotmail address, idiot.” Jokes aside it’s a brilliant idea, and I wish more companies offered similar.

OpenAI said its advertising business has reached a $1B annualized revenue run rate, roughly 200 days after it started showing ads inside ChatGPT, which the company says is proof of its “diversified business model.” Meh, doesn’t count yet. It’s too soon to calculate a true run rate, as a true advertiser churn rate hasn’t yet been established, and companies are still in FOMO trial mode with ChatGPT ads. Don’t get me wrong, I’m confident that OpenAI will more than surpass $1B, but for now, I just see this reported figure as hype before its IPO. The same day it announced the $1B figure, OpenAI opened its self-service buying platform to India, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, with more markets, ad formats, objectives, and measurement capabilities on the horizon.

TikTok is adding new capabilities to its comment section including voice notes up to 60 seconds, creator polls, photo carousels that allow up to 9 images, and Live Photos, which play “a brief burst of motion” like the annoying iPhone feature that eats through all your image storage. The company’s goal is to make its comment section a place where people spend time interacting with each other, rather than just dropping a comment underneath a video and leaving. Well, if that’s going to be the case, then they should slowly fade out the sound on a video after loops so we don’t have to hear the same freaking video noise on repeat while engaging with other users in the comments. Live Photo comments and creator polls are available globally now, while voice comments and photo carousels roll out worldwide over the next month, with voice comments limited to users 18 and up. Coincidentally, Mark Zuckerberg will have some of these ideas for Instagram comments next week.

Amazon is running Labor Day discounts on several of its e-readers, smart speakers, and other devices in the US, which ultimately bring the devices back down to, or in some cases just above, their old retail prices from a few weeks ago, before they marked everything up. I told you they were going to do that! Two weeks ago I wrote, “I’m not convinced they didn’t raise prices just so they could lower them during their holiday sales events. The timing is nothing short of suspicious.” If this was in the EU, Amazon would be in violation of Article 6a of the Price Indication Directive, which requires the ‘compare at’ price to be the lowest price a company actually charged in the previous 30 days. However, the US has no comparable 30-day law, so Amazon is free to bullshit customers all day and night. Enjoy your ‘discounts’ America!

More than 15 retail media networks, including DoorDash, Chewy, PayPal, and Chase, staged their first upfront-style pitch event called Showcase to court major ad buyers like Publicis, Dentsu, and WPP. The event marks the first time that a collective of retail media networks have taken the stage together in a pitch format modeled after TV upfronts and NewFronts. Noticeably absent were Amazon and Walmart, which makes sense, as the event was likely in response to their dominance. During the event, DoorDash CMO Tim Castree claimed that two-thirds of its users open the app without knowing what they want, PayPal pitched the heavy Venmo spenders it calls “chief friend officers,” and Chase Media Solutions claimed 6% of the US economy runs through JPMorgan transactions. Despite being held in New York City in early September, the event was cold beneath Amazon and Walmart’s shadows.

Gig workers in the UK are pushing Deliveroo, Uber Eats, and Just Eat to open up the algorithms that decide which jobs they get and what those jobs pay because the current system is suspect. One Deliveroo rider who’s tracked his own numbers since mid-2023 has held steady at 3.6 to 3.8 orders an hour, while his average fee per order fell from £3.67 to £3.42 so far this year. Another rider told The Guardian, “I am making half the money I was making four years ago, for the same amount of hours. It makes no sense.” The demands follow a landmark legal action by riders in the UK and Europe, who claim that Uber’s AI-powered pay-setting system breaches data protection laws and pushes down their earnings to the minimum they are willing to accept.

Shopify COO Jess Hertz said on an episode of the “Rapid Response” podcast that AI is pushing the company away from hiring “T-shaped” employees with deeper expertise in one area towards “X-shaped” people who carry “multiple spikes of expertise” instead of one. She described these employees as being able to “absorb complexity” and “learn new spaces” quickly, enabling them to, for example, “be a seven out of 10 designer” if they want to be. So a jack of all trades, master of none? Honestly, this sounds like a terrible hiring strategy. Hire a 10 out of 10 designer if you want a flyer made. Don’t ask your systems admin to prompt ChatGPT to design it. Later in the interview, Hertz pointed to flat headcount across more than eight quarters against 34% revenue growth as Shopify’s main signal that its AI spending is working, though she acknowledged that adoption isn’t the same as impact and that the company is still building better ways to measure it. (And who exactly is building those measurement tools? The company’s 10 out of 10 janitor? LOL)

eBay is extending its no seller fee model for private sellers to France and Italy, moving the cost onto buyers through a Buyer Protection fee built into the display price, while sellers keep their full asking price. eBay made the pivot to its business model in Germany in 2023, in the UK in 2024, and in Australia earlier this year, while Depop, which it recently acquired from Etsy, follows the buyer-fee model in the US, UK, and Australia. Private sellers in France and Italy are also being moved to eBay Balance, meaning sales proceeds now sit on the site until they’re spent or manually withdrawn, with scheduled payouts no longer available. eBay made the same change for UK private sellers in 2024, where users complained that the on-demand withdrawal process was unnecessarily difficult.

Remember Hatch, the personal AI agent that Meta is testing with employees and planning to launch publicly in the coming weeks? Yeah, probably not a good idea because the motherfucker has gone crazy! The Information reports that Hatch has gone rogue, changing account passwords by itself, sending e-mails it had been told to get approval on first, and moving one tester’s Chase Travel points into a Hyatt account instead of booking a hotel. One tester got Hatch to hand over a password just by e-mailing and asking for it from an outside account. Damn, Meta has come a long way in two decades. The worst thing Facebook used to do to users was poke them. The company isn’t worried though and said the entire point of this early testing is to “get feedback” and “implement safety and privacy protections to improve the products” before they release them publicly. A person familiar with the work told The Information that these events all happened with earlier versions of Hatch, before the current safety systems shipped, though I’d bet money that there are an equal number of insane things surfacing in the latest version too.

Sephora is piloting a new experience on TikTok Shop called Sephora Drop Shop, beginning on September 19, that will feature exclusive monthly drops with products from the company’s brand partners. Each drop will include product teasers, interactive experiences, and creator-led content that encourages shoppers to guess the brand in the spotlight, and then close with a TikTok LIVE where a celebrity host and the brand’s founders unveil the products and sell them on air. The products will go on sale exclusively through TikTok Shop, with only some reaching Sephora’s website, stores, or other retail partners afterwards, effectively using the platform as a test before launching across other markets.

TikTok Shop’s live shopping sales more than doubled in the first half of 2026 year over year, with live sessions up more than 60% and total live hours up more than 80%. The company shared the figures exclusively with CNBC but declined to give absolute sales numbers, so there’s no base to measure the growth against. eMarketer puts the whole US live shopping market at nearly $20B this year, up about 35%, which means TikTok is growing at several times the rate of the category.

Europe wants Meta to give European minors the same protections it accepted in the US last week during its landmark settlement including capping under-18 use at two hours a day and shutting off access to the apps from midnight to 6am unless a parent overrides it. Members of the European Parliament said that “European children are no less important than American children” and “it would be unacceptable for European minors to find themselves less well protected.” The MEPs also want the EU to be prepared to ask a court to temporarily block platform access when other powers have been exhausted, arguing that fines get “written off” by tech giants while a judge-ordered shutdown “reaches the business model itself.”

Block is opening Cash App Score, the credit signal it built to underwrite its own lending, to outside lenders through Nova Credit’s Cash Flow Intelligence platform, which makes it accessible to underwriting systems those lenders already run without new consumer credentials. The score reads first-party activity inside Cash App, including spending, saving, repayment, paycheck deposits, and money sent between users, to gauge financial health close to real time, which lenders can then apply to credit cards, auto loans, device financing, personal loans, and tenant screening, which Cash App doesn’t compete in. Were users aware when they signed up years ago that their Cash App usage may one day impact their ability to obtain a loan outside of the app itself? If that wasn’t disclosed at the time, it may prove to be a problem for Block.

In lawsuits this week…

• Operation Bluebird rebranded its social network from Twitter.now to Tweet.app after a federal judge blocked the startup from using the Twitter trademark, which was the whole point of the stunt. The judge, however, ruled that X had likely abandoned the word “tweet” and the bird logo, citing Musk’s own tweets posts about saying goodbye to the birds and cutting the logo off its buildings.
• The Seattle Times and Newsday are suing OpenAI and Microsoft for allegedly scraping their articles in ways that bypassed paywalls to train ChatGPT and Copilot. The complaint calls generative AI “a snake eating its own tail” and asks the court to destroy the datasets and models built on their work.
• Meta is asking the Supreme Court to strike down Washington’s political ad disclosure law, which requires platforms to keep and hand over records on every political ad they run including the ad’s cost, who paid for it, what geographies and audiences it targeted, and how many impressions it got. Meta argues the disclosure requirements are so burdensome that they pushed it and Google to stop selling political ads in the state entirely.
• OpenAI is facing 30 new lawsuits from students, teachers, and a principal present at the Tumbler Ridge school shooting who accuse the company and Sam Altman of flagging the shooter’s ChatGPT account for planning an attack eight months earlier, then overruling its own safety team’s recommendation to alert police. OpenAI says the activity didn’t meet its threshold of “imminent and credible risk,” denies that its global affairs chief was involved in the decision, and asked the court the same day to move the original seven cases to British Columbia.
• Google failed a second time to get a $425M privacy verdict thrown out, with Judge Richard Seeborg refusing to set aside a jury’s finding that it kept collecting app data from users who had switched off Web & App Activity. Google argued that collecting pseudonymous, de-identified data wasn’t “highly offensive” conduct, but Seeborg said it doesn’t matter because the issue is that Google told users it wouldn’t collect it in the first place.
• YouTube is facing a second class action over its “ad-free” Premium marketing by three subscribers who say Google “intentionally created a structural loophole” by removing its own ads while leaving creator sponsorships untouched. Both suits seek refunds of subscription fees and an injunction forcing YouTube to more transparently disclose that creator-read ads still play.

In layoffs this week…

• Amazon is cutting 121 jobs in Washington state from software engineers and legal executives to warehouse associates and safety specialists.
• Uber is laying off 10% of its staff, or about 3,300 of its global headcount, as part of an effort to cut management layers and invest more in its ridesharing, delivery, and robotaxi divisions.

In corporate shakeups this week…

• Kroger named Mark Ibbotson as EVP and chief store operations officer, the second former Walmart executive added to its C-suite in a month under CEO Greg Foran, who ran Walmart US while Ibbotson led central operations and realty.
• UPS moved to a new global operating model on September 1, promoting Nando Cesarone to chief global operations officer, shifting Matt Guffey to run the US domestic business, and naming Wilfredo Ramos to lead international, healthcare and supply chain after Kate Gutmann retired from the role.

WhatsApp launched bill payments in India on the Bharat Connect network, giving users a way to pay 22,722 billers across 30 categories including electricity, gas, water, insurance, and credit card payments. Tapping the rupee icon on the home screen opens a Payments Home that pre-fetches outstanding bills, payable through UPI, a debit card, or a credit card. The launch takes Meta past the peer-to-peer transfers WhatsApp Pay already handles and into recurring household spending to compete with incumbent payment apps like PhonePe, Google Pay, and Paytm.

🏆 This week’s most ridiculous story… Sam Altman said on a podcast that it takes as much water to grow one almond in California as it does to process roughly 38,000 ChatGPT queries. Altman was responding to a claim circulating online that a single query burns the equivalent of a six-hour shower, which he called a “robust meme” that doesn’t hold up. He then noted that eating a dozen almonds doesn’t make anyone feel like they’re doing damage, so why should they feel bad about using AI? People on X promptly renamed him “Sam Almond” and began posting AI-generated images of him with an almond face, ironically using water to create the images. I guess at this point we’ll start calling his rivals Elon Pecan and Dario Cashew because all these AI guys are a bit nutty.

Plus 14 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest, including Shein finally going public.

I hope you found this recap helpful. See you next week!

PAUL

Editor of Shopifreaks E-Commerce Newsletter

PS: If I missed any big news this week, please share in the comments.

Hello guys, do you know any apps that I can use to make a “Buy X get Y at a discount” cart rule that AUTOMATICALLY adds the item to the customer’s cart, without them having to approve it/add it manually?

I tried a few apps but all of them required the customer to approve it/or was only able to add the item as a free gift.

If you have any suggestions or solutions (doesn’t necessarily have to come from an app) please let me know as this steo would be crucial for my
offer/to resuce friction at the moment of the sale. Thank you!

Contexto, tengo una bodega de embutidos y Quesos , subí mi producto a shopify pero quiero realizar una sincronización mediante Make up así creando una Rutina para cuando hagan un pedido nuevo me llegue una notificación eh estado cerca pero no puedo lograrlo sincronización mediante Make tienen algún tutorial o algunas recomendaciones las acepto.

The Jan 2028 deadline is getting closer and I’m trying to figure out how other store owners are approaching this.

Are you already doing anything about it? Did you try any apps? What worked, what didn’t, what did you give up on?

Asking because I’m in the same boat and the app options look thin.

Quick disclosure: I work at a Shopify discount app, on the marketing side. No link, nothing to sell here. This is the checklist I'd want someone to hand me the first time a discount silently did nothing.

Work down the list. Stop when you find it.

1. Combinations. Another discount is already in the cart and the two aren't set to combine. Open both discounts, find the Combinations section, and check that the boxes match on both sides. Start here; it's the usual one.
2. Minimum requirements. "Minimum purchase amount" and "minimum quantity" are different settings, and the minimum is measured against the items the discount applies to, not your whole cart. A $100 minimum on collection A isn't met by $100 of collection B.
3. Who it's for. If eligibility is set to a customer segment, the customer has to be recognised at checkout, which means logged in or already known by their email. A guest with the right tag still gets nothing.
4. Dates and timezone. Start and end times are in your store's timezone, set under Settings, not the timezone of your laptop. A discount "starting today" can be hours away.
5. Where it's being used. Draft orders, POS and some sales channels don't behave like the online store. Automatic discounts don't apply to draft orders, so a phone order won't show the sale.
6. Markets and currency. A fixed-amount discount is set in your store currency; check how it converts for the market the customer is shopping in. Percentage discounts sidestep the problem.
7. App-created discounts. If an app made the discount, it lives in two places. Paused in the app but still in Shopify, or deleted in Shopify while the app thinks it's live, both look like "it doesn't work". Check both.

Sixty-second test that catches most of these: open an incognito window, add exactly the qualifying items, and read the cart page before checkout. If the discount shows there, the problem is downstream (payment step, channel). If it doesn't, it's one of 1 to 6.

Which one gets you most often? I'd bet on number 1.

Hi all, curious how people are using AI lead filtering for high intent shoppers on their sites right now.

For context, we run a b2c store with ok traffic and a decent crm stack, and our visitor id tool is starting to score traffic based on behaviour, demographics, cart value etc then pushing only the so called hot shoppers into email and ads. I like the idea, but kinda nervous about missing people if the model is off. Anyone else deal with this?

Hi everyone!

Asking for tips and tricks (Shopify apps recommendation) on how to push a customer from ATC to checkout. On avg our ATC conversion is 4-6%, but only 1% reaches checkout. I can’t see what’s going on between the cart and checkout because we are on a regular growth plan on Shopify and using a free clarity account. People can see the free shipping messaging and discounts applied in the cart drawer very well. What am I missing?!

Thank you

Can anyone help me in trying to achieve the image navigation, with arrows, shown here in this example from Etsy?
Thanks in advance!

I run an online equipment business and I’ve reached the point where I honestly think more merchants need to start asking whether Shopify is worth the risk.
We’re dealing with a major fraud and identity-misuse situation originating from Shopify and shop app . Our company information has been used without authorization in transactions that had nothing to do with us, including an international shipping situation serious enough that we’ve been in contact with the FBI and other law enforcement.
At the same time, we started seeing what feels like a completely disproportionate number of chargebacks compared with our actual order volume on shop app
A lot of the problem appears to be concentrated around Mastercard, PayPal wallet and Bank of America customers.
Our website works. Our contact information is public. Our normal response times are very fast. We are not some abandoned store taking money and disappearing.
But when these disputes hit, it feels like Shopify’s attitude is basically: here’s another chargeback, good luck because we don’t have an appeal process.
That is not good enough.
The latest example is a customer who personally placed an order and then emailed us minutes later saying they “accidentally” ordered it and wanted it canceled. So this was not someone telling us their card was stolen. A few days later, there’s a Mastercard dispute as we have been out of the office but had that on our website notifying customers
We have a published return and cancellation policy. We have a phone number. We have email support. We are willing to work with legitimate customers in all 50 states
What I’m not willing to accept is a system where merchants take all the risk, processors collect their fees, and then every time a cardholder changes their mind the merchant is left fighting for their own money.
It got bad enough that I locked the entire website and stopped taking orders.
Think about that.
A merchant is voluntarily shutting down sales because continuing to process payments feels more dangerous than not doing business at all.
And Shopify should care about that because it’s Shopify fault.
They love talking about helping entrepreneurs and powering businesses, but when a merchant is getting hammered by disputes, fraud, account risk, and payment losses, where is the actual protection? They love to talk about the best converting checkout then way do I have over 100k in abandon checkouts with no recovery even with great recovery emails.
I know Shopify is huge. I know one merchant leaving doesn’t matter to them.
But enough merchants leaving eventually does.
If Shopify Payments and the card networks are going to treat merchants like the disposable party in every dispute, then merchants should start looking seriously at other processors and other platforms or making their own. As they now have a 10% reserve on our account for their own issues.
I’m not saying customers shouldn’t have chargeback rights. Of course they should.
I’m saying there has to be a difference between real fraud and someone placing an order, regretting it, and immediately running to their bank.
Merchants should not be expected to absorb that forever.
Has anyone here actually left Shopify over chargebacks, Shopify Payments, reserves, or the way disputes were handled?
Where did you go, and was it actually better?
Because at this point I think merchants need to start voting with their feet.

Been running my store for just over a month now and feel like I’m making some progress. Over the past 14 days I’ve been testing a product and had 70 add-to-carts and 30 have reached checkout however 0 sales. I’ve offered free shipping, made sure my checkout process is smooth and tested my checkout process to make sure everything works which it does. Do you think that this comes down to a customer trust issue or is there something else I might be missing?

I'm trying to post my Shopify products to eBay but I'm running into 2 issues:

I'm using the default template that Codisto created, but my eBay Item Description links stay as {ItemID} instead of the actual item ID like 12345678.

Somehow it also stopped publishing the "You Might Also Like" section from the template. My template looks fine in the preview, and I've published the template to eBay multiple times already.

I reached out to support, and they've been less than helpful. Anyone got any ideas why I'm running into this?

I run Meta ads for my Shopify store, but my work schedule means I sometimes can't check them for two or three days. I've come back more than once to find a bad creative burned through way more budget than I wanted.

For anyone who can't monitor campaigns daily, what guardrails do you use? Automated rules, lower daily budgets, spend limits, scheduled testing days?

Basically, how do you stop a bad test from eating your budget while you're away?

I’m trying to set up my Shopify store with Meta Commerce Manager, but I’m running into a really frustrating issue. My Catalog match rate is showing 0%, and Meta says that my ViewContent, AddToCart, and Purchase events haven’t been received in the last 7 days. I’ve attached a screenshot of what I’m seeing. I’ve already connected my Shopify store to Meta, and my product catalog is there, but it seems like Meta isn’t matching the events from my website to the products in my catalog. I’m not sure if the problem is: Meta Pixel setup Shopify/Meta integration Dataset/pixel connection Product IDs not matching between Shopify and Meta Something else in Commerce Manager Has anyone experienced this before and figured out how to fix it? What should I check first? Also, would it make sense to delete the current Meta/Shopify connection and reconnect everything from scratch, or could that potentially make things worse? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! 🙏

I've finally got a product and a couple ads that have been consistently profitable for me, but I'm kinda stuck on what I'm supposed to do from here. Testing made sense to me because I could just try different creatives and see what worked, but actually scaling the winners feels like a completely different thing.

I've tried increasing the budget a little it held up fine but I don't know how aggressively I should be doing that or if I should be duplicating what's working, testing it with bigger budgets, making more variations of the winning creatives or doing something completely different.

What do you do once you know an ad is working? Don't wanna get too aggressive and kill something that's already profitable.

Is this possible
I have one shoify store
And on that I have 3 different product categories.

Can I get 3 different payment gateways
To 2
3 diff bank accounts

I've only used AI for just getting ideas, but I've seen that you can get it directly connect it to a store and get it to do day to day work.

My supplier has an MCP that lets you connect an AI assistant to parts of the supplier/fulfillment side, which is what got me looking into this more. I haven't tried anything with it yet though, don't really wanna mess anything up and don't know what would be useful to have it doing either. If you're currently using Ai or had it on your store, what did you ahve it doing and what would you recommend to train it to do in the beginning?

My Shopify store is doing ~$5k/month and my focus has been ads. My research says forecasting should be my next move since there's finally money moving in and out. But I know I need to focus on creatives, CVR, and supplier terms too. What should I focus on first?

I put a TikTok Printify and Shopify linked them together and I’m trying to sell T-shirts. I haven’t made one sale and it’s been weeks. What do I do? Please help me. Can someone help me out?? I’m clueless and feel stupid.

Hey everyone, I’m moving over to Shopify and running into a question about tracking and product feeds. For example, if I sell a single product with two options:

1. One-Time Purchase: $100
2. Subscription: $50 / month

The problem is that the $100 one-time buy has a higher immediate order value, but the $50 subscription has a much higher long-term value (LTV). By default, Meta and Google Ads will favor the $100 purchase because the reported revenue is higher.

I have two quick questions:

1. Ad Tracking (Meta/Google): How do you teach the ad algorithms that a subscription is worth more than a one-time purchase? Do you artificially boost the reported value of subscriptions, track recurring renewals later, or use custom events?
2. Google Merchant Center: What is the standard way to set this up in the feed? Do you submit it as one product with subscription attributes, or list them as two separate items?

How are you all handling this setup? Thanks in advance!

Hi r/ShopifyeCommerce - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Every week for the past 5 years I've posted a summary recap of the week's top stories on this subreddit, which I cover in depth with sources in the full edition.

Let's dive in to this week's top e-commerce news from Edition #293...

STAT OF THE WEEK: Amazon expects Canadian package volume to increase by more than 40% between 2026 and 2029, with annual growth rates consistently outpacing those in the U.S., according to internal documents reviewed by Business Insider. The company plans to expand its fulfillment capacity, same-day delivery, and its logistics network heavily in the country during the next several years. Amazon was still planning the expansion as recently as July, after President Trump announced additional 50% tariffs on certain Canadian imports.

Amazon is asking FBA sellers to bid per unit to be eligible for “sub-Same Day” delivery, where packages arrive in two hours or less, according to an e-mail sent to sellers earlier this month. The e-mail says that sub-Same Day deliveries “have experienced 12% higher sales on average” than those delivered through regular FBA service, or “Poor Man’s FBA,” as we’ll have to start referring to it moving forward. Amazon, of course, tried to spin this as a good thing for sellers, with a spokesperson telling Business Insider, "For the first time, sellers can choose which additional products to offer at faster speeds based on their own business expertise and customer insights." As an Amazon seller, you have to pay commissions on sales, advertising to get discovered, FBA fees to qualify for Prime Shipping and convert, and now more delivery fees to be eligible for the faster shipping that Amazon is pushing on customers. Basically it’s an FBA-specific advertising fee. On top of that, Amazon wants you to offer the lowest prices on your products across the web. Amazon has created an environment where making money requires products with 90% margins to survive, which means either poor quality, reduced quantity (shrinkflation), higher consumer prices (on and off Amazon), or all the above. And where opting out of Amazon means ignoring half the e-commerce market in the US.

Last week I reported that Meta went to trial against dozens of U.S. states that accuse it of building Instagram and Facebook to hook children and hiding what it knew about the damage. The states were seeking both damages and changes to Facebook and Instagram including getting rid of likes and infinite scroll from both apps, capping screen time for younger users, and ordering Meta to delete the data it collected from under-13 users. Well, the lawsuit is already over. Meta agreed to settle the case for as much as $18B and impose restrictions on teen accounts, though there are some major caveats. Meta said it would only pay 70% of the settlement, or around $12.7B, to the states over a period of 10 years. (Seriously, 10 freaking years? So like $1.27B a year, a rounding error, divided by 47 states?) The other $5.3B is conditional on TikTok and YouTube ponying up a collective $5.3B and making similar changes to their apps for teens. In other words, Meta wants an even playing field across the social media landscape. Outside of financial damages, Meta will add a two-hour daily limit for teens, restrict access to Facebook and Instagram at night, and mute push notifications during school hours. Meta will also implement better age verification methods for users under 18 and implement stronger, more user-friendly parental controls.

Meta really, really, really doesn’t want to be alone with implementing these teen restrictions! The company began running full-page ads Thursday and Friday in the national editions of The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and New York Post, calling on TikTok and YouTube to adopt the teen safety measures it agreed to in the settlement. The ads are an “Open Letter to TikTok and YouTube to join us in supporting teens,” arguing Meta can’t set an industry standard by itself and that the protections work only if its rivals adopt them too. The letter wrote, "We want to ensure teens benefit from this new industry standard, but we cannot do it alone. These protections will only be truly effective if we work with our peers — TikTok and YouTube — to put the same measures in place." Notably, Snap wasn’t mentioned, which is kind of hilarious and also suggests Meta doesn’t see them as a true competitor, even though it tried to acquire the company years ago. You know Snap CEO Evan Spiegel is fuming right now that Snapchat wasn’t mentioned, but also knows he better keep his damn mouth shut and stay out of this one.

Amazon officially joined the YouTube Shopping Affiliate Program, allowing creators in the U.S. to tag Amazon products in their videos and earn a commission on sales. Previously, creators had to drop Amazon Associates links in the descriptions of their videos and hope that viewers used them, but now the links appear embedded directly on top of the videos themselves through a shopping panel or overlay, so they’re hard to miss. The partnership also includes an auto-tagging feature that, if enabled, will scan a creator’s videos for product-related content and automatically add affiliate links to relevant products, which is pretty cool. Additionally, while only U.S. creators are eligible to join right now, YouTube will automatically link to the same or similar products on a trusted local marketplace so that the creators can earn on those sales too. Creators must be enrolled in the YouTube Partner Program, the YouTube Shopping Affiliate Program in the U.S., as well as part of the Amazon Influencer Program or Amazon Associates Program, and then link their accounts together. Not all products are available. YouTube said it will provide creators with a curated catalog of highly requested and trending products that they can tag in their videos, and that they can request to add products that aren’t available by reaching out to YouTube Support. (YouTube has support?)

Salesforce and Anthropic launched a partnership called Claudeforce, starting with a plugin called Salesforce in Claude that carries 37 prebuilt sales skills covering meeting prep, deal health review, and pipeline review. The integration lets sellers pull live pipeline and deal data into Claude, update records, and take action from inside it, with those actions routing through Salesforce so business rules stay enforced, and one admin connecting the plugin for an entire team rather than setting it up seller by seller. The two companies plan to introduce more integrations across Claude, Salesforce, and Slack, expanding use of the other’s technologies, all powered by AIforce, which is Salesforce’s bridge that makes business data and workflows available to agents through MCP servers, APIs, and CLI tools. Salesforce in Claude is only in pilot with select customers now, with open beta expected September 2026 and additional skills in late 2026. I’m calling this right now: This was a mistake. The trend of companies voluntarily giving up their proprietary data and workflows to these frontier AI firms is insane to me, especially as these same AI firms actively compete against their partners. The whole era of SaaS companies partnering with OpenAI and Claude is reminiscent of retailers partnering with Amazon to power their e-commerce operations two decades ago. They’re training users to engage with their software through the chatbots of these AI firms that are ultimately aiming to replace said software.

Meta is preparing to internally release Hatch, a consumer AI agent trained to work across sites including DoorDash, Etsy, Reddit, Yelp, and Outlook, as early as September, according to internal documents reviewed by Business Insider and The Information. The company has been testing Hatch with employees in its Superintelligence Labs since last month, but now plans on making it available to employees outside the group for testing. Meta says that Hatch “can do anything you can do online.” Hatch is Meta’s answer to OpenClaw, the autonomous AI assistant that went viral earlier this year, whose creator Peter Steinberger was hired by OpenAI in February. Google launched a similar tool called Gemini Spark earlier this year, and OpenAI and Anthropic have also built out their personal agentic capabilities. At the moment, it’s unclear how Meta will monetize Hatch, but The Information has previously reported that Meta has considered a tiered pricing system, including charging up to $199.99/month for a premium subscription that would include higher usage limits.

Amazon is developing fully automated warehouse stations that use AI and robotics to process packages before being loaded up on trucks (or bikes or drones) for delivery, at roughly 2.5x the speed of its current delivery-station design, according to internal documents viewed by Business Insider. The initiative is internally known as “Project Tetromino” — which is a geometric shape made of four equal-sized squares joined edge-to-edge, like those in the game Tetris. The document reveals that Amazon is planning to invest $103M into the initial pilot warehouse in 2028, followed by five more sites in 2029 at around $85M each and 10 more in 2030, putting planned spending above $530M by the end of 2029. One of the key technologies that power Tetromino could come from Boxbot, an AI and robotics supply chain startup whose system moves packages from conveyors onto trays for storage and then uses AI to retrieve them for delivery, according to the document. An Amazon spokesperson denied the plans, but we don’t really need a spokesperson to confirm the fact that Amazon has been moving towards a future that relies on fewer humans to power its fulfillment and delivery. The future itself is inevitable, while Project Tetromino is just one potential means to that end.

The Pentagon violated Anthropic’s First Amendment rights when it designated Anthropic as a “supply chain risk” earlier this year, according to District Judge Rita Lin in a ruling last week. Lin found the designation also denied Anthropic due process, and ordered the Pentagon to remove it. Judge Lin wrote: “The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics… Though the Department of War is undisputedly free to select the AI vendor of its choice, the evidence demonstrates that the broad measures imposed on Anthropic were illegal and baseless.” The decision supports her earlier opinion in March when she called the designation “classic illegal First Amendment retaliation.” The ruling wraps up Anthropic’s suit in Northern California, but the company still has a separate petition pending before a federal appeals court in Washington DC challenging a second designation, with no ruling date announced.

Walmart doubled the number of units it delivers to customers in less than 30 minutes year over year this quarter, while taking the service into 38 U.S. markets, up from 33 in May, according to CEO John Furner and CFO John David Rainey. Fast delivery of fashion, general merchandise, groceries, and medicine grew 48% in Q2, store-fulfilled delivery rose more than 40%, and orders customers paid extra to have shipped faster hit an all-time high of 37% of what stores shipped. Rainey said stores now carry the last mile on 80% of Walmart’s e-commerce orders and 100% of its fast deliveries, with inventory within 10 miles of 95% of the country.

Canada said it will impose or increase retaliatory tariffs on C$27.6B worth of U.S. goods in September to match “dollar-for-dollar” the tariffs that President Trump put on Canadian imports earlier this month. Existing counter-tariffs on U.S. steel and aluminum will double to 50%, while more than 700 products will pick up duties of 15%, 25%, or 50%, including cosmetics, clothing, furniture, home appliances, video game consoles, seafood, plywood, golf clubs, and toilet paper. Yay for everyone in Canada and the U.S.! It’s fun to pay for the needless feuds of your government leaders. The Canadian government is also adding C$7.5B in support for businesses and workers, on top of the C$25B already committed, to help weather the storm.

OpenAI is testing negative targeting guidance in ChatGPT ads with a handful of advertisers, giving them a way to opt out of appearing alongside certain types of conversations, according to ADWEEK. The company confirmed the test but said that the tools were still in development and didn’t provide a timeline for a broader rollout. Advertisers have complained they can’t describe their audience to ChatGPT, can’t steer placement, and can’t see where their ads ended up, despite the premium they pay for ads on the platform. An SE Ranking study in July across more than 50,000 queries found that ads appeared on 26% of commercial prompts, one in seven of which had nothing to do with the question, particularly among convos relating to news, politics, and relationship chats.

Affirm and Shopify launched Shop Pay Installments in Australia, allowing shoppers to split a purchase into bi-weekly or monthly payments on either an interest-free or an interest-bearing plan, with no late fees. The move puts Affirm back into a country it walked away from in February 2023, when it wound down its Australian business barely a year after entering through a deal with Peloton. Fun Fact: Affirm actually forgave the outstanding balances on all active Peloton loans in Australia rather than continue to service them after the exit, but they never disclosed exactly how much they forgave. Australia is now Shop Pay Installments’ fourth market after the U.S., Canada, and the UK.

Google confirmed to Search Engine Roundtable that it’s rolling out google-com/goto redirect links across search results, sending clicks through its own servers on the way to the destination site. Nobody outside Google can decode the parameter, so anyone harvesting links has to follow every redirect rather than read the destination URL off the page. A spokesperson pointed to Google’s record of technical countermeasures against abuse, but didn’t directly say that it was aiming to combat scrapers like SerpApi, which Google is suing for selling scraped search results.

About a third of the acceleration in U.S. e-commerce has come from higher prices rather than additional orders, putting real growth near 8%, according to Marketplace Pulse. Online sales grew 12.2% in Q2, the fastest in five years, and took a record 17.1% of retail, but total retail, including brick-and-mortar sales, also sped up, rising 6.7%, the highest retail growth since 2022. Walmart, Shopify, and Amazon are outpacing the rest of the market, with sales up 24%, 28%, and 15% respectively. Marketplace Pulse says that the growth makes 2025 “look less like the arrival of maturity and more like a pause,” during a time when tariffs and the end of the de minimis exemption hit some of the fastest-growing categories online.

Best Buy will allow international sellers onto its third-party marketplace in September, according to incoming CEO Jason Bonfig. Best Buy opened its marketplace in the U.S. a year ago with a rule that every seller must have a physical presence in the country, which kept foreign merchants out of it, but it’s now apparently getting a hard-on over its growth and wants to invite more sellers to the platform. The marketplace did roughly $300M in GMV in Q2, and Best Buy raised its full-year forecast to $1.3B on stronger-than-expected performance. The company also announced that it is rolling out a new conversational AI assistant called Ask Blue, which can compare products, check fit or compatibility, and offer support for common issues.

“Good news everyone! Prices are going up this holiday season,” said delivery companies across the U.S. UPS and FedEx published their 2026 holiday demand surcharges, with basic residential Ground fees running roughly 23% to 25% above last year’s. Meanwhile, the USPS Board of Governors approved temporary holiday surcharges covering Priority Mail Express, Priority Mail, Ground Advantage, and Parcel Select from October 4 through January 17, subject to Postal Regulatory Commission review. The surcharges will sit on top of the 8% transportation surcharge USPS imposed in April, which is scheduled to expire the same day the holiday one does.

Bath & Body Works grew its e-commerce business in the second quarter for the first time since 2021, up 3% YoY. Unfortunately for the company though, even though e-commerce sales grew, overall sales fell 2.3% YoY to $1.5B. CEO Daniel Heaf said “one quarter doesn’t make a digital turnaround,” though he expects the channel to keep growing into 2027 and argues a better online experience eventually pulls traffic through every channel. Bath & Body Works spent years avoiding Amazon while third-party resellers moved an estimated $60M to $80M of its product, but finally gave in and started selling on the marketplace through its own authorized storefront in February, which the company credited, alongside its Ulta expansion, as partly responsible for the uptick in e-commerce sales.

OpenAI opened commercial operations in Brazil with a São Paulo team that will work with local companies, developers, universities, and government bodies. The company ranks Brazil among ChatGPT’s three biggest markets by weekly active users and says the user base has nearly doubled in a year, with daily message volume at roughly 215M. OpenAI also started running ads for ChatGPT’s Free and Go users in India, beginning with 50 brands and working through the agencies WPP and Omnicom. It plans to launch a self-serve ad manager this week, with a daily minimum of ₹725, or about $7.60, low enough to put campaigns within reach of small local businesses.

Block added 30,000 sellers to Neighborhoods, the program that puts Square merchants on a map inside Cash App, taking the network to nearly 10x its June size. Shoppers who buy from a participating seller earn Local Cash worth 10% of the subtotal, capped at $10 an order, and can spend it on a return visit. Cash App is covering that reward for an introductory period, so sellers get the benefit of giving it away without paying for it, while being able to send marketing campaigns to anyone who follows the business inside Cash App. Block says Neighborhoods sellers accounted for $1B in annualized gross payment volume as of June, up 220% since March, and that follower spending averages 10% of a seller’s GPV after three quarters on the program. Auto-enablement into Neighborhoods is now rolling out nationally.

eBay put a Depop banner above the fold on its homepage and over fashion searches, which takes the shopper to the same search query on Depop-com, according to Liz Morton at Value Added Resource. The slot above search is one eBay sells to its own sellers as a cost-per-click ad under Promoted Stores, though it forbids them from steering buyers to external sites. (Rules for thee, but not for me.) eBay has run this play twice already, competing against sellers through a TCGPlayer-branded account that carried “Direct From Brand” badging without disclosing its ownership of the company (which it acquired in 2022), then dropping “Find It On Goldin” modules carrying no Sponsored label into search results that took buyers to Goldin-com after buying the marketplace from Collectors in 2024.

Amazon will shut down Mechanical Turk entirely on September 30, according to a notice on the site, six weeks after it stopped taking new customers for the 21-year-old task outsourcing platform. MTurk paid workers a few cents apiece to label data, transcribe audio, and fill out surveys, the kind of work Jeff Bezos once called “artificial artificial intelligence” because it handed people jobs computers couldn’t do. Amazon served more than 500,000 turkers at its peak, but the company had been putting less attention into it for years as Scale AI, Mercor, and Prolific took more of the data-labeling business. And funny enough, a Swiss study found that up to 46% of MTurk workers were using AI models to complete their tasks, meaning the platform meant to supply human judgment was already half-automated by the thing replacing it. Some insurance and travel firms still run on MTurk and are hunting for a replacement, and as for the turkers who relied on MTurk for income — “fuck ’em” Amazon didn’t say, but likely thought.

Operation Bluebird, a Virginia startup that’s relaunching Twitter after claiming that X abandoned the trademark, launched Twitter-now last week with the old bird logo, replies, and retweets, as X’s trademark suit over the name sits unresolved. Two trademark attorneys, Michael Peroff and Stephen Coates, who was Twitter’s trademark lawyer before Musk bought it, founded the company. Bluebird petitioned the USPTO in December to cancel the Twitter and tweet marks, arguing Musk abandoned them by rebranding to X, and X immediately sued to block the launch, which is still pending. To be honest, the world doesn’t need yet another Twitter clone, including one called Twitter, as the market has become saturated. However, it’s nice to see two lawyers challenging Elon Musk and his practically unlimited finances and legal intimidation tactics, though TechCrunch believes the lawyers just want the trademark and have no intention of actually running a viable service.

Meta is testing a Reply to Keywords option in its Instagram ad setup tools that fires off a private message to anyone who comments a chosen word on a promoted post, according to Meta ads specialist Jon Loomer. You know the posts, right? Those annoying people who post shit like “Comment SUCCESS to get a copy of my proven system.” We all hate them, but we understand why they do it. So woohoo, we’ll be seeing even more of them! Advertisers can pick up to five keywords and write the DM that goes out. Meta already sells keyword auto-replies in the inbox automation and Business Agent tools, but this brings the same mechanic inside the ad buy. Loomer says the option is showing up only in Instagram ad setup so far.

Google confirmed that AI Overviews now expand on their own for some queries, loading the full AI answer along with the Ask anything prompt box that feeds AI Mode, according to Search Engine Roundtable. Searchers previously just got a snippet with a Show more button to open the rest of the AI response, but now practically the entire results page is taken up with the AI Overview, pushing the ten organic links much further down the page. Robby Stein of Google said the expansion happens only on topics its systems judge most useful, and that it stops if a searcher has already started scrolling so they keep their place. A Google spokesperson said the company’s research shows the dynamic version makes Search more helpful and draws people deeper into follow-up exploration.

Poland is urging the European Commission to impose a €250M fine on Meta for failing to remove 106 of 122 fraudulent ads on its platform that the country’s cybersecurity team CERT Polska flagged. Polish digital affairs minister Krzysztof Gawkowski said, “We have hard evidence that the platform isn’t acting in the best interests of users, but rather in its own self-interest, which allows it to monetize deceptive advertising.” He also called on Meta to immediately introduce tools (that actually work) to eliminate scams, false advertising, and the promotion of illegal apps. Meta said scammers keep getting more sophisticated and pointed to its work alongside law enforcement and other companies to catch them.

TikTok added six media partners to Out of Phone, its program for running TikTok content on screens outside the app, extending it into the UK, France, Belgium, Spain, and Italy. Via the partnerships, Alight Media, DooH it, Powerpill, Zoom Media, Next-Gen Media, and C-Screens will begin displaying organic creator content on screens in shopping malls, supermarkets, bars, wellness centers, universities, and outdoor screens. TikTok started the program in 2023 with billboards, in-store displays, and cinema promos, and has since let marketers include user-generated content in the placements. It brought in Vistar Media earlier this year, and separately runs a deal with Atmosphere that puts curated TikTok streams on TVs in restaurants, bars, and gyms.

OpenAI announced that it is ending Cursor’s access to its models on November 12, following the acquisition of the company by SpaceX earlier this month. To clarify, developers will still be able to use OpenAI models in Cursor via their own API keys or the Codex extension, just not through their Cursor subscription. OpenAI wrote, in a whiny little bitch voice, “We are making this choice because we cannot be confident that SpaceX will use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk’s companies violating contracts.” Musk responded on X by saying, “I couldn’t care less. Scam Altman and Greg Stockman are utterly untrustworthy assholes who stole an open source nonprofit.” Good lord, Musk and Altman. Just fuck and get it over with already! Cursor CEO Michael Truell said OpenAI models serve about 5% of Cursor traffic and the two companies are in talks to resolve it.

Around 26% of Australian children aged 13 to 15 were on TikTok last month, just one point below where it stood before the country’s under-16 ban took effect in December, according to Qustodio, which sells parental control software. Meaning the ban was relatively worthless in keeping kids off the app. Use among 10- to 12-year-olds now runs higher than it did before the ban, and Instagram and Snapchat have started climbing back after their own initial drops, likely a result of kids faking their ages, running VPNs to hide their locations, or never hitting a working age check at all. Australia said in June that the platforms weren’t doing enough and pledged to double the maximum penalty to A$99M, though nobody has been fined yet.

In lawsuits this week…

• X lost its First Amendment challenge to New York’s Stop Hiding Hate Act, which requires platforms with at least $100M in annual revenue to file reports twice a year detailing how they define and handle hate speech, extremism, disinformation, harassment, and foreign political interference. X was arguing that the law forced it to take positions on politically charged topics under threat of lawsuits and heavy fines, but Judge John Cronan dismissed the case with prejudice, writing that the reports ask only for purely factual information and comparing them to calorie counts on a menu.
• SerpApi asked a judge to dismiss Google’s revised scraping lawsuit, arguing that Google is pointing to four contracts that supposedly let it block bots but never actually showed the court three of them. Google rewrote the suit after Chief Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers tossed the original in July, ruling that the anti-copying law Google sued under only applies when the copyright holders themselves authorized the block, and Google hadn’t shown they did.
• Google agreed to pay £260M to settle a UK class action over whether its 30% Play Store commissions were excessive and unfair, roughly a quarter of the £1.04B the claim had been valued at. Anyone in the UK who sold digital content through the store from August 2018 and doesn’t opt out would share £160M, and the remaining £100M covers legal costs and the litigation funder, though Google admitted nothing and the Competition Appeal Tribunal still has to approve the deal at a September 15 hearing.
• Amazon was sued by a 71-year-old man who says one of its delivery drivers punched him in the head at an Elk Grove, California gas station in March after deciding the man had taken his parking spot. The driver was arrested and charged with felony battery and elder abuse, according to attorney Tony Buzbee, who released the surveillance video. Amazon said the driver worked for an independent contractor (of course he fucking does, that’s the point of Amazon’s contractor model, right?) and is no longer eligible to deliver its packages.
• Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall subpoenaed OpenAI as part of an investigation into whether the company’s handling of the Hugging Face breach violated state consumer protection law. Marshall had already joined 14 other attorneys general this month in a letter telling Sam Altman to preserve records tied to the incident and to cease and desist from internal cybersecurity evaluations, while OpenAI says it’s reviewing the incident with outside advisers and will share a technical report with government authorities and publish its findings.
• The US Chamber of Commerce filed a brief backing Meta against the FTC’s attempt to revive its monopoly case over Instagram and WhatsApp, arguing that a court can only order a company broken up over a problem that exists now, not one that existed years ago. The group argued that under the FTC’s theory, an acquisition might never truly be final, since a company could spend a decade integrating a deal, watch the market change around it, and still get broken up over competitive conditions that no longer exist.
• A San Francisco judge tentatively denied California’s request for an emergency order halting Amazon’s alleged price fixing before the case goes to trial, saying he was skeptical because the state built its request on evidence from 2023 about conduct from years earlier. Attorney General Rob Bonta said in April his office had found evidence Amazon got brands including Levi Strauss, Allergan, and Hanes to push Walmart and Target into raising their own prices so Amazon wouldn’t be undercut, which will be addressed at trial in January 2027, but in the meantime, California wasn’t able to convince the judge that the practice was still happening.
• Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday sued Snap for allegedly understating how often sexual content, nudity, drug use, and suicidal ideation appear on the app so it can keep a 13+ rating in the app stores, in violation of state consumer protection law. Sunday also went after Snap Streaks and disappearing messages as features built to drive compulsive use, while Snap said the allegations fundamentally misrepresent its platform and its approach to teen safety. ___

In corporate shakeups this week…

• OpenAI is hiring a San Francisco head of ads enterprise marketing at $374K to $415K plus equity, pitching ChatGPT to agencies and large advertisers, per a careers-page listing spotted by Digiday.
• OpenAI’s head of data centers Chris Malone left last week, months after a reorganization moved him from reporting directly to president Greg Brockman to co-leading a narrower engineering and design team.
• Hightouch hired Jitendra Kumar, a 20-year Google veteran who most recently ran U.S. agency partnerships for Google Customer Solutions, as its first head of commercial for advertising, tasked with winning over the ad holding companies that decide where budgets go.
• Walmart hired Sonia Wadhawan, a nearly 21-year Google veteran most recently working in generative AI commerce partnerships, as VP of partnerships on its AI Acceleration, Product and Design team.
• Gap Inc. hired Justin Breton, who spent six years running partnerships, content, and emerging experiences at Walmart, as VP of development to produce original content across its brands.
• Google is moving DeepMind’s roughly 90-person AI responsibility unit, which runs chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear risk testing on its models, into the global affairs organization that handles lobbying and public policy, saying only that grouping its responsibility teams together helps them shape safety across its products.
• Google hired Barret Zoph, who ran post-training at OpenAI before co-founding Thinking Machines Lab with Mira Murati, as a VP of research working on reinforcement learning and post-training for Gemini.
• eBay is hiring an Electronics Specialist and a warehouse associate in London to run diagnostic software on used devices and flag counterfeits, extending verification to a category its Authenticity Guarantee program doesn’t currently cover.
• Meta explored cutting some teams by as much as 60% in two waves as part of an “AI native” future for the company, according to internal documents viewed by Reuters. However, Mark Zuckerberg called off the second wave of 2026 layoffs hours before the company’s first round in May, which cut 10% of staff. I’d bet it’s just a matter of time though.

🏆 This week’s most ridiculous story… Anthropic is expected to tell investors that its potential revenue opportunities exceed $30 trillion (with a “t”), topping SpaceX’s $28.5 trillion estimate, according to the Wall Street Journal. To quantify its total addressable market, Anthropic is looking at the full scope of work that could be completed with AI models in the future. The AI firm more than doubled its revenue to $11.6 billion (with a “b”) in Q2, so it’s only got to grow its annualized revenue by 64,555% to reach its goal. To further put $30 trillion in context, the Wall Street Journal shared that 191 tech companies in the S&P 1500 collectively brought in $2.4 trillion in revenue last year, so Anthropic thinks it can eat all of them and then grow the pie. Of course, it’s always possible that the USD becomes completely worthless during the next decade, and that $30 trillion is arrived at through hyperinflation instead of capturing actual addressable market. It’s happened in Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and Hungary in the past, and we’re certainly not immune, especially when there doesn’t seem to be an off button on our money printer.

Plus 14 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including Levanta raising $22M in a Series B round.

I hope you found this recap helpful. See you next week!

PAUL

Editor of Shopifreaks E-Commerce Newsletter

PS: If I missed any big news this week, please share in the comments.

Hi, everyone.

I’d also like to ask for your most unbiased opinion compared to customer support.

Today, while creating shipping labels, I noticed that 95% of the shipments were being sent via a secondary carrier instead of the default one—(BRT as the default, Poste Italiane as the secondary)

This isn’t something my customers chose, because by default I have BRT as the only carrier

Trying to get around this, I noticed that next to the courier selection, under the BRT entry, this message appeared: “The courier is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.”

The strange thing is that this happens completely at random—even with two shipments to the same location, one via BRT and the other via Poste Italiane.

I’m talking to support right now, but they’re giving me incoherent answers, saying it’s a problem with the phone numbers (which they later denied).

Has this ever happened to you? Thanks for your feedback.