In a new blog post, Amazon laid out its vision for agentic shopping and the role advertising could play within AI-assisted commerce.
The post begins: “Last month, Amazon brought together two powerful AI experiences—Rufus, our expert shopping assistant used by over 300 million customers in 2025, and Alexa+, our personalized AI assistant available across hundreds of millions of devices—into a single, unified experience: Alexa for Shopping.”
Later, Amazon broadens the scope: “The combination of deep product expertise and seamless personalization makes Alexa for Shopping the best AI assistant for shopping on Amazon and other stores from across the web.”
Amazon details its conversational ad-related products including:
- Sponsored ads
- Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands prompts
- Sponsored Brands
- Alexa+ Conversational Ads
- Prime Video Sponsored Tiles
- Creative Agent
- Ads Agent
- Amazon MCP server
- Amazon Ads API
Read: ‘Agentic shopping is here. What does that mean for advertisers?” (June 11) – Amazon Advertising
More: Amazon Exec Reveals What the New Alexa Has That Rufus Didn’t (June 11) – Adweek (subscription)
From tipsheet: Amazon is positioning advertising as a native part of agentic commerce rather than a separate marketing channel. The bigger ambition may be becoming the shopping agent itself—helping consumers discover and buy products beyond Amazon O&O and across the web.
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Developments
- OpenAI Considers Drastic Price Cuts, Anticipating War for Users With Anthropic (June 10) – The Wall Street Journal (subscription)
- Anthropic Pursues First Data Center Leases, Seeks Financial Backing From Google (June 11) – The Information (subscription)
- Space Exploration Technologies Corp. Announces Pricing of Initial Public Offering (June 11) – SpaceX
PLATFORMS
Magnite launches orchestration layer
Magnite launched Magnite Orchestration, a coordination layer that connects buyer agents to Magnite’s seller agent so AI-driven buying systems can discover, evaluate and activate premium omnichannel inventory.
The important part is not just “AI tools.” It is Magnite positioning the sell side as infrastructure for agent-to-agent transactions.
Magnite President Sean Buckley said on LinkedIn: “By connecting buyer and seller agents in a shared environment, Magnite is helping bring planning, audience intelligence, inventory discovery, and activation closer together, making it easier for buyers and media owners to unlock the full potential of AI-driven advertising while maintaining an open and interoperable ecosystem.” Read more. (June 11)
Initial test partners include Dentsu and DirecTV Advertising.
Analyst Karsten Weide commented about the announcement, “Magnite stops being a pipe and becomes a platform.” Read more. (June 11)
Read: Introducing Magnite Orchestration: Powering the Future of Agentic Advertising (June 11) – Magnite
From tipsheet: There is a growing perception that AI will collapse layers of intermediation across industries. Magnite’s announcement — and Weide’s observation that it is moving from “pipe” to “platform” — suggests a different possibility: some intermediaries may evolve into decision-making and coordination systems for AI-driven workflows.
BRANDS
P&G changes mind on trust signals
Adweek’s Kendra Barnett reported yesterday:
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“Two of the world’s biggest advertising platforms, Google and The Trade Desk have let their TAG (Trustworthy Accountability Group) certifications lapse, while Procter & Gamble has quietly dropped a longstanding requirement that digital ad partners maintain TAG accreditation. Industry leaders say the developments reflect waning confidence in one of the ad industry’s best-known anti-fraud certification programs. Critics argue TAG’s seals have become costly, redundant, and more symbolic than substantive, raising fresh questions about the group’s place in the industry.”
Read on LinkedIn. (June 11)
What is TAG? – “…TAG was created by the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s), Association of National Advertisers (ANA), and Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and works collaboratively with companies throughout the digital ad supply chain.”
More: “TAG Loses Ground as P&G Drops Mandate and Google, Trade Desk Ditch Certifications” (June 11) – Adweek
From tipsheet: P&G appears to be trusting platforms more than third parties.
COMMERCE MEDIA
Walmart extends shopper graph to Google
Walmart is continuing to distribute its shopper graph across the ad ecosystem through Walmart Connect.
Yesterday, Google announced a new partnership with Walmart Connect for Google’s Display & Video 360 demand-side platform (DSP) that will initially connect “high-intent shoppers through YouTube campaigns and measure their results with closed-loop measurement.”
Google VP, Retail, Courtney Rose said:
“Brands can now use audience insights from Walmart, the No. 1 U.S. omnichannel retailer, and reach its 150 million weekly U.S. customers through YouTube campaigns. They’ll then be able to see how those ads impact sales at Walmart. (…)
This integration is rolling out now in Display & Video 360, starting with YouTube campaigns, with more inventory to come in the future.”
Read: “We’re bringing Walmart Connect to Display & Video 360.” (June 11) – Google Marketing Platform blog
Linda Lomelino, Walmart Connect’s VP Product, Data Monetization & Ads, said on LinkedIn:
“Advertisers tell us they want two things: 1) Access to Walmart Connect’s omnichannel shopper data where they already buy media, and 2) better ways to understand how brand investments influence business outcomes.
Today’s announcement with Google is a meaningful step toward both.
Beginning with YouTube campaigns through Display & Video 360, advertisers can now activate Walmart Connect audiences built on real shopping behavior and measure how those campaigns influence omnichannel sales at Walmart.
What excites me most is that we’re creating a more direct connection between brand building and real outcomes, helping advertisers connect awareness, consideration and conversion strategies together.”
Read more on LinkedIn. (June 11)
Read: “Bringing first-party audiences and measurement to Google’s Display & Video 360 for YouTube campaigns” (June 11) – Walmart Connect
Two weeks ago, Walmart Connect announced partnerships with Yahoo DSP and Magnite to go with its existing partnership with DSP The Trade Desk.
Related: Attain joins Walmart Connect, emphasizing cross-channel sales measurement and incrementality (June 11) – Attain on LinkedIn
From tipsheet: Walmart appears to view its shopper graph as infrastructure. Each new partnership extends Walmart purchase signals and closed-loop measurement deeper into the platforms where media budgets are allocated and optimized. If successful, Walmart could become more influential across the advertising ecosystem than its owned media properties alone would suggest.
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Ad tech and LLM trends
Steven Liss, co-founder and CEO of AI ad platform OpenAds, shared an experiment with Anthropic’s new Fable model:
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“OpenAds processed 5 billion impressions last month – enough that it’s become worth optimizing. Last night I aimed Anthropic’s new Fable model at our bidder. It launched a probe of our production vCPUs, identified an anomaly, and opened a PR to optimize a 10-year-old open source package for higher throughput (which was accepted). This won us ~5% CPU efficiency… equivalent to processing 250 million impressions for free. It cost me about 30 minutes and $50 worth of tokens.”
Read on LinkedIn. (June 10)
From tipsheet: AI’s impact may be measured as much in operational efficiency as in new products.
LLMs & CHATBOTS
LiveRamp closing loop for ChatGPT marketers
OpenAI understands that measurement is a key ingredient of success for its nascent ChatGPT ads platform.
New ChatGPT ads partner LiveRamp announced Wednesday:
“Today, we’re enabling marketers with ChatGPT ad campaigns to use LiveRamp’s Conversions API (CAPI) Hub to connect conversion events. This enables secure, server-to-server data connections that reduce signal loss, and provide more reliable measurement than purely browser-based tracking. Through this implementation, marketers can measure the effects of their ChatGPT ad campaigns on conversions anywhere, immediately improving measurement and optimization, maximizing their advertising efficacy.”
Read: Unlocking better performance optimization and measurement for marketers in ChatGPT (June 10) – LiveRamp
More: Can ChatGPT Ads Get People to Buy? OpenAI Partners With LiveRamp to Prove They Do (June 10) – Adweek (subscription)
From tipsheet: OpenAI could have pushed marketers to its own Conversions API. Instead, it continues to connect ChatGPT to infrastructure marketers already use.
This is a sign that OpenAI is building an advertising platform rather than simply selling ad inventory. The AI company also wants established ad tech partners to help fuel its early growth.
Also: This is good news for the Publicis acquisition of LiveRamp. LiveRamp just got a little stickier for marketers.
SELL-SIDE
Viant helps publishers improve signal quality
Demand-side platform Viant is expanding its tools for the sell-side with a new intelligence system designed to measure publisher signal quality.
A Viant press release said:
“Viant Publisher Solutions features all-new SupplyIQ, a detailed, publisher-specific dashboard which includes key performance data around Direct Access, Household ID (HHID), and IRIS_ID to form a unified framework focused on improving signal fidelity, supply path efficiency, audience addressability and content intelligence. These inputs directly influence how the Viant ad platform values inventory, allocates spend, and optimizes campaign performance.”
In promoting the launch, Viant SVP of Data, Identity + Supply Keith Petri explained:
“Most people will focus on the fact that it’s free, and that is true…but I think that’s the least interesting part.
The industry has been having the wrong argument about supply paths for years. The debate has always been about path length: how many hops, whether a route is ‘direct’ and which intermediaries can be removed.
But a direct path to bad signal is still a bad path.
What matters isn’t how short the route is, but what arrives at the end of it. Instead of asking how direct a path could be, we started asking how much signal could be preserved along the way. That shift in thinking led us to a different model: one where more dollars go toward working media instead of fees, publishers get transparent access to demand without a toll, and advertisers get cleaner signals to make better decisions.”
Read more on LinkedIn. (June 11)
Read: Viant Expands Publisher Solutions to Unlock Greater Performance and Transparency (June 11) – Viant
From tipsheet: AI is increasing the value of transparency. The cleaner the signal entering the auction, the better the system can learn, optimize and price inventory. For publishers, that means understanding which signals are driving demand and which may be limiting the value of their inventory.
Also: Viant’s Petri and The Trade Desk executive Mike O’Sullivan connect in the LinkedIn comments of Petri’s post. Signal quality may be one of the few areas where competitors share the same objective.
MARKET INTELLIGENCE
Signal: AI reveals hidden demand
Pacvue co-founder and President Melissa Burdick shared an early lesson from ChatGPT ad campaigns: in a campaign run with performance marketing agency Kepler, a condition-specific product category the brand had never prioritized generated a higher click-through rate than its top-selling product line.
“The demand already existed. The brand simply wasn’t showing up in those conversations.”
Read more on LinkedIn. (June 11)
More: Video – “Inside ChatGPT Ads: Early Results, Lessons Learned, and How to Get Started” (June 10) – Pacvue on YouTube
From tipsheet: The most interesting opportunity in AI shopping may not be conversion optimization. It may be demand discovery.
If conversational interfaces reveal customer needs that traditional search and commerce systems miss, AI platforms could become a source of market intelligence as well as media inventory.
MORE
- AI ‘girlfriend ads’ are fueling a new wave of MFA sites (June 11) – Digiday (subscription)
- Meta’s Subscription Push Exposes Its Weak Hand in AI (June 11) – The Wall Street Journal (subscription)
- Sprinklr Introduces LLM Insights to Help Brands Understand and Influence How They’re Represented in AI-Generated Answers (June 11) – Sprinklr
- Mediaocean Introduces NIVO AI with Innovid Agents Driving 90% Improvement in Speed to Campaign Launch (June 11) – press release
- Teads Launches its AI-Driven Operating System, Teads EngageOS, to Maximize Publisher Total Revenue (June 10) – Teads