Amazon has sent a cease-and-desist letter (read it) to answer engine Perplexity telling the company that its Comet browser agent must stop enabling Amazon website purchases for consumers.
Bloomberg originally broke the news:
“The e-commerce giant is accusing Perplexity of committing computer fraud by failing to disclose when its AI agent is shopping on a user’s behalf, in violation of Amazon’s terms of service, according to people familiar with the letter sent on Friday. The document also said Perplexity’s tool degraded the Amazon shopping experience and introduced privacy vulnerabilities, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.”
Later in the day, Amazon said in part:
“…Agentic third-party applications such as Perplexity’s Comet have the same obligations, and we’ve repeatedly requested that Perplexity remove Amazon from the Comet experience, particularly in light of the significantly degraded shopping and customer service experience it provides.”
Read:
- Amazon Demands Perplexity Stop AI Tool From Making Purchases (November 4) – Bloomberg (subscription)
- Statement about Perplexity (November 4) – Amazon
Perplexity responds
Saying Amazon’s cease-and-desist letter was “a threat to all internet users,” Perplexity responded in a company blog post titled, “Bullying is not innovation.”
The post concluded:
“Amazon also forgets how it got so big. Users love it. They want good products, at a low price, delivered fast. Agentic shopping is the natural evolution of this promise, and people already demand it. Perplexity demands the right to offer it.”
The post revealed a detailed argument in favor of the form of agentic commerce which Perplexity claims to seek on behalf of consumers. Check it out. (November 4)
From tipsheet: The circumstances of this dispute appear to speak to future showdowns over agentic commerce or even advertising. Perplexity likely hopes so. After all, from a Perplexity point-of-view, this might be another opportunity to generate free word-of-mouth advertising for the answer engine. (See “Perplexity offers to buy Google Chrome” from August.)
LLMs & CHATBOTS
OpenAI optimizing shopping function
Josh Blyskal, a strategy executive at Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) firm Profound, said that he has detected changes in the way OpenAI’s ChatGPT is working which may be a precursor to shopping through the chatbot.
Calling it ‘The Entity Update,’ which was rolled out on October 18, Mr. Blyskal said that the update “structurally changed the way ChatGPT recommends and recognizes brands.”
He explained:
“This is the infrastructure for ChatGPT Shopping. OpenAI just launched their shopping feature, and this entity recognition update (which surfaces fewer, more structured brand mentions) looks suspiciously like the foundation needed to power reliable product recommendations and transactions. You can’t build a reliable shopping platform on messy, unstructured text. You need clean entities.”
Read more from Blyskal on LinkedIn. (November 4)
From tipsheet: It’s not a stretch to imagine this update also laying the groundwork for advertising in ChatGPT.
Related: “How AI Answer Engines Will Transform the Future” – James Cadawallader, CEO, Profound on the Profound blog
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Developments
- Anthropic Projects $70 Billion in Revenue, $17 Billion in Cash Flow in 2028 (November 4) – The Information (subscription)
- Cohere and Mistral see the upside of not being born in the USA (October 31) – The Logic
- Cognizant Adopts Anthropic’s Claude to Accelerate Enterprise AI Adoption at Scale and Deploys Claude to Drive Internal AI Transformation (November 4) – press release
PLATFORMS
TikTok touts AI-enabled platform
In a new B2B research study, TikTok was touting its AI-enabled ad, creative, and commerce tools such as Smart+, Symphony, and GMV Max.
In its research, which was facilitated by NewtonX, TikTok said that there is plenty of promise for generative AI, but adoption still has a ways to go. Insights included:
- “9 in 10 advertisers and executives expect AI-driven automation to help drive future business growth and 93% believe it will improve their own job performance.”
- “However, only one fifth (19%) have fully integrated AI into their core operations and invested at scale.”
- “88% of advertisers and executives predicting automation could halve departmental costs and 81% expecting to see returns within a year.”
- “71% of executives surveyed are growing their focus on automation through AI initiatives and increasing.”
Read the TikTok press release. (November 4)
SELL-SIDE
People joins Microsoft marketplace
During IAC’s Q3 2025 earnings call yesterday morning, IAC’s People Inc. CEO Neil Vogel revealed that his company had joined Microsoft’s content marketplace (first leaked in September) which aims to compensate publishers in return for AI companies being able to crawl publisher content.
Vogel said on the call:
“… we have an agreement with Microsoft to be a launch partner of what they’re calling their publisher content marketplace, it is essentially a pay-per-use market where AI players directly can compensate publishers for use of their content on sort of like an a la carte basis. As we’ve said, we intend to have a seat at the table as these content markets develop, and we work directly with Microsoft. We are physically in the room with Microsoft, helping to concept this marketplace.”
Read the IAC earnings transcript. (November 4)
More: People Inc. strikes Microsoft AI licensing deal as Google’s AI Overviews hit programmatic ad revenue (November 4) – Digiday (subscription)
From tipsheet: People Inc. is formerly Dotdash Meredith which includes over 40 brands like People, Entertainment Weekly, Food & Wine, Travel + Leisure, and Better Homes & Gardens.
Gannett announced its membership in Microsoft’s content marketplace last week.
VIDEO
OpenAI’s Sora wants to monetize
It may not have advertising in ChatGPT yet, OpenAI sees an opportunity to monetize brand characters — think Ronald McDonald – with its Sora 2 video app.
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday:
“[OpenAI] wants companies behind well-known characters to help build Sora 2’s popularity by proactively approving their intellectual property for use on the platform. OpenAI has been in direct talks with some major brands about potential commercial applications, according to people familiar with the matter.”
Read more in the WSJ. (November 4 – subscription)
It was just last Thursday that OpenAI’s head of Sora Bill Peebles said on X:
“… we imagine a world where rightsholders have the option to charge extra for cameos of beloved characters and people. we will soon pilot monetization, prioritizing people and companies who got onto the platform early. this will also be a way for a new generation of sora creators to make money.”
From tipsheet: A new way of advertising in the AI age: pay me for use of my brand character. Earned media gets paid?
What if anyone’s likeness was a product for purchase or licensing? OpenAI and Sora could offer that marketplace.
Related: “This week, we look at the Sora app, a social media funhouse mirror, which brands likely don’t understand yet. It feels familiar, but it’s uncanny. The content is from creators, but they don’t really exist, even though the characters could be people you know. Everything they do is AI. Anyway, Sora is having a moment.” (November 4) – Ad Age reporter Garett Sloane on LinkedIn
RETAIL MEDIA
Conversational commerce
Shopify reported its Q3 2025 financial results yesterday that beat Wall Street expectations. Among the AI highlights, the company said that AI features were creating workflow efficiency for its small- and medium-sized business customers.
Also of note, a buzzphrase has taken hold lately, and was present on the Shopify earnings call with Wall Street, is “conversational commerce.” The phrase itself was invented in 2015 by Chris Messina of Uber when he discussed it in a Medium post.
In 2023, Shopify embraced conversational commerce and associated it with human and chatbot customer service. Today, it seems to be another way to say “chatbot commerce.”
On the Shopify earnings call yesterday, Wall Street asked for more updates on conversational commerce. And though, Shopify president Harley Finkelstein offered next to no detail on the company’s OpenAI partnership, he did opine on conversational commerce:
Moffett-Nathanson analyst Michael Morton: “…as you see product search changing in conversational commerce, what do you envision happening for the product discovery funnel?”
Shopify president Harley Finkelstein: “Let me say this, I think there’s going to be different permutations of how gen AI commerce will evolve, how conversational commerce will evolve. It’s really exciting. (…)
But the way that [Shopify CEO Toby Lütke] sees it (…) is that whatever permutation will emerge we have to be prepared for whatever path wins. That was the same thing when social commerce started to get a lot of attention…”
Shopify Q3 2025 earnings call transcript – GuruFocus (November 4)
Read:
- The earnings report at Shopify Investor Relations (November 4)
- The earnings call transcript. (November 4)
- Reuters summary on Shopify earnings. (subscription)
From tipsheet: Shopify’s partnership with OpenAI should take off once OpenAI’s Instant Checkout is rolled out within ChatGPT and provides the ability to buy Shopify merchant products.
Today, the Shopify shopping feed has been integrated into ChatGPT and you can get answer engine results with Shopify products, but there is no way to buy inside of ChatGPT.
FINANCIALS
AI effects in Pinterest Q3 earnings
“We had a strong Q3, with 17% year-over-year revenue growth. Our investments in AI and product innovation are paying off. We’ve become a leader in visual search and have effectively turned our platform into an AI-powered shopping assistant for 600 million consumers. In turn, global advertisers are increasingly counting on Pinterest as a go-to search platform to reach their customers and drive sales.”
Read:
- Q3 2025 Earnings Results – Pinterest
- Pinterest’s Q3 Earnings Results: Revenue In Line With Expectations But Stock Drops 14.4% (November 4) – Yahoo! Finance
Coming out of the earnings call, Dan Salmon, analyst at New Street Research, was circumspect about the AI opportunity for Pinterest:
“While Pinterest has little risk from AI evolution in search (85% of users go directly to the app) and we think its visual positioning could create an opportunity for more AI-generated ad creative (especially if it can grow its SMB and mid-market advertiser base more), we think the market is struggling to grasp an AI narrative for the stock, which is another reason that valuation has reached a level that is out of line with its growth prospects.”
CONNECTED TV
Roku launches self-serve API
Roku announced a new API which will allow API partners to bring Roku’s self-serve advertising tools for Connected TV (CTV) nto their own ad systems.
Roku’s Head of Ad Innovation Peter Hamilton spoke to AdExchanger’s Victoria McNally who reported that “the API launch (…) reflects CTV’s evolution toward becoming a performance-based channel, particularly by drawing from the social media ad buying experience that many digital marketers are already familiar with.”
Read more on AdExchanger. (November 4)
More: Roku Launches Self-Serve API Suite for Connected TV – press release
From tipsheet: This wasn’t an “AI announcement” per se, but it does track two important trends that AI continues to ignite: the move to performance (and outcomes) and interoperability.
TECH
Extensions in OpenAI browser
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“Hey OpenAI, forget something? Nothing needs Rewarded Interest as much as an agentic browser. So you can imagine how disappointing it was to learn that Atlas browser by OpenAI doesn’t fully support extensions. They load, they run, and you can call the UI from other controls…. but they forgot… the extension… menu. sigh” – Scott Spencer, CEO & Co-founder of Rewarded Interest (former Google ad product executive), on LinkedIn (November 4)
From tipsheet: With concerns circling around security in these early days for AI browsers such as OpenAI’s Atlas, perhaps a full rollout of extensions are a nice-to-have, but not a need-to-have, yet, for OpenAI. An extension which serves ads according to content served by ChatGPT could be a way for OpenAI to back into an advertising model for ChatGPT if the company allows it.
MORE
- Opinion: How agentic AI is making online shopping feel human again (November 4) – Ad Age (subscription)
- Stop Running So Many AI Pilots (November-December) – Harvard Business Review
- “As Neil Patel highlights: ‘Everyone is underestimating just how much Google’s AI is about to change the way search and advertising actually work.’ This is more than a technology update; it is a fundamental change to the customer journey—and an incredible opportunity for those ready to evolve.” (November 4) – Sean Downey, President, Americas, Google on LinkedIn
- Thoughts on Ad Context Protocol (AdCP) (November 4) – Alex Brownstein on LinkedIn
- Reddit’s tips for publishers: ‘Contribute without disrupting the vibe’ (November 4) – PressGazette