Call it “agentic commerce” or “conversational commerce,” Shopify rolled out “Agentic Storefronts” yesterday, which gives merchants the ability to be a part of conversations within AI chatbots.
Use case: If you’re selling shirts, makeup or vitamins on Shopify, you may see your product appear as part of an answer in ChatGPT. And that’s a good thing.
Shopify explained on its website:
“Agentic Storefronts help brands on Shopify instantly and accurately get discovered on AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot, with others coming soon. One quick setup in your admin and you’re selling everywhere AI conversations happen.”
Essentially, merchants approve the inclusion of their product feed in what Shopify sends to OpenAI for use inside the ChatGPT chatbot.
Shopify has created a “Sell on ChatGPT” page here for what looks like SEO purposes. The SEO appears to working well, too. It’s the first organic listing on Google Search. And an OpenAI paid search ad was there, too, when I visited. (Another way Google wins with AI.)
Back in September, OpenAI and Shopify confirmed (here and here) an agentic commerce partnership between OpenAI’s ChatGPT and the eCommerce platform. Any sales tailwind from agentic commerce will be something to watch in publicly-traded Shopify’s Q4 2025 earnings release in January or February.
Also, any revenue for Shopify due to ChatGPT integration should provide a line of sight on affiliate marketing revenue for Open AI via a cut of any Shopify sales enabled through OpenAI’s Instant Checkout.
Read:
- Introducing Shopify Agentic Storefronts: Sell your products everywhere AI conversations happen (December 10) – Shopify
- News: Shopify Agentic Storefronts and Shopify Product Network – Vanessa Lee, VP of Product, Shopify on Shopify
Related: Shopify launches product ad network which integrates items across merchants (December 10) – AdExchanger
From tipsheet: If you blend yesterday’s Shopify agentic commerce merchant news with the new “product ad network” news reported by AdExchanger, you can see an ad “engine” developing.
The ad engine is a combo of ad placements on the merchant’s site and the chatbot powered by AI which is delivering product recommendations.
This would seem to be potential good news for commerce media which has been pressured by recent analyst reports (such as this one by MoffettNathanson analyst Michael Morton) suggesting agentic commerce might suck all the advertising away from retail media.
LLMS & CHATBOTS
Developments
- Google launches managed MCP servers that let AI agents simply plug into its tools (December 10) – TechCrunch
- New OpenAI models likely pose “high” cybersecurity risk, company says (December 10) – Axios
- ChatGPT can now use Adobe apps to edit your photos and PDFs for free – The Verge
TECH
Meta’s AI and ads ambitions collide
In a feature article yesterday, The New York Times said an internal struggle, which includes ads, has developed among top executives in its AI research division led by Andrew Wang and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s top lieutenants, Chris Cox, the chief product officer, and CTO Andrew Bosworth.
The New York Times’ Eli Tan reported:
“In one case, Mr. Cox and Mr. Bosworth wanted Mr. Wang’s team to concentrate on using Instagram and Facebook data to help train Meta’s new foundational A.I. model — known as a ‘frontier’ model — to improve the company’s social media feeds and advertising business, they said. But Mr. Wang, who is developing the model, pushed back. He argued that the goal should be to catch up to rival A.I. models from OpenAI and Google before focusing on products, the people said.”
The NYT’s Tan noted some of Meta’s AI ambitions that could intersect with Meta ads strategy among the company’s apps such as AI chatbots in Instagram and an AI “personal assistant” in Meta’s new smart glasses.
A Meta spokesperson responded to the allegations of internal strategy strife: “Not only is Meta’s leadership aligned on building super-intelligence while continuing to grow the core business, but our company is an outlier in how much our A.I. investment is improving the ads and recommendations systems at the heart of our business.”
Read: “Meta’s New A.I. Superstars Are Chafing Against the Rest of the Company” (December 10) – The New York Times (subscription)
From tipsheet: Meta’s internal disagreements sound healthy at this early-ish stage of AI for a company trying to deliver on an AI future which is not 100% clear. If one of those executives leaves, I reserve the right to change my mind.
With Meta’s AI investment, either in part or in whole, the company wants to iterate what is arguably the best ad system out there, particularly among DTC entrepreneurs. It remains a machine for making businesses.
COMMERCE MEDIA
Walgreens and Rokt power ads with AI
“The agreement [with Rokt] enables non-endemic brands to reach millions of loyal Walgreens consumers on Walgreens[dot]com’s order confirmation page.
‘At Walgreens Advertising Group, we are committed to connecting brands with one of the most loyal and engaged consumer bases in the country,’ said Abishake Subramanian, group vice president of consumer marketing, loyalty and the group. ‘By expanding our retail media ecosystem with AI-powered capabilities, we’re giving advertisers new ways to engage customers in meaningful moments while creating incremental value for Walgreens.’”
Read: Walgreens Advertising Group extends AI-powered retail media ecosystem with Rokt (December 10) – Mass Market Retailers
From tipsheet: A “thank you” page can have AI, too.
RESEARCH
Why pursue ads in a chatbot? Apple $$$
On Mobile Dev Memo, analyst Eric Seufert reviewed the implications of the recent remedies announcement in the Google Search antitrust trial.
The remedies effectively say that Google can not extend the existing structure of the search deal it has with Apple into chatbots. Chatbots are a new silo.
That’s good news for Apple because it ensures a new chatbot licensing or ad-revenue-share stream. To that end, Mr. Seufert noted, “The company that best executes chatbot advertising will similarly be best positioned to win iOS as a distribution platform.
He concluded:
“… given the scale of iOS and its prized user base, advertising in chatbots could become a distribution necessity: integrating into iOS and piggybacking on the iPhone footprint is significant motivation to pursue an advertising-based monetization model.”
Read: “Ads in chatbots as a distribution necessity” (December 10) – Eric Seufert on Mobile Dev Memo (subscription)
From tipsheet: Good thoughts by Mr. Seufert.
These days, Apple is either strategically waiting or meaningfully behind in AI, depending on the source.
MEASUREMENT
UK likes AI search, ChatGPT
The Office of Communications (Ofcom), which is the UK’s regulator for the communications industries such as the internet, released data yesterday showing traction for AI search as well as the sustained dominance of Google Search among English internet users.
Ofcom reported:
“Google Search is used by four in five (82%) adults. It is by far the most used search service in the UK, with 3 billion searches a month.
AI is changing the UK’s search experience. About 30% of searches now show AI overviews, and more than half (53%) of adults say they see these summaries often. In most cases, they aren’t seeking these but finding them now included by their search services.
Generative AI services are gaining traction, with more people actively seeking them out. ChatGPT had 1.8 billion UK visits in the first eight months of 2025, up from 368 million in same period of 2024.”
Another interesting UK stat:
“YouTube is the most used Alphabet-owned service, used by 94% of adults. Time on YouTube is increasing, reaching an average of 51 minutes a day, not including the TV set. The combination of Facebook and Messenger (93% adults) is the most widely used Meta service, followed by WhatsApp (90% adults).”
Read more on Ofcom’s website. (December 10)
From tipsheet: YouTube is a relentless, addressable media beast. How AI transforms advertising on Google’s video site will be something to watch. For example, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan touched on one new idea still in the works when he discussed an auto-tagging ad network of sorts with Stratechery’s Ben Thompson in September.
AGENCIES
Stagwell touts AI-enabled self-service
Following on the heels of WPP’s October announcement regarding a new self-service platform tied to WPP Open, agency holding company Stagwell — which is an amalgamation of MDC Partners and numerous agencies — is doing something similar.
MediaPost’s Steve McClellan explained:
“Stagwell has added another self-serve platform to its suite of offerings — an artificial intelligence (AI) agent-driven workflow management tool that it has dubbed NewVoices.ai.
According to the company, it is built as an end-to-end operating system to help sales operations book appointments, drive conversions, resolve questions and handle customer concerns, and it can do this in any language and respond instantly 24/7.”
Read more in MediaPost. (December 10)
From tipsheet: The irony of agency services expanding into self-service is not lost here.
Nevertheless, with Stagwell’s product, the target here appears to be a horizontal organization within the client. It also looks like lead gen for the agency.
With WPP, the self-serve platform is about extending to other internal customers next to the main client but within the same overall business.
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Edge AI — and edge advertising
The researchers at MBI Deep Dives explored a topic which you will here more about — Edge AI, where AI is hosted on your phone and does not require an inference through the internet and back to the cloud and a Large Language Model (LLM).
Edge AI is seen by some as a “bear case” for AI development in that AI companies are hoping to make money off the inference (the request of the LLM). If no inference, no revenue, and that’s bad for certain huge AI companies and, maybe, a so-called bubble bursts.
MBI Deep Dives provided some background with stats for today’s ChatGPT usage:
“It was a bit surprising to me that vast majority of ChatGPT users are not using reasoning models. If your queries can be responded without reasoning, those are exactly the type of queries that can be easily done by on device models in a few years. And if the free model on your device can have private, uninterrupted (personality won’t change due to any model changes) conversations, would ChatGPT remain compelling enough for incremental users to pay for subscription.”
Read “The ‘Edge AI’ Bear Case.” (December 10)
From tipsheet: Edge AI could also present “edge advertising” where digital ads don’t make an instantaneous call back to a server as it does in a real-time-bidded (RTB) auction.
Perhaps this, too, will be an opportunity for agentic buying and selling. The rules are set by the agent that lives on the phone and doesn’t need a real-time connection?
Or, maybe “edge AI” invigorates a tool such as Google’s Privacy Sandbox’s “Protected Audience API” where auctions are enabled locally?
MORE
- How do people use AI assistants? (December 5) – Dan Petrovic at Australian SEO agency, Dejan
- “We saw that over 60% of all Shopping and Apparel searches showed “broad intent,” meaning people aren’t just hunting for specific items; they’re exploring concepts, styles, and ideas, like “y2k shirts graphic” or “fisherman aesthetic’.” (December 10) – Google VP of Global Ads Dan Taylor on LinkedIn
- McDonald’s Netherlands pulls AI Christmas ad after backlash (December 10) – BBC
- South Korea to require advertisers to label AI-generated ads (December 10) – PBS
- Attain and Yahoo DSP deepen partnership for real-time purchase data (December 10) – press release