Product ads, shopping inventory and commerce platforms. Follow the changes affecting where products appear and how their performance is measured.
Amazon Ads
Amazon has announced that, from 27 July 2026, product titles in all categories except media must be 75 characters or fewer, including spaces, as detailed by Leszek S. A new searchable field, Item Highlights, adds up to 125 characters for comma-separated phrases such as materials and use cases, shown beneath the title in search results and on the detail page.
Display & Video 360
Walmart Connect audiences are launching in Google Display & Video 360, announced by Google Marketing Platform. The collaboration lets brands combine YouTube's reach with Walmart Connect's omnichannel audiences, built on real shopping behaviour, to target high-intent shoppers streaming video on YouTube.
Amazon Ads
Alexander Swade has flagged a new Amazon Ads bulk-sheet feature for off-Amazon spend control, which he traces to a direct exchange with Amazon staff after he posted feedback on the bulk-sheet section. An Amazon team member responded, took a follow-up feature request, and shipped it within a few weeks.
Amazon Ads
Amazon has added a disclosure step for images uploaded to A+ Content and Brand Stories, requiring sellers to indicate whether an image is AI-generated and whether it features photorealistic AI-generated people, flagged by Ivan Marynych. The information is collected as metadata during upload, with no shopper-facing AI label at this stage, and the requirement applies only to A+ Content and Brand Stories, not the standard product image stack.
Amazon Ads
Vanessa Hung has flagged that Amazon is testing brand logos above the product title on select detail pages, replacing the small "Visit the Store" text link most buyers ignored. Placed before a shopper reads the title or price, the logo becomes an early trust cue: tapping it lets the buyer verify whether the current seller is authorised.
Amazon Ads
Amazon has confirmed that its 2026 Prime Day will run from 23 to 26 June, announced by CEO Andy Jassy and flagged by Prem Gupta. The four-day event spans deals across popular brands, back-to-school supplies, groceries, and more, giving sellers a fixed window to plan promotions, inventory, and advertising around.
Amazon Ads
Amazon has removed the "Contact Customer" button from the Customer Reviews dashboard, effective immediately, flagged by Vanessa Hung. Unless a reviewer messages the seller first through the Messages system, brands now have no path to reach a reviewer directly.
Amazon Ads
Amazon has made its first-party paid-feature signals in Amazon Marketing Cloud free to query for both audience creation and measurement through 31 December 2026, as flagged by Mansour Norouzi and Alexander Swade. The offer removes a fee that previously ranged from about $100 to over $10,000 per month and covers datasets such as Amazon Insights, Retail Purchases, Prime Video Insights, and Brand Store Insights.
Amazon Ads
Amazon has updated the Financial Reports section of Vendor Central so 1P vendors can download financial data in bulk for a selected time range, flagged by Martin Heubel. The export includes purchase order IDs, invoice IDs, invoice status, identified invoice defects, and total deduction amounts, and separates price discrepancies from shortages so vendors can identify different root causes.
Amazon Ads
Amazon appears to be rolling out a new AI-powered campaign type called Full Funnel Campaigns. The format lets Amazon's AI coordinate Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display under a single strategy that spans discovery through purchase, rather than requiring advertisers to run and budget for each campaign type separately.
Amazon Ads
Amazon has begun auto-enabling a setting that builds AI-assembled videos for Sponsored Products campaigns, pulling features from images and assets already on the listing, flagged by Alexander Swade and Isaac Gross. Sellers received emails about a beta in which Amazon generates the video and adds it to SP campaigns, and the new campaign setting has appeared to be switched on across many US accounts.
Amazon Ads
Amazon’s unified reporting launched in June. Its announcement sets 31 December 2026 as the sunset date for the older Sponsored Ads and DSP reporting pages.
Amazon Ads
Amazon has introduced location targeting for Sponsored TV campaigns, including radius-based options in the campaign setup, as Prem Gupta flagged. Sponsored TV targeting previously centred on audiences, demographics, and behavioural signals; advertisers can now narrow delivery geographically, including at the city level and via radius coverage.
Amazon Ads
Amazon has expanded its AMC workflow MCP tools to all Amazon Marketing Cloud instances, flagged by Ivan Marynych. Previously, the tools required an AWS Clean Rooms-enabled environment, which limited access.
Amazon Ads
Destaney Wishon has spotted a new "Shop by feature" sponsored ad placement appearing in Amazon search results. The format surfaces sponsored products organised by feature rather than strictly by the search term entered, expanding where sponsored products can appear beyond the direct intent of a query.
Amazon Ads
Amazon has begun selling its conversational shopping assistant technology to retailers it competes with, as Roger Dunn has flagged. The announcement is the AWS Agentic Shopping Assistant (ASA), built by the AWS Generative AI Innovation Centre, which packages the architecture, starter code, and lessons learned from Amazon's own Alexa for Shopping: recently rebranded from Rufus: for external retailers.
Amazon Ads
Christian Otto Kelm has flagged that Amazon's Brand Tailored Promotions are now available from a minimum audience size of 500. The promotions let sellers select audiences based on the shopping behaviour customers have shown with their brand; audiences that fail to meet the 500-member minimum are not eligible.
Amazon Ads
Amazon has introduced Disburse on Demand, allowing sellers to request disbursement up to once every 24 hours rather than waiting for the standard pay cycle, as flagged by Nik Hall. Three conditions must be met: a positive available balance at the time of request, an active linked bank account in Seller Central, and at least 24 hours since the last request.
Amazon Ads
Muhammad Muzamil has flagged that Amazon has started showing review highlights: actual phrases pulled from customer reviews: directly in search results, before shoppers click into a listing. Examples include phrases such as "Positively reviewed for quality" and "Loved for design."
Meta Ads
Meta Platforms began notifying staff worldwide on Wednesday, 20 May 2026, about layoffs as part of a restructuring aimed at reducing costs while investing heavily in artificial intelligence. The cuts started in Asia at 4 a.m.
Amazon Ads
Florian Nottorf has flagged that the Amazon Benchmark Report is now live globally, including Germany, after launching as a US-only beta in February. The report provides detailed competitor CPC and CTR benchmarks by campaign type and category: with up to 90 days of data available via the Ads Console at daily granularity.
ChatGPT Ads
Tariq Mohammed has flagged that ChatGPT Ads are coming to the UK in the next few weeks. OpenAI confirmed on 7 May that UK users on the Free and Go tiers will start seeing ads in the coming weeks: in the shopping, retail, and travel categories first.
Walmart Connect
Daniel Sodkiewicz has flagged a Walmart Marketplace update changing Expected Ship Date calculations for seller-fulfilled orders. Previously, sellers with fulfilment lag time greater than 0 days could benefit from order cutoff times: orders placed after the cutoff could sometimes receive an extra business day before shipping.
Amazon Ads
Daniel Orkun Duzgun has flagged that Amazon's Product Opportunity Explorer now includes AI-powered insights: auto-generated analyses covering search-term behaviour patterns, pricing sweet spots, review sentiment analysis, and product feature trends. The most actionable data is Brand Click Share Distribution, which shows top brands' click share within a category.
Walmart Connect
Google Search Central confirmed on 21 May that the May 2026 core update has begun rolling out to Google Search. The rollout may take up to two weeks to complete.
Amazon Ads
The standout structural launch from Activate: Import Centre lets advertisers import campaigns from Google Ads, Meta, Pinterest, and Amazon (plus file upload) into Microsoft Advertising in a single workflow. The interface surfaces insights as imports run: max active campaigns warnings, missing conversion goal issues, CPC mismatches between source and destination accounts: and supports scheduled imports with pause controls.
Amazon Ads
Juozas Kaziukėnas has flagged that Amazon has doubled the number of AI bots it is blocking, adding China's DeepSeek and Musk's xAI/Grok. Amazon now blocks 100 different bots, playing whack-a-mole as new ones emerge.
Amazon Ads
Amazon Ads ran its annual Amazon Upfront on Tuesday, 12 May 2026, in New York, unveiling its 2026–27 content slate, sports rights, ad-product roadmap, and a major measurement and creative push for Prime Video.
Amazon Ads
Andy Jassy confirmed at CEO level this week that Alexa for Shopping has rolled out broadly: bringing Rufus and Alexa+ together as a unified AI shopping assistant across phone, laptop, and Echo devices. In his words: "Alexa for Shopping is like having an expert personal shopper who already knows you and remembers your preferences, past purchases, and conversations, and carries that knowledge and understanding across your phone, laptop, and Echo devices."
Amazon Ads
Juozas Kaziukėnas has surfaced Shopify data showing AI-referred shoppers convert at nearly 50% higher rates than non-AI-referred traffic, with 14% higher average order value. The data is sourced from Shopify's aggregate platform statistics across its 7-million-store base and represents one of the first systematic measurements of AI-referral commercial performance.
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