The era of free views on TikTok Shop is fading fast

TikTok Shop is transitioning from offering free organic views to a predominantly paid advertising model, significantly impacting small businesses that once relied on viral exposure to drive sales. The move aligns TikTok Shop more closely with platforms like Amazon who monetize through ads and sales commissions. This evolution reflects TikTok Shop's effort to mature its business model amid broader challenges, including falling sales and political pressure threatening TikTok’s U.S. operations.

TikTok Shop's shift to a pay-to-play model underscores the importance of adapting to an ad-driven marketplace. Ecommerce brands should reassess their strategies, investing in paid advertising to maintain visibility and sales. This transition highlights the need for a sustainable, diversified approach to thrive in the evolving digital commerce landscape, that balances both top and bottom line considerations.

How Amazon’s AI ad campaign tools are being used by brands to test new ad targeting

Amazon has introduced advanced AI-driven tools within its Demand-Side Platform (DSP) to enhance ad targeting and campaign optimization for major brands. These tools analyze vast datasets to uncover nuanced consumer behaviors and preferences, enabling more precise audience segmentation and personalized advertising strategies.

The integration of AI into Amazon's DSP signifies a pivotal shift towards data-centric advertising. Ecommerce brands should leverage these AI capabilities to refine their targeting strategies, ensuring ads resonate more effectively with intended audiences. By embracing these tools, practitioners can achieve improved campaign performance, higher conversion rates, and a more efficient allocation of advertising budgets.

Costco ecommerce sales grow more than 10% for sixth straight quarter in Q3

Costco Wholesale Corp. reported robust growth in its e-commerce segment for fiscal Q2 2025, with online sales increasing 20.9% year-over-year, more than double the rate of its total sales growth of 9.1%. Key drivers of this growth include enhanced digital tools; personalized marketing; product category strength such as bullion, home furnishings, small electronics, hardware, and sporting goods; logistics expansion; and marketplace growth.

Ecommerce practitioners should note Costco's successful digital transformation and its commitment to enhancing the online shopping experience for its members, and remember that Costco is a key player - and growth opportunity - in the ecommerce landscape.

Amazon's secret 'Bend the Curve' project purges billions of product listings from the Everything Store

The 2024 initiative aimed to remove billions of underperforming or outdated listings, from an anticipated 74 billion to under 50 billion. The primary goals were to enhance the shopping experience by eliminating clutter and to cut down on cloud infrastructure costs associated with hosting inactive product pages, saving Amazon over $22 million in AWS server costs, with projections of an additional $36 million in savings for 2025. Underperforming listings were defined as listings that lack inventory, contain outdated information, and implementing "creation throttling" to limit new listings from sellers with extensive catalogs but minimal sales.

This move is a reminder to brands that Amazon is seeking more balance between being "The Everything Store," and operational efficiency.

Lawyer admits to ‘embarrassing’ mistake after Anthropic's Claude made up a source in a legal filing—and no one caught it

"An attorney representing Anthropic—an artificial intelligence company—admitted to incorporating an incorrect citation created by the company’s AI chatbot amid an ongoing legal battle between the company and music publishers, according to a Thursday court filing."

Something similar happened in the White House's "MAHA" report, citing research articles that don't exist to support its positions. An important reminder that AI still hallucinates, and not taking the time to carefully review and "own" its output comes at your own peril.

PDD Holdings Announces First Quarter 2025 Unaudited

The parent company of Pinduoduo and Temu reported Q1 2025 revenue of $13.18 billion, up 10% year-over-year, but saw net income drop 47% due to heavy investments in marketing and merchant support. The profitability decline and concerns around the impact of tariffs spooked investors, causing a sharp stock drop amid broader economic and competitive pressures.

FreshDirect ventures into physical retail | Grocery Dive

"The e-grocer has opened a temporary brick-and-mortar location in the resort town of Southampton, New York. FreshDirect, which currently provides next-day grocery delivery service to communities in the Hamptons, said it is looking into offering same-day service to the area by using the pop-up store to fulfill orders."

Instacart names Chris Rogers as CEO after Fidji Simo's exit for OpenAI

"Instacart has appointed business chief Chris Rogers as its new CEO, less than a month after OpenAI announced CEO Fidji Simo as its new operations chief. Rogers joined Instacart in 2019 after 11 years at Apple."

Amazon's new generative AI-powered audio feature synthesizes product summaries and reviews to make shopping easier

"Hear the Highlights" provides short-form audio summaries on select product detail pages, generated by "AI shopping experts" who analyze product details, customer reviews, and information from across the web to present key product features in an engaging audio format. While available on a limited number of consideration-heavy products, brands need to be thinking differently about optimizing for AI vs keyword search including adding multi-format, rich content to product listings, experimenting with AI tools including Amazon's "Enhance My Listing" feature to optimize product descriptions, monitoring customer feedback regularly, and staying on top of AI developments.