Amazon has introduced Lens Live, an AI-powered update to the Amazon Lens shopping tool. The app, which works in concert with Amazon’s Rufus shopping assistant, uses smartphone cameras much like Google Lens does with visual search. Pinterest Lens is another such app. But the purpose-built Rufus ties it even more closely to the shopping experience with instant scanning, real-time product matches and insights from Rufus. Lens Live is already available to tens of millions of U.S. users on iOS in the Amazon Shopping app with plans to roll out to all U.S. customers in the coming months. Continue reading Amazon’s Lens Live Brings Real-Time AI Shopping to Mobile

TikTok is reporting that TikTok Shop’s U.S. sales have increased 120 percent in 2025 compared to the same period last year. However, this announcement was made as reports surfaced that TikTok owner ByteDance is disappointed that the U.S. performance of TikTok Shop is falling far short of its original tenfold growth goal to $17.5 billion in 2025. The company reportedly moved to “drastically lower that objective” prior to touting its performance this month. Meanwhile, President Trump recently extended the deadline for ByteDance to sell the U.S. operations of TikTok, pushing the cutoff to September 17. Continue reading TikTok Shop’s U.S. Sales Improve but Still Fall Short of Goals

Bookshop.org was launched in 2020 as a way for local bookstores to compete nationally against top names such as Barnes & Noble and Amazon. The outlet lets independent bookstores — even those without websites — set up a storefront on Bookshop.org, creating curated lists and themed pages. Readers could then visit these virtual bookstores and select one as their preferred shop. The idea was to bring local bookstore charm to the generic experiences available through larger services, and it has been called a lifeline for small shops. Now the company is adding ebooks with a reader app for Android, iOS and the Web. Continue reading Bookshop.org Adds Ebooks to Help Level Field for Indie Sellers

YouTube has expanded its relationship with Shopify, allowing more merchants to make their products available for creators to tag in their shopping content. All eligible Shopify Plus and Advanced merchants in the U.S. are now able to sign up for YouTube Shopping’s affiliate program through the Google & YouTube app on Shopify, which is expected to significantly increase the number of participating brands and products. According to YouTube, viewers watched over 30 billion hours of shopping-related videos in 2023. Broadening the scope of its Shopify deal is expected to make YouTube more competitive with TikTok Shop. Continue reading YouTube Expands Retail Relationship with Shopify in the U.S.

Music streaming service SoundCloud has added a digital merch outpost, the SoundCloud Store, where select artists who have signed up for the paid Next Pro tier can design exclusive merchandise for their fans — “with minimal effort — letting them focus on their craft while driving meaningful revenue beyond streaming.” The items will be manufactured by SoundCloud, which is launching what it calls “the first edition” of the SoundCloud Store in the U.S., Canada and European Union. Only artists that own 100 percent of their merchandise rights are invited to apply to participate. Continue reading SoundCloud Helping Artists to Design for New Merch Stores

After five months of testing, e-commerce giant Amazon is releasing its AI-powered shopping assistant, Rufus, on mobile throughout the U.S. via the Amazon Shopping app. By tapping the icon, shoppers can access a chat interface and query Rufus on topics such as the best portable speakers or summer dresses under $50. In time for this week’s Prime Day event, the new assistant can also provide status updates on orders. Rufus was trained on the Amazon catalog and other Internet content, so it can provide information on a wide variety of topics and reportedly also answer questions about politics and write short stories. Continue reading Amazon’s AI Shopping Assistant Rufus Is Ready for Prime Day

Amazon reported $143.3 billion in Q1 revenue, a 13 percent increase year-over-year, excluding the impact from foreign exchange rates, with net income at just over $10.3 billion, a nearly 229 percent surge that set a first quarter record for the company. Both categories outperformed Wall Street expectations, with strong online sales and a booming cloud business thanks to the increased demands of artificial intelligence deployment by enterprise clients credited as driving the boom. Amazon President and CEO Andy Jassy called it “a good start to the year.” Continue reading Amazon Q1 Profits Surge on Strong Retail and AWS Comeback

Amazon has launched a new service called Your Books that allows customers to see all the books they have purchased, borrowed or saved across print, Kindle and Audible. In addition to serving as a reading history, the hub also serves personalized discovery suggestions designed to drive sales. “Simply type ‘Your Books’ in the search bar on the Amazon Store, and the top result will open the Your Books feature. Once there, the Library tab contains every book you have ever bought or borrowed from Amazon,” the e-retail giant explains. Continue reading Amazon Launches ‘Your Books’ for Lists, Recommendations

The U.S. saw record Cyber Monday sales, with shoppers dropping $12.4 billion, according to Adobe Analytics, which tracked roughly 1 trillion retail website visits resulting in purchases of more than 100 million products. Top-selling items included Hot Wheels toys, Microsoft’s Xbox Series X game console, televisions and small kitchen appliances. Spending was up by 9.6 percent over last year’s event, according to Adobe, which crowned Cyber Monday 2023 “the biggest online shopping day of all time.” Although consumers continue to fret about the economy, sales were propelled by discounts and offers to “buy now, pay later.” Continue reading Cyber Monday Marks Biggest U.S. Online Shopping Day Ever

American consumers set a new online shopping record for Black Friday, spending $9.8 billion on November 24, a record for the famous sales day and a 5.7 percent increase over 2022, according to Adobe Analytics. Thanksgiving Day online sales were also strong, rising 5.5 percent to $5.6 billion, per Adobe, which predicts that Cyber Monday numbers will blow past both those days, projecting U.S. consumer spending of between $12 billion and $12.4 billion for another new record. A notable trend during the holiday shopping weekend was increased reliance on “buy now, pay later” deals. Continue reading Black Friday Sets Sales and Mobile Shopping Records in U.S.

Walmart has doubled the size of its Marketplace platform in the past 18 months, with about 100,000 active sellers. Now, the company — which receives seller applications at the rate of about 20,000 per month, about 10 percent of which get approved — feels it is within striking distance of Amazon. Some say Walmart has been emulating the moves of the Seattle-based e-retail giant, including now adding sponsored video ad units in time for the holiday shopping season. The Walmart+ online brand has been emphasizing convenience, membership, free delivery and even a Paramount+ Essential plan, similar to Amazon’s approach of offering Prime Video. Continue reading Walmart Extends E-Commerce Push, Adds Sponsored Videos

Salesforce suggests “the retail industry is again on the precipice of major disruption” based on consumer adoption of artificial intelligence, which is being used to change shopping habits and inform purchases through things like personalization, browsing suggestions and recommendations based on past habits and visualizations. Other popular use cases include AI-generated marketing assets and customer service agents. Based on a study conducted in May and June of this year involving 2,400 shoppers and 1,125 retail decision makers, Salesforce notes that one in six shoppers, or 17 percent, have already used generative AI for “purchase inspiration.” Continue reading Salesforce: 17 Percent of Shoppers Have Used Generative AI

Amazon is rolling out systematic artificial intelligence summaries of customer product reviews for mobile users. The retail giant says it will be using generative AI to condense highlights of consumer comments so buyers won’t have to wade through dozens of individual reviews to grasp recurring sentiments. Short, AI-generated paragraphs will begin appearing on the product detail page, highlighting prevalent opinions. Along with the summary, Amazon will also include clickable buttons that highlight key product attributes, such as “ease of use,” “wearability” or “performance,” linking the references to reviews that discuss those aspects in detail. Continue reading Amazon’s Generative AI Will Help Streamline Product Reviews

TikTok is making a big push into e-commerce with a plan to sell made-in-China products to consumers. The move sets up a rivalry with popular shopping platforms Shein and Temu to bring Chinese goods to the U.S., while the overall approach replicates the successful “Sold by Amazon” program. As with leading online marketplace Amazon.com and the companies it represents, TikTok will warehouse and ship items — ranging from clothing, electronics and kitchenware — for Chinese merchants, handling checkout, marketing and after-sale services. TikTok plans to debut its American shopping program in August. Continue reading TikTok Offering Chinese Goods via U.S. E-Commerce Market

TikTok is testing an in-app shopping feature in the UK called Trendy Beat. The products offered for sale are primarily things that have appeared in trending videos, like tools to remove pet hair from clothing or ear wax extractors. The items are shipped from China by Seitu, a Singapore-based subsidiary of TikTok parent ByteDance, according to recent reports. Trendy Beat offers a range of items manufactured and promoted by TikTok for which ByteDance keeps all proceeds. Its preexisting e-commerce pipeline, TikTok Shop, allows third-party vendors to sell merchandise in exchange for a commission to ByteDance. Continue reading Trendy Beat: TikTok Testing White Label In-App Online Store