Pinterest is unveiling AI and automation tools to support advertising campaigns on the platform. At its annual Pinterest Presents global advertiser summit the social platform known for inspiration boards and shopping unveiled a generative background feature for its Pinterest Performance+ suite, allowing advertisers to replace flat backgrounds with “lifestyle imagery” using AI. Launched earlier this year, Pinterest says Performance+ lets advertisers create campaigns in about half the time and is already producing positive results. Now it is rolling out improvements to the feature in time for the holiday shopping season. Continue reading Gen AI Among Pinterest Performance+ Advertising Upgrades

Amazon has joined the ranks of firms offering generative video tools, although its release is aimed only at advertisers, at least for now. Simply called Video Generator, it can turn a product image into a video that showcases the product and even demonstrates its features, “leveraging Amazon’s unique insights to vividly bring a product story to life.” At the company’s Accelerate 2024 conference Amazon also debuted Live Image, which lets brands create animated GIFs from stills, a customizable chatbot assistant for third-party sellers, and a new AI-powered recommendation engine based on customer interests. Continue reading Amazon’s Video Generator Turns Stills into Advertising Clips

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 is launching Ad Relevance, a cookieless consumer tracking solution that will be available to those using Amazon DSP, a tool that lets advertisers buy Internet ad placements on and off Amazon’s website. Ad Relevance “uses the latest in AI technology to analyze billions of browsing, buying, and streaming signals in conjunction with real-time information about the content being viewed” to reveal customer shopping patterns and serve relevant ads across devices, channels, and content types without using third-party cookies. The technology accommodates Google’s long-delayed cookie deprecation, currently set for 2025. Continue reading Amazon Debuts Ad Relevance Cookieless Solution in Cannes

MainFunc Inc. has raised $60 million on the strength of its principal technology — a free, AI-powered search engine called Genspark. The platform responds to queries by writing custom summaries that are presented in a “Sparkpage,” a one-page overview featuring content from around the web. Genspark joins a growing field of generative AI search engines, the best-known of which is Perplexity, which has raised $250 million since its 2022 launch and is currently valued at about $2.5 billion. Reuters says Genspark’s funding values the company at $260 million. Google also offers “AI Overviews” as part of Google search. Continue reading Genspark Joins Collection of GenAI-Powered Search Engines

In 2023, viewers watched more than 30 billion hours of shopping-related videos on YouTube, according to the platform, which reports “a 25 percent increase in watch time” for videos that help people shop. The uptick coincided with the introduction of tagging features for creators, and now YouTube is expanding its retail involvement even further by allowing creators to set up storefronts and sell products in-app, as yet another way to monetize the service. The move comes as TikTok seeks to grow TikTok Shop as high as $17.5 billion in the U.S., a tenfold increase. Continue reading YouTube Adds Shopping Features for Products, Virtual Stores

In its continuing effort to expand in-app shopping activity, TikTok is testing an option to allow users to automatically identify products in their uploads — a march toward making all objects shoppable. The test lets select users toggle to “Identify Similar Objects” within a video. When activated, the AI-powered ISO highlights matching products that can be purchased in-app. TikTok has been exploring the feature for deployment in the United States this past year. TikTok parent ByteDance has for some time been using the in-stream shopping feature in the platform’s Chinese sister platform, Douyin. Continue reading TikTok Tests Feature Designed to Streamline In-App Shopping

U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) Chair Alexander Hoehn-Saric spoke with CTA Senior Director of Regulatory Affairs Rachel Nemeth during CES 2024 about the challenges of extending safety to products that are constantly evolving and incorporating new technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. Nemeth pointed out that the agency’s authorizing statute was enacted in 1972 and was last amended in 2008. “We’re doing a lot of good work with the statute we have,” Hoehn-Saric responded. “But we’re changing the way we operate. We talk a lot about machine learning and AI.” Continue reading CES: Championing Consumer Product Safety in the Age of AI

Spotify has launched an in-app dedicated Merch Hub that will offer personalized purchase recommendations based on listening habits. Previously, the music streamer’s shopping opportunities were through artist profile pages as well as via the Now Playing view and new release pages. Now, “instead of having to browse artist by artist, this update makes it easier than ever to access all artist merch in one place,” Spotify says. Last year, the streamer reported “the highest-grossing merch sales week for artists in Spotify history” in its annual Wrapped report. Continue reading Spotify Offers ‘Merch Hub’ for Recommendations and More

Amazon has developed a new virtual fan experience that includes shopping and interactive tours to tie-in with popular Prime Video series and films. The first such immersive experience is designed for fans of the Prime Video series “Gen V,” and includes a virtual tour of the show’s fictional Godolkin University, which trains aspiring superheroes, complete with a campus store brimming with actual merchandise that fans can purchase from Amazon. The programming extensions aim to offer “culturally rich environments for customers to discover, learn, experience, and consume more of their favorite stories” while shopping. Continue reading Amazon Launches Immersive Online Shopping on Prime Video

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

Amazon’s AWS cloud-computing unit generated $22.1 billion in Q2, a 12 percent year-over-year gain that was a highlight in a strong quarter for the e-commerce giant. The company generated a total of $134.4 billion in revenue for the period ending in June, an 11 percent increase over the prior year. Advertising was also strong, jumping 22 percent to $10.68 billion. Cost-cutting and rebounding e-commerce helped propel the Seattle-based company to a quarterly profit of $6.75 billion (its strongest performance since Q4 2021), which contrasted sharply with a loss in the same period last year. Continue reading AWS, Advertising Drive Amazon to 11 Percent Revenue Gain

Amazon says it achieved its “fastest Prime speeds ever” for deliveries across the 60 largest U.S. metro areas in Q2, when more than half its member orders arrived “the same or next day.” The benchmark announcement precedes this week’s earnings statement and was couched as fulfillment and transportation investments that have paid off. Amazon says it will in two years double the number of same-day delivery sites. So far in 2023 it has “delivered more than 1.8 billion units to U.S. Prime members the same or next day,” almost four times the shipments delivered at that rate during the same period in in 2019. Continue reading Amazon Boosts Efforts to Ship its Prime Deliveries in One Day

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