Happy Sunday,
Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news:
Q4 is 7 weeks away, here’s a spotlight on the brands that owned the 2025 holiday season:
As we are passionate about search & discovery, here’s the discovery view on the upcoming holiday seasons: the first Christmas where the AI search Third Shelf reaches scale. More details on how to act now here.
On Linkedin I started publishing a daily search pulse on core category & brand trends, this weeks content featured. Full coverage on Linkedin & X.
Insights from This Week on Search Pulse (Wk 30)
Mon · highlighters — BiC doubles share, takes #1
Tue · electric toothbrush — Oral-B 2.4×'s, takes #1
Wed · microwave — Chefman passes BLACK+DECKER for #1
Thu · twin mattress — Zinus doubles, #3 → #1
Fri · colored pencils — Crayola owns both top slots
Here’s this week’s top 10 trend summary for 2025 vs 2026:
Amazon had stopped Perplexities AI shopping agent in court from shopping on behalf on its user on the marketplace.
The court this week overturned the stop which opens the door for wider agent-shopping adoption on the marketplace.
The criteria in which a Computer Fraud and Abuse Act claim will hold are clarified as:
Intentionally accessed a computer
Without authorization or in excess of authorized access
Thereby obtaining information
From a protected computer
Causing at least $5,000 in aggregate loss in a one-year period
[More details by Cooley in ‘Ninth Circuit Rules on AI Agent ‘Access’ to Third-Party Websites Under CFAA’]
Shopify released it’s Q2 financials this week.
The highlights:
Revenue $3.58B, up 34%. GMV $115.6B. Free cash flow margin 18%.
AI traffic to storefronts tripled. AI-search orders tripled. Those buyers convert 2x.
Catalog-fed AI searches convert 2x better than scraped page data. Structured data wins.
75% of AI-attributed orders came from outside the top 100 categories.
Loan losses hit $141M, up 76%. Margins slipping as merchant solutions outgrow subscriptions.
Amazon’s title updates to short titles & item highlights are set to take broader effect this Monday, August 10th. More details here.
Gorilla Commerce built a 9-figure business on Amazon. Now, it’s launching in Walmart stores [Modern Retail]
Amazon loses US court ban on Perplexity’s AI shopping tools [Reuters]
Under Amazon, Whole Foods Is Shedding ‘Whole Paycheck’ Reputation [Bloomberg]
Shopify says AI search is driving more traffic and sales, not replacing Google [Techcrunch]
UPS CFO on the lessons learned from scaling back Amazon—and why the strategy is paying off [Fortune]
Retail’s new operating model centers on leaner teams, smarter data and physical community [Glossy]
Brands Briefing: Why apparel IPOs are creeping back up [Modern Retail]
Reddit announcement: expanding a new shopping feature that turns product mentions inside threads into full blown product pages [Linkedin]
OpenAI drives visibility of fake brand in experiment: “I launched a fake deodorant brand to see if AI would notice. “ [Deana on X]
Salt Lake City eCom Summit, SLC, Aug 20
Brandtech Connect @ IFA, Berlin, Sep 5
Amazon Accelerate, Seattle, Sep 22-24
Amazon unBoxed, San Francisco, Sep 28-30
Social Commerce Summit, Los Angeles, Oct 14-16
Make this week count 🙌
Christian
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