TikTok just announced two new features that could make it even easier for users to discover and buy products without leaving the app.

Here's what's coming:

👉 Shopping Assistant: A conversational AI agent that helps shoppers find products, answers questions about sizing, shipping, availability, and more. It can even remember their preferences throughout the conversation.

👉 Buy Direct: A one-click checkout experience that lets users purchase directly from brands while scrolling through their For You feed.

Think about it.

Someone discovers your product in a video, asks AI a few questions, and completes the purchase without ever visiting your website.

Pretty interesting, right?

But there's another side to this.

As platforms like TikTok take control of more of the shopping journey, brands could lose access to valuable customer data and opportunities to build direct relationships.

My question is:

Would you trade some control over the customer relationship for a potentially higher conversion rate?

Source: Retail Dive

The AI channel is ON FIRE. 🔥

I was about to close my laptop yesterday when I came across Harley Finkelstein's latest LinkedIn post...

What's it about?

Well, Shop Pay is now live in Meta's Muse (their new AI assistant).

What does this mean?

Users can ask Muse to find a product, add it to their cart, and check out with Shop Pay.

In 2026, shopping has started expanding beyond websites and into AI platforms, and agentic shopping is starting to take on real meaning.

Exciting times to be in ecomm!

Earlier this year, I wrote about the "end of dashboards" in 2026, and it happened faster than expected, as every as many companies started releasing their MCPs (it's what allows us to access their data from Claude, ChatGPT, etc.).

Now, it's Amazon's turn.

Sellers can now automate routine tasks 24/7 with Seller Assistant and bring their Amazon data and Seller Central insights into the AI tools they already use.

Read more.

Remember that, as of earlier this year, you can checkout directly from ChatGPT?

Well, now Google is doing the same thing for Shopify merchants.

Eligible Shopify merchants can now be automatically enrolled in native checkout across Google’s AI shopping experiences. 🙌

More info here.

Late last week, Shopify President Harley Finkelstein announced what all ChatGPT Ads early adopters had been waiting for:

A native Shopify product feed integration. 🙌

What does this mean?

You can now run a Product Feed ad campaign on ChatGPT Ads, similar to Meta’s Catalog ad campaigns.

Why is this a big deal?

Because before this update, populating and syncing a product feed was a nightmare. It was enough to make you lose interest in running ads on the channel because it was unbelievably difficult to do properly, especially compared to Meta and Google.

Want to start running ads on this channel?

Check out our guide.

What do you think of ChatGPT Ads so far?

Comment below. 👇

I was scrolling through my LinkedIn feed when I came across Jon Loomer's post about this.

What is this new feature?

During the ad setup process, you'll now see a Text section. One of the options there is Advantage+ Creative Text Generation.

Jon shared that it generated three new alternative angles for his ad. For each angle, it also created two new image variations, changing nothing but the text overlay.

Here's the link to his article.

ChatGPT just made the Conversions campaign objective available.

What does this mean?

We no longer need to optimize for Reach or Click objectives.

We can now tell ChatGPT to optimize for what we actually care about:
Conversions.

I'll be testing this today.

What about you?

You can now control what AI agents connected through Meta's Ads MCP server are allowed to do inside your ad account.

You can find this option in your Meta Business Settings:

Instead of giving them full access, you can choose exactly what they can (and can't) do, including:

• Creating campaigns, ad sets, and ads
• Editing budgets
• Updating targeting
• Editing creatives
• Turning campaigns on and off

If you're experimenting with AI agents, I'd recommend disabling things like budget changes, campaign status, and creative edits until you're comfortable with how everything works.

Since you're part of this community, you get to hear about these updates before they make it into the newsletter.

Have you started experimenting with Meta MCP yet? If so, what are you building?

Small Meta Ads update that could be worth testing.

Since you're part of this community, you get these updates before everyone else. 🤝

Meta now lets you set a ROAS goal even when using "Maximize number of conversions.

Previously, ROAS goals were only available with Maximize conversion value.

In practice, this gives Meta another optimization option: generate as many conversions as possible without completely ignoring efficiency.

Whether it outperforms your current setup is another story, but if you're optimizing for purchases and have a clear profitability target, this is one to add to your testing backlog.

Read more

I'm curious to see where everyone is.

Are you using AI for:

• Research?

• Ad creatives?

• Customer support?

• Reporting?

• Internal workflows?

• Something else?

Or are you still figuring out where it fits?

Share your favorite AI workflow or ask a question below.

If you could solve one problem before the end of the year, what would it be?

• Acquiring new customers?

• Increasing AOV?

• Growing LTV?

• Creative performance?

• Forecasting?

• Something else?

Drop it below.

I'll jump into the discussion, and I'm sure other operators here have faced similar challenges too.

I'll start.

This week I'm finishing the next edition of The DTC Insider, recording a new podcast episode, and helping several brands prepare for Q4.

On a more personal note, tomorrow a close friend who lives abroad is coming to stay with us. It'll be great to catch up while our families spend a few days together.

How about you?

Whether you're launching a new product, planning BFCM, improving retention, testing new creatives, or just trying to solve a stubborn growth problem, I'd love to hear what you're focused on.

👇 Share what you're working on this week.