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2025 is clearly a year of opportunity. While it’s been a challenging year for many brands for a variety of reasons, news like ChatGPT’s integration with Shopify, AppLovin opening its doors to advertisers, and now PayPal doing the same (not to mention the overall boom in AI) is creating more opportunities (and sometimes a few headaches from shiny object syndrome) than we’ve seen in years. 

I’m not saying you should jump on everything at once, but it’s great to have more options to explore.

Now, let's dive in!

Topics we'll cover today:
💠 PayPal Opens Its Ad Network to SMBs
💠 TikTok and Google Just Launched Some Interesting Features
💠 Top-Listened Podcast Episodes

PayPal Opens Its Ad Network to SMBs

Last week, AppLovin opened its doors for every advertiser, now PayPal just announced PayPal Ads Manager, a new platform that lets tens of millions of small businesses turn their websites and apps into retail media networks, something that, until now, only big players like Amazon or Walmart could do.

The tool lets SMBs opt in, install a simple SDK, and start earning ad revenue from third-party brands shown on their storefronts, all managed inside the familiar PayPal Merchant Portal.

With no upfront cost or ad-buying expertise needed, merchants can:

💰 Monetize their site traffic by publishing ads PayPal automatically serves and manages.

📈 Create new ad inventory for brands targeting high-intent shoppers.

🧩 Track everything through their existing PayPal dashboard.

PayPal’s advantage is its transaction graph (25 years of cross-merchant purchase data) which allows precise targeting based on real buying behavior, not just browsing.

The company says Ads Manager will also let merchants launch their own paid campaigns across PayPal’s ecosystem and social channels, using AI tools for creative generation and unified cross-channel management.

📅 Launch: Early 2026 (U.S. first, then U.K. and Germany)
👉️ Waitlist: paypal.com/us/advertiser#contact

Will you test it?

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Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

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TikTok and Google Just Launched Some Interesting Features

Both companies announced new features that are worth mentioning here. 

Tiktok

TikTok just rolled out major upgrades to its AI-powered Smart+ campaigns, giving brands more control and better automation.

Until now, Smart+ was mostly a “trust the algorithm” black box.

Now, you can customize automation module-by-module, for targeting, budget, and creative.

So if you want to let AI handle creative testing but control your targeting manually, you can.

Key updates:

→ More control: Decide how much automation you want across each campaign element.

→ AI creative tools: Built-in access to TikTok’s Symphony suite.

→ Recommended Creatives pulls your best historical or AI-generated videos.

→ Automatic Enhancements lets Gen AI resize, dub, and improve video quality automatically.

→ Better measurement:

→ Custom split tests to see what’s actually driving results.

→ New GMV Max dashboard to track which creatives and creators are generating the most sales.

→ Smarter attribution:

→ Google Analytics integration (in testing) shows a 54% lift in conversions and 27% lower CPA.

→ Assisted Conversions helps you see when TikTok sparked a purchase that happened later on your site, those “invisible” conversions most brands miss.

For brands heading into Q4, this means you can now blend control with automation, instead of choosing one or the other.

Google

Google just announced a series of updates that will reshape how search results – and ads – appear in the SERP.

1. A new “Sponsored Results” section

Paid search listings will now live in their own labeled block called “Sponsored results”.

The label stays visible as people scroll, and users can even collapse the section if they only want to see organic results.

This could have two effects:

→ Lower CTRs on some search ads (especially brand campaigns)

→ More pressure on SEO and organic placement as users learn to hide ads entirely

If you’re still bidding on your own brand name, it might be time to re-evaluate whether those clicks are worth it once the ads become more obviously marked – and easier to hide.

2. AI-Generated Image Search

Google’s rolling out new generative tools in Search, letting users create an image (using Google’s Nano Banana AI model) and then use it to find visually similar results.

Snap a pic, tweak it with AI, and search based on what you generated.

This expands the same tech already live in Google Shopping – but now it works across all of Search.

For brands, this means product discovery is moving even closer to visual intent – people will literally generate what they want to find.

3. AI Summaries in Discover

Google’s also adding AI-powered summaries to Discover, surfacing quick overviews of trending topics, sports, and stories relevant to each user.

These previews can expand into deeper dives or external links – now live in the U.S., South Korea, and India.

What do you think of these?

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Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

Our Most-Listened Podcast Episodes

Q4 is here! It’s officially game time. 🏁

For most brands, these next 90 days aren’t just another quarter…they’re THE quarter. The one where you either hit the accelerator and close the year strong, or get buried under the noise, promos, and rising ad costs.

I’m fired up for it. Are you?

Because Q4 isn’t about who spends the most, it’s about who’s most prepared: the brand that knows its customers, its offers, and its customer journey inside out.

Those are the brands that don’t just survive Q4…they dominate it.

If you enjoy reading it, it'd mean the world to me if you could leave a review here.

Let's dive in!

Topics we'll cover today:
💠 Breaking: You Can Now Buy in ChatGPT
💠 ChatGPT is Now 20% of Walmart’s Referral Traffic
💠 Our Most-Listened Podcast Episodes

Breaking: You Can Now Buy in ChatGPT

This is probably the biggest announcement of the year.

On Monday, Shopify revealed a new partnership with OpenAI to bring commerce directly into ChatGPT.

You’ll soon be able to ask for product recommendations, shop around, and...

Drums please… 🥁

Check out, without leaving the chat!

Here’s what’s really happening 👇

→ Shopify merchants will be able to sell directly in ChatGPT. No links, no redirects, just seamless transactions.

→ Behind the scenes: Shopify maps real-time data (inventory, prices, images, variants) so AI understands it as commerce.

→ When a shopper asks ChatGPT for a product, they’ll see inventory from millions of Shopify merchants, all inside the conversation.

→ Merchants remain fully in control: your brand shows up, orders flow into Shopify admin with attribution, you stay merchant of record, and you decide checkout experience.

→ Shopify calls this “agentic commerce”, turning AI conversations into direct commerce moments, not detours.

🚀 Why this matters to you:
→ If your store is on Shopify, you’ll be discoverable alongside the biggest brands.
→ The friction of redirects and lost conversions? Gone.
→ And Shopify says this is rolling out “very, very soon.”
→ A new frontier: product discovery is moving inside AI chats instead of search engines or ads. 

Welcome to a new era of e-commerce.

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Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

ChatGPT is Now 20% of Walmart’s Referral Traffic

The Shopify x OpenAI announcement I shared earlier wasn’t just a shiny press release. The ripple effects are already showing up in real-world data.

📊 In August, 20% of Walmart’s referral traffic came from ChatGPT. That’s up 15% from July. Etsy saw more than 20%. Target nearly 15%. Even eBay hit 10%.

Now, to be clear, referrals are still a tiny slice of total traffic (less than 5% overall). But the speed at which AI chat has cracked into the top tier of traffic sources is staggering.

Think about what this means:

👉 Consumers are clicking through links in AI responses, instead of searching on Google.
👉 Shopping intent inside ChatGPT is real: around 50M shopping queries a day.
👉 Nearly 60% of U.S. consumers have already used a GenAI tool for shopping help.

Meanwhile, the two giants are taking opposite paths:

→ Walmart, Etsy, Target: wide open to AI, letting ChatGPT surface their products.
→ Amazon: blocking AI crawlers to protect its $56B ad business, while pushing its own bot, Rufus.

My take?

Amazon is betting on control, Walmart on distribution.

And Shopify just gave millions of independent merchants a ticket to play in this new AI-driven discovery funnel, as we covered in the previous section.

That’s why this is bigger than “just another announcement.”

This is the new front door to e-commerce.

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Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

Promote your Business to 11,000+ People in the DTC Space

Only 1 spot left for Q4!

The DTC Insider (newsletter + podcast) reaches a highly qualified audience of DTC founders, directors, and marketers. Learn more about the sponsorship opportunities we offer for your business.

Our Most-Listened Podcast Episodes

This week I took a break from new episodes on The DTC Insider podcast (we'll be back this Friday!). 

In the meantime, you can enjoy some AMAZING conversations I've had with super successful brands:

Also Happening in the DTC Space

📰 Instagram wants to be on your TV too
📰 Trump announces extra 100% tariff on Chinese goods starting next month
📰 36 Predictions for Social Media Marketing in 2026

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About The Writer

Brian Roisentul is the founder & CEO of BSR Digital, a growth marketing agency he started in 2013 to help e-commerce brands unlock hidden revenue by identifying misalignments between their marketing and customer behavior. He is also the host of The DTC Insider podcast, where he interviews thought leaders, founders, and directors in the e-commerce space.

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Promote your Business to 11,000+ People in the DTC Space
The DTC Insider (newsletter + podcast) reaches a highly qualified audience of DTC founders, directors, and marketers. Learn more about the sponsorship opportunities we offer for your business. If you’d like to become a sponsor, apply here.