The latest ecommerce news in marketing, measurement and Shopify. (October 12, 2026)
65% of shoppers will use AI this holiday, Shopify tells us who’s winning
Shopify says that 2026 is the first holiday season where AI shopping agents go mainstream, with 65% of shoppers planning to use AI for at least one shopping task and regular AI users increasingly favouring indie brands. Because agents understand plain-language needs rather than keywords, niche brands like Cottonique (AI-referred sales up 276%) are finally being found, while Stanley 1913 grew AI-referred US orders 5x by bringing social, PR and analytics into its discovery work. But only a third of shoppers trust an agent to buy for them, so brands still have to win the final decision: Aviator Nation leans on emotional connection, and Material Kitchen competes on value and purpose rather than deeper discounts. The takeaway is that brands must be readable to machines and persuasive to people, since an agent can only repeat the case a brand has already made.
ChatGPT launches new visual ad format with expanded measurement
OpenAI has introduced visual ads that appear alongside image generation in ChatGPT, starting in the US later this month for Free and Go users, giving retailers a way to reach its 1.2 billion weekly users. On measurement, advertisers can now connect their existing conversion data, track attribution through third-party tools, and run early incrementality tests to see the true impact of their ads.
Google’s September spam update is done, and it took 7x longer than usual
Google’s September 2026 spam update finished rolling out on 8 October after nearly 14 days, far longer than this year’s earlier spam updates, which took between 19 hours and under 3 days. Early data from 32,000+ sites showed 10% lost half or more of their organic Google traffic share during the rollout, though some rank trackers also showed ranking swings that real searchers didn’t see. If you spotted a drop between 24 September and 8 October, check Search Console before blaming the update: a genuine hit will show up in impressions and clicks over several days.
Running a Shopify store and your marketing at the same time? Download the ASK BOSCO® Shopify app to bring all your data together and see what’s driving revenue, and what to do next.
