The latest ecommerce news in marketing, measurement and Shopify. (Sept 28, 2026)
ChatGPT Ads on Shopify is live
OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Ads inside Shopify’s App Store. The free integration lets merchants sync their storefronts to ChatGPT, set ad campaigns within a budget, and feature products in marked ads inside the chatbot.
The rollout is US only for now. OpenAI says the app expands to other markets where ChatGPT Ads operates starting September 23, but we’re still waiting on confirmation of whether Canada is included.
Shopify president Harley Finkelstein confirmed Shopify is OpenAI’s first commerce partner. Shopify has spent the past year building merchant capability to sell directly through ChatGPT, and its recent product updates have focused heavily on agentic commerce. The company has also struck similar discoverability partnerships with Google and Microsoft.
The ad integration is the next layer on top of the work that’s already been done.
Google expands AI Brief and adds deeper AI Max reporting
Google has announced two updates to AI Max, its AI-powered feature set for Search campaigns.
First, the closed beta of AI Brief is expanding to Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish. AI Brief lets advertisers guide AI Max in their own words, giving it context on their business, audience and key messaging.
Second, a new reporting feature in Google Ads will show the full Search ad journey in one view: the search term that triggered the ad, the creative assets the user saw, and the page they landed on. It tackles a common complaint about AI-led campaigns, which is not being able to see what the automation is actually doing.
Google hasn’t confirmed dates, saying more details and availability will follow later this year.
Shopify just changed sessions – here’s how to read your numbers
Shopify rolled out a change to how it measures sessions between September 21 and 23, 2026, and your sessions, conversion rate and other session-based metrics may look different once it reaches your store.
Shopify is clear that this doesn’t necessarily mean your traffic, orders or customer behaviour changed. The way they are measured has changed, but the actual metric hasn’t.
- Bots are out by default
- Midnight UTC no longer splits a visit
- Pageview-free journeys now count
Conversion rate is calculated from sessions, so it can shift even when orders and sales stay flat. Fewer sessions from bot filtering lifts it. More sessions from cart links lowers it.
For example, 50,000 sessions and 1,000 orders gives you 2%. Strip 5,000 bot sessions and the same 1,000 orders now reads as 2.2%. Nothing has improved but the maths has changed.
Shopify’s own guidance is that a higher or lower conversion rate after the update isn’t automatically good or bad.
For more information on any of these stories, or for support with your marketing campaigns whilst trying to run your Shopify store, download our Shopify app and connect all your data into one place. One source of truth, so you can see exactly what’s making you money and what to do next.
