The latest ecommerce news in marketing, measurement and Shopify. (Sept 21, 2026)
AI Max auto-upgrade
Campaigns using Automatically Created Assets (ACA) or campaign-level broad match are being moved onto AI Max, Google’s more automated Search setup. Google is trying to preserve your existing setup as closely as possible: AI Max gets configured with settings that mirror your legacy campaign, including search term matching and text customization turned on by default.
Auto-upgrades started on the 1st of September and Google expects all eligible upgrades to finish by end of September. You can move voluntarily before then, and Google provides tools to port settings and historical data if you’re coming from Dynamic Search Ads specifically. One thing that changed since Google first announced this: DSA migration itself got pushed back to February 2027. Only ACA and broad match campaigns are moving on the original September timeline.
Here’s what you need to do: every campaign using ACA or campaign-level broad match now. Test AI Max on one before it’s forced on the rest. Review the search terms it starts matching and the ad copy it generates, since both change automatically once you’re upgraded. You can opt out in settings, but that’s a manual action you have to take, Google won’t leave the old setup running by default.
Commerce audience sharing
A retailer or marketplace can share its first-party customer data segments with brands that sell through their platform. Google’s own framing: it lets advertising partners access valuable first-party data segments from their commerce partners to improve campaign performance and drive sales, and lets those combined audiences be used across all supported commerce media campaign types.
Any campaign using a commerce partner’s shared audience can only send traffic back to that commerce partner’s website. So a brand can’t take a retailer’s audience data and run ads that lead to the brand’s own site, the retail relationship stays the destination.
For the retailer or marketplace, this is a way to deepen partnerships and let trusted brand partners run better campaigns using the retailer’s own customer data. For the brand: access to audience insight you’d otherwise have no way to build, without needing a direct data relationship with those customers. This is opt-in and partnership-based, not a default change to anyone’s account, so it only matters if you’re a brand selling through a retailer, or a retailer running a program like this.
Shopify x OpenAI
Merchants can install the ChatGPT Ads app from Shopify’s App Store. It syncs their product catalog into ChatGPT Ads, lets them set a campaign budget, and shows their products as marked ads inside ChatGPT conversations. Shopify president Harley Finkelstein confirmed Shopify is OpenAI’s first commerce partner, the same week OpenAI named HubSpot its first CRM partner for the equivalent ChatGPT Ads integration.
US merchants only right now, OpenAI says international markets where ChatGPT Ads already operates get access starting September 23, though it’s not yet confirmed whether that includes Canada.
The app installs an OpenAI-run server-side pixel (similar function to a Meta or Google conversion pixel) to track which ChatGPT ad views turn into actual sales. To work, it needs access to customer name and email, IP address, browsing behavior, and store analytics.
The caveat worth passing on is that ChatGPT’s ad audience is still small next to Google Search, roughly a third of the US population uses ChatGPT versus over three-quarters using Search, so this is worth testing, not worth reallocating serious budget to yet. Treat it as an early channel to watch, not one to lead with.
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